In the past, I have posted about my troubles rounding up chickens. If your hens don't want to go back in their coop after a session of free ranging, it can be pretty damn hard to convince them to do so. Chickens are fast and they can be surprisingly sneaky.
It's almost always a bad idea to chase an uncooperative hen, particularly for me, since my backyard is on a hillside. I'm more likely to fall on my butt than I am to actually nab one of my hens. But I don't want to have to keep the girls cooped up because they can't be trusted to return to the safety of their fenced-in run when I need to go to work. Luckily, I have come up with a new technique to herd them that I wanted to share.



All you need to execute my newly discovered Hose Technique (patent pending) is a good, long outdoor house and a spray nozzle. With these tools, you too can herd your hens right back into their run in a manner of minutes. Here's how it works:

Stand in a location that allows you to see your chickens and their run. Then, start spraying short bursts of water behind them. This will startle them a bit, but it won't hurt them, even if you accidentally hit them in the butt with a little water. Basically, the water will annoy them, so they'll run in the other direction. Using their desire to avoid getting wet, you can herd the hens with water the way a dog would herd sheep. It takes a little practice, but it works really well for me, because I can spray a stream of water much more quickly than I can run back and forth shooing my hens.

In fact, now that I've used Hose Technique a couple of times, my hens start to head back towards their run as soon as the first spray hits nearby. They know that as soon as they get in the run, that weird water will stop showing up.

I know some folks may not enjoy startling their pet chickens, and this technique is not for everyone. But for me, if it's a choice between very rarely letting my girls free range and using the Hose Technique, the hose wins.

I have exactly seven figs growing on my little fig tree this year. They looking pretty good and my tree is having its happiest and healthiest year yet. So, I'm hoping to taste some fresh figs in another month or so.

I'm considering tying some shiny ribbon to the tree or using some other anti-bird technique to protect those seven fruits. But I don't think ribbon is going to keep squirrels away, and I suspect they're the biggest threat to my figgy dreams. Any suggestion?

I've been cloth diapering my son for a little over a year now, so I thought this might be a good time to share  my diaper-washing method, in case other prospective parents stumble across this blog. First, let me say that, despite what you might have heard, cloth diapering is not difficult or expensive. Whenever I tell people my son wears cloth, they say, "Wow." Honestly, they shouldn't be impressed. Now, if I was doing EC, then they should say, "Wow," because that takes some serious commitment. But cloth diapering is no big deal.

Anyway, enough proselytizing. As I mentioned in a previous post, my son wears cloth pre-folds with waterproof covers. It seems like everyone has their own washing method, but here's what's kept my son's diapers clean and sturdy for the past year:

Note: I have a front-loading, high-efficiency washer.

Regular wash
1) Put dirty diapers, flannel wipes, covers and diaper pail liner into washer and run a "rinse/spin" cycle on COLD, no detergent. This is basically just to rinse off the, ahem, debris and keep stains from setting.
2) Add roughly 2 Tbl Sp of Planet 2x Ultra Laundry Detergent* and 1/2 cup of vinegar to the fabric softener section. Run the "heavy duty" cycle on HOT.
3) OPTIONAL: If the diapers are particularly dirty or stinky, I sometimes run an additional "quick wash" cycle on HOT with just Borax
4) Remove from washer. Hang cloth pre-folds and wipes on the clothesline, preferably in the bright sun. Hang the covers and diaper pail liner on an indoor line or drying rack, because the sun can degrade the plastic.
5) OPTIONAL: After the pre-folds are dry, put them in the drier for 10 mins just to soften them up a bit.

Stink removal
- For stinky pre-folds, I usually fill up a big bucket with cold water and about 2 cups of Biokleen Bac-Out, and soak the pre-folds in this mixture overnight.
- For stinky covers, Thirsties recommends that you run a wash with a small amount of chlorine-free bleach powder, like OXO-Brite. This method has worked for me.

And that's it! Honestly, if you use pre-folds, you can purchase enough so you only have to wash diapers every 3 days or so. Dakota and I both have full-time jobs, and don't find diaper-washing to be a major time suck.

And now for a baby photo, just because. This is my son watching his dad build the deck.



* Planet is one of the recommended detergents on this cloth diaper detergent chart, and it's both cheap and wildly available.

I know I tend to be kind of a chicken proselytizer, always playing up the benefits of chicken-keeping and how easy it is to have hens as pets. Well, there is a darker side to backyard chickens, which I will share with you now... Chickens are jerks.

Okay, much of the time chickens are perfectly nice, and maybe even funny or interesting. But, sometimes, they can be real a**holes, like when they break through fencing boundaries and dig up a bunch of your garden even though they have the whole yard to run around and scratch in and all you're asking is that they stay out of this one space!

Yes, the dirty little secret about backyard chickens is that they can be very destructive to your plants and vegetables. Last week, my hens somehow managed to break into the only two fenced-in areas of the yard and destroy several carefully-tended squash plants. Considering how minimal my garden is this year and how late I started growing things, this was a crushing loss.

When it happened, I was pretty furious. I mean, honestly, they have a HUGE amount of space for three hens. They have weed patches, dirt patches and lots of bushes and trees to hide under. But that wasn't enough for those girls. Oh no! They had to break into my garden.

I guess the moral of this story is that chickens are very curious. When they see a nice green plant surrounded by straw, they really want to get at it. So, build your fences well and watch those chickens closely, or you may find yourself in your backyard one evening shouting swear words at three clueless hens. (This may or may not have happened to me.)

Summer is here, and Dakota decided we were not going to go another month without our deck. Our house is small and we don't have central air conditioning, so it makes life so much better to have that extra outdoor space. The French doors in our kitchen/dining room open onto the deck, and when it was warm enough, we'd eat meals out there. I'm looking forward to doing that again, especially now that our son will be joining us.

Three weekends ago, Dakota got the structural part of the deck all built. Impressively, he did it all by himself, aided only by scaffolding and clamps. That dude is tough. The structure is made of treated lumber, but the actual deck itself will be built using Ipe.

Ipe is a tropical hardwood that is so hard and dense that it's both rot and bug resistant. It also won't need to be sealed or painted. So, that means less work to install and maintain. Of course, it's also more expensive that traditional deck woods like cedar, but since our deck is fairly small, we think it's worth it. This Ipe is FSC certified, so it's supposed to be sustainably harvested. There's some argument on the Internet as to whether this is really possible when you're talking about wood cut down in the Amazon basin. Like many products marketed as sustainable, it's difficult for the consumer to know what to believe.

Dakota got a lot of the Ipe decking down last weekend, and should finish up this weekend.

The wood starts out red, but will eventually fade to a grayish color, much like the unsealed cedar on the chicken coop.

After the deck is down, we're adding galvanized wire "fence" panels between the railing posts to keep all dogs and babies from falling. The hope is to eventually grow vines on panels for privacy and prettiness. There will also be a slanted roof over part of the deck, where we'll put a small dining table for the previously-mentioned outdoor dining.

I can't wait to enjoy cool summer evenings as a family.

We're big coffee drinkers in our family, and, lately, Dakota has been interested in collecting various interesting coffee-making apparatus. So, for Fathers' Day, my son and I got Dakota the ultimate coffee connoisseur's gift: his very own coffee tree.

We picked up a nice-looking 1-gallon coffee tree at Mimosa Nursery in East LA. I read about this nursery several years ago on another Los Angeles gardening blog, and have always wanted to go there. Mimosa is the place to get interesting and exotic fruit trees in Los Angeles.

After a multi-freeway journey, my son and I arrived at Mimosa and were immediately helped by the very friendly owner. (I think he was the owner.) He even showed us over to a bigger coffee tree and gave us some of the red berries to take home and dry. We didn't stay long, but the large lot was covered with all kinds of interesting fruit trees--Jujube, Jack Fruit, Guava--and I definitely plan to go back soon and get something else soon.

The plan for this little coffee tree is to plant it into a larger pot for a while before putting it in the ground somewhere sunny. From what I can tell, a full grown coffee tree can produce a couple of pounds of beans a year. So, we'll be producing some very trendy small-batch, artisanal coffee here on our little urban farm. You can't get more gourmet than that!

Last month, I took some potatoes from our produce delivery service that sprouted in the pantry and planted them in my garden. I put very little effort into my potato patch, since it was more of a small experiment than a real effort to grow potatoes. Plus, I had a rather spectacular failure with potato growing a couple of years ago.

Well, a couple of weeks ago, I noticed the stalks had died back on all the potato plants, so I decided to go ahead and dig them up. My expectations were low, so I was happy to find a small cluster of tiny yellow potatoes buried under the dirt. I guess I ended up with around 3/4 of a pound. A small crop, but I was happy to have been successful.

I roasted my little crop of tiny taters with olive oil, salt and pepper. They were very tasty! Was it the freshness or the sense of accomplishment? Who can say?

I think next year I might try to grow some more potatoes in a deeper hole. One thing I learned is, in Los Angeles, it's best to grow potatoes in the spring. I think last time the weather was too hot and dry when I started my crop, which made the stalks droopy, which caused me to over-water and rot my seed potatoes. That's my theory anyway.

Good news! Los Angeles residents can now recycle milk and juice cartons in our blue bins. According to a post on Mayor Villaraigosa's website yesterday:

Starting now, you can recycle cartons such as milk, juice, cream and egg substitutes as well as juice boxes, soup, broth, soy milk, and wine cartons. We are now the largest city in the state with a carton recycling program, solidifying our position as the number one recycling city in the nation.

We consume a lot of juice and milk at our house, and I always feel bad throwing those waxy cartons in the trash. Now I don't have to.

Speaking of Los Angeles recycling... I was perusing the Los Angeles Times website the other morning, and came across this excellent feature in the home section. It's called "Can I Recycle?" So far, they've covered plastic wrappers, mesh citrus bags, bottle caps, Tyvek and a few more. Check it out if you live in LA County, as various cities in the area are covered.

I picked this beautiful, bright-red strawberry from one of my potted plants last week. It was delicious.

I think next spring I'm going to try to grow a whole patch. I suspect my son will really enjoy picking and eating them right from the garden.

The only unfortunate side effect of this lack of attention is that the paths get pretty messy and weedy. Last spring, the weed situation got particularly bad (perhaps because our new neighbors let their yard turn into giant patch of dandelions and foxtails). I really didn't want to spend hours pulling up all those weeds, so I decided to go an easier route with cardboard and mulch.



Last week, Dakota stopped by a lot downtown that offers free mulch, courtesy of the The Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation. They give away mulch and compost at several sites around the city. You can find a location near you here. Dakota filled up a few plastic bins worth, the perfect amount to cover our two small paths.

The mulch itself is very decomposed. It smells more like compost than pine trees, although the scent has faded now that it's been on the paths for a week. While the chunkier, bark-filled mulch might look and smell a bit better, this stuff worked out fine (and did I mention it was free?). I suspect the city lets it decompose more to kill all the weed seeds that are likely mixed in with the tree trimmings.



Before spreading the mulch, I lay down some pieces of cardboard to provide an additional weed barrier. I didn't cover everything perfectly, but, as you know, I'm in a lazy gardening phase. I honestly think the combination of random pieces of cardboard and a thick layer of city mulch should work pretty well for a while. I guess we'll find out this coming spring.

Long-time readers of this blog know that our kitchen remodeling project was an epic undertaking. Dakota took everything down to the bare bones and then slowly and carefully rebuilt the entire space. It took a looooooong time, mostly because Dakota was building the kitchen on nights and weekends, but the project was completed several months ago. If you're wondering, it functions beautifully and looks amazing.

Click here, here and here for some "before" photos.

For some reason, the potatoes we get in our produce delivery box sprout a lot more quickly than the ones we get at the store. I'm guessing it has to do with their freshness and variety. The ones above started growing little stalks after a few days--or at least that's how it seemed.

Rather than chuck them in the compost bin, I decided to plant these taters and see what happened. I had a rather spectacular failure trying to grow potatoes in bags, so this time I just dug a deepish hole in the upper garden bed and buried them, with room to add more dirt and compost as they grew.

To my delight, they shot right up! What's nice about potatoes is that the stalks grow extremely quickly. I planted the sprouted potatoes in late March, and by mid-April they were in need of some more serious mounding. So, I built a little wood barrier around the plants and buried them a bit more. If I had more time, I'd build it even higher. But I think one level will have to do for this year.

Since I haven't grown potatoes successfully before, I did a little check last weekend to see if the plants were actually producing new tubers. I dug up two stalks on the edge of this patch, and, happily, found some teeny tiny baby potatoes growing deep down in the soil. So, I may actually get some homegrown potatoes this year, if I can keep curious chickens and evil skunks away.

I think they key in Southern California is to plant potatoes in the late Spring. Once summer really begins, the plants have difficulty in our dry heat. At least that's my experience.

Last month, we finally got around to fencing in the lower garden bed. In the past, I'd used some more half-assed barriers, including draping garden netting over the beds. But I have wanted to create a more permanent fence for a while, and Dakota was kind enough to oblige.

The garden now has three sides covered in chicken wire and one side hung with a large piece of garden netting, so that I can drop that side down to plant and weed. I feel confident that this setup will be successful in keeping out skunks, squirrels and, most importantly, my naughty chickens.

Unfortunately, all the wire fencing in the world can't keep out insects. I seem to have some kind of cutworm or other pest that's gobbling up my squash sprouts as soon as they emerge. I'm not really sure what to do, but I guess I might need to get some beneficial nematodes. If anyone has cutworm control tips, let me know, especially if they aren't too time consuming. I don't have a lot of time to spend in the garden these days.

So, things are not off to the smoothest start this Spring. But once I get the pest situation under control, I am hoping the new fencing, combined with a soaker hose, compost and lots of straw mulch, will ensure an excellent crop of squash, tomatoes and beans this summer.

Hope you enjoy a beautiful Spring day.

I apologize for all the gloomy chicken posts lately, but I'm afraid I have some distressing news: Peggy has passed on to that great chicken coop in the sky. We had some crazy times, me and the Peggster, and she will be missed.

I'm no chicken doctor, but I believe Peggy died of natural causes. Several weeks ago, I found her lying dead in a corner of the run when I went down to give the hens their morning scoop of food. There was no sign of foul play (ahem), and, honestly, it looked like she'd just keeled over while sitting on a perch. Hopefully, she died happy, clucking away with her sisters.

Peggy was one of my older chickens, at a little less than 3 years old. Tina, who is the same age, is still laying eggs and seems quite vigourous, but Peggy hadn't laid for a year or so, and seemed to have slowed down a little. She is my first chicken to die of old age. We gave her our traditional viking funeral.

My mom sent me a link to an interesting article a while ago, and it seems particularly relevant now that Spring is here and my garden is full of flowers and pollinators. It's actually a guide for "urban bee gardeners" from UC Berkeley's College of Natural Resources, and it points out a funny contradiction that conscientious gardeners should be aware of: mulch is not good for wild bees.

It turns out, the majority of native California bees are actually ground-nesting. That means that, rather than building the classic hive hanging from a tree branch, they actually dig little holes in the soil and put their cells inside. So, if you mulch like crazy to suppress weeds and keep water from evaporating before it soaks into the soil, you might also be making it harder for bees to nest.

Since bees are also essential in a good organic garden--and, well, essential for life as we know it--I think it's important to know about their need for naked ground. That way, we can all leave a place in our yard that is both plant and mulch-free, so California bees can happily reproduce.

My backyard is still a bit of a wilderness in places, so I don't think the bees will have trouble finding bare ground to dig their little holes. But I'm glad I know about this, just in case I manage to tame the whole space someday.

In the meantime, the bees in my yard are busily buzzing around my lavender, native plants and, happily, my blooming fruit trees. Hopefully all that careful pollination will bring some tasty homegrown apples, peaches and oranges in the coming year.

Since my gardening strategy this year has been to keep it simple, I decided to focus on greens for my winter crops. Lettuce, spinach and other greens grow quickly, love containers and provide several harvests from the same plant. They're perfect for the lazy gardener.

I also wanted to try out a cool new container, made from Dakota's discarded art project: an extra-long tool box. After he drilled drainage holes in the bottom of each compartment, I filled them up with dirt and compost and planted my salad mixes. This year, I went with some lettuce mixes from Renee's Garden. They've all grown really nicely and the mixes provided a good variety of color and flavor in the salad bowl.

I also planted some baby romaine in the center of a large pot and surrounded it with baby carrots. That combination has worked out really well, with the romaine growing tall and healthy and the carrots happily growing downward around the rim of the pot.

I've also got a couple one small pot of chard and another pot of collards growing, although that's not really enough for a meal. I should have planted more.

Overall, though, I'm happy with my winter crop. I expended very little effort, and have already enjoyed many delicious salads fresh from the back patio. Hopefully the warm weather won't cause my greens to bolt too soon, and I'll get a few more cuttings off the plants this Spring.

Well, it's been almost a week since Rita the hen disappeared, and I think it's time to admit she's not coming back. It's hard to believe a chicken can just vanish into thin air, but I am pretty sure that's exactly what happened. Hawk attack just seems like the most likely scenario.

It's sad to think of Rita meeting her end in such a sudden and scary way. I just hope the hawk killed her quickly, and that her life in my backyard was a happy one. I think it was.

There is some good chicken news this week, though. Perhaps to cheer me up--or perhaps because they don't want to "disappear" like Rita did--three of my hens have started laying!

Tina was the first to start up again. She's the oldest and has already molted twice, but she's still laying big, nicely-shaped pink eggs. It must be her hearty mutt genetics. If you're looking for a consistent layer, Black Sex-links are the breed to choose. Tina was soon followed by Janice, laying dark brown eggs, and Betty (I think) laying green ones. It's possible the green eggs are from my other Easter Egger, Peggy, but I doubt it. Peggy's also an older girl, and she hasn't laid in ages.

Production has been excellent for the last week. I've even had a few 3-egg mornings. Hopefully the hens will keep up the good work, and I'll be back to gifting eggs to friends and neighbors in no time.

The flowers pictured above were grown in our back yard. It's been a great year for the iris patch. They're blooming like crazy, despite--or maybe because of--this winter's weird weather.

• Sprayer hose: You need a good, hard stream to spray the poop off any of your detachable coop parts (perches, removable floor, food and water containers)
• Metal dust pan: This is great for scooping up dirty straw and shavings (and dumping them on your compost pile)
• A cheap metal wall scraper: This tool is extremely handy for scraping off dried-on poop and gathering up shavings hidden in a corner
• An old metal barbecue brush: If you really need to scrub a dirty perch or coop floor clean, these can work great. Just make sure you mark it so no one accidentally uses it on your grill.

I went down to the chicken coop this morning to feed and water the girls, and when I opened the door to let them free range a little, only four hens emerged. Rita, my Silver-Laced Wyandotte, is missing! (That's her on the right in the photo below.)

After confirming Rita wasn't inside the coop, I searched the whole yard, checking under every structure and bush and in the overgrown ivy where the chickens sometimes hide. Dakota and our son came down to look too, but there was no sign of her--and no sign of a struggle. No pile of feathers or blood trail. Nothing.

I looked over the neighbor's fences and into the no man's land below our back yard, and Rita wasn't there, either. To be honest, I highly doubt she jumped a fence or squeezed through a hole in the gate. The chickens have never shown any interest in leaving the yard or getting too far away from their coop, even when I've (stupidly) chased them.

The last time I saw Rita was last night just before sundown. She was with the other hens, scratching around in the dirt near my garden. My son and I even spent some quiet time watching the hens free range and shooing them away from the artichoke patch.

After dark, I went down to the coop and closed the door to the run. I didn't check to make sure everyone was inside, because the idea that one of the chickens would have stayed out after dark never occurred to me. Even now, I doubt that's what happened. There would be no reason for Rita to stay out when all her chicken sisters were already settling in for the night. Chickens do not have a taste for the nightlife.

My current theory is that Rita was carried off by a hawk sometime yesterday evening. This is hard to believe--Rita is a full-sized chicken--but I have seen hawks eyeing the girls before. Once, a hawk tried to swoop down and grab one while I was in the yard with them. That attempt was unsuccessful, but maybe this time the hawk got lucky. I hope not.

Has anyone lost a chicken to a hawk before? Would there really be no sign of a struggle? And wouldn't I have heard something? I was up in my son's room, which overlooks the back yard, at the time I suspect she disappeared. I feel like there would have been a screech or a loud cluck or something if a hawk suddenly grabbed Rita. Wouldn't the other girls have made a fuss--or been skittish this morning when I let them out? Still, a hawk attack seems like the most likely scenario.

The only other explanations I can think of are (1) escape and (2) theft. These both seem pretty unlikely. I keep hoping Rita will just suddenly show up, and I haven't ruled out posting a "Missing Chicken" sign or two. I guess she might have wandered off. Maybe? Poor Rita. She is/was so young.