Casual Living

Let there be no doubt — if there’s one thing that I believe the success of a garden rises or falls upon (other than water, without which etc.) it is liberal applications of well-composted chicken manure. I am a lazy gardener. I do not test my soil pH and apply carefully-measured amendments of lime or potash or what-have you … I cross my fingers and, year after year, turn-in more chicken manure. It’s worked well so far. Sure, we maintain a compost heap of kitchen and yard scraps, keep a worm bin in the basement, and buy the occasional bags of commercial compost — I’m no raving horticultural coprophile — but the backbone of it all is deeply funky, high NPK poultry poo. It’s got what plants want, it mellows out extremes of acidity and alkalinity, you know it’s got some serious microbial mojo going on, and it’s a lot less environmentally spooky than the fertilizers that industrial agribusiness favors. Yay chicken shit!

The garden is getting off to a late start, largely attributable to our having more spring rain than usual — often coinciding with weekend daylight hours (i.e. when I can do things outside). Thinking to accomplish some much-needed prep and planting, I picked up some bags of chicken manure on Sunday afternoon, only to return home in a dismal, dusky downpour. Not really manure-moving conditions. Yesterday: more of the same and home after dark. Fortunately, today’s skies managed to expend their energies in a late-afternoon hail storm, leaving a nice window for me to transport the bags from car to garden, though nothing more. By the time I’d pulled on the overalls and made my wheelbarrow trips, darkness was falling, but at least the bastards are out of the car. For all that I sing its praises, chicken manure really has no place being locked up in an enclosed vehicle for a couple of days — it tends to makes its presence known, as recent passengers would (vehemently) attest.

For the record, the apple trees have just about run the course of bloom. I believe there may be one or two flowers on the Ashmead’s Kernel, and more on the Hudson’s Golden Gem, but in the main there’s no more pollinating taking place this year. I hope it sufficient. The Hudson has a longish, vigorous bloom extending over a month (on spurs), while the leggy Ashmead is miserly with its meager tip-blossoms, and then only for about two weeks. Fortunately, the two overlap, so their genetic essences are each available to the other. Unfortunately, the weather has been wet, windy, cool, and overcast for the past month, which is just the ticket to discouraging bees from getting busy. Granted, I’m not around much, holding down my desk during daylight hours, but when I have wandered the garden paths I’ve not seen the trees to be getting much api-action. Peering at the Hudson’s withered flowers the other day, there weren’t any markedly swollen ovaries — I’ll give it another week or so before declaring defeat, but it looks as if I may not be making many pies this autumn.

Oh, and, yielding to the lateness of the season, I bought some lettuce starts on Sunday, too. As soon as the opportunity presents itself, I’ll plant the salad patch. Real soon now. I hope.