Did you know you can automate watering your garden? Watch this for an explanation of my favorite gardening technology, drip irrigation!
Also, if you would like a full list of the materials I use to irrigate my garden, please message me through the HomeDabbler Facebook page anytime!
Kevin
P.S. – For more gardening info and ideas, visit my Yard & Garden page.
Tomatoes are unusual garden plants in many ways, including how they need to be planted.
If you buy tomato plants from a nursery to plant in your garden, there is a simple technique for planting them that will make them strong, keep them from flopping over so badly, and set them up for season-long success.
Watch this short video for the tip!
Kevin
P.S. – For more gardening info and ideas, visit my Yard & Garden page.
**A month or so after Hurricane Michael destroyed Panama City, Florida—my home town—I was fortunate to write an article for the Washington Post about what life was like here just weeks after the storm. I had to edit my first version down from 1,400 words to 900 to meet the editorial guidelines. Below is the full-length version.**
by Kevin Elliott
It has been a month since the eye of hurricane Michael passed over my house.
If you saw any coverage of the storm, it was probably drone footage of the damage to Mexico Beach, the coastal village that was eliminated from the Florida Panhandle on October 10. It is twenty minutes from my home in Panama City.
I’d like you to know what it is like here.
You may have experienced a hurricane. We have many times. It’s what we do here, part of our waterfront rhythm. It sounds strange to my friends elsewhere, but we are intimate with our storms. Their names mark our lifespans like notches on a child’s closet door frame.
“Remember Ivan? That was bad in Pensacola.”
“I was in college when Opal hit Panama City Beach.”
“My dad was there for Eloise.”
Tropical cyclones define our salty lifescape as much as beach sand and blackened grouper. We take pride in our ability to live with and withstand them, to “ride them out.”
Took pride. No one is proud of what happened here a month ago. This was different. I struggle to call this storm by name.
It did not just damage our city. We were strafed. A methodical decimation. No, worse. Decimation means destroying one in ten. The destruction in Panama City is universal, not a single unaffected structure or person. Friends of mine have spoken with Vietnam vets who told them that the aftermath of this storm looks in every way like the result of a bombing run. The only thing missing are the craters.
We are homesick on our own streets.
I have heard other people raised in special places like Panama City, tourist spots in particular, say they don’t appreciate the beauty of their community enough. They don’t take advantage of what’s in their back yard, what tourists pay to enjoy.
Panama City isn’t like that. We truly dig our home and its surroundings. Our social media feeds are (were) full of weekend pontoon rides to Shell Island. Evening walks on Mexico Beach. Canoeing on Econfina Creek. A successful hog hunt or fishing trip. Cliché shots of tanned legs stretched over quartzite sugar sand. If there is a pretty sunset on a random Tuesday, you can scroll Facebook and see shots of it from a hundred different angles. Captioned #LoveWhereYouLive.
It’s a soulful life. Panama City is a lovely mix of old Florida Gulf-side hamlet and Deep South gentility, blue collar redneck ethos, military town, and artist colony. There are NRA conservatives and fire-breathing liberals and people who don’t give a shit. But we all like the fish tacos at Finn’s.
And the trees. Our historic neighborhoods—Millville, The Cove, Saint Andrews—are known by the shade of timeless live oaks under which those communities sprouted a century ago. The trees are why people wanted to live there. Forests of muscular beauties formed an unbroken canopy, a cocoon, over the homes of common people, a twining web of arthritic branches laced with dainty Spanish moss. It conjured Tolkien.
By some estimates, Panama City has lost more than 90 percent of its mature trees. Maybe that’s exaggerated, maybe not. But as you drive around, it feels accurate. There are few shadows left in our defining enclaves. Imagine Savannah without its oaks. What would it be?
How does that sort of mutilation affect a small town? We know what trauma does to individuals. But can the effects of abuse be experienced collectively, across a populace? It seems so.
This is a crass analogy, but the best I can think of – it feels like we were raped. Pinned and violated, over and over. Taken. Taken from. It was absurdly violent. In less than three hours, we were denuded, brutalized, and left exposed.
There is a heartache here.
We are in phase two now. In phase two, the adrenaline is gone. The visceral needs are met, most roofs are tarped, fewer sirens. Curfews lifted. The astonishing army of out-of-town linemen that rewired our infrastructure has all but dispatched. The first panic is over, but has been replaced with a dreadful clarity about what we are really up against, and for how long.
At first, early in phase one, it didn’t sink in that the foundation of our community could be cracked to the bedrock. But both hospitals were closed. Completely, taking no patients. There was not a single gas station or grocery store in operation. No traffic lights. No cell service. No schools. No municipal water or flushing toilets. No emergency services to outlying areas. Looting in a city that has never, ever, had looting. A local mayor openly recommended on her official Facebook page that her constituents leave for at least two months.
In phase two, the layoffs have started.
A friend of mine, a successful medical marketer, texted me the other day.
“Know of anyone hiring? The medical system is suffering and I am more than likely going to be laid off in two weeks.” Update: she was.
My friend lost her home to the storm as well. She salvaged enough of her daughter’s belongings to fill a few pillow cases.
Phase two has brought a housing crisis. There are literally not enough habitable buildings. By all accounts, more than 30 percent of structures in Panama City proper are unlivable. In some pocket communities like Parker, Callaway, and Springfield, it is well over half.
Many teachers, police officers and fire fighters, paper mill workers—those lucky enough to still have jobs—are homeless. Entire apartment building and condo populations have been evicted for repair and mold remediation, without recourse. A co-worker of mine bought a camper and parked it behind the remains of her home while they rebuild over the next year. As of last week, she was still trying to get running water to it.
At the same time, many places are hiring. Home Depot, Wal-Mart, AutoZone, and certainly the building trades, are open and begging for applicants. Many lower-wage workers had to leave almost immediately, couldn’t wait for the rebuild. But if there are no homes, then coming back, even for a job, is futile.
We are in a quandary.
We will rebuild. All communities say that after a disaster, but we will. As what though? With whom? How long?
Yards are re-appearing. Roofs are tarped. Stacks of debris are more organized and taller, much taller. People are doing what they can. It must be done, but it’s also busy work and therapy, something we can control and achieve.
The busy work is lessening though. We’re on to the stuff that average citizens can’t do. Heavy demolition, rebuilding whole subdivisions and shopping centers, and disposing of the interminable berms of shattered trees and household belongings at every curb.
We will rebuild I’m sure, but it hurts right now. We are vulnerable and scared. We have not moved on. We are grieving.
As in all catastrophes, there are some smiles and optimism. Bucking up. Stories of genuine communal effort. #850Strong is a popular hashtag (850 is our area code).
For Halloween, a group of locals decided to hold a community trick-or-treat event on Harrison Avenue, the umbilical of our historic working-waterfront downtown area. They held a used costume giveaway for kids who had lost their clothes. People donated candy.
My wife and I normally hovel up and cut the porch lights on Halloween night, but I wanted to see how this event would go, how (or if) people would respond.
It was slammed. Costumed families choked Harrison Avenue. Those restaurants that were able to open, did. There were craft tables and blow-up ghosts and a stilt walker. The Saint Andrews Ukulele Band performed outside the damaged Panama City Center for the Arts. It was everything Halloween should be and a much-needed gathering. We needed to see each other’s faces.
I chatted with a couple while we waited online at Tom’s Hotdogs, an iconic downtown joint. They lived in Callaway. Lost everything. They and their two little ones were dressed as the Incredibles.
What does it take to actually dress up as a family and go for hot dogs after the last month in Panama City?
Incredible indeed.
Like any hobby or occupation, chicken raising has its own vocabulary. And there is some confusion about what things are called in chicken world. So, let me give you some definitions.
You need to know these terms because they each have particular elements that match specific chicken behaviors (as well as their predators) and getting them right will make you and your chickens happier.
I’ll explain what each one must have and then you can customize to your own space and flock size.
A fully-protected area where chickens scratch, peck, and dust bathe.
Most mistake a run for a coop but they are not the same thing. The coop is the little box your chickens sleep in (see below). The run is a fenced space around your coop where chickens do their daily activities.
When I say fenced, I mean all the way around as well as on top. Your run should be completely protected against predators. There are many safety techniques I’ve learned over the years that I will share in other posts, but the main thing is that your coop should be inside your run and your run should be like a fortress.
I have found that chain link is the best material for a run. I’ve tried everything else and it eventually failed. Here’s what my run looks like:
*Note: If there is grass or any other ground cover in your run when you build it, there won’t be for long. The chickens will tear it up in short order. That’s okay though, because they need dirt to dust bathe in. Otherwise, you have to provide vessels filled with sand for them to bathe and that’s a hassle. Just dedicate your run space and let your flock have it.
It is important that your coop be inside your run. That way, your birds can do everything they need—Scratch, Eat, Poop, Lay, Sleep, Repeat—in an enclosed, safe space.
If you only have a small area to keep chickens, you can get away with keeping your chickens inside the run at all times as long as you don’t get too many for your space.
A space with walls and a roof where chickens sleep.
Chickens are birds, obviously. Most birds like to sleep in trees, for protection. Chickens have the same instinct. They want to sleep in a protected area off the ground. They also want to sleep close together.
Chickens are descended from ground-walking jungle fowl and can’t really fly. So, they want to sleep on a tree branch, but not very high in the tree.
You have to create these conditions in your coop. All you really need are some simple walls, a roof to keep the rain off, and several “perches,” or horizontal poles (to simulate branches), for them to grab on to.
For perches, you can use 2 x 4s cut in half, old shovel handles, or any stick of wood that is about two inches in diameter.
Perches simulate tree branches. They can be made of 2 x 4s cut in half.
*Note: Chickens will sleep on the highest thing they can find. Therefore, your perches should be the highest element inside your coop under the roof. If they are not, your birds will jump onto the roof to sleep and leave themselves unprotected.
There is no need to make your coop too big. I did this with my first one. I built it with four or five nice, wide perches. I went out that first night to see how my chickens were acclimating to their new digs. I was shocked – every one of my six birds were huddled shoulder to shoulder on about half of one perch.
Most birds make nests in trees or high in bushes. Chickens do not. If chickens like to sleep high up, they like to lay eggs down low. This is also because they are descended from jungle fowl. To keep their eggs protected on the ground, those birds would make nests deep under bushes or piles of fallen branches.
Your chickens have the same instinct, so you must simulate those conditions. They want a tight, dark corner to lay in so they feel their eggs will be protected. And it should be close to the ground with soft nesting material in it to simulate leaf litter from the forest floor.
I attach my nest box to the outside of my coop, for easy access. See?
Excuse me, laying an egg here!
And on the inside:
See how tight and dark?
If you don’t give your birds a nest box fitting this description, they will lay their eggs elsewhere and you will get to do an Easter egg hunt every day.
Nesting materials can include hay, pine straw, leaves, dry grass clippings, or any other soft, dry, plant material. My preference is shredded paper from the office.
A fenced area where chickens scratch, peck, and dust bathe.
As mentioned, you can raise chickens forever with a coop inside a safe run. A chicken yard is for those with more space. You can have a run with no yard, but you cannot have a yard with no run.
Your chicken yard can be as big as you want. In fact, your chickens will roam as much space as you give them. The main concern is that it must be fenced all the way around. No exceptions. This has to do with predators.
Your chickens will spend their daytime hours in your yard and most of the critters that threaten chickens during the day (dogs mostly, but I’ve had coyotes snatch my birds in broad daylight) can be stopped with a strong fence. The one exception is hawks and other predatory birds. Trees can help with them, since they have a harder time getting a straight shot to your birds.
These are the basics, but you really don’t need much more. Chickens are pretty simple and easily contented if you give them this fundamental infrastructure.
Have fun, and comment with questions or ideas. If you want to direct message me, pop over to my Facebook page.
Have a look at my Chickens page.
Thanks for reading!
Kevin
Sweet! I started almost 20 years ago and love it.
One of the great things about chickens is that, in one way, they are like robots. Their behavior is totally predictable. Which means that if you understand their behavior and what they need, your experience should be as happy as mine.
That said, chickens will not change their behavior. For anything. So read this carefully and if what I describe doesn’t sound like something you are in to, maybe they aren’t for you.
These are the core chicken behaviors. Here’s what you need to know about each.
Chickens are obsessed with scratching the ground. If they are awake, they are likely scratching. It makes them happy and it’s one of my favorite things to watch them do.
Chickens scratch to find bugs and seeds to eat, and they mean business. Which means that they will scratch out anything in their way, including your lawn grass, flowers, garden veggies, anything. I have personally watched my flock obliterate an entire quarter-acre site of grass in my back yard. Down to dirt.
Chickens are scratching machines. See that dirt? Used to be grass there.
This means that you must give your chickens a place to scratch that you do not mind getting beat up. If you have an enormous yard—an acre or more—and you have less than 15 chickens, you are probably okay (but they will still destroy your flower beds).
However, most people don’t have that much space, which means you must sacrifice some turf grass to your birds and let them scratch the heck out of it.
Chickens scratch for another reason – to “dust bathe.” They will dig a hole a few inches deep, lay down sideways in the hole, and throw dirt all over themselves. It looks like they are dying, but don’t worry, it keeps them healthy.
The dust they throw on themselves removes a lot of pests that bother your birds, like mites and lice. In fact, in the nearly 20 years we have had chickens, I’ve only had to treat my flock for bugs once. If they have plenty of loose dirt to dig in, they’ll take care of the rest.
Here’s what it looks like:
There are three types of food that chickens eat:
Starter crumbles are for baby chicks. They have the right mix of protein, carbs, and vitamins to get them started. They are also in little pieces, “crumbles.” Chicks eat these from the day they are hatched to about four weeks old. Then they move to layer pellets.
Layer pellets are just that – pelletized food for adolescent and adult chickens. The commercial feeds are mixed with the right levels of good stuff to help make healthy birds. They eat pellets starting about four week through the rest of their lives.
*Note: There are lots of layer pellet brands out there, from standard commercial to all-natural to organic. We like the all-natural variety and so do our chickens.
Crumbles and pellets are everyday food for your birds. Just keep a feeder full of it in a dry place (we hang ours from the ceiling of our coop) and they will eat when they want.
In addition to crumbles and pellets, chickens will eat almost any vegetable substance from your kitchen. Lettuce, carrots, melons, citrus, beans, turnips, you name it. They are better than goats. Supplementing your chickens’ diet with kitchen scraps is a great way to recycle the scraps and also make healthier chickens and eggs.
Mmm, cabbage.
Watering is probably the easiest part, but super important. Chickens don’t drink in big gulps like humans and dogs. They drink in little sips all through the day. So, you must keep a vessel full of fresh where they can get to it at all times. We use a stainless steel automatic dog waterer. Works like a charm.
Chickens eat constantly, drink constantly, and poop constantly. They also poop whenever and wherever they feel the urge, even when they sleep. This means that anywhere a chicken can walk or roost, there will be poop.
If you walk in your chicken yard, you will get poop on your shoes. Most experienced chicken raisers keep a pair of rubber boots or clogs by the back door that they slip into before going to the chicken yard.
“Doesn’t that mean my whole chicken yard will stink?” Actually, no. The average chicken yard is remarkably stink free, and because chicken poop is small (as opposed to, say, a dog) it breaks down into your yard quickly.
The one exception is your coop, where the chickens sleep. Unless you clean it regularly, poop will accumulate and smell. One solution to this is to have a dirt floor under the roosts in your coop. The poop falls into the dirt and decomposes. Really cuts down the smell.
The average healthy laying hen in her prime will drop about five eggs per week. She needs a small, dark, quiet place to lay them that has soft nesting material. A dedicated space just to lay eggs.
Nesting material can be hay, pine straw, dry leaves, anything that mimics leaf litter on a forest floor. We use shredded paper from the office.
See?
Chickens wake and sleep with the sun, no matter how long your day is. In the winter, when days are shorter, chickens sleep more. In summer, less.
They also want to sleep in exactly the same place every night. They are super habitual about this. Once they find their sleeping spot, they stick with it.
Another thing about chicken sleep – they are almost completely night blind, which means they are most vulnerable to predators at night. You must have your chickens locked in a safe place when the sun goes down or they are in danger.
That is the life of a chicken. If that sounds like something you can live with and accommodate, get some!
For more great chicken tips, look at my chicken page.
Kevin
Chickens have radiators? That they don’t pee? That each of their eyes sees a different distance?
Watch this short tour of a backyard chicken for those and other tidbits.
Kevin
There is a lot of fascination about honey bees, for obvious reasons. Colony Collapse Disorder is now a household term and bees have become a poster child for the fragility of our ecosystem, food supply, and economy.
There are real issues around our favorite fuzzy flying friends, but there are also some misconceptions that I think increase our anxiety about honey bees unnecessarily.
I attended a lecture on back by the great University of Florida entomologist and beekeeper Dr. Jamie Ellis that schooled me on a few things I didn’t know about honey bees.
Did you know these?
Honey bees have become such a part of our culture, I thought they had always been here. Nuh-uh. Europeans brought them over in the early 1600’s.
There is evidence that honey bees existed in the Americas millions of years ago, but they went extinct. The adorable bumblers that make our honey today are relative carpetbaggers.
Like cows, chickens, dogs, and cats, honey bees have been domesticated by humans to exhibit certain traits, like docility and strong queens. In other words, we’ve engineered them just as much as we have our purse dogs.
A “wild” hive in America is simply an escaped hive from someone’s apiary.
Check out this cool map from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It shows all the American crops that honey bees pollinate.
Check that pattern. All of the fruits and veggies that we love are grown largely on the perimeter of the country. These are the crops that would be most affected should we lose the bees altogether (and we won’t).
But why don’t bees pollinate crops in the middle of the country?
Because that is where the grains are grown, wheat especially. And grains are wind pollinated. They don’t require bugs, including honey bees, to reproduce.
Wheat = bread = what humans lived on for thousands of years before we developed cantaloupes.
If we lost all pollinators (honey bees aren’t the only ones by far), we would survive, because we could make bread. Our variety of flavorful food would suck and our agriculture economy would be a shambles, but we wouldn’t go extinct.
Dr. Ellis explains why:
I must have cut a million miles of grass in my years of business.
Over those years, I consistently saw four things that kept homeowners from getting pro-level results. They are all simple, easy to implement, and will actually save you work and money.
Nothing makes a yard look more polished than crisp, clean lines along the sidewalks and driveway. That can only be done by an edging tool. NOT A WEED EATER TURNED ON ITS SIDE. That is actually harder than using an edger.
Every major brand of lawn equipment sells interchangeable edger attachments. Spend $75, use an edger, and your lawn will instantly look better, guaranteed.
You are probably cutting your grass too short. Yes you are. You think you are helping but you aren’t. Cutting your grass too short stresses it out (which is why it looks dull right after you mow). The stress makes it hungrier, thirstier, and weaker.
One of my most popular videos describes the proper height at which to cut your grass. Give it a try and let me know the results.
You’re also probably watering your grass too much and too often. This hurts your lawn because 1) you wash away most of the fertilizer you just put on the grass, which means you have to fertilize more often ($$), and 2) you make your grass more susceptible to weak roots, bugs, and fungus.
Your grass is tougher than you think. I also did a video on how and when to water your grass. It may surprise you.
When you throw away grass clippings, you throw away free fertilizer. So you have to fertilize more. So you throw away money.
Some folks think clippings accumulate to create “thatch” in the grass that chokes it out. Not so. If you leave clippings on your lawn, they quickly decompose and release valuable nitrogen for the grass to use again. It’s easy recycling.
“But I don’t want to see the clippings on my lawn like baled hay,” you say. Agreed, but if you cut your grass at the proper height (see tip 2), and use a good mulching blade, you should see no clippings on your lawn after a mow.
The beautiful thing about these tips is that they mean less work and money for you, with better results.
How often does that happen?
Kevin
My wife and I took a weekend trip to Savannah, Georgia on back and I couldn’t get over the doorways.
If you’ve been to Savannah, you know what a stunner it is. Strolling through the historic downtown, it’s as if you’re walking through a lush oil painting. You should go.
To my wife’s dismay, I couldn’t stop taking pictures of the creative doorways. Even on otherwise bland buildings, those doors made it a showpiece.
Your front door can become the crowning jewel of your home as well, with very little time and expense. So, here are some of my pics of Savannah’s doorways to inspire you. Enjoy!
In a past life, I worked at a daycare. In the summer, we were always looking for activities to keep the kids busy. One was a u-pick blueberry farm down the road.
It was one of my favorites. Not only because I always liked gardening and growing and eating blueberries (though there was that). It was more to watch how the kids reacted.
We would off load them from the van and then gather them in front of this little shack where the proprietor, Mr. Dauphin, would hand each child a bucket and show them the rows that had the ripest berries that day. Then we would turn them loose.
The first time we did this, I was surprised by their reaction. Most just stood there, confused.
We had to take them by the hand, show them the berries, and pick a few for them before they were confident enough to try on their own.
I remember one boy in particular.
“You mean we can just pick them off and eat them?” he asked.
“Yup, give it a try.”
He did. And then we couldn’t stop him. More blueberries went into his belly than in the bucket. Which was alright by us.
I’ll never forget what he said next. With a mouth full of juicy berries, he said, “I didn’t know blueberries came from plants.”
What a beautiful moment.
I think too many kids don’t know where food comes from and don’t know how amazing it is fresh. U-pick farms are a great way to introduce the idea that food is precious, requires work to grow, that it is better the closer you are to its source, and that a fresh berry has more flavor than any junk food.
U-picks mend a valuable connection between us and our food that broke a few decades ago, when we stopped needing home gardens and livestock to live. The convenience is great, but our appreciation and care for our food went with it I’m afraid.
Take your family to a u-pick. It gets everyone outside together and busy with their hands, minds, mouths, and hearts.
Is there anything better?
Kevin
