I recently discovered that 1 in every 10,000 chickens turns out to be gynandromorphous, half hen, half rooster, thanks to a recent BBC article.

Dr Michael Clinton of the Roslin Institute has just published some of the latest research on the subject in the scientific journal Nature.

They came up with a surprising conclusion. The system is different from mammals in that there is no mutation and the birds are full male on one side and full female on the other.

Of course the hope is to find a way to increase production in the poultry business by making female birds with the same growth characteristics as the male to "increase productivity and food security".

With the driveway finally dry enough to drive over, Mark spent most of his time this week hauling in load after load of soil amendments.  In the process, I've been learning to visualize a much larger unit of measurement than I'm used to --- a cubic yard.  Obviously, a cubic yard is a volume that's three feet on each side, equal to 27 cubic feet.  That's equivalent to about 40 five gallon buckets, or half of Joey's pickup truck bed.

By my estimate, we netted two cubic yards of wood chips during our chipper rental weekend, for a cost of about $33 per cubic yard (not counting our time and gas.)  Ten pounds of King Stropharia spawn used up a full cubic yard of those fresh chips, with the other cubic yard set aside for later.

On his way home, Mark bought two cubic yards of well composted wood mulch, for a cost of $24 per cubic yard.  The mulch covered the ground around a dozen blueberries, eight grapes, and about seventy linear feet of blackberries and raspberries.  The seemingly huge amount of mulch was perhaps a third of what I use on my woody perennials each year (and maybe a tenth of what I could easily put to use if I had an unlimited supply.)

When I sent Mark over to the neighbors' to shovel up some of their horse manure, I decided to translate the five gallon buckets into cubic yards for comparison.  He filled up the truck with twenty buckets of well composted manure, which is about half a cubic yard.  That scantily covered twenty garden beds.  In fact, I put the manure into the garden nearly as fast as Mark could haul it in to me, and figure I will need at least 5 cubic yards of compost/manure to feed the vegetable garden this year (and could use twice that much or more without overfertilizing.)

I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this thought, except to say that I really like soil amendments, and I could use many, many cubic yards of them.  I guess I just like to keep track so that we can work up to providing all of the mulch and compost our farm needs.

Before picking up our latest load of mulch I lined up all the 5 gallon buckets we had in the center of the bed.

I was a bit curious to know if they would stay in place or get knocked over by the force of the load.

Now that I know it works we plan to add another 10 buckets before the next load.

I wrote earlier that traditional cottage garden plants were primarily edibles or medicinals, but some flowers were included just for prettiness.  Cottagers couldn't afford to buy flowers, but they often dug up pretty wildflowers to transplant into their garden, or traded plants with their neighbors.  The flowers in a traditional cottage garden sound exactly like the flowers I allow in my garden --- they were easy to propagate and often self-sowed, needing little care.

The close spacing of flowers in the cottage garden helped minimize the amount of time the cottager spent weeding since the flowers choked out any weeds.  Forest gardeners use this same technique, talking about filling all unoccupied niches so that unwanted plants don't have any space to gain a foothold.

I'm unlikely to focus on flowers anytime soon, but I have started setting aside patches for self-seeding annuals like cosmos and fennel and have some spring bulbs that require very little care.  I like to think that my garden is more closely akin to the traditional cottage garden than modern "cottage gardens" are, complete with fruit trees, herbs, lots of vegetables, bees, and chickens.  All I need is a pig.

One of the most common questions I hear from new gardeners is, "When should I plant my first spring vegetables?"  I'm not surprised that folks are confused since there seem to be several schools of thoughts on the matter.

Around here, many people plant by the signs.  You pick up a calendar at the local hardware store with phases of the moon and planting dates on it, then put your seeds in the ground when the moon dictates.  People who plant by the signs also tend to believe that you need to put in your fence posts at a certain phase of the moon, but I've yet to meet anyone who set up a controlled experiment to test the effects of the moon's phase on their garden.  I dismiss planting by the signs as voodoo, although I would like to see some scientific data one way or the other.

The next faction is the scientific set, of which I'm partially a member.  They figure out their local frost free date (May 15 here in the mountains of southwest Virginia) then download a spring planting chart and use some simple math to figure out their planting dates.  The chart below comes from the Virginia Cooperative Extension, and I've posted an explanation of how to use it here.  Note that the example assumes a frost free date of April 15.


I used a chart like this to make a spreadsheet with optimal planting dates on it, but I don't mark the exact dates on my calendar.  Our seasons can be so variable that I suspect the best way to figure out optimal planting dates is to pay attention to natural signs, like when the first chorus frogs begin to call or when certain flowers bloom.  These plants and animals are more alert to the intricacies of soil and air temperature than we are, and chances are they know best.

Unfortunately, I haven't got this method really figured out yet, beyond the old saying that you'd best plant your corn when the oak leaves are as big as a squirrel's ear.  So, for now, I just add in a one week window on either side of the "optimal planting dates" to allow for rain, drought, strange freezes, or warm spells.  For example, although I'm slated to plant our main crop of peas next week, we rushed and put them in the ground on Thursday morning before the rain came.  The ground is warm enough that my hands don't freeze as I pull weeds, and the less clayey areas are actually drying up on top (though some of the clayey beds would have liked a few more days to evaporate winter's moisture.)  I figured I'd be better off putting my peas in the ground now than waiting until the ground is dry again, which may not happen for over a week.

Of course, the real reason I planted our main crop of peas early is because I talked to my garden guru on Monday and she'd just planted peas in her own garden.  Gotta keep up with the Joneses!