The Chicken Coop

 Barbara in Florida asked about the building that appears in my frost photos.  Yes, this is a chicken coop, but it is also a garden shed.  This shed has had a long life.  My husband built it as tool storage when he built the house next door back in 1988.  I personally helped him move it twice, and when we had been dating a few years and I was living in an apartment, he turned it into a chicken coop for me.  When we married and he moved over here, the new neighbors wanted to put a larger shed in its place so they asked us if we wanted the chicken coop.  I said yes, without consulting, and it got moved once again.

The Coop up on blocks but in it's permanent location

Because we wanted it to stay a chicken coop, and because so much remodeling had been done to make it so, my husband added on to it to create our garden shed.  He stripped the siding off, and built a mirror image of the salt box style shed on the back side so that they became one building with two rooms adjoined by one wall.

Building the Garden Shed Blog

The roof lines can kind of mess with your head, but it was a perfect solution.

The original wide, equipment shed door on the chicken coop was replaced with an insulated door.  The lumber from the doors was planed down and repurposed into my cold frame.   The shed was vinyl sided to match the farmhouse, and a deck was built.

Finished Garden Shed Blog

The chicken coop portion has been left untouched.  The feeders and waterers are still hanging. There is a wire wall closing off the right third of the shed with the low ceiling.  The walls and ceiling were insulated and covered in ship-lap and there are lights on a timer.  South facing windows provide daylight and sheltered fresh air all year 'round. There is a rubber stall mat on the floor and plenty of roosts.  The space is about 4'x8' which is more than comfortable for six to eight birds.

Current photo

Here is another photo from before the walls were insulated.

The rest of the shed is insulated and shingled.  There is plenty of room here for bales of straw or pine shavings and bins for feed and grit as well as whatever tools you need to care for chickens.  In bad weather, you could latch open the door to the "birdcage" and increase the square footage.  Because this shed is mouse proof, and hasn't been occupied by chickens in many years, it has become storage for things that need to be kept out of the reach of mice and chipmunks like patio umbrellas, canvas tarps and grass seed. The 24'x24' chicken run fence is completely built but we never installed the wire fencing.  The wire is still stored in a roll in another shed, as well as enough bird netting to secure the top from hawks and if we ever decided to get chickens, we could be fully operational in a matter of hours.  We would just need to find a new home for the patio umbrellas and install the wire.

I patched three photos together to give a panoramic view.

The door to the run has a cute little chicken porch.  The door can be pushed closed and secured with a rod from outside the gate.  The railing was a very popular perch.

The chicken run has been covered with road stabilization mat and coarse sand to make it easy to maintain.  I have to go in there and pull weeds two or three times a year but it is easy and sort of satisfying.  I found that this $3 junk auction cultivator works pretty slick to uproot weeds.

So that is the chicken coop.  It is a pretty nice chicken coop to be sitting empty, but we have managed to keep it mostly clutter free and ready to go.  Chickens are certainly an appropriate compliment to a home garden because they gobble up insects and consume excess produce and weeds turning them into valuable fertilizer.  They also make very entertaining pets.  Maybe someday.

Storing Dahlias

 I got all of my Dahlia tubers stored.  I worked on them yesterday and today.  I'm whooped.  That is a lot of hard work.  I've done more detailed blogs about my methods in the past.  Digging and Storing Dahlias  and Dividing Dahlias.   This year I made some improvements to my system that saved a lot of work.  Instead of washing them into the wheelbarrow and then dumping the mud out each time, I set my compost sifter up on sawhorses so the mud washes away.

I also got these neat tags that can stay with the tuber all year.  You can wash them and plant them.  I no longer have to write on the tubers.  When you plant them you can either leave them on the tuber or pull them off and put them on the garden stake for identification.

Those two improvements made a huge difference.   Also, I have culled over two dozen plants this year.  Some of them I pulled during the summer when I lost patience with them and some I pulled recently because I didn't want to waste time and energy storing them.  This was either because they just don't bloom well, or they were not a color that I liked.  A couple of them died on their own.  

I cleaned up each clump, removing damaged or old tubers, and a few of them divided up on their own.  Some of the clumps are massive.  This poses a storage problem but it ensures that the plant will be large and productive next year.  I've stopped worrying as much about dividing them.  I just remove what I need to and get them cleaned up. I managed to get everything into the same amount of tubs as I did last year, even though many of the clumps were quite large. 

This is most of the ones from yesterday drying in the breeze.

I have decided that I enjoy getting new varieties each year, looking forward to seeing the new bloom in person.  I will probably keep storing Dahlias for a few more years, but the more I store, the fewer new ones I can plant so I am not going overboard.  Last winter I stored 97 tubers.  I did not have room to plant them all this spring, and between that culling and culling throughout the year, I am down to 59 in storage.  And that is plenty!

Frost and Fire 2026

 This morning we had a hard freeze.  29F  And the Dahlias and Zinnias are showing it.  Which is good.  Dahlia cutting and digging may commence.  I am ready for it.  This coming week will be beautiful weather, perfect for dealing with this chore.

The Dahlia flowers are burned so all of the bees are wandering around looking for food and being annoying.

I have been leaving my ornamental peppers out.  One of them is succumbing to the frosts we have had.

There are two that I am considering overwintering.  I moved them against the wall of the house and they have not yet been touched by frost.

It is amazing how the routine of our lives repeats itself year after year.  It is time for the autumn brush fire.  Two years ago we burned on this weekend as well.   Every year we tell ourselves that surely this is the last year we will have enough volume of brush and tree limbs to require burning.   Then the saplings start growing in the brushy areas, and lawn trees need limbing up, or something falls in the lawn.  The next thing we know, we have accumulated a whole lot of brush and the pile begins to grow.

This pile had been growing since July.  It has chunks of punky Ash that was not suitable for firewood, the neighbor's Linden limbs that were lying on the roof, our spruce branches.  We took some time cutting brush and goldenrods away from the wild edges, and then set fire to everything.  It went up in an inferno.  Once the July pile had gotten so big it was going to topple, we began piling brush in other areas so the neighbor could use the forks on his loader to add it to the pile once it began to burn down.  There were a lot of dry leaves in the pile and we had to rake them up out of the lawn.  My husband had mowed around the pile this morning to clear any dead grass or leaves away.

We had almost an inch of rain this past week, but we prefer to burn on a day when the rain is just clearing out so that everything is still wet.  We had large fire extinguishers from the garage on hand, but just to be on the safe side my husband filled the tractor loader full of water and we used watering cans to water down the grass around the fire.  

The grass was drying fast and we didn't want to have to worry about it.

Our high today was 61F (16C) which was vey pleasant weather for sitting around a huge fire.  Winter will be here soon.  I saw this prediction on Facebook this week which says that our winter here in NY should be mild.  That would be fine with me.  The past two winters we have had significant snows which left us shoveling the roofs to be on the safe side.

NOAA released their winter outlook today, highlighted by an exceptionally strong El Nino. The end result favors a general pattern that will likely leave snow-lovers across the Great Lakes & New England disappointed. There is a strong lean toward a relatively warm winter, which theoretically throttles the ability for lake effect snow to contribute.

The View Out My Window - Gloomy Day Edition

 The thing about fall color is that it even looks good on a gloomy day.  We have a rainy day and our warm 68F (20C) temperature right now is our high for today.  It is a good day to stay inside and look out the window.

Talk about saturated color.

That's probably as pretty as it is going to get today.  Wind and rain will bring down the leaves and we will be right back to garden cleanup.  We are hoping to get our summer brush pile burned this weekend.  It is a lot more pleasant burning brush on a cold day than it is in the heat of summer.

Two years ago we had a brilliant autumn, but I think this year is even better.

Leaf Season Has Begun

 As the weather changes and the lawn stops growing we turn our attention to dealing with the leaves.  Most of them get mulched with the mower and then blown towards the woods.  Some of them I save for mulching the vegetable garden.  This is the first autumn with my battery operated push mower.  It bags them up nicely, but I have to empty the bag at the end of each circuit.  

I have been putting grass clippings in my compost, and it has been nice to have some dried leaves to add to the green material.  But today it was 99.9% leaves which will not break down as fast as it would if it had green grass mixed in.  So I refilled my leaf tube which was half empty.  I have to say that mowing them beats sucking them up with the leaf sucker.  I am quickly going to be overstocked with leaves.  We will take the extra to the woods.  

The other day I said we were at peak leaf color but them I did not take any pictures.

Hickory Tree

This deep magenta Dahlia is easily seen from our window.  I have been enjoying it very much.  It has 16 blooms on it today.

It is one of the Bee's Choice Dahlias that I grew out from my own seed last year and overwintered.  I believe it is a cross between Junkyard Dog and Hootenany.

The View Out My Window

 We are at about peak fall color here this week.  Teetering on the point between the most trees turning and the least leaves falling off because of wind and rain.  I have really been enjoying the morning view out my window as I do my computering each day.

In fact, all summer I have noticed that this specific view into the woods was so peaceful.  I started to wonder why I was appreciating this view more.  What changed?  Then I remembered.

For most of the 23 years I have lived here there has been this Ash tree full of Poison Ivy smack in the middle of the view.  In the summer the Ivy leaves would be green and lush, and in the fall they would be brilliant yellow, but under it all was that dying tree trunk looking worse and worse each year.  No one wanted to deal with it because of the Poison Ivy.

Finally, two years ago, we asked the neighbor, who is not allergic to Poison Ivy (although he attracts deer ticks like a magnet so there is a trade-off) to help us by chain sawing through the main stems of several gigantic Poison Ivy vines that were taking over dead Ash trees on the edge of the woods.  What a difference that has made in the Ivy department.  I used to find half a dozen Poison Ivy seedlings in my perennial gardens every week.  I have maybe found two or three all year.  Plus, I don't have to look at that ugly vine out my window.  Once the vine died, we knocked the tree over with a tractor and even managed to salvage some of it for firewood.

Frost on the Pumpkin

 We had a good frost this morning, quite a few degrees colder than the first frost on Sept 25th.  This is right on time and welcome.  I am ready for the next season.

I am hoping to save one of each of my black pepper plants under a grow light this winter.  However, I do not want to play the watch for frost game, worrying about whether to bring them in or not. For a few more weeks anyway. They belong there by the steps.  It is warmer near the house with radiant heat from the driveway.  If they make it they make it.  If not, too bad, so sad.  I ditched the cornstalks after a week of soggy weather because they looked absolutely awful, but these Dracaena spikes were still looking nice.

I am actually looking forward to frost on the Dahlias.  Over the past couple of years I have noted that newly purchased tubers I plant do awesome the first year, blooming early and profusely.  And then in years after they dwindle.  Not in all cases, but often.  Some of this could be due to the fact that I did not fertilize the Dahlia beds this year.  I plan on dumping a whole bag of Garden-Tone in them next spring.  But, my theory is that I am not handling my tubers correctly in the fall.  The larger Dahlia farms wait until a killing frost to begin digging tubers.  The frost tells the plant to stop producing flowers and start storing energy for next year.  It is sort of like removing Daffodil foliage too early.  You won't get blooms the next year.  That is my theory anyway.  I need to wait longer to begin digging tubers.

Ice Tea

No frost on these yet.  They may wait to show some damage until this afternoon, but what I need is enough frost to kill the leaves.  Last year our first killing frost was Oct 27th.  I dug the Bee's Choice Dahlias after that and they are performing well this year.

Hootenany

I already moved my Coleus cuttings indoors after that first light frost. 

When they start to show some good roots I move them over to the soil in the cells.

Coleus are so sensitive to cold that they begin dropping leaves and I have already pulled all of the Coleus that was in the garden.  These cuttings are all I am going to get.  I will lose some throughout the winter, but I think I have a large enough selection to have a good start next spring.  After they establish well in their cells I will bump them up to 3.5" pots.