Gardening Tips with Lee Callendar

Originally Posted on February 14, 2013

Gardening Tips with Lee Callendar

We asked Lee Callender, a farmer at the sustainably-farmed GRUB CSA Farm in Chico, what activities were going on at the farm, and what types of crops they'd be growing for their community this year. He said this patch of warm weather (we've been having warm, sunny days, with cold nights), and the soil draining from (modest) rains will allow them to get the soil tilled and prepared for planting.

GRUB CSA Farm is located at 3197 West Sacramento Avenue, where they have a 10-acre parcel on which to grow. Approximately five-and-a-half acres have been used for growing food crops, and this year they will likely add another acre, or so, in order to add melons to the crop selection.

The greenhouse is bursting with more than 10,000 plants to go into the field, including lettuce, broccoli, fennel, and cabbage, which will be transplanted in the coming weeks.

Along with plenty of greens–chard, kale, cabbage, and the like—they'll have berries, leeks, onions, shallots, and garlic. They will also offer potatoes, sweet potatoes, and sweet corn.  Astonishingly, lettuce will be available throughout the entire season–even through our hot summers. They grow several heat tolerant varieties, and Lee says they perform to GRUB's high standard for flavor. In the summer they'll have an abundance of tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers.

Lee told us that spinach can be direct seeded in the home garden now, in our area. He cautioned that it will take a while to get going, and suggested gardeners be vigilant about controlling weeds, lest the spinach be taken over. Carrots can be sown now too. Though GRUB doesn't grow spring carrots. Why not? Well in our climate carrots sown now will be maturing when nights are not cool. Lee told us we'd still get a carrot, but not a nice, sweet one.

The secret to good, sweet carrots is to have the crop mature when the nights are still cool. So plan to sow your carrots at the end of the summer (thinking of a 60 day maturity), and they'll be a superior tasting carrot. For our readers in climate zones with cool nights throughout the spring and summer, lucky you! You'll be able to have those sweet roots from your own gardens. And for our readers who join the GRUB CSA, you can look forward to some deliciously sweet, tender carrots in the fall and winter. (Valley Oak Tool Co. folks have tasted these carrots just this week, and we vouch for their deliciousness!)

GRUB CSA Farm harvest season starts in April and goes through mid-December. There is a $100 membership fee, and the shares are $84 per month. Pick-up is on Tuesdays or Thursdays (indicate which day you'd prefer on your membership form) at 3197 West Sacramento Ave, in Chico.

The GRUB website is very informative about the CSA program, and more.

Chickens in the garden prove beneficial in multitudinous ways.

Gallus gallus domesticus, aka the domesticated chicken, has lived with humans for centuries, to the benefit of both species. Gardeners in the Chico area: Jeffrey Williams, Nancy Leek and Hazel Van Evera are carrying on the chicken-keeping tradition.

While each gardener had different reasons for bringing chickens into her or his respective gardening processes—ornamental, food production, bug patrol and fertilizer production—other benefits quickly became obvious.

Williams—a driving-school instructor and local stag-horn fern expert, as well as a citrus aficionado—has kept chickens for about four years. He selected exotic, very decorative chicken breeds to raise—Crested Polish, Silkies, Frizzle Cochins, to name a few—for their attractive appearance.

“I thought chickens would look nice running around the yard, scratching up weeds, eating bugs and making the place look more farm-like,” he said while feeding a pear to his goat, Oreo, during an interview in his sunny garden. Williams gives the hens’ eggs to his neighbor, and when his neighbor, who raises livestock, butchers her animals, she gives him some of the meat. It is a good trade. “The chickens are my pets,” he said. “And they are great at weeding under the rose bushes.”

Meanwhile in Nancy Leek’s garden, 10 hens were vigorously foraging and weeding under a large pomegranate tree. The fallen fruits were being been picked over by the hens. Leek, who is a youth-services librarian at the Orland Free Library and author of a book about John Bidwell (John Bidwell: The Adventurous Life of a California Pioneer), started keeping chickens about 3 1/2 years ago. She wanted the fresh eggs.

A few of Nancy Leek's chickens in her orchard. “I thought that it would be fun to keep chickens,” Leek said. “I do so much gardening, I thought, ‘Hey, why not raise eggs, too?’”

Leek selected breeds that lay large eggs: Orpington, Ameraucana (the so-called Easter-egg chicken, which lays eggs with blue or green shells), and Rhode Island Red. When she collects the eggs “it is like finding treasure,” she said. “I wouldn’t bother to do it [keep chickens] if they weren’t giving me eggs every day.”

Ah yes, the poop. Manure production was Van Evera’s key reason for obtaining her flock of three chickens. She is an avid gardener and food preserver who runs the Chico Organic Gardening lecture series. It was her passion for and adeptness at gardening that motivated her to get chickens about a year ago. She wanted chicken manure to use in her large vegetable garden and small orchard. However, Leek has found the chickens have an entertainment value as well.

“They are so fun to watch walking across the yard,” said Leek, smiling. And of their usefulness in the garden she said, “I don’t notice as many slugs, snails, bugs—I think they get ’em.” Further, the garden benefits from chicken poop. “I clean out the coop every so often and, boy, does zucchini grow great when it has been fertilized with chicken manure!” she said.

Breed selection was not as important to Van Evera as it was for Williams and Leek. Van Evera uses her chickens to process garden waste. For example, she was juicing hundreds of pomegranates one afternoon—the juice she would consume herself, the waste was slated to go to her chickens for picking over, before it would go into the compost. She has an impressive composting set-up where the chicken poop and plant waste gets turned into rich, organic fertilizer. Like Leek, Van Evera noted the excellent pest control her flock offers.

“The chickens are great at keeping down the bugs,” she said. While egg production was not a major consideration, “I thought the eggs would be just a perk,” she said. She has come to appreciate the fresh protein packs. “I love the eggs!” she gushed.

Then two hens disappeared, and her rooster, Chaz, had his tail-end bitten off by a free-roaming domestic dog. She found his little mangled body upside down on the wood pile, and nursed him back to health. Van Evera and Chaz bonded through that ordeal. “They are so sweet—I’m in love with them,” she said with great warmth and affection. Van Evera added a covered dog run and fencing to keep her flock contained, and has not lost another bird since.

Predators recently became a problem for the first time for Williams. A marauding gang of raccoons made daring, heartbreaking daylight attacks on his flock, killing more than 20 of his beloved chickens over several days. Feathers, feet, legs and other body parts were strewn about his yard. He trapped and relocated the raccoons, and mended some holes in his fence, and has not had any troubles since. His flock of approximately 15 surviving chickens is safe.

Leek’s birds have not been hit by predators, but that was her major concern when she was designing the coop for her flock. Her husband, Jim, found a used dog run on Craigslist to secure the chickens when no one is home, and that has worked great. The chickens roam around her yard when she is home to keep an eye on them.

While the predators made a meal of their chickens, Williams and Van Evera both said they would not butcher their birds. Even if someone else took care of the butchering, they said they would not eat their own chickens. Leek, on the other hand, said that while she would not butcher them, she would eat her birds; her son, who keeps chickens in his Livermore back yard, would do the butchering.

As integral parts of these three gardens, the chickens are beneficial to both garden and gardeners. Scratching the soil, eating bugs, and eating weeds and fallen fruit are all instinctual and beneficial acts. These chickens have their basic needs met: access to the outdoors, sunshine, soil, grass, bugs, exercise, clean water and fresh air. The chickens also bring a lot of joy to their keepers, and that is worth a lot these days.

Shop Now