No I know we don't have chipmunks here. How big are they anyway - like a squirrel?
I've just been reading Four Seasons Harvest by Eliot Coleman and one of the ingredients in his compost is the odd dead chipmunk. He also mentioned bread along with the kitchen scraps. It got me thinking. We are always told not to put such things as meat cooked food and bread in the compost to avoid attracting rats. Since rats are omnivorous anyway, will it make any difference what you put in so long as it rots down. The rat would have to be in the garden in any case even if your compost is vegetarian, and I can't see a hungry rat turning its nose up at a free snack in a warm compost heap.
What do you think?
He also mentions that he spreads about a 1" layer of compost over his plot and just works it into the top two inches and lets the worms etc. do the rest. He doesn't walk on the soil to avoid compacting it, and instead of digging he aerates the whole plot once a year with a broad fork. This is 2 ft wide with five tines and two handles instead of one in the middle. He says you can use an ordinary fork, but the special one is good fun and you can feel how easy it is to use something designed for the specific purpose. You just stick it in and ease it backwards lifting the soil a bit but not turning it. I know the no-dig principle, but hadn't heard about the aerating idea he uses.
Philomel and Sorgina would find the book interesting as he talks about a fact finding trip he did in Southern France on their vegetable growing practices and types of crops. Apparently Maine where he lives is on the same latitude as the south of France. He was fascinated by the seed business of Jean-Luc Danneyrolles, Le Potager d'un Curieux and waxes lyrical about the variety and quality of his produce.
Just thought I would share this with you. Must get my act together it is seed sowing day in the greenhouse today. As it is raining and a bit warmer the greenhouse is the ideal place. I'm much later getting started than usual this year as it has been so cold and dark I couldn't see much point in starting anything off, even in the propagator. Right, I will see which runs out first, my compost or the daylight!
WOULD YOU PUT A DEAD CHIPMUNK IN THE COMPOST?
I think the point about attracting rats is that rotting vegetable matter is around in a garden anyway, but items containing extra protein and carbohydrate are not so easy to come by and give higher energy to a rat, so it will hunt them out and therefore be attracted to a compost heap with these items more than just vegetable matter.
I find a thicker mulch of compost than that works well, but I'm on heavy clay. Not walking on the soil is something I also practise and have layed out beds with paths between to make it possible. Anything to help retain the soil structure.
I'll look up that book once I'm back home thanks Pat :)
There is very little chance of any meat or bread making it to our compost bins Bo really dislikes the idea that anything might get something he'll eat before he has a chance. He might not always eat his food indoors but throw it on the garden and he's out there eating as if there is no tomorrow.
Some years ago on a college farm I worked on for a very short time, at the very end of the cattle sheds (outside them) were two small dung heaps where we used to turn the feed wagon around. One morning I was feeding the cattle and driving towards the turning area, I noticed something moving on the dung heaps. That's nothing vastly unusual, birds and the like come down to see if they can grab a few things but as I got closer I realised the heaps were full of activity and moving in strange patterns. By now I was almost the the end door and saw the two heaps suddenly halve in bulk and stream away and realised what I'd seen were a huge, heaving mass of rats scavenging on what was basically straw and dung ............. I'm not normally squeamish but to this day, even thinking about it makes me feel queasy ..... eugh!
Ugh Baa, That must have been horrible. I'll bet there are far more rats about than we imagine. I know they say you are never more than 12 feet away from a rat - don't know how they work that one out, but it makes you think. It is a pity my cat is so small, she can only tackle mice, although there are plenty of tom cats wandering round the garden, but they are all in love at the moment, wailing and fighting and spraying all over the place, so I think they are too preocupied to catch anything.
Have you read the book I mentioned? He loves his ducks and highly praises their eggs and their slug and creepy crawly catching abilities. How is Beetle by the way? We've not kept ducks since I was small, and I got the impression that they made a bit of a mess. I'm sure they are lovely in the right conditions.
It is a really interesting book with lots of good ideas which I'm going to try out. I've already got radishes, lettuce and some spicy salad mix growing in the greenhouse border. They germinated last week with no heat and just a double layer of floating cover over them, and we had snow on Friday. I also have a few Red Duke of York potatoes in the border and they are growing rapidly, also with no heat and just the double layer of cover.
It will soon be Spring thank goodness.
I haven't read Four Seasons Harvest, come to think of it I haven't seen it in the shops. I got a WH Smith voucher for Christmas and cannot decide what to buy with it yet so I've been looking through the books and I'll look out for this one.
In the borough where I used to live they changed the bin collections. We have a recycling scheme so they collect the recycled bins one week and the normal rubbish the next, supposedly to force people to recycle but we were already all doing that, it was purely to save money. None of us liked the system and when another Hants borough (the one I live in now) tried to change to this system several reports about hygiene and rat populations can to light, turns out in my old borough the rat population tripled in the two years of the scheme and continues to grow rapidly, the councellors insist it's nothing to do with the current bin collection scheme and refuse to change back.
Beetles fine, thanks for asking, he spends most of the day in with the other ducks and comes in at night. He happily stood on one leg watching Columbo last night, he likes Peter Falk and Homer Simpson, he usually has a little chat with them. He is starting to become more duckish now though and it won't be long before we'll be weaning him onto staying with the other ducks.
He did become very upset yesterday though. We picked up the old duck so she could go in the pond, she can do it but struggles and the other ducks tend to prevent her from doing things. Beetle, usual drake behaviour, was so jealous he flew at my knees croaking his head off until I picked him up and told him what a beautiful little chap he was ............... yes that was a big rod I made for my own back. This year we will definitely be removing eggs from nests, as lovely as he is, I really don't want to go through it all again this year! Ducks are messy birds but they are a lot of fun too, I'm not sure about having any more than we have, if we had a bigger garden that 60ft it might be worth a few more. We are no reduced to one hen, we've decided to wait to see how DEFRA is going to react Avian Influenza wise before getting any more in, she seems happy enough pootling around with the ducks and no psuh and shove to get a good seat in her hut.
I hate to admit it but I've not sown a thing so far this year and I have it on my to-do lists for this week. I've a ton of veg seed to plant and am sending some to my brother and SIL who have just moved. I gave him the Ornamental Kitchen Garden (by Geoff Hamilton) for his birthday a couple of weeks ago and they've already started to plan it all out.
Red Duke of York is one we've not tried here although I heard quite recently that they can be very variable in taste and quality depending on where they are grown, is that something you've found?
I got the book off Amazon, so I'm not sure if it's available here.
I'm glad Beetle is thriving. I've been wondering what contingency plans to get ready to protect my hens if avian flu gets here. I wouldn't want to keep them fastened in the hut for long so I was thinking of rigging up something like a fruit cage perhaps with a tarpaulin over the top. They wouldn't have any contact with other birds, but would still have a reasonable amount of space outside. I've already started feeding them indoors to prevent any wild birds contaminating the food. The small Araucanas seem to be getting pushed out though so I might have to give them a bit extra on their own. We do spoil them don't we?
The Red Duke of York do well here they are quite prolific and a good flavour, although Lady crystl (not sure how to spell it) and Charlotte have a better new potato flavour I think.
I'm holding off buying new hens too because of avian flu - it's hard to know what to do for the best, isn't it? The 5 old hens we already have,(they lay very few eggs anymore), are now confined to their hut plus the fruitcage. My husband had only just made me this cage, (for the berry bushes), but it looks like no blackcurrant jam or red currant jelly again this year! I can't see Mikel finding time to make another fruit cage,(he's not that keen on jam)! We still need to cover it somehow though, and sparrow-proof it - they can get through seemingly non-existent gaps. The news last night that a cat had died of avian flu in Germany is particularly worrying - I can't imagine confining my two cats to the house....What do you all think?
Maggi xxxx
I can't imagine keeping my cat in all the time either, and there are so many more cats passing through the garden all the time. Wasn't the cat that died in Germany found on an island where there had been dead swans? So perhaps it was hungry enough to eat a sick bird.
I am hoping it won't get here this year at least, all the winter migrants have been here for months without any disease, and they will all be going back in the next few weeks. I think the next risk will be if the swallows and summer migrants bring the infection with them,
Does any one know what the incubation period is for this H5N1?
At least you already have a fruit cage Maggi, the pandemic will probably have been and gone by the time I get help to construct mine.
Yes, I think the migrations for Spring/summer will be the crunch time here - they start in a couple of week's time here, with birds coming in from Africa, where they already have the virus....I'm not very optimistic that it won't get here this year. There are plenty of stray and starving cats here that would eat any amount of sick birds, although apparently there have been no reported cases of cat to cat transmission yet. Just have to wait and see,I guess. I have no idea of incubation times, I'm afraid.
Maggi xxxx