Arizona Chickens

[Gallo del Cielo]

Oh no, I'm so sorry. This has been such tough season here in AZ.

 

[Tracydr]

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Cute as all get out. They're inhabiting the little bantam coop and doing well in there. But I need to put more wire on it. It was the plan all along, but we had an incident yesterday. The main flock was free ranging, and for an hour showed no interest whatsoever in the new birds. Then a couple made their way over to check things out. One of them was our Buff Wyandotte. Well, Domino (one of three birds we named after Bond girls) suddenly starts pecking through the 1x4 wire mesh at the Cochin roo. The little roo didn't take kindly to this and proceeded to show Domino what he thought of that. In a clucking frenzy of black feathers, Louis drew blood through the mesh on Domino's comb. It was easy enough to break up, because Domino was so absorbed in the fracas that I was able to just go nab the bird. Since there was blood, Domino spent the night inside in a pen. More wire Saturday morning, and a moratorium on free ranging until then.

And then guess what we heard this morning out of Domino's pen? Yep, at thirteen weeks, Domino decided that now was a good time to start crowing. Oh boy. So we are now making fun of him for getting his butt kicked by a bird one-third his size

The reports of Cochin roos having "little man syndrome" are true. Louis is great with the two bantam pullets and he doesn't mind being held by us. Hilary loves the little guy and everyone who sees him agrees - too cute!

With Jinx and Domino both showing their true gender, I have a little poem I've wrote for Arizona Feeds:

The hatcheries sometimes get it wrong
And so I do not blame you
But now two of the hens you sold me
Are saying "cock-a-doodle-doo"

One of my bantie Roos started trying to crow this week. He's an OEGB,only 7 weeks old. I about fell over laughing. I have at least 3, maybe four Roos in the batch, but, luckily, they all seem to like each other. One of the Old English has the same coloring as two of the Silver Duckwing roosters but is not developing a dark red comb. Not sure if it's a he or a she,yet.

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

I wanted to share my recent discoveries about tomatoes with my fellow gardeners here. I've been growing tomatoes here in southern AZ for 14 years now. For most of those years they were all grown in containers which makes it easy to bring them inside overnight when it freezes. In this way, we are able to grow most of the fresh tomatoes we eat year round and almost never had to buy them. We discovered early on that smaller cherry-type tomatoes do well here in our climate and the "wild" varieties and heirlooms from this region were easiest. These types of tomatoes are unbelievably flavorful (especially if you are used to store-bought), but even though they are delicious, they leave me lacking when I want that super meaty slab of tomato on a BLT. So, once again this spring we decided to try growing large tomatoes. We chose about 6 varieties at our local nursery and planted them into the garden, instead of containers. We also planted our go-to regional favorites, Nichols and Punta Banda tomatoes. As I had experienced in the past, most of the the big tomato plants died before producing or are at this moment malingering and taking up space. However, one variety (of which we have two plants) has been a mind-blowing stand-out. It was sold to us as a "San Diego", an heirloom from that city. The vine on this variety is huge and requires sturdy trellising; the tag said it would be 8' tall and mine easy exceeded that. The most fantastic thing about it is the size and quality of tomatoes. The first ones were bigger than softballs but the average are baseball sized. They have very few seeds, are extremely meaty and the flavor is among the very best I've ever eaten. The productivity easily matches that of the Nichols and Punta Banda--which says a lot if you are familiar with those varieties. For example, in just one seven day period we harvested over 70 lbs. from two San Diegos, two Punta Bandas and one Nichols plant. During that same period we probably lost at least 30 lbs to wild birds. So, if you're looking for a good variety of large tomato plant, go with San Diego!

 

[Arizonachicken]

Thanks for sharing. My husband agreed to build me a garden if I grew tomatoes. I have tries and tried. This year was the best year, I probably got 2 or 3 little tomatoes, that's all! Where can I get the varieties you are talking about? I'm in Scottsdale, by the way. And I'm obviously doing something wrong. I've also read that tomato plants love chicken manure. I have plenty of that now!

 

[Gallo del Cielo]

I think it's all about the soil. Our climate is actually not too bad for tomatoes; if they can get the right amount of water and have good organic content in the soil, productivity can be amazing. Start by composting everything worth composting and working that into your soil. We keep an air-tight bin on the kitchen countertop where all the compostable stuff from inside goes and we empty that into the outside compost bin daily. Here's where I get varieties "native" to the area like the Punta Banda and Nichols: http://www.nativeseeds.org/ I did some searching around for San Diego seeds and it seems that they are somewhat hard to find, with lots of suppliers out at the moment.

Oh, I forgot, the other most important thing is mulch. My tomato plants have about 12" of mulch at the moment and that is woefully inadequate.

 

[squeakyballs]

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[nurseshelly]

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Oh, I'm so sorry!!!!

 

[nurseshelly]

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We have had great results with cherry tomatoes too (more than we could eat from one plant), but haven't found a large tomato that does well here. We will have to try the San Diego one

 

[azpenguin]

Never thought of checking Native Seeds for tomato plants and seeds; I should know better. We are finally this year having success growing tomato plants. This time we're using a raised bed with lots of mulch and it's working. Our big tomato this year is from a plant called Sunmaster that we got at Harlow Gardens. We also have a yellow pear plant and a Porter improved plant that we got from The Chicken Ladies at the farmers market (they're only there once a year.) We have a Hank tomato plant and a Taos tomato plant that we bought from the Arivaipa folks at the farmers market. They grow endangered plants so that they can help preserve the species. The Hank plant does not have good tasting fruit, but the chickens love 'em. The Taos plant makes just fantastically nummy tomatoes, and we want more. The Chicken Ladies' plants went nuts and are producing a lot of tasty little snack fruits; we often pull 20 little tomatoes a day off those. The Sunmaster has steadily produced fruit, a little bigger as it goes along, and there's some big big ones that we're just waiting to turn red. Next year should be even better because we'll have more beds and the compost we've been working on will be ready to go. One of the reasons we got chickens is for the compost.

 

[Memphisjourney2seramas]

I just wanted to let you guys know about some rainboots that are great for chicken coops! I have been seraching high and low and even at walmart they were $30. I finally found some at Target.com on clearance for $7.54. they have tons of cute prints and colors. Just FYI. I love mine and know wish I had order more!!