Our DIY A-frame Chicken Coop

I have six girls: Claudia, Heidi, Tyra, Marissa, Giselle, and Cindy.  They are teenagers at 14 weeks now, getting their big-girl voices and clucking and bocking here and there.  Sometimes they look skinny and scrawny and then next minute they seem big huge and giant breasted.  Yes, yes, I am talking about chickens-- not people.

My fiance and I have spent way too many hours building the girls a coop, and digging and driving around town looking for the best prices for organic chicken feed.  We bought both our chicks and feed from City Farmers Nursery in San Diego.  The feed is about 40 bucks for 50lbs.  For the cost of building the coop, and food so far, the first eggs are going to be like golden eggs.

The Coop before moving it down the hill and adding the "run" area.

The coop is constructed from fencing planks, 2 by 4s and plywood.  Hardware cloth is everywhere is is not cheap! The A-frame is about 30 square feet, and the total outside area is about 100 square feet.  The outdoor area has a bamboo roof (with a tarp for when it rains).  The whole coop is seated on a steepish hill, and is about 8 feet tall.  The floor of the hen house is covered in left over laminate flooring stickers (left over from our bathroom project but less than 5 bucks to buy) to better clean up in there.  The side of the A-frame is shingled with left over roofing shingles from our roofing projects (no good pictures of it shingled).  

Inside view with heater.

It probably cost around 250 dollars at the end of the day.  But the total hours of building and getting it situated on a hill was huge.  Easily 40 hours each.  Not to mention my mom and dad helped a lot too. Had we had level ground, and no predators about, it would have been a much faster and cheaper build.

The coop is not only on a hill, but right next to open spaces land in San Diego.  So there is no doubt, coyotes, raccoons, opposums, snakes, and most definately ferral cats (lots of pet cats too).  So, we had to build a sturdy coop and bury in the hardware cloth for any burrowing creatures.  The land is mostly clay, and full of giant stones too.  I burned some calories working on the girls house!

Almost a "tiny house." Mom helping out.
Notice the vinyl tile flooring.

We took the girls home when they were 3 weeks old.  Little cuties. Peeping and scurrying about. I didn't use a brooder, rather the A-frame coop house worked great for the little ones.  We just didn't lower the ramp, they were forced to stay in the house for the first four weeks.  A heat lamp kept them warm.  The fiance and I set up chairs next to the coop to sit and watch "chick TV."  We were instantly smitten and demanded that all of our friends come by and see our little bundles of joy.

Officially cat-proofed.

The Leghorns sleeping.

Did you figure out that they are named after supermodels?  It was only natural, seeing as they strut around all the time!

Growing Pink Banana Squash

Pink Banana Squash- 9 weeks old

Nothing cheers me up more than a garden nursery.  What cheers me up even more is when said nursery has a basket of Botanical Interests seeds on sale because they expired two weeks earlier. Well, I'm one for a deal! True true that they say old seeds don't germinate at a great rate... I say so what.  I only grow one or two plants, and the seed packets have so many more than two plants. So doing the math, I'd say I'm likely to succeed!
Enter the Pink Banana Squash. If you are reading this page, you have probably done an internet search already.  That means that you have seen the many pictures of people struggling to hold up a giant pink oblong blimps.  I hope the 14-year old inside you giggled as much as I did.  Let's just say the squash looks like something out of a tacky romance novel.

Naturally, I cannot wait for this plant to grow.  It is tucked in the corner of a raised bed on a south on an east facing hill.  It took about a week to sprout.  March 16, 2015 was the day it peeped up from the ground.  Every year I struggle with squash because of the ubiquitous powdery mildew.  This year I am trying something new.  Equipped with a three dollar spray bottle from Home Depot, and a solution of 25% milk to 75% water I am planning on spraying the plant every two weeks (more likely once a month).

UPDATE June 3, 2015:
I picked this first squash on June 3, about 12 weeks after it sprouted.  I was really worried that the plant was not setting additional fruit, so I picked this massive squash early.
UPDATE June 5, 2015:
The first signs of powdery mildew are showing.  I'm going to spray the leaves with the mild milk solution this evening.  Cross your fingers it does the job.  Though there are clearly signs of some leaf burrowing bugs too.  I'm going to focus on the mildew first, then attack the bugs.

Crimson Sweets, Sugar Baby Watermelons & Ollas- Southern California

Its that time of year again! Whoo-hoo! Watermelon season.  Last year I grew Crimson Sweet melons in my back yard--er-- I mean, canyon/very steep hilly area with a few mostly flatish areas.   It was an insane spreader and covered a serious amount of area.  I grew it in a raised bed, and let the vines fall over the corner so as not to take of the entire box.  Read about it here.  At the end of the season I ended up with four 25-30 lb melons, so about 100 pounds of watermelon.  Oh yea!  Being a watermelon freak, I want more.  

Saving watermelon seeds is a breeze.  Eat the watermelon, spit out the seed, rinse and let air dry.  Wrap up the dried seeds and keep in a dry place with moderate temperature.  Plant again next spring.  And that is just what I did.  Let me tell you, you can plant a watermelon farm with all the seeds you could save.  BUT, make sure your variety is open pollinated and that you only grew one variety of watermelon that year.  Otherwise you may get a watermelon vine with no fruit, or a wacko watermelon that may or may not taste any good.  Seems like a fun experiment to grow a mystery fruit, but if you don't have the space to waste, then you may want to just compost those mystery seeds.

Crimson Sweet Seedling & Terracotta Olla Waterer

Did anyone tell you there is a drought in California? No?  Well there is.  In San Diego, we are only allowed to water on certain days of the week and for limited time.  Buzz kill if you are a really into your home garden; needless to say I've had to get creative this year.  I'm doing the olla-thing.  The Olla thing involves burying a water permeable vessel next to your crops and watering your plants by filling the vessel up with water.  The vessel will leach water into the soil  thus ensuring the roots to your plants are nice and well watered.  You don't add water to the surface where it can run off and evaporate.  Ollas are made of earthen clay that hasn't been glazed.  BUT ollas are like 30 bucks a pop!  By the way 'Olla' just means pot in Spanish, so peeps might be really confused if you just start taking about ollas in garden!  

Sugar Baby Watermelon & Strawbs

I went cheapo and bought terracotta pots, glued them together until totally sealed, but for a hole in the top for filling with water.  I "planted" the terracotta olla next to my crimson sweet seeds with the top above ground and filled the vessel with water regularly.  Since I am mostly filling it with water I collect inside the house while waiting for faucets to spit out hot water, I am thinking it doesn't count as "watering."  Low and behold, my seeds sprouted and I've got a baby crimson sweet starting to grow.  I am worried that I didn't amend my soil enough to take into account the extreme clay content in the ground.  But I've mulched it already and am gearing up to add more mulch in hopes of combating this nasty water  deficit.  

Sugar Baby Melons- I picked up some Sugar Baby Melon seedlings at Walter Anderson's Nursery (my favorite SD nursery).  I tucked a plant into a raised bed and am still trying to figure out where I can put another plant or two.  I hope to be knee deep in melons this summer.  Smitty, my 8 year old corgi, loves chomping on watermelon and watermelon rind and I anticipate my chickens be all over watermelon too.  I just can't get enough.  

Header Image Courtesy of irum of freeimages.com