Esther Platt

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since Jul 29, 2012
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Oregon Zone 8b
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Recent posts by Esther Platt

Apricot trees are lovely. Does your climate have zero rain in summer? I wonder what protected it. Is it in a rocky area?
3 months ago
Post the location in the title.
3 months ago
Thanks for the ideas about electric fence and motion-activated deterrents. So you think bushiness or large canopy branches are not worse. The remaining question is whether I should keep the fruit/nut trees just outside of the chicken fence, to deter raccoons from hanging out in the chicken yard eating fruit.
4 months ago
Is it best to not have any large bushy or climbable trees (ex. hazelnut or mulberry) inside a chicken yard? Does it attract raccoons to hide or sleep in the branches? It would be almonds, plums, hazelnut bushes, mulberry bushes or tree, loquat. The rest of the yards (including immediately outside of the chicken yard) definitely will be planted with many small fruit and nut trees and bushes.

I'm curious because when my 1/4 acre property was bare with only some ornamentals, I was the only chicken owner not encountering raccoons in my yard. We even sometimes left their coop open slightly after dark. Now that I have some fruit trees but no chickens anymore, we have raccoons coming every night to eat and poop.
4 months ago
I too am wondering if I can make DIY hard tires out of some old cracked/brittle ones. Maybe I could slice it open (still on the wheel) along the circumference, fill it with some solid substance (maybe I'll try wrapping hoses as mentioned here), and seal it back up. What could I bond it/seal it with?
5 months ago
Have you considered making a "barn latch" rod and slot, either swiveling or sliding? It would be a one-handed operation with comfortable distance for your hand from the ground. But it might be prone to opening by animals, not being a hooked latch.
See these pictures; I assume yours would be oriented vertically to connect the bottom frame instead of side frame:
Sliding https://images.app.goo.gl/NMCnRtFhDpHr7wux5
Swiveling https://images.app.goo.gl/bJzYbpWzrrgF8bG69
6 months ago
This summer's earwig problem was slightly better. Besides having a wetter springtime this year, we are on the third year since applying wood chips to many plants and areas of the yard. Maybe the soil food web is getting established. This is the first year that frogs and wolf spiders have been notably living here, and I'm wondering if they made a dent in the earwig population.
1 year ago

Lauren Ritz wrote:what if I were to put our food garbage under the woodchips as bait? Would that keep them away from the other plants? It would certainly be a better fertilizer than anything chemical, and if it works well to attract them I could douse the whole thing in vinegar...



My infestation is so bad that we can't grow compost, because the earwigs eat up all the compost scraps.
1 year ago
Hi Dan, I may graft some mulberries soon. It sounds like you took the cuttings in summer. What kind of cuttings were they (tips, hardwood, with fruit, etc.?)? When did you graft them onto your seedling in Michigan? Did you make an extra slit below the grafts to bleed the sap?

Dan Allen wrote:I collected mulberry cuttings from across the us on my way home from Florida.  Amazing the different characteristics from state to state and tree to tree. I grafted them all on to a seedling tree here at my farm in Michigan to see what takes. I have cuttings from a tree at a rest stop in Kentucky that had long mulberries like a Pakistan variety, but it was growing wild along a fence.

1 year ago
Carla and others, I like your double-fence designs. It looks like most of these double fences have the secondary (short) fence on the outside and tall main one on the inside. In that layout, I would think the deer would be tempted to vandalize the short outer one in order to jump the tall main one. I wonder if putting the tall one on the outside would discourage them from damaging the outer one, and maybe the inner short one could be a single rail only, not a solid mesh.
2 years ago