in the real garden wow it's after five o'clock we still have a little bit of daylight the chickens are still up to things get a lot easier when the days get longer like this again in a couple minutes morning and evening every day happens every time about this time of year and the chickens to really feel it  she was going to make it through the summer last year but it's kind of got a second wind looking pretty good actually but nonetheless we are going to re refresh the flock this spring these two will of course be on the full retirement plan and get to live out their days teach the young guns how it's done in the mood for some fresh chicks it's been a long time coming i've wanted to go do a batch for the show for the last nine years and  had no idea these chickens would last so long  we're going to get a fresh batch looks like the now the seven thirty eight of march the feed store has some varieties that i would like to  have nobody volunteered for the real garden chicken launch so i'm just going to strike out on my own fortunately it means that i'm not going to get those norwegian star production birds come into the feed store so we didn't get one of those we also have an amber white hybrid which is got some lagering in it so i'm going to get myself a mediterranean bird here and see if everything they say about legan's is true as far as their outstanding production of large white eggs and i'm going to get probably get another americana just because cleo here has been such a delight that looks good the other was the other one you remember but you know i'm going for production i want some egg laying birds i don't care how ugly they are i'm just joking there's no such thing as an ugly chick and they're all beautiful in their own way that's a way we'll get to see some chicks growing up here i've been reviewing the techniques trying to remember what i did last time and what i liked about it and what i didn't chickens are a lot like babies you know the first born you know you fuss and worry about every little thing and do exactly what the book tells you to and no deviation from the program and then the second was and second batch to find out well they really need some warmth yeah and they need food and water but some of the other stuff they recommand you know kind of goes by the wayside and amazingly the chickens serve you know from day one they're through hopping around and acting like little chickens you know you look at a robin or something like that that's completely blind bald and helpless when it happens out in the nest chickens aren't like that very first you know within soon as they dry the fluff off their they're up and running around and looking for food and water adventure  they grew up awful fast it's about twenty four weeks from hatching to laying so you know we're going to get some march birds here so we should be starting to see some eggs and mid to late august solution the way it works you can hardly wait it's going to be sort of a more involved process you know commercial growers practice all in all out you know you bring in the new you sterilize your ham house you know get all the birds out sterilize it and then bring in an all new batch so that all the same age and  at the same rate of way but of course commercially they call them at about eighteen months so it's a different operation and what we're doing and you know i tell you i've saved a lot of time and money on you know raising up chicks by keep them these birds good and healthy you know kitty didn't play last year because she was having some health problems but  i would say expect production at least or if you know your five year six despite what the books tell you to make sure they get lots of vitamins plenty of fresh air sunshine of course they let him take a break during the winter which doesn't happen when you're running a commercial operation to light them up so they lay all the time to have a feeling cleo is probably going to be the terror kid he's so secure in her position that she really doesn't pick on the younger birds much growing up she's seen two or three batches come in and she's always  given one low pack and then call it good so she's a real good bird you can if you've got adult birds in your introducing young birds you might want to consider getting a more aggressive breed you know there's mellow chickens and there's more aggressive chickens by breed and for instance if you're concerned that the adults are going to you know pick on him which they will get yourself something like a rhode island red will  teach him a lesson once it gets big enough to stand up for itself or you could get a big bird like a brahma you know which is going to grow rapidly didn't outweigh the pecking order tends to be by size and weight although that's not my little prudence was a scrawny little stick of a bird and she kept the order in the chicken yard for sure so i'll toss it up and you know it can be done we'll talk a lot more about that as the weeks progress so for time constraints on camera here and but we're going to i save a little patch showing up what we're up against here i'm you know get the tree seedlings get the bons eyes out of just last week we had hopes this bad to dry it out a little which really helps when you go to dig it's in good condition for that and  but then later in the season you know this this this will cost slumps which i actually like because i bring it lower down to the water table it's water table lowers you know in the dryer months june july hopefully these of the out here by june this is but these are going to be the breeding project piece the shell and p and we're going to wait a week or two before we plant the snow pod peason the snap peas because they seem to like and the mammoth melting mixed with the purple kappa junker male so the service you know you've got four different gene pools going on in here and has performed well for the past couple years so we're going to put it in a species of peas need a piece species and this one's got several different species in it it's the kind you generally find at the nearest nursery store the garden combination is good for all your beings p the seed on germination it's going to have this coating of stuff and so it's going to pick up that bacteria as it emerges so that's looks about right and now we're going to mark our road i've got this beds five foot wide rather than four foot which is you know this one came with the house and they don't didn't use my and ideally well you should have your trellis in place before you do this but in this case we're going to do it the other way around it's probably also my water like that and it's they also you know when they start climbing they can kind of before they hit that first string they can kind of tendril with each other and it helps them you know stand up to the when the elements a little  molecule the bacteria does and to make the reaction it needs an anaerobic environment and so the plant grows these little round nodes around the bacteria and that's where the magic happens so when we pull a plant here you know in a month you know once they get go and you can pull a plant you can actually see the nodes and if you break them open in their pain meds shows it's put a little nitrogen source in there for him and if they don't have bacteria on them if you grow often enough you know if i put peas in this bed you know there's a number of people who swear by this and this is just your ground dolemite limestone the kind that you use to as a soil amendment for calcium and to keep the  fine powder and these what happens is this is alkaline and slugs of course don't like alkaline you know that's why the ammonia dissolves them when i do the slugs so what we're going to do here is create a hostile and go through the garden and do that and they there in the u k which is has a pretty good slug population and they claim that if they do this often enough the slugs are a bait it shouldn't have much negative consequence for the ph in your garden soil because if you're driving your cat's eye on exchange capacity with calcium it tends to bind it's its own level at about you know the appropriate you know six