light is a feather it puts more pounds on you girls they look like big bird but they're all feather you know that's a three and a half or four and a half pounds maybe skinny little things saw the show last week but you know things continue to progress and we'll take a look at what we've got to talk about the future we're just getting the lion's share their so the young birds are still still laying up a storm pretty much for eight days on the starboard a week we had a two a day in fact it was last week when we film the show and i said that we got nothing before eight days and knock wood because i we got to that day but they came on strong the next day i swear some of those eggs got to be double yorkers there in the fridge especially when the young will you know it's just a waiting game seeing how long they'll go my first batches did stop for the winner they didn't start melting their first year until  thanksgiving though those days get short affects their metabolism their hormone levels however i've had viewers plenty of them i don't like them up or anything you know if you if you want to lay all winter you know you want about fourteen hours of light a day to keep them play am i let my antenna take a break fall them take a little break for the winter and as i've said you know cleo nine years old played pretty well this year kitty laid up two or nine year i think she's retired officially retired  which one do is you know that you don't need a lot of like in the cold and what you do is you like them in the evening where they can get up with the dawn you know get off the roost go about their day and then when the sun goes down no yard they'll get into bed and that way the lights still on they can you know find the roost you don't wan get stranded out in the you know you don't want to out in the yard you know with a light on and then also it clicks off and they'll be kind of they don't see good in the dark probably just hunker down in the dirt go to but you know i didn't pursue it too much and really notice a difference point i had a theory that the street light across the street kept a million later in the year because the next year it burned out and they seemed to quit sooner well it was just a coincidence you know just as they as they age they're going to play a little later in the spring and stop playing a little earlier in the winter as the years go on so i don't think it was street life is a theory what can i say other thing i've been putting these girls to work on they had an assignment this week d i don't know what she's up to clear as in mult and she's losing her feathers and grow in the new ones and she just does not want to be touched so so we're looking at these beds back here we talk about putting the garlic back here one better part next one bit soft it's a nice bed for the winter growth particularly because you know this is kind of the  north end of the yard so when that sun gets low in the south this is kind of the area that gets the most sun gets you know warmed up during the day better than anything else in the front of the yard so i think it's going to they're all slightly bigger beds and they're not to my standard eight by fours these are actually like a five by eight so i can get a few more cloves in and or space them out a little better try to get a bigger plan to try to get some of these i've got a couple varieties that have been getting a little small on me so i'm really trying to get them in in october this year and grow and little for a couple extra months this year and try to bulk those seed close up end of the beet greens collected seed off the beats and the carrots and it was a real jungle back here and i thought well i don't want to do it well if chickens tractor the thing  you know some people do a chicken tractor where you've got a little portable pan for him that picks up often enclosed above to keep predators out what i do is i just i've got some portable and the chickens do kind of keep turning it keep burning at least really did a number on these two beds it's basically ready to rake up and dig ready to go and if you leave them in too long they'll really start turning the soil to dust almost sterilize it with their activity so obviously it's good not good it's good for knocking everything down you know they eat bugs and weeds and pretty much do a number on it  it's almost time to take this away from them that might have a couple extra days here i need to get this other bed so basically once they're done here you know they always pick this stuff around quite a bit so you know i try to go in find where the and you can see how dusty this is when you start seeing them taking dust bats in the soil you know that they've got it where they like it it's pretty much time to take it away from them but this is good i love it when you dig for them find little treats in there another one bacteria start to go into dormancy the one guy as well so going there in your water the dirt a little bit and start to bulk up the biology in there and you know i've been rotating these beds really hard to last ten years i don't you know i've been too busy to really have a whole lot of starts i could certainly run down to the nursery and buy maybe a will cabbage a little bit charred tail collier  survive frost very well and will grow throughout the winter i think and i've going to give some of the stuff a little bit of a rest and maybe do a little cover crop for you know a good portion of the  beds this year so let's take out jason's big box cover crop i tend to buy in bulk when i do let's talk about some of the things you can put in u cover crops basically any root in the ground is going to help the biology help the cycle continue it holds moisture it traps nutrients from this year and holds them in the plant throughout the winter so when you chop them back down it goes back in the soil and feeds that we can lucked out on that one had some fava beans in storage here and i've got my little which has been fact absorb a lot of moisture out of those seeds and you can see it's turned into a liquid serve a gel which is what happens when it becomes completely saturated and that's very corrosive it's not good for your seed so should probably go through the other bucket i've got here the people that bought the beans locked out and not wet and this is my favorite you can plant these in the time of year very aggressive plant i've been seen and you know i remember shelling a bunch over the lawn once and also and i had these things growing out of the lawn so anywhere they they pop down they'll start growing and you can plant and even you know those germinate even in the dead of winter grow slowly obviously when it's dark and cold out that they will grow continue and then really pop up in the spring so you plant a good thick cover of these you'll get a good stand if you plant now you'll have a good stand by january and then i as i said come spring they'll really take off these things will get you know six seven feet tall and they're lagu minnes which means you know these can fix up to two hundred pounds of nitrogen per acre when they're popped properly inoculated so these guys will sprout this time of year they won't really take off until next taking over they do seeds and sprout and grow readily there by any they get into everything so make sure you chop those down as right as they're blooming don't let them start setting seed and one of the things  covered with a pretty good my silly old sheath from from beneficial fun guy so the fun guy are borrowing a little sugar and carbon from the wheat plant and in exchange they help that mine for nutrients particularly phosphorous and they make that sheet on the on the roots which helps protect plant and then when the plant dies off those mice and plant something else behind it you know biology that's going on the soil if you don't plant cover crops few years back i didn't experiment with just covering go ahead put a hope over your bed i usually have one you know like one of my tall hoops over a bed as sort of a dry storage area you know for things like buckets of compost are things i don't have room for and stick my tools under there and in the spring i did nitrogen tests between cover crops you know things like know being covered crops versus simply being covered and i found that they were equivalent and even the covered might even have a little more because the rains don't leach away in the heavy winter rain so if you don't want to do a cover crop to go ahead and just cover your beds i don't like to put the plastic flat on the soil i like to let it bring you let stuff get on you know the air get under there but you know just try that if you know if you don't have a bucket a week to plant so let's take a look at the peppers which are just really starting to show the beauty that this is the goldfish hybrid pepper that i've been talking about third of the goldfish pepper crossed with all the other weird peppers i used to grow and this year i planted nothing but again they got the orange for my ball gary carrot pepper so a lot of production and what happens at the end of the year here's my chart from last year that will maybe take it to the seed a little more you can read it without the glare so every year this is a chart of you know a representation of the garden bed itself and we take notes of the plants and i keep the seed separate when i collect seeds and so i can kind of follow what's done what when and where obviously i've got i'm going to be throwing out a few every year as far as you know of if it's ok this will keep but if it turns into a new mexican that's less productive  orange is what i'm really a little smaller fruit but they tend to be a little hotter and you know so i'm pretty happy with all of them even though the bulgarian  are producing better than the buggering carrots that have been breeding all these years i think i ran into a limited genetic stock just because i didn't have enough plants going in so i'm actually kind of going with all hybrids collecting from the plants i don't take careful notes on the it's just kind of figured though in the end all have the ultimate much you know a tough early flavorful big that's kind of one thirty to get and the first sign of the tomatillos getting right  first off the really feel those skins out you can see where if i squish this one here you know there's a lot of slack on that little lantern and they develop this guy's nice and tight all the way around and  you know that they start to split after a while so you want to catch them a little earlier now that the other thing you'll notice is they'll start dropping on the ground susie see it just a couple hit the ground like this you know it's time to start them and find in those nice ones i'll keep these for seed and then some of these others it's time for salsa you know these will go real good with those peppers and thank goodness for this weather because as we discussed last week i'm getting this fight of thor in the late blight that's coming on strong on these plants you know right now the weather conditions  far favorable enough where i'm right the thing faster than i'm dying basically you can see a large amount of leaves are missing from that back patch chicory where the sun doesn't get it you know it grows pretty quick it looks like got to go back through it again but in the meantime you know i'm writing up fairly quickly now even at the top here i've got some color i always leave as many right ones on as i can you know if they're getting over right sure i'll pick them and deal with them but the ethylene that's coming off of the ripening fruit is sort of it's like a domino effect a domino effect if you leave a few ripe ones on and that