A Day at The Fair

Karen and I are spending the day running her booth at Everybody’s Bird Mart at the L.A. County Fairgrounds in Pomona CA.

We came down Friday evening and spent the day Saturday picking up supplies both that Karen needs for her business and for her booth at the bird mart. She probably thinks I haven’t noticed but she is employing her infamous “carrot & stick” tactics.

After getting all of her running finished we went by Holt Garden Center in Chino, CA where she found me 2 nice Pakistani Mulberry Trees and 4 Comfrey Plants. The Mulberry’s are going on the west end of my orchard where they will serve many purposes. Being a rapid growing tree they should start providing afternoon relief from the brutal summer sun by next year, their long fruiting period (2 months) should distract the wild birds from the other fruit in my orchard, Karen loves he taste of mulberries and is looking forward to making jam, and finally the my chickens are gonna love foraging under them!
The guys at Holt Garden Center knew exactly what Comfrey was and had a bunch of it! The owner is Korean and apparently it is very popular in oriental herbal medicine. So now I have four big plants to put between the rows of my orchard, hopefully they will grow as well as sources on the Internet claim. Comfrey is a ” bio-accumulator” that accumulate’s nutrients and minerals in the soil that may not be readily available to other plants because of other factors such as alkalinity and through composting converts them to more usable forms. In addition it is supposed to grow very fast and chickens love the greens.