What Does 5 Months of Neglect Look Like?

Interviewer: What would you say is the single worst trait you possess; if there was one habit or behavior that you would most like to change, what would it be?

Steve K.: Jesus, you don't waste any time, do you?

Interviewer: I suspect you were familiar with my style before you agreed to this interview.  That, or you don't believe in due diligence... [Steve appears uncomfortable, drinks heavily from his 2nd martini]

Steve K,: Fair enough, fair enough.  I'm not perfect, damn close, but not perfect and to answer your.... intrusive and tragically cliché question: My biggest flaw is my inability to balance life.

Interviewer: Are you saying you can't handle "life"?

Steve K.: WTF?!  No, what?  I'm saying I have a tendency to jump, 100% from one platform to another.  To be overflowing with drive and passion for X, only to be distracted and pursue Y and then Z.

Interview: Sounds like you have commitment issues, or... perhaps a fear of.... HALTING your perpetual pattern of seeking -seeking what, remains a mystery... a compulsion of sorts... 

[Steve stormed off at this point, visibly drunk and aggravated]

OK, back to the real world.  That was a little creative outburst from my overactive imagination.  That and I just finished a straight up, ice cold and delicious martini.

Weeds - everywhere!

This is an important post for me.  Near the end of July my tomato crop had been virtually wiped out and it really demoralized me and turned me off to gardening.  Normally I would have bounced back in a few days, maybe a week but this time work got REAL crazy at just about the same time.  As eluded to in the above fictitious interview, I'm TERRIBLE at managing multiple things at one time.  So the farm slowly took a back seat, then a third and before I knew it I had become fully involved in work and the exciting new developments.

People know me, they weren't surprised to see this pattern emerge, yet again.  It still bugged me each time someone chuckled while asking "How's the crop, farmer Steve?"  I had a desire to get things shaped up, but it just wasn't happening.

I haven't stood at that table and planted for over 5 months

Earlier this week I had a very good friend in town, along with his wife, new baby as well as their good friend and his wife.  They were in town for business, but we still made a point to spend a day together.  My friend' a chef and he was aware of the garden but hadn't yet seen it.  I knew this would be an issue so I preemptively stated in an email that I would NOT show the garden/farm to  him because it was in such terrible shape.  I wanted to wait until I had a chance to clean it up and be proud of it.

Overgrown with weeds, dead bean plants, arugula gone
nuts and remnants of tomato trellises

Just as I knew he would - he disregarded my wishes and marched right out to the garden.  It sucked, I hated being in a situation where I was making excuses and talking about what it "used to look like" or what it "would look like again" after I cleaned it up.  We moved on, but it stuck and was a wake up a call.

More of the same, weeds and dead crops

Jump to Today and I decided to begin the process of taking control of the garden again.  A hobby that I worked incredibly hard at, spent hundreds of hours reading about and thought "this may be what I want to do next in life (if I had the $)"  It started with a modest list, just to get the process started and get my body (especially my back) warmed up for the action.

If you've followed this blog at all you've seen how nice I typically keep things, how well groomed the beds are, how the weeds are pulled regularly, etc.

So Today I put in about 3-4 hours of rough cleanup.  It's so bad that I opted for a multi-pass approach, here is the first pass:

1. Cut off seed and flower heads of weeds to prevent further propagation
2. remove diseases crops (tomatoes!) - can't compost them, too risky to spread the disease
3. Pull weeds and other crops for composting
4. Rough rake the rows and beds to collect the weeds and expose the ground so I can weed further
5. Roll up the drip lines off to the side to facilitate bed maintence

I plan to hit it again Monday and take a second pass.  Here are photos of how it looked when I was done Today.

 

Almost perfect

I like this

red noodle blossom

Homey, Red Noodle

Red noodle showed up while I was away, finally!  Not only do they produce beautiful flowers, but the beans are really cool looking.  So far I have a couple that are ~18" long and about 1/4" diameter and the widest.  The flavor is nothing amazing, beanny... vegetabally...  They are green on the inside and apparently green when you cook them.

I noticed ants all over the plants and blossoms but I can't see that they are doing anything wrong.  Then again I didn't suspect the pill bugs at first either, and look how that turned out.

The results are in

Didn't start at 5am, I forgot that I was going to drive my Dad to LAX for a flight to China at 1am, I didn't get home until 2 and there was no way I was getting up in 3 hours to measure water in dirt.  However, I did get up at 7:30 (that's about as late as I can sleep) and set out to begin the test.
I grabbed a 1" diameter pipe, marked an 8" line, drove down with a twisting motion into a bed and then......... couldn't get the dirt out.  Complete failure.  I tried to ram it out with a large dowel, I tried tapping to loosen the dirt, I tried everything I could think of but that dirt was staying.  To the Unisaw to rip a 6" gash down a length  of PVC pipe so I could spread the "drill" to release the core within and this is when I checked myself.  Overkill, all of this.... complete overkill.  I light up with a technical challenge, it get's me going and I realized the focus had left the dead plants and shifted to creating a custom tool to take perfect soil samples!
After putting away my tools I got started with plan B which is to use a simple trowel to get to the stuff down 6-7".  Here's the stuff:

1. 8:30 am (EW2) - 6" down and bone dry (this is bad)  Evidence of dried leaves and the soil had that great texture soil gets when worms have done their job.  Still, it was dry.
2. 8:42 am (EW2) - proceeded to manually water for 10 solid minutes, walking back and forth down the row watering as evenly as possible.  I'm thinking "This shit is wet" I mean I really soaked it, I almost felt guilty as if I had done something really wrong, it was that much water.  But I needed data, I needed to know water was getting down there.
3. 9:30 am (EW2) - 6" deep sample taken and STILL dry, only the top 1-1/2" was wet!  I still can't explain this, the water went somewhere.  It wasn't running down the sides of the bed, it (mostly) stayed on the bed and soaked in.  This is still odd, but I can say the dirt was dry.
4. 9:35 am (EW2) - cultivated with the single tine cultivator (great tool) to break up the surface.  This resulted in some soil spreading down and out from the edges which I then quickly dragged back up the bed creating a short lip that would serve to ensure the water stays ON the bed.
5. 9:40 am (EW2) - another 10 minutes of soaking, same thing
6. 11:30 am (EW2) - still visually wet on top despite the warm temperature.  6" deep sample shows that the soil is thoroughly saturated (finally)
7. Went to work, then mountain biking after work so I didn't test anymore.  I'll take a sample tomorrow AM and see what the water has done.

No relevant photos, just Chui

So I left for awhile

The area is irrigated because it's soon to be
another block of corn.  All that water and no
shade makes for a weed invasion!

I took off to the mountains to get away for awhile, catch up on some work and get some hiking in.  My family has a house up there and I've set it up with a workstation, nice monitor and can basically do what I do "down the hill" just as effectively up there.  With the added bonus that I'm not in suburban hell.  I returned this past Saturday evening which means my garden was without a captain for 11 days.
When I left I really didn't care too terribly much what happened to the garden, I was (and am still) pissed about the tomato failure.  I'm not losing sleep over it but it did take a good portion of the wind out of my sails - maybe some time away was just what I needed?

blossom end rot - about 50% of current toms' suffer from it
I'm assuming it's from the heat spell, but it can be caused by
a few different things

Upon returning I encountered pretty much what I expected; still living but not thriving plants, tomatoes that look like shit, arugula that bolted, red orach that continues to be devasted by pests, corn doing pretty good (happy if you give it water!) and my good little beans with their work finished, waiting to die.  So my sprinklers work.  The yard looked terrible with sick or dead plants and weeds everywhere, I knew that cleaning things up would be a good start and I planned on doing just that on Sunday.

stupid arugula, hate you...

Sunday came and the yard was cleaned up, dead and very sick plants pulled.  I watered everything real good and gave my compost operation some much needed attention.  Didn't spend the full day, I didn't have the heart for it and ended up wrapping after about 5 hours of work.

big zucchini ≠ good zucchini
This was chopped and composted

much better

Tonight I was surprised (should I still be??) to find the beds dry!  I watered HEAVILY yesterday morning, I mean I really went for it and soaked the beds but they are dry, dry, dry.  I dug down about 8" and dry.  This actually gives me a little buzz because maybe, just maybe the terrible performance of the crops are due to the chronic under watering?  Maybe the soil composition in the beds is just incapable of storing water?  If you've followed this blog at all you know what a schizo I am about watering ("I over water!" "No, I'm under watering!" "mulch is good" "No, mulch is bad and rots the stems!!") 

bolted arugula gone - I like dirt more than 
sick or bolting plants

Tomorrow I plan to get scientific on it's ass, here's the plan:

1. Water HEAVYILY in the early AM (5ish)
2. Take core sample to determine water penetration depth (2 or 3 sample should suffice)
3. Every hour I will take a core sample to a depth of 8" and track the progression down (if any) as well as the drying

If I can prove that this soil just won't hold water then I can begin to take steps to correct the problem.  See, I just 180'ed in a single blog post!

Blueberry Bliss

My blueberries are all going through a growth spurt which is GREAT because they really need to fatten up a bit in order to support any real quantity of berries.  I just released a couple hundred ladybugs the other night to get the aphids (not pictured) in check...

Tomato Watch - Day 11

Just keeps getting worse and worse.  I pulled another 4 plants Today.  Looks like I'll have 5-6 survivors and will lose the remaining 30 or so.  I'm basing that on the fact that 5 or 6 plants are thriving, healthy and almost 6' tall; everything else sucks!

Fortex Have Arrived

Fortex on a bed of provider

My Fortex crop is finally ready for the first harvest, I've been able to pull a pound or so of 12"+ beans.  The flavor is good, different than provider, a little simpler I'd say, but still good.  They aren't as form as provider either.  I brought a bunch into work and they went over well, people tripped out over the long size - I can't wait to bring in the Red Noodle when they are ready!

Size comparison of Fortex and Provider

Tomato Watch - Day 7 (getting old...)

I'm getting tired of this, death travels slowly for tomatoes.  They continue to look beat up, sick, depressed and weak.  I have a couple that are doing terrific yet that only makes the sick look sicker.

I took the ducks back to where I purchased them.  It was sad, and I was bummed to give up on this experiment but it was the only fair thing to do.  They had a good time while they were here and hopefully they find a good new home.

Harvested about 2-1/2 lbs of "provider" beans.  These ones are much sweeter than the spring crop.  Fortex are about 10" long, twisted and wild looking.  Going to look up some bean recipes and put these to use...if I don't eat them all raw first.

Red Orach is bolting as is my arugula - can't take the heat...

Tomato Watch - Day 5

Took a day off Today

Tomato Watch - Day 4

Another hot one Today, hovered around 90 for 4-5 hours.  The soil in the EW2 bed was much more dry than I would have expected considering the thorough soaking I gave it Yesterday.  It could be that the soil in those beds just plain doesn't hold moisture very well, maybe there is too much organic material and not enough "dirt"?  - I watered again...

I've found the limit on how long guardsman bunching onions can be in the ground - the "skin" (they are hollow tubes... what would you call it?!) is starting to decay a little, not rot, but just break down a bit.  They still taste great, just don't look as nice.

Did some regular landscape work Today.  Removed some overgrown bushes, fixed sprinkler issues, trimmed some plants, etc.  While I was programming the irrigation timer I bumped the trip duration on the vegetables from 15 minutes to 30 minutes.

When these reach about 12" or so I will plow the space between the rows to mound onto the stalks while also
creating a furrow for flood watering (easier to fertilize)

This pile is ready for the shredder then the compost pile
it was a HUGE lantana and salvia "hot lips" - both planted
in my front yard.

Planted fortex seeds in the corn mounds (not pictured) and then fertilized all corn with urine fertilizer diluted ~1:8.  It was actually this planting process that made me question the water retention properties of the raised beds.  The soil in the corn mounds is un-amended "dirt" from another part of my yard.  I'm sure its deficient in nutrients and more susceptible to compaction and all the other negatives but it WAS wet when I cultivated it Today.  At least it holds water.

Severely pruned an old geranium that had been beat down by some
worms. Not sure if it will survive, or even be worth keeping after this...

Tomato Watch - Day 3

Nearly 90 Today, feels like summer finally arrived.  Had a mixed day of farm work, misc. house work and relaxing.  Split the chipper apart to sharpen the main blade and replace some missing hardware (kind of troubling that hardware would be missing considering the speed the impeller spins at!).  Ducks were hot but nothing 2-3 minutes of spray from the hose didn't fix.

Tomatoes seemed to like the heat, it's probably in my head they sure look greener to me.  I probed around with my moisture meter and concluded that I may be UNDER-WATERING everything.  I went ahead and gave all the beds a real deep watering this morning, should hold them for the following days but I'll check the soil moisture to verify.

I'm a big fan of the Fortex pole beans so far.  They are vigorous growers, haven't had any pest issues and are pushing beans all over the place.  I will be starting some more on my new corn I've got going, sort of a 2/3 of the 3 sisters.

Tomorrow I'll be removing some bushes in my front yard and running through the chipper for the compost.  I also plan on giving the compost some much needed attention, it seems to have stalled out.  Been collecting pee to fertilize the new corn I've got started.

According to supplier, the pods will reach 7-11"

Tomato - Day 2

Heat started Today with 2-3 more days on their way - maybe that will knock some of these plants out of their funk. I noticed Today that two tomatoes at the East end of EW2 were droopp and looked thirsty. Because I don't yet know how to read the plants or their moisture needs I decided to water only these two very deeply and will observe the effects.

not much noticeable change

Demise of a Tomato Plant

I've decided I will take a daily picture of one of my stricken tomato plants to document it's demise or, maybe it's recovery.  This is photo #1

Pet Harmony

I have the best dog, he's already so cool with the ducks, he just follows
them around and smells their many, many shits that are all over the place

Big step Today by letting Chui into the same area as the ducks with neither party restrained in any way.  I actually think my bud is a bit scared of them!  Which really, if you've met Chui probably isn't all that surprising; he's not the bravest creature in the world.  The ducks also don't seem to care much about him.

I'm still undecided on the ducks, part of me thinks I've bitten of more than I can or want to chew, but on the other side they are pretty neat and it's nice to have some more living things roaming around in the yard.  They make me laugh.

If this duck could hold and fire a gun I think he would kill me.  I noticed
that in every photo of the ducks, HIS eyes are always on me.
I think he may be evil, I should name him Damien

 I'm a bit flat on the garden right now, just not that excited about working in it.  I think the biggest reason is that my tomatoes are under some form of attack, it's unknown what is making them sick but they are dying off one by one.  On top of that my peppers look like shit!  Thin, sparse leaves, pale yellow coloring...  It's hard to be proud and enjoy working in the garden when things look so poor.  It's also that I don't know what to do to fix any of it!  I'm not letting myself dump a bunch of fertilizer on anything, people tell me to be patient and let the plants adjust but it's tough to watch things look so.... anemic, so poor

Apparently a Hundred Feet is Not Always a Hundred Feet

do not buy!

The SunCast SideTracker wall mount hose reel is crap.  I'll be uninstalling and returning this POS this weekend.  I'll go for the old school "hanger style" instead.

Duck Run

I intend to give the ducks an area about this size.
It's approximately 420 sq. ft.
That's just a temporary fence and I'm still working
on nursing the grass back

Keeping ducks is much more work than I anticipated, much more work.  I've been getting a little frustrated with the pekin' fear of me and how he will just about do anything to flee when I come to pick him up in his pen.  My patience finally wore out this morning and I just kind of plopped him back down with an "eff-you then!"  It bothered me all day, I mean he's just scared and I shouldn't be frustrated.  But I was and you can't really change that.

The plan I came up with was to get them out free ranging and roaming which was always the plan anyway.  I figured the daily routine of:

1. Moving their outdoor pen to a new location so too much poop doesn't accumulate
2. Rinsing the water bowl
3. Rinsing the food bowl.
4. Carrying them one by one (squeeling and squeeeking!!) from the indoor pen (which is soiled) to the outdoor pen
5. Fill the outdoor water container and chuckle as they all jump in immediately (good, a positive!)
6. Dump a scoop of food in their bowl
7. Say goodbye and continue with my day
8. regular life stuff, you know, work, bills, exercise, driving, cooking, etc.
9. Clean out indoor pen, wash food bowl, water collection tray and water bottle
10. Fill water bottle
11. Scoop out soiled sawdust (soaked with poo, water and pee)
12. lay down new sawdust
13. place bowls and fill with water and food
14. Grab each one by one (squeeling and squeeeking!!) from the outdoor pen (which is soiled) to the indoor pen (which is cozy)
15. Pause and look them and ask myself what I'm doing, maybe wonder if they will ever just let me hold them and not freak out
16. Light off, door shut - goodnight
17. Repeat next day

I mean shit, that'd get on anyone's nerves, right?  So Today I was finally tired of the little guy just not warming up to me.  I wanted ducks for pets, I want them to like me, I want them to follow me around and be social and at a minimum, NOT be terrified of me.

So back to the plan-  I will move them outside on a permanent basis, let them roam around, crap where they want, looks for critters, get exercise... you get it.  I figure this will reduce the repetitious labor and allow more time for enjoying them.

It worked, I think.  I came home and rather than resume with step #9 from above I just walked over, said some greetings and lifted their pen to let them out.  It was cool, they walked around and didn't run from me.  It took no time for them to head for my corn seedlings but they were easy to shoo away.  They spent the next 3 hours roaming around while I crafted and installed a quick temporary fence to define their new run.  I chopped up some veggies, took a seat on the ground and they came to me, I even let them climb up on my lap to eat.  The pekin was having none of this, but he wasn't war away either.  This is the kind of interaction I want to have with them, it was great!

I feel the key is just letting them be more free.  I will build a little house for them that they can go in at night, but I don't plan to secure it and attempt to keep them safe from predators - I'm gone too much to attempt to keep that up, I don't want the stress of "oh god, I forgot to shut their door Tonight!" followed by frantic calls to neighbors to ask favors...

I should mention that I left them out in the run Tonight, it's nice out and they are a pretty good size.  As I came in the house to catch up on emails it took about 30 minutes before I began to worry and resumed with step #9...

Alls Calm

I didn't have a relevant photo from Today so I just skimmed through
some other folders and picked one of my best dog friend, Chui
I'm pretty sure he's about 10 months old here.

Was at the office most of the day, not much farm work.  Been a little worried about perceived paleness of peppers (say that 3 times fast!) in EW2 and suspected stunting of tomatoes in same bed.  I did some reading last night and of course there are dozens of different opinions and guidance.  I could feel that anxious feeling coming and then just-in-time a conversation I had with my wise (and getting wiser) friend Chad (farmer Chad, I've mentioned him before) popped into my head.

We were walking around his horse barn or something talking about various pest treatment options and bad weather and he commented that he finally learned to just relax and let the plants to what hey want to do, not to rush to action and try to fix things so quickly.  I think that's wise.  Not that he doesn't take action, but the point was not to react too soon and just give them a little room.

I followed the advice, I didn't take any drastic measures and instead spent 10 minutes updating their twine support windings, picking a few suckers and just relaxed.  Thanks Chad!

It Tastes Great

Despite it's apparent mutation, what I can only guess is the successful merging of two distinct seeds into a single carrot root, it tastes great!  I've begun the process of picking a carrot here and there to snack on, it's very much like how one makes several small strikes on cake at the office or the box of donuts that someone should not have brought in -

"Who the hell eats 1/5 a donut?!"

The phantom guilt-stricken snacker with 15 lbs they'd like to lose, that's who.  Just wait 5 minutes, when that sugary donut taste fades they'll be back for another 1/5 - repeat until a minimum of one donut is consumed.

Anyway, so that was weird, kinda?  That there's a Purple Haze and they taste great.  Carrots are in my top 5 favorite things to grow, going to do a TON of carrots next year.

PumpkaMelon

Baby Bear pumpkin - this is the kind for eatin'

Transplanted my "Baby Bear" and "Jack-O-Lantern" pumpkins along with my various watermelon seedlings into the new "tomato beds".  Did some brief research and it sounds like the main thing is to not disturb the roots too much when transplanting - I took extra special care and only broke up the bunch when necessary.  Fed the transplants with some Neptune's Harvest to get them off to a good start.

The plan is that these vining plants will grow at the feet of the tomato plants they share the bed with.  The tomatoes are North of the pumpkin, watermelon and cantaloupe and as such they shouldn't shade them out.  Combine that with the heavy pruning and eventual plant to keep a 20" branch-free space on the tomatoes and I think these new transplants will receive plenty of light.

watermelon transplants

Duck Update
The ducks are rad, they crack me up!  "Tweak" (temporary name for the neurotic Pekin) is eagerly eating out my hand finally, even though he stops to scream at me and spits the food he was in the process of eating.  I've been putting them outdoors in a small pen, letting them forage in the web grass, soak in their water bowl, see other animals, smell smells - just basically be animals.  I move the pen each day so that they are fertilizing multiple areas of the grass that will soon be their entire run.  I plant to make their short (24") fence out of recycled pallets - more on that later.

Zucchini makes Chui very nervous, VERY nervous!

A Picture's Worth...

Neighbor Pam's grandson huggin' some fresh beets from the farm

Heavy Pruning

I leave the considerably stubs to help with lacing the
support twine around the stem

I feel good right now, I think I'm hot stuff!

I pruned the bejesus out of my Tomatoes (I'm happy with them, I wanna show respeck with a capital "T")  I knew I needed to do it, I've read bits and pieces here and there how pruning tomatoes increases yields, promotes strong stem and root growth and helps prevent disease and pest problems from soil born threats.

I've been pinching suckers since they were 4" tall and even more frequently lately as they've been in the ground and growing more rapidly.  What I didn't realize is that I had missed some suckers early on and they had grown to the size where I thought it was just a "split stem" plant - a tomato that had forked into two main stems, a Siamese-tomato plant.

I didn't give the "two stem" issue much thought until it came time to string them up to the supporting trellis and twine drops - suddenly I'm faced with a decision of which stem to support!  Literally, I'm standing there, mud on my knees, AM talk radio in the background, Corona shears in my back pocket and I'm just looking at a plant kind of having a prolonged brain fart, paralyzed by this seemingly simple quandary.  I denied my gut to google and instead thought critically, leveraging whatever fragments of recent information I had read on the subject.

You know I'm excited when I draw
Actually, drawing, like writing has the great effect of burning things
into my memory for a long time - this just an archival technique...

It paid off, I had my "ah hah" moment when I realized that in every single case one of the "stems" (aka twins) has a branch at it's shoulder, in many case I had already pruned the branch but the stub remained.  Given that suckers grow in the crotch of the stem and a branch I deduced that the "stem" with a branch right under it had to be the sucker.

Out came the shears and off went some seriously large suckers and branches.  There is something invigorating and exciting about heavily pruning a healthy, seemingly thriving plant - it requires confidence in your decision and action

I'm expected these plants to hit 6+ feet in height, it's
important to get the structure correct and the support in
place for their future growth

I really did it enjoy it, I went sort of nuts and reduced the overall mass of the tomato plants by an average of, oh I'd say 30%.  I then spent the next hour carefully stringing them up.  I feel like a big task is behind me and I've added a new skill to my repertoire that I will be able to use for the rest of my life - that's a feeling that's hard to beat.

Early Father's Day - 2011

Very full day with the family Today - parent's arrived around 11:30 and hung out, helped me get some last minutes things picked up.  Sister and J, Cait, Ella and Molly arrived around 1:45 - everyone stayed until about 8 that night, it was a really nice day.


Girls met the ducks (Ella even hand fed them), well, everyone met the ducks for that matter.  Harvested beets which my Mom whipped into a delicious dish with avocado, apple and red onion.  Baked some Zucchini crisps and used the beat tops and chard for lettuce on the grilled chicken sandwiches.  We spent pretty much the whole time in the farm area and it was great, I loved having everyone there sharing my favorite space and views with me.

Bean Blossom

Blossom from "Provider" variety bush bean

The blossoms from bean plants are not only beautiful but edible as well.  If I wasn't so eager to harvest the first beans that should be here in a week or so I'd use the blossoms on a salad - if nothing else they would look great.

New leaves from "Fortex" variety pole bean

 Don't eat the leaves though, I heard they taste terrible.