Compost Overhaul

I ended up trimming the creeping fig growing on the back North wall.  Of course I ran it all through the chipper which then meant I had to do some compost work.  Ended up processing ALL the compost in the 3 bins through the chipper, I then carefully remixed it all back into a single bin.  If I did a good job, this stuff should get HOT and FAST.

Stockpiled kitchen compostables

Here's a timelapse of the wall trip, I do it by hand because it let's me selectively thin the vines and results in a more naturally look than you would get with a hedge trimmer.

Hot and Windy - PERFECT for my seedling winter crops

It was 80+ Today with Santa Ana winds blowing like mad.  I had a pretty substantial hangover so I was looking forward to busting my butt doing some yard work.  Decided to overhaul my compost piles and shred everything up.  I thought I was pretty good at managing compost but I'm not and that makes me sort of sad.  It's not fun to think you are good at something and then face the reality that indeed you suck at it.  Maybe I'm being too hard on myself, but my current compost batches are cold and lame.

To try to get back on my composting high-horse I broke down the pile I just created a couple weeks ago and ran it all through the shredder (including grubs - great fun).  Plan is to remix the contents and hopefully get a nice hot pile going.  My back was sore so I took a Vicodin early and I must say the combination of working with compost while having a slight Vicodin buzz is a pretty good way to spend a Saturday in the yard.

Picked up my special order of 6' chicken wire and will be setting up another bed for peas.  Pea crops don't make efficient use of the beds as you can only have a single row of plants - to have more rows would make harvesting difficult and deprive one of the rows of sunlight.  I will try to companion plant another crop with the peas.

Otay!

Snow(sweet) peas poppin' up

The buckwheat cover crop has finally started to emerge, I was getting worried!  The cover crop on EW #1 and #2 is an experiment to see how the buckwheat will do with little to no sun.

What?!

Flower of Flowers

I present to you the 14,435,225th photo of a sunflower with a blue sky background!

Pam's sunflowers - this is the biggest, it's about 6' tall

Beds are Made

Had to vacate the domicile for about an hour and used the time out back in the Farm!  That's right, 1 hour of premium, first class bed sculpting - no tricks, no bull.  What am I talking about.  Anyway, yeah, EW4/5/6 were all raked up, amended with the balance of my delicious compost and raked flat.  Then watered with rain water.  No pictures, it was unplanned work and I had to move quick.

Oh!... something is eating my spinach seedlings.  Suffice it to say I'm pissed and I WILL find the creature responsible and promptly destroy it.

.58" More

Storm moved in this morning and has already cleared out, left behind .58" total.  Forecast is, I kid you not, 80-85 starting Tomorrow through Sunday!  That's going to confuse my spinach and peas.  Southern California weather is whacky and I'm tired of it.

Shred!

Shredded the life out of more of Pam's sunflowers as well as some old carrots that were still in the raised bed.  Normally I wouldn't drag out the machine for such a small batch but I needed to add more greens to the compost tumbler.  We have another storm coming in so I readied the rain catchers and flushed out the rain gauge to get a fresh read.

snap peas sown in 1" furrow with wood ash

Sowed snap peas in 8' double rows in bed EW3.  Dragged a furrow with the single tine cultivator, dusted with wood ash, dropped a seed every 1-1/5" then covered back up.  This was all done very haphazardly for some reason, I think my heart just wasn't in it.  Actually now that I think about it what set me on the wrong track from the get-go is that I wasn't happy with my trellis solution.  See I've had these trellises rolled up in storage since last year and I wasn't excited to use them because they didn't work all that hot:

1. Not long enough (too many posts required)
2. The plastic mesh is irritating to work with, too springy
3. The bottom border of the mesh needed to be anchored down with spikes or else it would blow in the wind like a damn sheet

I'd considered using chicken wire which would address all of the above gripes, but I can't find chicken wire in wide enough rolls - I want 72" (6') rolls.  Anyway, that's it, it was the trellis that soiled my mood I think.  I'm going to Ace Hardware later and ask if they can special order chicken wire in the desired width.

Just What I Needed

Storm came, most of it wrapped up by 9am leaving my frantically observing it's demise on the increasingly colorless Doppler images; I would have loved a full day of rain.  Interestingly, I received just about the exact amount of rain I needed to fill my rain water containers.  As I mentioned Yesterday I calculated .82" was needed and it looks like we received .88".

Blue sky :|

Hitting your number is nice, but my strategy was nonetheless flawed; I was considering the sum of capacity using a formula that assumes equal distribution across all the containers - but they aren't all the same size (of course) nor do they present a collection area equally proportionate to their capacity.  This means the little ones were overflowing and the big ones remained unsatisfied.  The required rainfall was still correct but I would have needed to dump the smaller vessels into the larger ones to fill everything up.  Oh well, all the more reason for a catch tank and gutter setup.

Finally at 12:30 I couldn't deny the fact that the storm had passed and the sun was out.  I was tired of sitting on my ass writing code anyway so I went out and checked on the farm and worked bed EW3 (reformed, weeded, added 3" compost, level).  The bed is now ready for a crop, although I'm not sure what I will do.  I could do more spinach, peas, lettuce - but I've done carrots and chard.  Gonna research if there are any other cool season crops I may want to do over there.

BedWork 2012 (!)

After 8 months of nothing

30 minutes of weeding, rake-forming, amending and leveling

Ready for Rain!

Rain in the forecast which is perfect as I have days of office work.  Love collecting rain water, was giddy like a kid running around collecting capture containers.  I'd say there's approximately 96 gallons of capacity there, or 22,176 cu. in. :0)  Based on my calculations from last year it looks like I will need ~ .82" of rain.
Some of the reports are suggesting .75" - 1.0" for this storm.

overexposed a little??  Jesus...

Added some greens from the kitchen to the compost tumbler, collected the ash I produced into a bucket, sowed 30 sugar peas and 20 snap peas in a 50 seed flat.  I sprinkled the cells with a little wood ash as an experiment, I'll see how that ends up.

Spinach Succession Sowing

First planting (1/9/12) of red cardinal with ~95% germination

Bad day Today at work, a little yard work was a welcome change of pace.  I'm late with my second Red Cardinal succession planting so I took care of that - sowed another 3' of 4 rows, straddling the drip lines this time rather than aligning next to them.  My little cheapo seed spreader tool from Johnny's continues to make sowing a cinch.  It's nice to have a cheap tool that does what it's supposed to.

I steal pain mixers from Home Depot!

Also sowed 4 rows of carrots in NS1 bed.  Created 3' long furrows with the edge of 1x5 board.  Like my spinach the rows were set between the drip lines.  2 Rows of vitana, 1 row nelson and a final purple haze row.  This is a bit early to start carrots I think, but we've had a mild winter so I may get lucky.  I used a thrice folded blanket of weed screen to act as a temporary mulch as carrots are a real pain in the ass to get started - VERY fussy about drying out, you've gotta keep em' wet.

Spread some straw between the rows that I've reformed to cut back on the mud.  There's a good storm coming in Tomorrow night so having a dry-ish, or at least mudless path will be nice.

Wimpy Storm

Lesson learned; I didn't properly store my seeds from last year and
I'm now seeing terrible (~10%) germination rates with this "Bright Lights"
swiss chard and even worse with my "Red Cardinal" spinach

I've been under the weather and haven't done any work out back.  The weather pukes were threatening rain and when it finally arrived it was nothing more than 3-4 minutes of real rain. Although I've been staying in bed to get over this cold, I have gone out and turned the compost tumbler each morning, as promised.

The Circle is Complete

As I've mentioned, Pam has 10 hens that I've been feeding my compost grubs to, as well as carrot tops and beet tops.  I thought they should give back something so I asked Pam for a bucket of their manure to add to my compost the next time she cleans out the coop.  She also dropped off some sunflowers she pulled and I ran those along with old carrots, onions and beets through the shredder to make a nice nitrogen booster shot for my compost in the tumbler.

That's right, I forgot to mention that I've giving the Compost Tumbler another shot at life.  I came across one of their ads that said "Finished compost in 14 days" and I thought "yeah, bullshit!" but then it went on to say that you should turn it every single day and you will have compost in 14 days.  Every single day - I hadn't done that before, once (if at all) it reached temperature I would leave it alone.  This time I will try it the way they say, I will rotate the drum every day and see what happens.  Would be great if I could find success with it.

Kevin came over and we both worked to fix the lights that are hanging from my trees.  They were too low and people less height challenged as myself would walk into them.  For the record, Kevin broke two bulbs.  Also burned some more sticks and twigs to create some clean ash to use in the compost.  I figured it was better than throwing it in the trash and I don't need browns for the compost and fire is fun and I had been drinking beer for a few hours and it just seemed like fun.

Cleaned up the EW1 and EW2 beds, spread 2" compost and worked it in.  Then Kevin sowed buckwheat seeds for a cover crop and covered with another 1/2" of compost.  Beds look good, will be nice to see something growing on them again.

Current Crop Log - Posted Online

I just dealt with the consequences of poor file organization and proper record keeping.  I used my last printed Crop Lifecycle Report and wanted to print more.  Because I am so awesome I had included the filename in the header in light gray text - for this exact reason.  Great, so I searched my system for the file and nothing found.  I checked Google Docs thinking maybe I had uploaded it there - nope!  Briefly contemplated recreating it and then thought to check my office computer and found it!  So here is the current version in PDF format for my own records. I also have the original stored on my local system for future revisions.  This post is not intended to be interesting, if you read this far.... I'm surprised and think you are a fool!
Happy Friday.

Chipper Fix

Impeller showing the 4 flail blades (think about"flailing
your arms" and you should understand) and the center
blade with both outer bolts removed.

I don't think I mentioned this before, but the last time I used my chipper it made a terrible loud crash sound, then a violent rattling as if a rock or something was stuck in the chipper area.  It was the end of the day, I was tired and now pissed about the noise so I shut it down and drank a beer.  A couple days later I could see that one of the outer bolts that attach the cutting blade to the main flywheel was missing.  Today I took it apart real quick and could see that the bolt sheared right off!  I'm assuming it was weakened through the years of use, high temperature stripping when I rebuilt it, the re-plating and finally being installed and torqued when reassembled.  A quick trip to the hardware store, $0.96 and 35 minutes later and the problem was solved with new hardware.  I can now shred some much needed greens to get my compost going!

This was a grassy field of weeds and grass n' stuff until
I torched it!

Spent the last 10 minutes with some more torch time, I've just about hit every weed that I can safely get to, and then some.  It looks ugly now, but after being walked on, rained on and a couple windy days it will look fine.  See all that fig on that back wall?  Going to the chipper!

Spinach!

Decided I needed to get a crop going ASAP for motivation.  Spinach, Red Cardinal to be specific is what I went with.  Following good crop rotation practices meant I needed to use a new bed for this and chose NS2.  Spread some compost and worked it in, watered heavily then placed the drip lines back.  After that I sowed about ~2' of 3 rows of seeds.  Seeds weren't stored properly so I don't know if they are any good, should find out in a couple days.  Next sowing will be 4 rows inbetween each drop line rather than aligned with them, just as a test.  Also torched another hundred square feet of weeds or so and put all the tools away.

Messing around with my camera and learned it had a panorama mode which is pretty cool.  Considering the
minimal time I've been investing I'd say the place is shaping up pretty good.

Fire & Budweiser

Most likely the best frame of the day

 Kevin came over with Emma and a 12pack.  I did some light duty stuff, cleaned up the yard bench, pulled the trellis poles (which were rotting already, BTW) and put away some stuff in the potting shed.

Then the torching started...  Kevin's (or it may be me?) giggle in the first 20 seconds says it all.
WARNING: The motion in the video may make you sick - it made me sick!

Compost Tweak

No farm work Today.  Heard back from Lilli and the future child labor session - more on this in a week or so.

Wait.... is that....?
Yes it is!

Wrong Tool for the Job

Cleared so I can prep the beds and get some compost out there

I have leaves all over the place, from the Liquid Amber, Crape Myrtle and Chinese Flame.  They've been accumulating for months and I don't have enough greens to just simply compost them at this time.  Of course I couldn't throw them away either, that would be too easy and leaves are valuable in a garden... when you need them.

The solution was to mulch/shred them up and bag for later use.  My shredder needs a replacement blade so I asked my Dad if I could borrow his Toro yard vacuum/blower which also shreds leaves as it sucks them up.  My Dad loves this thing, it's quite literally one of his most prized yard tools.  He loves it so much that he bought me one a few years ago (thanks Dad) but I was never happy with the tool and donated it to my family's vacation home (where he can use it).  Anyway, I thought I'd try it again because this seemed like the perfect job for it - it failed, again.  It's just not strong enough, I'd have to go over an area 3 or 4 times before it would pick them all up.  It's loud and requires a cord and it's just a pain in the ass.

I did this a total of 2 times

After 10 minutes I gave up and went to plan C (which should have been plan B): Lawn shredding with the mower.  This always works great, it requires a bit more physical work but it's worth it and in a strange way, fun.  You rake up the leaves in trash cans, spread it over the lawn and then run the mower over them.  Easy.  If you are lucky and your grass is still growing in the fall or winter it's also an easy way to pre-mix compost ingredients.

After an hour I had the worst of the leaves up, spread, shredded and bagged.  Leaves are still falling so I will need to do it again in a couple weeks, but to a much lesser extent.

With the leaves cleared I can torch the grass and weeds

2 Down...

Only had time to put in about an hour Today, busy with the real job.  I chose to prep a couple of the back East/West beds.  Not too much was needed as I'm not going to dig the soil but rather leave the existing soil structure as much in place as possible.  I raked up the sides that had eroded a bit and then topped off each row with about 1-2" of my homemade compost.  Roughly raked it out flat and done - ready for planting.

Tomorrow I'm hoping to take 1-2 hours and get the leaves mulched and bagged for future composting.

Lost & Found

Miss me?

I found a pair of sunglasses in my raise beds below some pepper plants.  They are BCBG which makes them Women's glasses I think, but I don't recognize them.  This post will be sent to the women/girls/chicks that I can recall being in the farm in the past 8 months or so.

Grub Disposal and Processing Unit

"unit" doesn't really make sense,... I mean, I guess it could work if you think of it as a resource of a larger operation, like "We have three separate units for processing waste" - that is so ambiguous that it could really describe anything "waste processing" related.  I will pretend I'm a large enterprise and will stick with "unit" because it makes a better title.

BTW, before I forget: Yes, grubs are benneficial to the composting process and I don't pick them out from a still decomposing pile, it's only when I do my final screening that I hand pluck them out (their work is done)


I know, what am I talking about, right?  Yesterday I covered my grub problem and discussed not only my typical disposal methods, but more importantly the problem I have with Chui eating their guts.
Then it hit me: Neighbor Pam has 10 chickens and I remember reading that chickens go fuckin' nuts over grubs - it's perfect!  I can feed the chickens (whose eggs I do occasionally enjoy), dispose of grubs without exposing Chui to by product, I just toss them over the wall (super easy) and my favorite - it's a terrible way to DIE!
Here's a video of me tossing a few handfulls (yes, I touch them) over the wall, as I zoom in you can see a couple get shredded by the savage fowl:

Nice new pile, thermometer is in place and I plan to log
the temps over the next couple weeks so I can
plot the progress

I processed more compost, cleared out one pile and rebuilt it with fresh stuff pulled from the garden (peppers, weeds, arugula, etc.)  Washed down a bit and already feeling better about how things are looking in the compost area.  The fields (ha!) are looking better and better too.

Compared to the pictures from less than a week ago it's really shaping up.

Makin' room

Compost area is impacted, overwhelmed

Cleaning up the yard is generating a lot of waste, organic, compostable waste and I can't stand to throw it out.  Problem is just like the rest of the yard my compost operations have stalled out, I was stuck with 4 separate piles/bins in various stages of completion, all needing attention.  Working compost is a back buster so I only put in 2-3 hours on it.

This would be considered a small-medium size grub

As I've mentioned before, neglected compost can become infested with beetle grubs; disgusting, squishy, fat, blak-goo filled giant grubs.  I hate them, I hate seeing them, I hate reaching in to compost and spearing one with my finger and feeling it's guts coat my finger and worst of all - I hate when they grow into beetles and eat my trees and crops.

Collection and extermination is punishment for not staying on top of my compost duties.  Killing is typically accomplished by throwing (one at a time) against the wall where they explode on impact - I've also talked about this before.  However I've learned that Chui likes to eat their guts and then later, usually.... around 3-4am likes to vomit it back up in the house somewhere.  No more wall smashing (well maybe one more time, I want to try capturing it on high speed camera)

Here's a video of about an hours worth of collected grubs.  Sick.

Chui for scale

 Processed 5-6 loads of finished compost from one bin - 9 months ago this was grass, egg cartons, dog hair, melons, etc.  It never gets old, I mean look at all that homemade compost!