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.

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!

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.