Bean Devouring Beetle Identified: Cribrate Weevil (Otiorhynchus cribricollis)

The bean eating beetles are back and this time they're also devouring my broccoli and the new citrus I planted.  I deal with this last year and had the bug identified by my local extension office but I couldn't find the report.  Until today.

Otiorhynchus cribricollis - Cribrate Weevil

• http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/r105301211.html
• http://bugguide.net/node/view/345304/bgpage

The common treatment appears to be applying a sticky substance at the base of the plant to trap the adults as they climb to feed at night.  I cut 1.5" square pieces of paper grocery bag with a slit and hole in the middle.  I then brushed on a mix of equal parts sugar, water and honey to make a sticky goo.  I placed the traps under 6 bean stems and 2 broccoli stems as a test, if it works I will put them all over the place tomorrow.

OC Agricultural Commissioner

For my records, this is where to go to get pests identified. Takes about a week and you need to leave self addressed stamped envelope.
http://ocagcomm.com

The office is very close to my work.  Fill out the PDF form and drop off with specimen.

Address:
Orange County Agricultural Commissioner
Specimen for Identification
222 East Bristol Lane
Orange, CA 92865-2714

chipper shredder

Model #247775850

broccoli experiment

I'm going to try and keep a casual log of what im sowing and transplanting right now, for my own record.

• Transplanted red onions from flats to RB1, seeds started 2/24. 4" spacing, between carrot rows
• Trans. Honey dews from flats to 4" square pots, seeds started indoors 2/24
• Started 6 pack broccoli indoors on the rig
• Started 6 pack of broccoli raab indoorz on the rig

Need to figure out where the peppers will live this year as well as additional tomatoes I have in flats.

¡Cerdo!

BTW I have two new tortoises, not sure of breed yet.  I just received them from Neighbor Frank Sunday.  They're 27 year old brothers and were hatched from eggs.  I'm unaware of their existing names so new ones must be decided upon; currently considering Jesus y Moises - Moises is the larger of the two with a small chip in his shell.

Jesus is pigging out in the below video.

Last Minute Summer Crops

I've be getting reacquainted with the garden and gardening and enjoyed success with chard, spinach and blueberries.  This success has motivated me to get a small summer crop of beets, broccoli raab, carrots, cucumber, (more) spinach and some squashes.  I'm gonna use up what remaining old seed packs I have and will sow much more dense than usual in anticipation of poor germination.  I also placed a Johnny's order tonight for some fresh seeds.

White Trash Sunday

1. Family sitting on sofa on driveway
2. Family sitting on sofa on driveway while drinking cocktails
3. Family sitting on sofa on driveway while drinking cocktails before noon
4. Family sitting on sofa on driveway while drinking cocktails before noon, some family in pajamas
5. Family sitting on sofa on driveway while drinking cocktails before noon, some family in pajamas.  Two year old little girl present
6. Family sitting on sofa on driveway while drinking cocktails before noon, some family in pajamas.  Two year old little girl present and about to witness Grandma kick Chui in the head fer' actin' up!

I love my family.

One, Two, Three

Step 1 - cut down dead tree

Step 2 - Cut to length and split (I found the cedar logs)

Step 3 - Load into truck for badass Panamint Valley trip!

BTW all work done with hand saw.  Arms and shoulders = sore.

Trailer Training - day 1

Day 1 of real trailer training with Chui today.  I'm using "cookies" (milkbone), pets and scratches and verbal affirmations and praise ("Chui' a good boy!  Such a good boy.") to make him more comfortable.  It's working I think.  I can now just point to the trailer and he gets in but he's still very uncomfortable in there, it freaks him out.  Once I give him the cookie I gently shake the trailer while scratching him.  I've also been walking around the trailer and away from it while making him stay.  If only he understood what's at stake!  Damnit, man!

Giant Rock - night 1

Chui' in that warm coziness in the truck

The fourth different flying insect I've seen is crawling across the top-right quantrant of my screen as I type while a stupid, stupid moth smacks it's stupid little face into the light glowing above and in front of me.  Here I am again, in the "great outdoors", technology, truck and dog along as always.  North of Landers, CA I've been here for hours ahead of my friends that are still en route after a days work; a perk of self employment that I still manage to take for granted.  Somehow.

The feeling began to come over me before I even boarded the plane last night, west bound from Atlanta after a week of tradeshow... show.  What was home now feels like a house, demoted to a simple structure or place that feels broken.  It's difficult to describe.  I know what triggered the change, what pulled back the scab on the fact that living in a house designed for a family, as a bachelor is not a great feeling.  Or maybe it's the recent renewed feeling of what it could be but isn't?  Whatever it is, it sucks and I don't like being in my house right now.  That's why I'm in the desert.

It's beautiful out here.  A perfect 60 or so degrees with Mogwai on the radio, a fire burning away in preparation for dinner and sky full of stars.  In a few moments a good friend is about to walk through a door to a poor choice of venue for a first date.  The guy seems to make sense on paper and I'm excited for her, I hope it goes somewhere.  I miss the feeling.

Aphids have been Neemed

Just in from spraying corn with Neem II from Green Light, about $8.50 from Orange County Farm Supply.  Two things:

1. It's difficult to spray the tassels and upper leaves where the aphids are the worst
2. Lady bugs have arrived and are eating and mating - thanks for coming, but you're a bit late.  I regretted spraying with the LBs kicking it all over the place but a mans gotta do what a mans gotta do

Also plenty of ripe tomatoes and beans that need harvesting.  I'm off to go see Seanna in SF today so this will need to wait until I return tomorrow night.

Corn Aphids & The Compost Burnout

I've been away from the garden for about a week or so, busy with work and all that.  Went out today and gave some much overdue attention to the compost operation.  It was a chore, I didn't enjoy it, each fork load felt heavy, the mess annoying... the work just plain unpleasant.  This is odd, working with my compost is one of my favorite ways to spend time in the garden, I hope this is just a temporary funk.  Bitching aside, I did toss one pile into the third bay and wet it down, hopefully it fires up. Lots of grubs for the ladies, it so great to hear their little feet beating it across the dusty yard to get the grubs.

Inspected my corn which it appears I've finally figured out how to grow correctly, at least to get it to the expected height!  Upon close inspection of the silks and tassels I found them to be infested with aphids and to a lesser extent some other pest.  I'm in the middle of pollen shed and this is the worst time to have an aphid problem, but that's what you get when you ignore your garden for a week.  I'm going to pick up some neem oil tomorrow and get in a quick treatment before it gets too hot out.  Hopefully I can knock this problem down and still have successful pollination of this crop.  Great information on pollen shed at this site:
http://ohioline.osu.edu/agf-fact/0128.html

To do:

1. treat corn for aphids
2. Harvest last of bush beans and preserver (freeze)
3. Rake up straw and newspaper so I can torch the vetch infestation in EW4 and EW5 - it's crazy!
4. Start fall crops, sow in flats where appropriate
5. Shred tree trimmings
6. So much more...

Melon Success

I think I mentioned at some point that I had volunteer cantaloupe and water melons growing, I dunno, I can't remember.  But I do and after researching a bit I was confident the cantaloupes were ready to be harvested. I only had 3-4 that weren't rotten or undersized so I grabbed the closest one, took it inside and cut it up.  Holy crap, really good!  Very crisp with a mild flavor that intensified as the fruit cooled off (I picked them around noon on a 104° day).  Next day it was much sweeter and I later heard from friends and family that it was some of the best they've had.

So the plant that I don't actually grow on purpose, give no water to for the first 8 weeks of it's life and generally ignore turns out to be one of the best things to come out of the garden. - god hates me, or maybe he's trying to teach me something?  No, he hates me.

My adorable nieces in the background

FYI, this is what fly poo looks like

I watched a fly poop on this leaf then fly away.  Huh!...

The greatest compost manager that has ever lived

... at 350 N. Maplewood St., Orange, CA 92866

My recent compost adjustment has resulted in a SHATTERING of my previous puny record of 164° to a new high of 168°!

A strange emotion has swept over me... a feeling of emptiness or a pit that can never be filled - now that I have achieved the highest levels of supreme excellence, what else is there?

Spirit Crop - can you steal from the dead?

Family came over today for Dad's birthday.  Nieces were slip-n-sliding on the lawn, dogs were chewing on each other's necks and adults were sipping my fresh squeezed Stoli screwdrivers.

Of course I grabbed oranges from my buddy Chris' house as per usual however today he wasn't home and his gate had a new padlock on it.  Hmmm...  Chris mentioned that his next door neighbor had recently passed (he was old) and that I could gain access from his back yard and hop the fence.  On my return hop over I noticed a Spirit Crop - a few tomato plants and a chili that were, I hope, lovingly cared for while neighbor was still kicking but now looked terrible and neglected.

The key to extra sweet tomatoes is stress by water reduction (the plant focuses energy on fruit production because it thinks it's dying - you get to play god)  and these things looked hella stressed!  Long story short I nervously pilfered everything that was ripe or even a little overripe, added to my oranges and got the fuck out of there before lightning struck me down!

I expected more in a week

3rd corn crop this season - third times the charm

I was away in Miami for work all this past week.  My Mom stopped by Wednesday and watered for me as we were having a hell of a heat wave.  This morning when I finally walked out to the yard I was expecting... something more than what I saw - things just didn't grow as much as I had hoped.  But... everything looks good and healthy.

I love amazon and blue stripe 1/4" emitter line

I also had my Amazon order waiting for me.  This was a shipment of Toro blue stripe 1/4" emitter line on 6" spacing.  Home Depot used to carry this stuff but I tried to buy some a couple weeks ago and was told they no longer carry it.  I tried a local commercial irrigation supply company, "HydroScape" and while they were able to finally locate it from a distributor the price was something stupid like $48 per 100' roll plus shipping and tax (<-- this will make sense in a moment).  So I left and I was irritated (ha - irrigated, irritated...).  Good ol' Amazon to the rescue! - note that the picture shows all black tubing but I verified the PN and it was the right stuff.

This was a chewed up, leafless
stem last week (check
older post).  It bounced back
well!

My PVC collars worked perfectly so I'm hooked on that solution.  Pole beans look killer, tomatoes are shaping up nicely and my watermelons and cantaloupes also look good.  I flipped my entire compost pile (which is huge) and watered it, expecting it to spike back up to 150+.  Fertilized and watered the lawn, heavily watered the Carolina Cherry trees and pruned my navel orange trees.

I just lost interest in writing anymore, I'm tired and have to get up early.

Red Noodle beans

This is one of the sickly looking tomatoes
that Seanna planted when she was here.
After some manure and fish emulsion
they are responding well

Stupid huge compost pile

Lots of different things taken care of today, best of all was getting caught up on my composting.  All ingredients I've stored up over the past few months have been shredded, mixed and in the pile.  I broke my rake I've had for years and drove to the store and found the exact model for $7.59 - sold.  Installed another section of trellis and sowed a run of red noodle and fortex poll beans.  I also sowed a row of bush beans on each side of the poll beans as an experiment.

Bean seedling that was devoured last
night.  I want to see if it will fight back
and send out some leaves

Re-sowed the areas that haven't emerged yet and cut some PVC collars for seedlings that are being targetted by pests - If this is effective then it's a nice little method to keep the bugs off.  Problem is you can't install these until the seedlings are a certain height or else you'll make them leggy which is a whole new problem.  It's also tempting to drive the collars down into the soil but that will shear off the roots or at a minimum damage them.  I'm leaving them floating to see how it works out.

Cool spider hanging out on my glasses

Pray for my kidneys

I've consumed a very large amount of alcohol in the past 36 hours and there's another storm on the horizon!  It started Yesterday with (now probably played out) fresh squeezed screwdrivers and Chris Huber.  I think. Yes, it was yesterday and Chris arrived with oranges and the oranges met the vodka and away we go.  WTF does this have to do with vegetables, farms, composting, etc.? - nothing, but I want to talk about it.
So we had 3 rounds at my house, then to the kitchen where we finished off the last of the 1942.  Now we're feeling good.  Kevin is dispatched to my parents house where a plan is forming to watch Flight 666 with my dad.  So Chris, Kevin and myself descending on my parents house to drink more and watch an Iron Maiden documentary.  Luckily my Dad pulls the plug on the plan so we adjust to have dinner at the circle and more drinks.  We get to Citrus City Grill and there is a 30 minute wait.  Name in, off to the bar next door to kill time.  Two more beers, actually they were my first but whatever.  Back to the restaurant where over the course of our nice ambiguously gay mandinner I slurp down two martinis.  We leave and have a quick detour by the barber shop for another beer (long story) then off to the Pump Room for a few more.  That was Friday.

Best baby I've ever encountered and I've encountered... well, like 4
babies

Now today I wake up with a hangover that would kill a small child, hell it would kill an adolescent in some countries.  It's serious and I decide to drink through it rather than suffer the nausea and headache of a stage 5 hangover.  Blueberry bagel extra toasted with extra jalpeno cream cheese and a medium americano with 4 shots later and I'm feeling 73% human and ready to get dressed and brush my teeth.  And drink.

Screwdrivers (<-- plural) give way to a near-frantic desire to have friends come over and destroy their perfectly good Saturday with me.  Several well crafted texts designed to temp, guilt and beg later and Kevin Anne and Emma are en route!  Anne only had one drink and was the designated driver but Kevin and I put the hurt on, again.

BTW, if that "baby pen" looks familiar?... maybe cause it is!

I want to hang out at my parents house tonight, I like 'em, they're cool and don't forget my Dad has an Iron Maiden documentary.  Kevin and Anne ("K&A") get the boot, my teeth get brushed and I inexplicably pair a nice shirt with my absolute shittiest pair of jeans and set course for parents house.  Movie was rad, scotch was good, Chui hung out with my Mom while she did needle point, my Dad made his famous popcorn and my great day wrapped up with a perfect relaxing night with Mom and Dad.

No farm work was done Today, NONE.

Amendment experiment

Bag-an-a-half of steer manure blend before being
cultivated into the soil

I pulled my 2nd failed corn crop yesterday and sent the stalks to the compost heap.  I'm narrowing down my cause of failure and at this point I think it's a combination of insufficient water and nitrogen - shocking, the two things corn needs the most.  With the area cleared I amended with two bags of Steer Manure Blend (HD no longer sells straight manure, at least not by me and Pam just dumped her chicken manure in the compost).  Worked the manure blend (manure and compost) into the top 3" of soil and leveled out, then dragged some shallow furrows to set seeds and planted away.  Four rows 18" apart with 6" seed spacing that will be thinned to 12" spacing.  Irrigation is now working well and the area should get plenty of moisture.  I'll talk to Pam and try to get the next bucket of chicken shit worked into the corn field.

This is one of the better looking tomatoes of the
suffering bunch, I'm experimenting to see if the
problem is nutrients/soil fertility

While I was at it I amended the  mounds that held the tomatoes that Seanna planted when she was here.  As soon as the poor guys hit the dirt they started to yellow and wilt.  After observing for a few days and monitoring soil moisture I can only assume it's a soil fertility problem.  Added manure and deep watered with seaweed extract.  The next few days will tell the tale.

While I was in the sowing mode I dropped some zuccini and summer squash seeds into EW4, just a rough job as this is about the absolute latest you can start those guys.  If it works it works, if not then no big deal as the seed will be shot by next summer anyway.

I can't believe how fast the Red Noodle pole beans have emerged!  I'm not sure, but I think I sowed those seeds last Sunday with Ben and they emerged by Tuesday - 3 days, that's awesome.  Wednesday I will succession sow another set of bush and pole beans, then again 10 days after that.