Confirmed

Fish Guts

1/18/16 Steve:

"Do you think I could get some fish carcasses or waste from Anne's brother? I'm interested in occasionally getting my hands on 20-40 lbs of waste (heads, guts, tails, scale, etc.) raw, fresh and wild caught. For free."

Blueberry Addition and some other stuff

"Jewel" early-mid blueberry

I picked up my early-mid blueberry solution in the form of a "Jewel" grown by "L.E. Cooke Co" and sold by Gary at Laguna Hills Nursery. I now have very early, early, early-mid and mid. Next up will be mid-late and late. I still need a pot solution.

Also today:

1. Fertilized seedlings with fish emulsion
2. The second sowing of Kale has emerged
3. My chard and carrot crops are so pathetic I may start over :(
4. Did a bit of light weeding before seed heads show up, composted

Spinach looking very healthy, need to thin soon

Snap peas also looking great, don't plan to thin.
Hopefully the fish emulsion will kick them into a growing/climbing pattern

Pump Hole

Sounds dirty...

Pretty Small for a Month Old

Beet seedlings - once they emerged they stalled without
producing true leaves...yet

I don't have much experience growing from seed in the winter, and what experience I do have is from quite a while ago. I'm not sure if it's normal or if I'm failing, but my current seedlings seem awful small for their age. The Kale, Beets, Swiss Chard, Spinach and Peas were all basically sown on 12/15 making them about a month old.

Siberian Kale - after the peas this these guys show the most progress, but STILL...
only maybe 1" tall, MAX

Snap peas are doing the best, but same as the others: they seem to have stalled.
1 month old plants should be bigger than this

BTW, photos taken late dusk with Katy's iPhone - I must admit the white balance and contrast is way better than my phone.

No Need to Flip Yet

Two compost piles are still cranking away. Back on the 2nd I combined and flipped two older and cold piles and worked in 15 pounds or so of aged chicken manure to activate it. I also started a new pile with a fig and tree trimmings. Well, the new pile peaked a week ago around 150 but is strong at 140 still and the "old" pile also hit 150 but is currently at 120. This is great, no need to flip until I see them hit 100 or so.

14 days and both piles still hot! I'm thinking next weekend will probably be time to give at least the combined pile a flip.

Ants 1, Steve 0

My insecticidal soap experiment failed - the ants live on. Didn't do much today, put some barriers around a few Kale that are getting chomped on. Checked the organics in EW3, I raked a bunch of much in there a few months ago and much of it is still in there. Saw some termites :( but also some worms :)

And now a random picture of my adorable wife.

Survived the storm

Spinach sown 12/15 (25 days ago)

Kale, 25 days old

Beets, also 25 days old

My efforts to protect my new seedlings paid off: zero rain damage.
It's interesting how much slower everything is in winter. Emergence and growing is taking at least 2x as long. Vegetables are retarded in winter.

Twice now we've had an eruption of ants around this pothos. An 11 year old house plant deserves at least a bit of effort to save, and save I did: depotted, submerged root ball in a home made batch of insecticidal soap, cleaned pot, broke up bound roots and repotted with fresh soil. Fingers cross.

Outlaw Water?

It's possible... and in California I really wouldn't be surprised if it were illegal to collect rain water. So I checked a bit and found

California enacted Assembly Bill 1750 or the Rainwater Capture Act of 2012

Hmmm, digging deeper I find this gem in part 2.4 of the Rainwater Act of 2012

10574. Use of rainwater collected from rooftops does not require a water right permit pursuant to Section 1201

Well thank god!, looks like I can keep my water...

Pump Success

My little 1.5HP pump turned out to be a great piece of equipment. The rain came down hard today, just over an inch in a couple hours which resulted in the flooding I had expected. With enough volume of water I was able to crank up the pump to full throttle and let it run for more than 5 seconds! Here's a video of the murky output at the curb (this is 150' of discharge line, up-grade)

The North-West corner of the yard also floods very bad, I've got a big ass concrete slab back there so can't use the same technique of digging a small hole for the intake line.

I think I can put a hole just on the other side of the compost pallets which also seems to be the lowest point. BTW, for that hole, the gate hole and the side yard hole I plan to use a sprinkler valve vault which will allow me to keep it covered when dry, but quickly pop the lids and drop the pump intake when raining.

Mighty Little Pump

First Big El Nino Storm - Rain Prep

With the first big el nino storm coming I spent just about all day prepping the garden for heavy rain. I have a bunch of tiny, fragile seedlings right now and the rain could easily destroy them. I'm not really sure the best way to protected them, decided to try two different methods of using floating row covers. I give it a 50/50 chance of working.

Nina and the snap peas

Rain water collection

Compost Cleanup

With the rain coming I made a big push to consolidate compost bins #2 and #3 into #2, this leaves #3 empty. I set #1 up with all the recent shredded tree and fig trimmings as well as some junk that was sitting in there. NO SIGN of the chicken carcass I threw in here a few months ago, this is great and means I can throw my stock waste in the compost. I scraped some finished compost from the bottom of the bays and tossed it in the tumbler which has been re-purposed as my finished compost storage.

BTW if you want to know what finished compost looks like check out the below video.

Let There Be Light

Before the slaughter

My Carolina Cherries lining the perimeter of the back yard wall have been excellent for privacy and giving a sense of outdoors and nature for the backyard, however they've also proven to block a significant amount of sunlight making growing veggies more difficult. Today I impulsively went at em' with a lopper and a saw and dropped the tree line by 4-5'. I have some remorse, it feels much different, less private with an increased presence of neighboring homes. The beds were flooded with new sunlight, I suppose it will be worth it in the end if I'm growing better crops. This years navel crop is maybe the best tasting in my 12 years here. The tree looks like shit, but the fruit is incredible.

Peas and Kale Emerging

Not very uniform, but they are popping up. These took 9 days with average daily temps in the 65 range. The spinach, beets, chard and carrots are still a no show. I covered the beets and carrots with plastic to warm up the soil a bit.

Peas showing up

Beets and Carrots

Planted a few feet of beets and a few feet of carrots. Cooler weather and some rain in the forecast, hoping for better results from carrots. No frills post; just recording the sow date for my own records.

Bones, Fuck Yeah!

Yes, it will blend

Peas, Kale, Swiss Chard and Spinach

Nothing exciting, just sowed a full bed of Peas and split up another bed with Kale, Swiss Chard and Spinach. The soil and air is cold, but they should all germinate without artificially warming up the soil.

Pickle Madness!

Third batch!

Nothing wasted

Made stock from the chicken carcasses, onion, garlic, celery and carrot waste we've been stockpiling for the past few months.

Sorted through the strained stock material, bones to be sundried and pulverized for bone meal. Everything else went into the hotpile.

After separating from the veggies, skin, etc. they're put out on a screen to let the sun dry them out and the bugs eat up the tissues that is still attached.

Also started another batch of celery. The last batch pretty much stalled out, I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Bad seeds? Bad soil mix? - I don't know, but this time I'm trying a few different soil mixes to see if that makes a difference.