Wouldn't you?

That’s only a relatively small part of it – just what I picked today. I’ve [...]]]> Yesterday, walking through the Vineyard on an incredible autumn afternoon after brunch at García’s at 4th and Mountain, Joe asked how my square foot garden experiment had gone.  I said I’d have to call it a success.

Wouldn't you?

That’s only a relatively small part of it – just what I picked today. I’ve harvested a bunch of Big Jim green chile peppers and a metric buttload of tomatoes already – and there’s a bunch of tomatoes, at least, still ripening. And that’s my third and final carrot!

It really is an experiment. I’ve never tried growing actual food before, much less using the SFG technique. And I got food. The tomatoes and chiles (and two prior, smallish carrots) I’ve eaten have been quiet good. A couple of friends have enjoyed the tomatoes. So, y’know … success.

Because I got a late start growing there were limits to what I could grow. Time and energy limits imposed by things like writing deadlines (those pesky, pesky devils) limited how much research on hot-weather crops I could do, and carry out the results of. So no more than about half the sixteen square-foot sections got used.

Mostly, those that got used have produced. Two tomato plants and the chiles did, obviously. I’ve got way more basil and tarragon than I now what to do with (yet.)  And I’m unclear what to epxect from, or do with, my Eyptian Walking Onion, although it’s hanging in there.

The only real clunker was the Cutting Celery, which seemed born to die, and in short order did. All the above plants I got as seedlings from Plants of the Southwest, on the basis that I wasn’t sure how much I had time to try growing from seed, given my mid-Juine start. I also planted carrots and cucumbers from seed. The carrots were not a dazzling success:  I got three. Or maybe four. Out of sixteen plantins in the square-foot section. One of two cucumbers did sprout and grow and even flower, although I think the flowers have died. While I haven’t given up on it yet altogether I’m pretty sure I planted it too late. Also it’s been wilty and temperamental. I may try some techniques Joe suggested for container-planting them next year.

As for Square Foot Gardening overall, I can say: do it. It’s incredibly resource efficient – and that’s counting your money, time, and effort as well as things like water and space. If you’re an urban-type gardener/farmer, as I am, it’s awesome: you could set up a 4X4 foot SFG on a largish apartment balcony. I of course have a backyard, and plan to put in at least one more SFG next year.  Likely two.

And get a much earlier start.

Also, if you’re an Albuquerque area gardener, especially try SFG. We have a distinctive soil type here: shitty. Throughout the Valley, where I live, and much of the Northeast Heights, we have dense clay. It has the workability of concrete and doesn’t drain for anything. Also, after you’ve busted your ass turning the awful, and stirred in your expensive soil amendments like compost and sand to get something other than certain death for a growing medium, in a season or two, it’ll eat your soil amendments. Clay reproduces, people.

At the minimum for Albuquerque I’d advise some kind of elevated, container bed for growing. My good friend Larry had great success with the Jeavons method from How to Grow More Vegetables and Fruits (and Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains, and Other Crops) Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine. That’s really labor-intensive to do right, like reading through that title (whew!), but it works.

The real advantage to #SFG, even as creator Mel Bartholemew brags in his All New Square Foot Gardening, is the “Mel’s Mix” soil. You make it yourself from three inexpensive and (fairly) easy-to-obtain components. It works like a bloody charm, at least for me. And you don’t have to chisel it out of the damned ground the way you do when you’re trying to amend clay.

Our West Mesa, I’m told, is largely afflicted with sandy soil. While it’s not as horrible as the clay (it could hardly be, unless it actively attacked you) it poses its own problems. To our sisters and brothers across the river, verily I say unto you:  try SFG too!

Flying Subject Change – Friday night I was up rather late after dinner and cheesy SF movies with some of the ASFS crew: Craig Chrissinger, Jessica Coyle, Steve Kubica, Randy Tinkham, and Kevin Hewett. Which was fun as always. Emma was outside, barking. Some of the neighborhood dogs were going off too. Usually that means a stray dog, or occasionally human, is wandering the alley.

But Emma seemed unusually persistent and … focused. Also she seemed to bark a lot from the north side of the house, by the gate to the backyard.

Then she growled.

That got me moving. Emma doesn’t growl without what she considers good reason. Even given her professional paranoia, it makes things more serious.

So I equipped myself with a flashlight and some other useful items, and went out back to check. Nothing.

Noting that Emma continued to bark from the gate, I went out front. And down the tree out by the sidewalk climbed – a raccoon. It ran off to the south and into a neighbor’s backyard.

So that’s like three years in a row I’ve been visited by raccoons. I like seeing the little guys. I also understand they can pose a danger to my dog. They would be well-advised not to.

So far we’ve been fine. We’ll go with that.

“WTF’s that?” I pretend to hear you ask.

This (photo credit Frostcall.com)

To start with, it’s the Seekrit Projekt I’ve been mystifying about these last few days. Yes, a huge anticlimax; I know. I just can’t resist tormenting Sara by tweaking her curiosity.

Basically it’s an intensive, organic, space and resource-efficient form [...]]]> I’ve got a Square Foot Garden!

“WTF’s that?” I pretend to hear you ask.

This (photo credit Frostcall.com)

To start with, it’s the Seekrit Projekt I’ve been mystifying about these last few days. Yes, a huge anticlimax; I know. I just can’t resist tormenting Sara by tweaking her curiosity.

Basically it’s an intensive, organic, space and resource-efficient form of gardening developed by a guy named Mel Bartholomew. He has a website devoted to SFG, and also a book.

If you’re interested in growing your own food, and especially in the increasingly trendy subject of urban gardening, you really might consider looking into SFG. I checked the book, All New Square Foot Gardening, out of the library and starting reading. Before I’d got halfway I’d ordered it on Amazon. Just to give you an idea of what I thought about it.

The basics are pretty, well, basic. You take four 2 x 6 boards (allegedly you can use 1 x 6s, but I can’t see how you’d screw ‘em together without splitting them), each four feet long. Since boards are usually sold in lengths starting from 8 feet, it’s easy to buy a pair and get them cut in half. Unless you’re me and shopping at the Lowe’s on 12^th Street, but that’s a story too long and off-pissing for me to tell right now, especially as tired as I am. You also need six inch-wide 4-foot laths. Fortunately they tend to come just that length.

You connect the 2 x 6s into a six inch deep box. You then fill it with something called “Mel’s Mix”: equal parts compost, peat moss, and something called vermiculite. The latter’s the “final ingredient” I crowed about obtaining in my last post. It’s not easy to find; I turned it up, pretty cheap, within a mile or two of my house.

The compost is by preference homemade. I had to beg some off my friend Larry since mine was, as mentioned, too damned damp to sift and measure properly. Fortunately he had plenty and was kind enough to share. Peat moss is peat moss, I guess; I bought mine at Lowe’s.

So you stir up 8 cubic feet of these ingredients and pour them in your frame. Then you divide it into sixteen square-foot sections with the laths (hence the name, yes.) And then: plant!

And I finally finished today. Poor Emma Dog did not get her walk; and I didn’t finish transplanting the seedlings I bought Saturday at Plants of the Southwest until after sunset. Kind of had to drive myself to get it done, but some of the plants were getting distinctly droopy.

Naturally it was too dark for my not-so-great cell phone camera to take pictures of. Hence the use of someone else’s as credited above. It’s particularly appropriate since it shows the mesh support for climbing viney plants, such as tomatoes and chile peppers. Which by amazing coincidence I planted.

Also got some seeds at Chase hardware for things I can plant at this relatively late point in the season. They’ll go in over the next few days.

When I let Emma out, having finished the transplanting, she trotted into the yard, saw the new addition 15 or so feet from the kitchen window, and stopped dead. She walked cautiously up to the SFG and sniffed it. Then she came straight back to me, apparently seeking reassurance that this new addition was okay, and not something she was somehow to blame for. Dogs are like that. They do assumed guilt like a human four-year old.

So, yay! I’m pleased to get this done and going. I’ve talked a lot about landscaping and gardening but not accomplished so much. That’s why I wanted this to be a going concern before I revealed what it was.

Will it work? I’ve no idea! That’s why we do things, or so I’m given to understand.

Stay tuned.

So in her comment yesterday to this post, she said:

I shall gently remind you that TWICE now you have alluded to said wonderful news yet have neglected to deliver it.

TELL ME TELL ME TELL ME TELL ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My response was to tell her that I soon would, and mimic an [...]]]> … Sara’s totally gonna kick my butt.

So in her comment yesterday to this post, she said:

I shall gently remind you that TWICE now you have alluded to said wonderful news yet have neglected to deliver it.

TELL ME TELL ME TELL ME TELL ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My response was to tell her that I soon would, and mimic an evil laugh.

So today I sat down to reveal the Wonderful News, and discovered … that I already did.

It’s the Wild Cards thing:  there’s a new anthology a-brewing – Fort Freak – and I’m in it.

As I’ve indicated, I’ve been getting lots more stuff done of late. But it’s taken a toll. In part I need to figure out how to manage my sleep better. One consequence of this is that my brains are sometimes even more scattered than usual.

Then again, I did reveal the Big Secret in my next post … on the 17^th of May.

In other news, anybody got any cheap and easy solution (my favorite kind!) to the problem of how to measure 2 2/3^rds cubic feet? It’s a gardening thing. I’ll tell you all about it when I get this thing done in a few days.

Also, any ideas on how to dry compost? I need, by remarkable coincidence, 2 2/3^rds cubic feet of the stuff. I think I’ve made that much, and probably more, in the handy composter I fabricated out of a wheeled 50 gallon Wal-Mart garbage bin. It was yesterday when trying to turn and sift it – yes, when the boys and I experienced our little shovel-handle mishap – that I discovered it’s basically mud. Now, I suspect strongly that means it’s mostly, yes, compost; but extracting it from the unfinished bits with my homemade screen was less than productive. Not to mention not so much “sifting” as “grating.”

So I want to try drying it out and then sifting. The problem is how to keep it from all blowing away in the process, this being Albuquerque, and also to keep a lot of crap from getting in it. In large part literally, since a lot of birds hang out in my yard.

Suggestions, please, O my wise and puissant readers?

Along the way I discovered an Important Composting Don’t: don’t hit yourself of in the [...]]]> Got much done today. Reread lots of my big fantasy novel manuscript (you know the one), walked Emma, and turned and sifted the compost pile, both for the first time in way too long. Plus, you know, stuff. Standard daily chores.

Along the way I discovered an Important Composting Don’t: don’t hit yourself of in the nuts with the handle of a shovel. Even if not very hard. Just … don’t.

After all this time composting I’m not sure I’ve generated enough yet for my Special Purposes. While I will unveil shortly, once we move beyond the Gathering Materials Phase to the Actually Doing Stuff Phase. This may entail pictures, should I be able to coax acceptable images of out my cell phone camera.

And now I feel as if I’ve been dragged up ten flights of stairs by my heels.  Need to get busy soon getting to sleep, so I can start getting up at a regular time, and get even more done.

More news soon.  I promise.

It’s been a good day, mostly. After the usual cocoa and mobilizing exercises I headed off to the office, which is to say Village Inn, where I had breakfast (yeah, at 1:30 in the afternoon. Sue.) and wrote plenty on Annja.

Fortuitously, the battery capacity on my Toshiba notebook [...]]]> Well, they promised us awful winds today…

It’s been a good day, mostly. After the usual cocoa and mobilizing exercises I headed off to the office, which is to say Village Inn, where I had breakfast (yeah, at 1:30 in the afternoon. Sue.) and wrote plenty on Annja.

Fortuitously, the battery capacity on my Toshiba notebook and my bladder’s ability to contain all the water and coffee I suck down both tend to run out about the same time. As usual when those things happen I called it quits.

I packed up and headed out. Went to the grocery store, to get some necessities such as fresh garlic. Can’t do without that.

As I parked I saw a stocky, red-faced woman wandering the lot carrying a clipboard. Never a good sign. After I turned off the car I hauled out my Pilot to write in the date and time for a cool Baroque trumpet piece they were playing on KHFM, so I could look it up later on their website.

She came right up to my window and, despite the fact I was doing something, said, “Are you registered to vote?”

“No.”

“Would you like to register to vote?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s a vile thing to do.”

She made a face and a dismissive gesture. Fortunately she didn’t argue. She turned and walked off toward Carlisle. I kind of hoped she’d wander into traffic but this didn’t happen, at least soon enough for me to see it.

When I was done getting the garlic and whatnot I remembered tonight was garbage night and I likely needed more cat litter. That indicated a possible trip to Wal-Mart, which is fortunately just across the street and a block or two down. Since their parking lot was not appallingly crowded I went ahead in.

After snagging the litter and sundry supplies I headed for the Garden section. I was hoping to find a compost thermometer, but not too surprisingly they didn’t have one. What they did have that I needed was a sprayer wand to fit on the hose. Appropriately, it’s a kind of scary looking one, all black and chrome, with a trigger. They had others but that, of course, was the one I had to have.

It’ll fit right in with the Scary Tools I got the other day. By the way, yesterday I found another use for the tetsubo, which proved to be just the thing for poking holes in the ostensible compost for aeration. I still may have to drill some holes in the sides.

Why the tetsubo doesn’t feature more in martial arts films, I don’t know. It usually only shows up used by Benkei, the giant warrior-monk who hung out with the legendary hero Yoshitsune, who was by way of one of your original bishounen. (Story short: it all ended in tears. Do I even have to say that? It’s Japanese!) The tetsubo is about the most phallic-looking weapon possible, unless you were to just go and flat out cast the thing to look like a giant Mr. Happy. In which case you’d have to call it Shiva’s Cosmic Lingam of Doom and it would be used in an Indian martial art by some dangerous Hindu sect.

Anyway … where was I? … Wal-Mart, of all places. As usual there wasn’t anybody in line at the Gardening section check-out, so I paid for my stuff there. Then I realized I had to pass through the register area to get to the external gardening area, which is a pretty goofy way to do things.

But I went on out to peruse the plants and equipment. In particular I was looking for some kind of trellis so I can plant my potted honeysuckle that I grew from a cutting – I love honeysuckle. They had various options. I decided to go for the 5′ x 8′ nylon mesh that you string between stakes. I also got two 6′ green stakes upon which to string the trellis. Then, annoyingly, I had to go back inside to the same checkout stand to pay for the new purchases.

Fortunately no one was in line. The big bearded college guy mentioned that the one form of weather he really can’t stand is high winds. I told him truthfully I’m the same way.

So I paid again and headed out into the wind. Which had really picked up. About the first thing that happened was it plucked the new receipt out of the bag and whipped it away. It wound up beneath some plats or whatever you call them of little potted plants. Fortunately I had a six-foot stick to fish it out with.

I forged out to the car with my shopping cart. And damned if, just as I reached the car, the wind didn’t whip the other receipt out of my pocket and away. Leaving the cart by the car, fingers crossed no one would steal my cat food or plastic hangers, I gave chase. The wind then carried the receipt over the parking lot wall toward Carlisle, now well clogged with early rush hour traffic. I gave up the chase.

Wouldn’t you know, it was the big receipt? So now I’m concerned about my sleek and lethal water wand. It’s Chinese, you see. And the PRC government has recently been publishing manufacturing-policy papers with titles like (I kid you not), “Pushing the Envelope of Shoddiness.” I was taking a calculated risk even buying the thing, based purely on my adolescent attraction to its appearance. Which, granted, is really cool. But now if they’ve pushed the damn shoddiness envelope too far and the thing only dribbles like … whoa, let’s just forgo a simile here, shall we? … anyway, if it’s junk, I’m stuck with it.

So anyway. The wind is really going mad out there. No puttering in the yard this evening for me. Nor are Emma and I going to get our walk, it seems. Not that she’s even going to want to go out in the backyard in this damn wind. She’ll probably make me feed her in the kitchen.

Ah, well. It’s been a productive day, anyway. I’ll write some more on Annja and some on dinosaurs, and see about getting started again on getting the house in order. That’ll be good.

The purpose of this post is purely to show how utterly easy it is to compost kitchen wastes. If you want to do any kind of landscaping or gardening, or if you’re interested in recycling or self-sufficiency, now you’ll have no excuse not to just get started.

I do not recommend [...]]]> Kids, don’t try this at home!

The purpose of this post is purely to show how utterly easy it is to compost kitchen wastes. If you want to do any kind of landscaping or gardening, or if you’re interested in recycling or self-sufficiency, now you’ll have no excuse not to just get started.

I do not recommend the technique I’m about to describe. I’ll go further: don’t do this. It does not constitute housekeeping best practice. Indeed, it wins the inaugural Bad Housekeeping Seal of Reproval, which I just made up. Just confessing to it’s totally going to blight any hope I’ve had of getting dates, at least until I get thin and rich. Which fortunately are on the agenda for summer.

So. Here’s the awful easy way to start kitchen-waste composting broken into simple steps.

Do Not Do These Things:

1) Toss fruit and vegetable detritus (no meat or fat; there’s controversy over egg shells, but for now I throw ‘em in) and coffee grounds in a plastic grocery bag in the kitchen.

2) When it gets full, starts leaking (ew!), or you just can’t stand it any longer, toss onto the back porch.

3) Begin in Fall, continue over winter.

4) Springtime: suck it up and examine all those containers o’ nastiness. Surprise!

5) You have (some) compost!

Seriously. I just did this so you don’t have to. And found that, yes indeed, a fair amount of what I’d so casually disposed of had turned into what looks and smells a good deal like good, clean dirt. And much of the rest was these big cement-hard clods which I suspect getting dampened and soaking will fix.

Before I attacked the back porch I’d checked my Rolling Composter. Today it didn’t seem to be generating its own heat but smelled nice – again, like soil. What you don’t want is for it to smell like decay or ammonia or anything else vile. And it didn’t.

Since it’s been a week I turned it. And found out that a bunch of what I had tossed in had already become fairly soil-like. Now, some actual soil had gotten in there, a bit inevitably because for my dry brown layers I was forking up (something I do often, in many contexts) weeds I’d cut down last fall and left lying about. Aside from the incidental dirt – and while some composting guides advise us to toss in some earth to sort of give the mix the idea, I tend to be more afraid our awful alkali soil will just kill that stuff dead – I also found that the undersides of a lot of the dead weed layers had turned into something suspiciously compost-like. So, hey, that went in the bin too.

But still, as they say in those Aussie dubbed 1980′s kung-fu flicks. It did seem I had more soil or compost-looking stuff in there than I started with.

I turned the heap back into the bin and set it back upright. Next I drilled some aeration holes around the top of the bin so the stuff’d get more air. Then I added the accumulated kitchen waste of ages, plus some recent wastage. Then I stuck on more dried weeds, soaked hell out of it all, and covered it back up.

Oh, and here’s what you really should do about the kitchen wastes so as not to be a revolting slob:

1) Put a bucket on the floor by the sink or food-prep area.

2) Toss your debris right in there as it’s generated.

3) At the end of each day run it out and dump it into a bigger can or bucket on the back porch, or in the back yard. If inquisitive animal friends tend to frequent your premises, some kind of lid or cover would be a good idea, here.

4) When it comes time to turn your main compost pile, add the recent waste right in!

Isn’t that simple? Not to mention, uh, nicer. That’s how I’m doing it now. Really.

There’s also vermicomposting. It turns out that isn’t something you get from becoming too friendly with Paris Hilton, regardless what it sounds like. It’s a way of using earthworms to compost kitchen waste. That’s on the list to try later.

So, I am at long last doing actual landscapy things, in the case of today while taking a break from writing. I will not feel I’ve really started, however, until I dig a hole and actually plant something in it. I’ve a couple of candidates, basically awaiting me to quit dithering about where to put them. And as I mentioned yesterday, I bought those cool weapons. So now I can’t wait to try ‘em out!

Oh – as indicated, the Rolling Composter so far seems to be working well. The one issue I foresee is that I may need either another one or two or a single much bigger container. I will, shortly, post a description of where the idea of the Rolling Composter came from and how to make one.

Actually got up when I intended to – my sleep pattern, to give it more dignity than it deserves, got all out of whack when I was finishing off my recent Rogue Angel novel. I’ve had a terrible time trying to get either enough sleep or regular sleep. To one degree [...]]]> Today started off very well.

Actually got up when I intended to – my sleep pattern, to give it more dignity than it deserves, got all out of whack when I was finishing off my recent Rogue Angel novel. I’ve had a terrible time trying to get either enough sleep or regular sleep. To one degree or another I’ve had trouble with that most of my life; I need, and intend, to get it squared away soon.

Did my mobilization exercises, then some kettlebell. To cool down I did the Long Form of Yang taijiquan. TJQ works great for that.

I drank my morning cocoa. Then I packed up the notebook PC and headed to the Village Inn over on Menaul near University, a regular haunt, for huevos rancheros and coffee. VI does surprisingly good huevos rancheros, at least here in Albuquerque. Never, never order them anywhere outside New Mexico. Trust me on this.

I wrote for a while, most productively. Well-pleased, I headed out into a cool but lovely day. By which I mostly mean, calm. We’ve had some cold, explosively windy days the last couple of days. I was glad to see the wind abate.

First I went to Costco and dropped 160 bucks and some on fripperies like food and necessities such as coffee. You understand the priority, yes? Sadly, I could probably live a Neptunian year off stored body fat, but evolution has cruelly and senselessly neglected to provide our bodies the ability to store caffeine. This constitutes the single best refutation of intelligent design I know of.

(Oh, and by all means, guys, feel free to drop the whole “Flying Spaghetti Monster” gag any time now. It was never that great to start with; it’s long since tipped over into pure boring asshattery. If your goal was to prove that people who claim to favor science can be just as annoying, irrational, and sometimes outright scary as the loopiest Fundie loonball … mission accomplished.)

Fifty bucks of the expenditure went to getting Roundup weed killer concentrate – fortunately, I get a lot of uses out of a bottle. I’m going to decapitate the weeds that have got an early start in the front yard one more time with my Rotary Nylon Scythe of Retribution (+2). (Yes, I have played too many role-playing games. Thank you for noticing.) It gets the +2 from being powered by lightning via the Orange Cord of Utility. Anyway … what, I digressed again? … I’ll toss the amputated weed-tops in the rolling composter and then douse the stubs with Roundup, mainly in hope of killing the roots. When the bastards’re good and dead I’ll chop ‘em off level to the ground with my faithful Scuffle Hoe.

I know “scuffle hoe” sounds like a person who keeps too much company with gangsta rappers. It’s really a most wonderfully useful garden tool. Especially if you have to deal with sprawling evil like our goatheads. Try to get those out with a shovel or a conventional hoe and you’ll wind up whacking yourself in the head with it. Which’ll do about as much good. But the scuffle hoe, also called the circle hoe, will just shave those bad boys right off at the ground. It’s great.

Unless, of course, you totally overdo it, give yourself elbow bursitis that gives you a fever for two weeks and messes up your arm for four months. Don’t do that.

Not content with dropping all that dinero at Costco, I went across the street to Home Despot and plunked down another $56 indulging my childlike love of scary-looking tools. Or perhaps I should say, actually scary: a resin-handled pick-axe and a six-foot digging bar – basically the old Japanese martial arts weapon known as a tetsubo, or Iron Quarterstaff, but with a point on one end and a chisel tip on the other. To deal with our lethal North Valley combo of clay and caliche, or what we might call “concrete,” you need weapons.

It’s not really iron. Rather it’s serious steel, drop-forged, heat treated, and tempered. Which is good, because if it wasn’t properly tempered it might shatter when I hit one of our harder rocks with it and fire a nice six-inch splinter into my shin. I wouldn’t like that. I’ve never done it but I’m just sure. The manufacturer calls the thing a “San Angelo Bar.” Spoilsports. We know it’s really a tetsubo.

So anyway, I just got all this stuff out of the car, and Emma sufficiently greeted – always a production – and got most of it put away, when the phone rings. It’s El Joe. He wanted me to come over. I went. He talked about some personal matters, and then he gave me some hot new ideas for how some of us New Mexico writer types can promote ourselves and our books. Excellent stuff.

But more of that later. Heh, heh.