• Tag Archives irrigation

  • Planting During the Full Planting Moon

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                    Full Planting Moon

    Ah, the sweet feel of being in synch with the moon.  I planted Scarlet Nantes carrots and golden beets amongst the green onions and the radicchio.  Threw in a few zinnias for good measure.  Next in the onion bed with storage onions, dill, marigolds and some other flower I can’t recall, I planted more carrots, more golden beets and some Red Russian Kale.  Over in the bed with the Russian sage, some leftover onion and garlic and the bok choy, I planted Swiss Chard, beets vulgaris (I love that), the deep red ones, arugula and flame lettuce.

    At that point the direct sun got to me so I retreated to the garage to turn on the zone for the area I had just planted.  The beds seemed dry to me, so I wondered about its time and its arc.  Sure enough, it’s going 360 when I want 180.  That means the veggies only get half of the water they need.  Later on the drip irrigation will provide most of what they need, but now, in drier conditions and with seeds starting over-head watering is the best.  I’ll change the arc when it finishes this round.

    The cold also leaves me more exhausted than the work would usually suggest.  Now I’m inside for the siesta time period:  lunch, a nap, perhaps some Latin.  As the evening cools, I’m going to go out and at least dead head the grasses and other weeds that are about to go to seed.  Then I can take them out with a hoe at my leisure.


    📂This entry was posted in Garden Health permaculture 📎and tagged

  • Doing Stuff

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                      Flowering Moon

    The netaphim ruined last year by dogs Rigel and Vega has repairs.  The repairs sit safely inside fences that Rigel has shown either no interest or no capability to penetrate.  They should last.

    The bees will wait until a less breezy tomorrow.  Wind blows the smoke around and I have to perform a reversal, hive check and clean off the bottom board.  The reversal of the top 2 hive boxes encourages the queen to move into the top box and lay eggs there to create an ovoid shape of larva outside of which the nursery bees will complete a ring of pollen and a ring of honey.  This makes the planned colony split on May 15th assured of one hive box full of larva, hopefully the top one with new larvae and therefore newly born nursery bees.  Nursery bees take more kindly to moving around than the older worker bees.

    Irrigation folks have scheduled Tuesday to come out and turn on the irrigation system.  A good thing.  They usually wait until the second week of May since our average last frost date is around May 15th.  I imagine that’s moved up closer to the first week of May on average, but a frost outside the average is still a frost so most planning still accommodates the old date.

    Tomorrow the bees and soil amending, that is, putting in composted manure and humus on the raised beds and adding some sphagnum moss (some more) to the blueberry beds.  The outdoor season with sun.  The great wheel turns.  Again.


    📂This entry was posted in Bees Garden Great Wheel Great Work 📎and tagged

  • Gremlins or Demons or Bugs, oh my

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                    Waxing Summer Moon

    This morning the temperature has fallen back to 65.  Good garden weather for moving mulch and repairing netaphim.

    Electronic gremlins have given me fits for weeks now.  Not strong fits, but sure annoying.  A while ago my computer refused to recognize my disk drives.  On a day to day basis this is not a problem, but on those days when I want to play a CD or reload software or look at photographs saved to disc, on those days it’s a total frustration.

    Then, sometime after returning from the trip to South Carolina, Georgia and Florida my photoshop elements photo organizer seized up.  It opens with a large rectangle in the upper left of the screen and a smaller slice vertically to the far right.  Nothing happens after that.   Again, on a day to day basis, not a big problem, but when I want to manipulate photographs, something I do often, particularly to make them smaller so they’ll fit on this website, I’m shut out completely.

    In all these cases and the one below I try to sort stuff out myself.  I have a pretty good, but not perfect track record at this.  I never could figure out how to set up our wireless router, for example.  Geek Squad.  I may have to take my computer over to best buy.

    The last couple of days, too, I’ve been bothered by a diminished stream.  No, nothing that Flomax could cure.  I’m talking about irrigation system.  I’m very familiar with the amount of water that comes out of a given spray head.  When it comes out in a weak flow, something is wrong.  It happened last week and I called the well guy to check the well reservoir.  Works fine and he did not charge me.  Whoa.  Again, this morning a weak flow.  Hmmm.

    Kate said, “I know why it’s weak.  The front sprinkler is on.” Now that’s just strange.  This should never happen, two zones on at the same time, unless two different programs are scheduled for the same time.  Nope.  I checked that, not the problem.  Zones run in sequence.  1 runs, shuts off, then 2 runs, shuts off, then 3 runs and so on.  Why this should happen, I don’t know, but I hope the folks at Rainbird can explain it to me.


    📂This entry was posted in Garden GeekWorld 📎and tagged

  • Home Alone

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    62  bar steep rise 29.98 3mph NEE dew-point 47  sunrise 6:08  sunset 8:28  Lughnasa

    First Quarter of the Corn Moon  moonrise 1533  moonset 2334

    Kate’s been gone since Thursday morning.  I miss her.   There’s always a certain frisson being home alone, for a bit, but it fades and then missing her kicks in.  We talk things out, watch each others backs, fill in each others life.  Happily married, I’m happy to say, 18+ years and counting.

    Bumped the irrigation system up to 150%.  The rain has been scarce to none.  We’re in a severely dry period.  The grass has begun to turn brown, even with regular watering.  The crops need water now because many of them come to maturation in the month of August and early September.  Having our own well is a blessing when it comes to irrigation, it means we don’t have to worry about drawing down the city wells or abiding by their sprinkler rules.  Even so, I wonder about the water table and if our use of the sprinklers and our neighbors affects the city as a whole.  Don’t know enough about hydrology to know.

    A few of the Olympic events were on TV, but women’s soccer, the early rounds, and volleyball do not draw me.  The sports I enjoy are the track and field events. Even there, the participants are, for the most part, unknown and will not become visible again until the next Olympics.  I suspect I’m not the only one who does not enjoy sports where the narrative line has no visibility most of the time.  One of the things I enjoy about football is the back story I know from years of paying attention.  Almost none with the Olympics.

    Up too late. Again.


    📂This entry was posted in Family Garden 📎and tagged