Work-ticket report and thoughts on weeding

Work-ticket report

The contractors left at 4:00 PM today. I will tweak a few things they did, with Mrs ERJ's permission, of course.

From a budget standpoint we can pull off one project like this a year. Many of the basic mechanical and electrical systems in our house are 50 years old. Our plan is to have have it ship-shape and apple-pie order when we get old so it can go on auto-pilot.

I dug about 30 feet of potatoes today and it took about 25 minutes. I left the spuds on top of the soil. Call it one foot of row a minute. With 600 feet of row, that works out to ten hours or roughly three-and-a-half days at three hours, time-on-task per day. Running and lifting will have to wait. I have real work to do.

A couple of comments asked how I handle weeds. In a word, "Poorly". Or, if I am generous, "mediocre". My biggest weakness is lack of time-on-task. Weeding is one of my least favorite chores and keeps sliding to "tomorrow".

If/when we start playing for keepsies, it will be a non-negotiable two-hours in the garden/orchards EVERY DAY unless lightning is flying. Every day. All of that time will not be weeding, but any gardener worth his/her salt will pull weeds while they are harvesting or doing other chores. They will pull weeds when they are thinning seedlings. The Hispanics keep a basket to put the edible greens in as they weed. Those go into soup, gravy, side-dishes and so-on. They can also be fed to chickens/ducks and to rabbits in small amounts.

Soil moisture content makes a big difference. Weeds pull easily two days after a rain. My sandy-loam tills well after three days. Five days after a rain, it starts to become a fight to pull weeds. The fact that I let them get big enough to pull is an admission of failure. Young weeds do not have woody roots and are easily handled with a hoe...when the soil moisture is in the Goldilocks zone.

From a purely economic standpoint, garden yields are relatively resilient to some weed pressure after the plants have filled their space and/or they canopy over. However, yields are very sensitive to weed pressure before the plants fill their allotted space.

One of the problems with letting weeds "go" later in the season is that they set seeds, they restrict air-flow through your garden and they harbor pests. They also fight you if you want to plant a cover-crop like Red Clover.

For some crops, like potatoes, mechanical controls like mowing and tilling are viable options. For other crops that ripen later, mechanical control is more difficult and a hybrid method like using a string-trimmer (Weed-Whacker) to mow the tall tops that produce most of the seeds is worth considering.

No good answers. Just muddling along. 

David Morens, advisor to Anthony Fauci pleads guilt

Mostly crickets from the mainstream media. Link

 

I wonder if turning State's Evidence and testifying against former coworkers is part of the plea-deal.

Growing Degree Days, base 50F, Charlotte, Michigan

 

Growing Degree Days b50 by year, Charlotte, Michigan as-of August 19

Median value of 2150 GDDb50.

2026 is one of the warmer years but not a +3 Sigma event but a +1.2 Sigma event.

It is silly to even talk about standard deviations with this swath of data because people automatically jump to percentiles in their head.

Data plotted lowest-to-highest temperatures. 2026 value highlighted with yellow background.

This is not what data from "Normal" or "Bell-shaped" curves looks like.

That kind of data generally has nearly vertical ends and a large horizontal middle region. I am just not seeing it.

The strongest statement I can make is that this year has been warmer-than-typical for my region but it is will within what a fruit or vegetable grower should anticipate. 

Still here

The contractors packed up for the day at 4:00 PM.

They were a mile ahead of me as I drove to Hammond Farms Landscaping Supplies to pick up fill-sand to contour the outdoor area they had been fiddling with. They very graciously agreed to pause their work in that area so I could do that.

While driving to Dimondale, I noticed that the goldenrod is starting to bloom. According to Michigan Flora, there are 23 species of goldenrod that are native to Michigan: Tall, White, Bluestem, Canadian, Zigzag, Late, Hairy, Houghton's, Early, Missouri, Gray, Ohio, Rough-leaved, Upland White, Riddell's, Stiff,  Rough-leaved, Seaside, Gillman's, Showy, Bog, Elm-leaved and Voss's. They are all the same to me. They are all pretty and the bees love them. They are a marker of the passing seasons.

The extent of my gardening yesterday was to pick an eggplant fruit and to dig three hills of potatoes. As reported earlier, I did not add any fertilizer to the potato patch this year, I relied on the nutrients released by the heavy over-layer of vegetation that I tilled into the soil in the spring. The vines did not aggressively canopy over the tilled areas. The tops also stopped growing sooner and died back sooner. The upshot is that I can start harvesting them now because they are not going to be adding any more mass.

The contractors come back today AND I get to watch Quicksilver. The upside is that Mrs ERJ doesn't have any commitments so I will be able to run some errands.

Bonus political meme

 

Two long quotes that might be worth reading

"It has been said that everyone has one secret. This is not true.

Everyone has many secrets, many faces, many masks. All humans...are the sum of their masks.

It is what you do in life, not what torments you in your soul that matters." 

"It is not what you feel that makes you evil. Feelings are natural...It is what you do with them that decides if you are a villain or a hero."  -John Ringo in There Will Be Dragons

"Utopia is the imaginary society in which humankind's deepest yearnings, noblest dreams and highest aspirations come to fulfillment, where all physical, social and spiritual forces work together, in harmony, to permit the attainment of everything people find necessary and desirable. In the imagined utopia, people work and live together closely and cooperatively, in a social order that is self-created and self-chosen rather than externally imposed, yet one that also operates according to a higher order of natural and spiritual laws. Utopia is held together by commitment rather than coercion, for in utopia what people want to do is the same thing as what they have to do; the interests of the individuals are congruent with the interests of the group; and personal growth and freedom entail responsibility for others. Underlying the vision of utopia is the assumption that harmony, cooperation and mutuality of interests are natural to human existence rather than conflict, competition and exploitation, which arise only in imperfect societies. By providing material and psychological safety and security, the utopian social order eliminates the need for divisive competition or self-serving actions which elevate some people to the disadvantage of others; it ensures instead the flowering of mutual responsibility and trust to the advantage of all."  -Rosabeth Moss Kanter in her book Commitment and Community which examined Utopian societies from the 1800s.

Growing up, most two-parent families with kids below age 12 came pretty close those the Utopian Ideals. 

 

NUDES!!!!

 

Seriously, what did you think I was going to post?

Today's work-tickets

Stay out of the way of the contractors.

Be available to the contractors.

Don't distract the contractors with conversation. 

Maybe I will make a chicken-rice-zucchini casserole.  

Fine Art Tuesday

 

"Angels of Holy Hill". Do you see the angels?

Don Kloetzke was born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin in 1951 and died in 2023.

His father was in the military and he lived in many different locations throughout his childhood but retained a special affection for Wisconsin's outdoors and the Green Bay Packers.

His paintings are notable for their detail and highly believable backgrounds. 

P.S. The angels in the first image are "Snow Angels" left by children in the snow, right-foreground.