Roadside Dinner

After a longish hiatus from this blog I'm back, with nothing special to report from the backyard, which looks exactly the same as it did in my last post three weeks ago.  Matt wants to let the mulch sit 4-6 weeks before he rototills and grades the whole backyard.  In the meanwhile, despite four inches of this heavy mulch and total lack of water the bermuda grass and crab grass is coming back.  To combat this I ordered an organic herbicide called Weed Pharm which is made from acetic acid, the stop both from your photo darkroom days if you are old enough to have worked as a photographer in the pre-digital age.

Anyway....acetic acid comes in many qualities the highest of which is "food grade."  (Actually there is even a  "kosher food grade" acetic acid.  I don't know if it is a higher grade but it is approved by a Higher Authority).

Food grade acetic acid in an extremely diluted form is the vinegar you have in your kitchen cupboard.  

The Weed Pharm is dilluted to 20 percent.  I'm going to apply it tomorrow and let it bake in the hot sun and see how effective it is. 

Now, for the roadside dinner, here is what is growing in front of the house, where all dog passing dogs pee and worse.  Two photos below are the same respectably sized cucumber (and my 2004 Honda).

Same Honda and a tomato plant with one red tomato.  This area, called the parkway, gets regular water from the automatic sprinkler system but I don't fertilize or do anything else.  That combined with the dog pee etc I think getting any veggies to grow here at all is an achievement.

This Anaheim pepper plant is in the raised front yard where dogs don't pee (most of the time).  No pee= will be used for cooking.

Kong, sitting beside a cucumber vine, keeps his eye on a squirrel across the street.

30 Square Yards of Mulch

Visually not terribly interesting, but to update the progress in the backyard demolition, yesterday Matt and his guys finished laying down more than 30 square yards of Mulch in the backyard.  That's more than one heaping truckload. 

    This is the view from the back corner of the backyard looking at the garage.

   This is the view in the opposite direction, from the house looking toward the back.

I'm a little skeptical about putting down the  mulch before grading, but here is how Matt sees it:

"I recommend applying a heavy mulching after the sod-cutting. Then after 4-6 weeks rotor-tilling in the decomposing roots and newly decomposed mulch bits. This approach will have superior results. "

So we will see how that goes.

As an aside here are a few photos of what's maturing on the trees and veg plants:

That's red pepper, grapes and peach. And here's Salty sunbathing:

I'm concerned the honey bees were disturbed or harmed by removal of some much vegetation back there (and the laying of the mulch as well) so I'm going to get some honey today to put on the new hive to see if that helps to attract them to move house.