Bermudagrass is on the moon

Back when we first started tackling Bermudagrass in the backyard, I totally thought of it as "Bubba's Thing".

Like, he's the one with problems related to the existence of Bermudagrass and he's the one who thinks it's necessary to turn an entire lawn out into the streets to fend for itself while sifting and shoveling and raking and HUNTING HIS FINGERS TO THE BONE searching the remaining soil for remnants of Bermudagrass.

Him.

Not me.

I'm normal.

And then it cropped up near my vegetable plants which I think you know meant that FUCK THAT.

So, then it became my Thing, too. Because it encroached on my precious vegetables and I can.not.have.that.

But I mentally drew the line there.

Bermudagrass is only my problem if it gets near the vegetables, but otherwise, Bubba can fight it out with that nonsense and in the event that I see it around, I will pull it out, but I won't go down the dark and winding rabbit hole of trying to eradicate it by means of removing everything it its path and going at it with a shovel and my bare sifting hands.

Or will I?

Yeah. See that harshly pruned fountain grass in the back corner and the lower growing iris greens beside it and the daffodils and some of those poppies next to the maple tree?

Bye-bye.

The shit found its way to the front yard. Because of its intense evil and because it can grow under pavement, without light or water FOR 150 DAYS.

Yes. Absorb that information, will you. In our mild NorCal climate where it doesn't freeze but it will suddenly rain for no reason on a September morning at 6am for 30 hard minutes so that everything has a chance to soak up a little moisture, Bermudagrass can thrive. And I also imagine that this sudden September rain shower happened on Day 149 of No Rain, so all of that Bermudagrass that was on the ropes of life and almost about to bite the dust received a life-giving boost that empowered it to take on the front yard.

To thrive, if you will.

And thrive it did. All the way under or around or through (it could happen) our house and into my front yard meadow.

Which I then, of course, ignored for a solid six months. Like, I saw some signs of it out there when I was pruning the fountain grass (RIP, buddy) or deadheading the bulbs or hunting wild animals in the Serengeti that is our wild meadow, but I dug those bits out and called it a day.

Done. The Bermudagrass is handled.

But it SO was not.

Which Bubba brought back to my attention a few weeks ago and hasn't let me forget. I do believe there was a "Come on, peckerhead." in there somewhere, too, just so that he knew that I wasn't going to conveniently only listen to the sound of our contractors NOT FINISHING THE BATHROOM GAH! instead of heeding his warning of the encroaching Bermudagrass.

Eventually, though, I had to do something because, at least, it was in stark contrast to the complete powerlessness I was experiencing with regard to the rest of the disasters unfolding in my house.

This I could do something about. I had the power. I could also rage my fricken face off at the Bermudagrass and no one would file a lien against our house in the process, or say, drop a deuce between the new drywall.

No, Bermudagrass is defenseless that way. It can't come into my house, tear down my bathroom and leave me showerless for 2+ months.

But this isn't about our forever-taking bathroom project. It's about my Bermudagrass rage and how I punched a hole in the atmosphere with our sprinkler system again.

You see, friends, when I realized I was going to spend my weekend digging and sifting through the hard-packed hasn't-seen-rain-in-forever-because-we're-having-the-driest-year-on-record front yard soil instead of going to Tahoe to gallivant around for Oktoberfest, I was none too pleased.

This is not fun for me - digging about looking for evil invaders.

So, you can imagine that when I headed out to the yard in my full yard work regalia (doo-rag included) and my heftiest and pointiest shovel, my rage was on full tilt.

I was ready to slay me some fucking Bermudagrass.

Also, sadly, it meant that I was going to have to remove the fountain grass altogether because The Evil was all up in that thing like it was a stairway to heaven or something crazy.

So, to keep myself from going blind with rage and sorrow and frustration and WHY ISN'T MY BATHROOM DONE NO I DON'T CARE THAT THAT'S UNRELATED TO YARD WORK, I consoled myself with the fact that at least I'd be able to divide the irises that had been growing into an ever-denser clump over the five years they'd been in the ground.

"I'll divide the bulbs!" I said.

"I'll replant them in a huge drift where the fountain grass used to be!" I said.

"It'll be beautiful!" I said.

Do you know what I did not say?

"We'll have a geyser in our front yard where the fountain grass used to be!"

Nope. Never said that. Except that's exactly what happened.

But first, I actually did dig up everything, toss the fountain grass, divide the bulbs (HOLY HELL THERE WERE ONE MILLION) and eradicate the mother effing Bermudagrass.

That's a 5 gallon bucket, friends. OF IRISES. When I planted them 5 years ago - there were a dozen. 

This is our yardwaste bin. CRYING.

Just an extra bucket of Bermudagrass I pulled after filling the yard waste bin. THAT'S ALL.

Dug the giant hole. Added compost.

Replanted one million divided irises.

Covered it up to pretend like nothing happened.

Mulched the ever loving crap out of it and roped it off so no one decided to use it as a walkway which would have totally happened. 

And then Monday morning came around.

I was sitting in the backyard covered in all of my textbooks doing all of my homework and studying for class when my neighbor peeked his head through the dutch gate and advised me of the Tallest Fountain in America Award which I was now winning thanks to the new water feature in our front yard.

Apparently, in all my rage-shoveling, I sliced through one of our 1/2" irrigation lines.

Hooray.

And then did I mention that our irrigation system is totally haunted ever since the contractors unplugged it during the re-piping of our house so now it comes on twice on the days it's scheduled to run?

Because I got to experience the second coming on of the sprinklers AS I was inspecting the irrigation line for the alleged leak.

Hooray for my extremely clear sinuses. And the vicinity of the emergency water shut off valve. And our stockpile of sprinkler fittings and couplings. And the fact that I was caffeinated and vitamined (I should update you on the vitamin regimen - good times) and thinking clearly and rationally. And the fact that I'd burned out all my rage doing the too-aggressive shoveling over the weekend.

Because I actually managed to give the Tallest Fountain in America award back to our friends in St. Louis after only about 20 minutes of sorting through couplings, muddy digging about in the yard and replacing of iris bulbs from those that landed on our roof in the fountaining process.

And I'm proud to say throughout that stratospherically damaging event, not a single sprig of Bermudagrass was seen, so I can only assume that it was shot into space where it shall remain until such time as suburbs become commonplace on the moon.

We hate ourselves, but not as much as Bermudagrass.

Oh my, how we love to abuse ourselves and do shit the hard way and not listen to the reasonable voices around us.

Oh my, how we also hate Bermudagrass sooooOOOOOOOOOOOooooOOoOOOOoooooooooo much.

 

 

Oh my god, fuck you.

Seriously, now.

And that is how I ended up spending last Saturday shoveling and shoveling and shoveling (and admiring worms and dark crumbly soil and fantasizing about summer tomatoes) and shoveling until HOLY I thought I might pass away.

This photo in no way represents HOW MUCH soil that is. IT'S SO MUCH.

But that's the end of the story, the beginning of the story started with Bubba saying, "You know, baby, we really should rip everything out of the back part of the yard so that we can get rid of the Bermudagrass back there, now that we've gotten rid of it up here."

Don't worry, beautiful soil, I'll save you!

And then I pretended not to hear him because LO that's a lot of work. And also it would mean relocating a lot of cubic yards of finely tuned and productive garden soil without misplacing a single crumb. And also shoveling like I've never shoveled before. And looking at/pulling/swearing at Bermudagrass like I've never known before so that it started to invade even my waking dreams.

But he wouldn't let it go even though I kept conveniently hearing other things while he was talking until finally he took me by the shoulders and presented our Pay Attention To Me, This Is Important phrase: "Come on, peckerhead. We need to do this."

I know, we're very mature. No, I don't know how we landed on this as our prime method of communicating when the other one needs to make something a priority and quit fucking around, but there you go.

It's gotten us through taxes, computer OS migrations, house projects and now terrible and horrific yard work.

So, if I'm ever trying to get your attention about something and you hear me say, "Come on, peckerhead." you better fucking well listen because I mean business.

We're very profesh.

So yes, when Bubba delivered The Ultimate Line, I did listen and then I considered his proposal very seriously and then I began creating a plan.

It had to be done before the bees arrived because you can't be loudly and sweatily mucking about around a new and active hive with shovels and flying dirt and rage. It's bad bee business.

So that meant it had to be done before 4/7 because that's when the bees come.

So that meant we also had to get the grapes in and trellised before then because once this project is done and the bees are in, I'm only going to want to work with the vegetables and the grapes came into the nursery way early and needed to be planted.

So so so...and and and...it basically meant it all had to be done this month. When we've had an incredibly epic snowy winter and all Bubba wants to do is ski. And rightfully so because the man Lives. To. Ski.

And I have a race coming up for which I need to train. And I'm going to see my boys play at Spring Training and will be out of town. And Bubba has work bullcrappery that takes him out of town.

Anyway, what happened was what I described above - Saturday became Finny Shovels Her Back and Hamstrings To Death Day while Bubba Skis.

That there are four empty vegetable beds and a bunch of soil in a sauna.

 This will then turn into Bubba Pulls Bermudagrass Until His Gloves Wear Holes In Them while Finny Runs.


And then, I imagine there will be a lot of double duty where we're both out there rolling out new bulletproof landscape fabric and then bark mulch and staring down anything that looks remotely like a speck of Bermudagrass until the bees arrive and the situation's out of our hands.

Then I plant the vegetable garden and we all go back to our regularly scheduled lives of FREAKING OUT ABOUT THE #1 TOMATO plus a fun and exciting contest I'm going to announce when the prizes show up at my house (oooooh! suspense! You don't get that a lot around here.).

But until we get the Bermudagrass out, we can't do any of those fun things. So, go forth we must, into the back breakingest yard work I'm likely to know in my lifetime because we can't just go out back with a bottle of Round-Up and nuke that crap. OH NO. We're doing this by the organic method, folks, and that means hard labor that results in healthier soil rather than the chemical method which results in dead soil and OH WHAT THE HELL a triumphant return of Bermudagrass in under 6 month's time.

Don't believe me? I dare not tell a lie about the indestructible nature of Bermudagrass. That stuff is the devil's own landscape material, I tell you what.

If you want to read more about this horrific yet highly effective method of removing Evil from your own yard, read up on my Examiner article. In fact, you should probably just subscribe to my Examiner feed and Like me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter because that helps kill Bermudagrass, too.

OK, well, the manual labor does, anyway, but the other stuff is good fun so just come on, peckerhead.

Good job, peckerhead.

I think I just threw up.

Know what that is? A LOT of Bermudagrass. So much that I had to use a full grown dog for perspective.

See how the big pile of weeds looks like it could eat Jada if it were to spontaneously (and frighteningly) animate with a born-in beef with canines?

Yeah - that shit's scary.

Even scarier is when it's growing all surreptitiously beneath and between FOUR layers of landscape fabric, just looking for the tiniest slice of leeway so that it can burrow its evil way through the soil and into *GASP* the vegetable beds.

HOLY SHIT I KNOW.

Now you see why we had to kill it. KILL IT UNTIL IT WAS DEAD. Of course, time will tell whether we actually got it all, but we used Bubba's tried and true method and that soil is now buried under, yes, a 5th layer of contractor grade landscape fabric and will soon be buried under more bark mulch. 

And my careful and protective eye will be scouring the landscape for any suspicious looking sharp green pointy-ness that has the smackings of Bermudagrass. And if I see any - BOY HOWDY - that stuff better have its insurance premiums paid in full because I will not rest until I've eradicated every last hairy root of it.

For those of you who said you cultivate and reseed and grow this stuff with reckless abandon - keep yourselves east of the Mississippi, k? I see you walking around these parts, all weighted down with stray Bermudagrass seed, I might accidentally roll you in a tarp like the one you see in that photo above and set you out at the curb on trash day.

I just can't have Bermudagrass re-infesting my yard! You understand! Don't look at me like that!

In other less psychopathic news, I am excited to report that every last sumptuous crumb of that glorious hand-crafted garden soil made it back into the beds successfully.

And, phew.

Granted, it doesn't look that sumptuous right now, since the soil has dried a bit since shoveling (and shoveling and shoveling and shoveling) it back from the big steaming pile, but I assure you, its suptuousnessocity is unparalleled. It's had more than two weeks to simmer and smolder and cook down the nitrogen-rich fava bean matter under its plastic sauna and when I shoveled it back into the beds yesterday, it was crumbly and wormy and dark and OH JUST THE BEST.

I may even go out on a limb here and say that when I test it, and I will test it, the deficiencies will be slight - if at all. I know! Big talk! But we'll see...I'm still going to test it to be sure.

And I suggest you do, too - test your soil that is. It sounds like a pain and like it's really boring and there are some people out there who will argue whether those soil test kits from the hardware store are really accurate or meaningful and I am here to tell you that my answers to all that are Yes, Yes and As far as I can tell, they are.

To be clear:

Yes - it's a pain

Yes - it's really boring

As far as I can tell, these soil test kits from the hardware store produce meaningful results

And if you doubt me on any of these points, I will direct your attention to the 200+ lbs of tomatoes I grew from just four plants and the 273 lbs of produce I grew altogether last year. 

You don't grow 273 lbs of produce from a 90 square foot garden if your soil's shitty, folks. And, at one point, I had shitty soil. And then I tested it. And I amended it (organically) accordingly. And then I grew 200+ lbs of tomatoes from four plants in one season. So there. If the soil test kit was useless, then oh well, it at least got me to adding enough amendment to bring my soil into good health WITHOUT overdoing it.

See, that's the other end of the soil spectrum. You can have inert and useless soil like I had or you can have scorchingly over amended soil with too much of any number of things and actually end up frying your plants. Both ways are bad.

So, why be bad? At least in this case. You can test to find out just how much you need to add and then add it. And then grow a lot of tomatoes (and cucumbers and melons and beans and herbs and peppers and tomatillos - but always two plants - and so on). 

Just don't neglect your soil, OK? If I were Bob Barker, I'd be saying something about having your pets spayed and neutered right now - it's only the right thing to do.

But that's not my thing - do with your pets what you will - but with your soil - please test it. And then grow a lot of fantastic vegetables.

And if you find Bermudagrass - TEAR IT THE FUCK OUT. Then lay down another layer of landscape fabric, cover it in bark mulch (that's next) and get to installing your bees (4/7), planting your vegetables and living happily ever after this summer, peckerheads.

The new bermudagrass

Remember when I was all, "BERMUDAGRASS CAN GO FUCK ITSELF", or whatever?

Because it was the worst/the devil's landscape material/etc?

You may remember. I remember. But now I laugh when I remember how much I loathed the Bermudagrass because...

Poison oak.

OH FUCK YOU.

People, I'm not saying that I'd take 5 acres of Bermudagrass over the poison oak, but what I am saying is FUCK THAT SHIT and also, our perspectives toward yard work have changed.

Specifically, we are extra not fucking around.

The days of maybe I'll wear flip flops while I do some light gardening are way over.

You know - coveralls speckled with filth are basically the same.

The days where I yard work myself to a near stroke only a few times a year when the vegetable garden goes in/comes out are super over.

Every weekend, folks. Be jealous.

The days where going out to do yard work does not involve a pre-treatment, hooded Tyvek suit, elbow length gloves, full face coverage and an invasively thorough Technu post-treatment hosing off are over, too.

Strange that the gloves are what makes this scary.

These are the salad days for sure.

But - we are making just the tiniest bit of progress with the 5 acres of Bubba-eating poison oak, so there's that.

Before

After

And, while Bubba happens to be violently OFFENSIVELY allergic to poison oak, I happen to not be allergic apparently at all.

And...vomit.

Though I'm sure that now I say that, I'll die of poison oak inhalation or something stupid.

And I think you know that this was finally the moment we were all waiting for - GOATS.

Let me allow that to sink in.

GOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTTTTTSSSSSSSSS

FOR FUCKING FINALLY, RIGHT?

And not because I somehow convincingly demanded it or looked extra pathetic or made some censor-worthy offers to Bubba - oh no.

IT WAS HIS IDEA.

Because of the almost dying twice of poison oak since we moved here less than a year ago.

But yeah - GOATS CAME.

And not just, like, one or two goats. NO, PEOPLE - 402 GOATS WERE AT OUR HOUSE.

And, for a few minutes on our road, and then for 5 munchy munchy days of blissful oak, grass and POISON OAK eating they were on our property doing their adorable, insatiable, bottomless-bellied bests.

I said, "This is the greatest thing I've ever seen" approximately 100 times. Every minute.

Because COME ON...

I mean, before was all:

And then after 5 days of endless goat attention, it was all:

And during I was all:

It was all.

Anyway - yeah. Poison oak is basically our lives and, as a result, we've gotten REAL.

After they took the goats away (it was a sad day), we armed ourselves with The Poison Oak Station.

So, yes, this is a repurposed repurposed tool cabinet that some kid made (unsupervised, I'm thinking) in shop class that Bubba bought and cut up and welded back together to be the FrankenSmoker and then cut up again and then here we are.

Now it's, luxuriously I might add, lined with cardboard and filled with everything we need to almost hopefully probably if we're really careful not get poison oak while we use the Not Fucking Around tools to, basically, go to battle.

I mean, what even is this thing?

Brush ax. Kaiser blade. Sling blade. Take your pick.

We call it the Dothraki Death Blade because - I mean you can see why. It's kind of like a scythe crossed with a giant machete and bolted onto an ax handle.

And it FUCKING WORKS. For chopping shit back anyway. That's its main purpose. And we have a lot of chopping shit back to do. So, that's one tool we can't do without.

Then there's the super long tree saw with the hookey-loo that can snag the poison oak vines BECAUSE OF COURSE THEY ARE VINING and drag their oily asses out of the beautiful coast live oak trees and into the trailer BOOM. And then saw down the big fat trunks choking the shit out of the trees.

Except don't tell Bubba I called it a hookey-loo. I think he takes offense to the goofball names I apply to all his manly stuff.

And then there's the chainsaw to which Bubba has pledged his eternal soul.

Now, to be clear, we do not use the chainsaw on poison oak - that'd be crazy and would just spray noxious poison oak bits and blobs every old where. But we are also limbing up the trees and cutting up fallen limbs every other foot fall as we creep ever closer to the center of this property, so the chainsaw is a must.

And the trailer. He's a good boy.

And you may not think of it as a super Not Fucking Around Tool - but the rake is in there, too. The ratty old one that the former owners left behind. He can pull great wads of filthy poison oak down around your ankles in no time at all.

Makes me itchy just thinking about it. And I don't even get poison oak! Or do I...?

So yeah - that's what we're doing instead of training for races, brewing beer, crafting a thing, growing a vegetable garden or basking our buns in Hawaii.

AND IT'S GREAT.

So like I was saying: vegetable garden & chile peppers

My whole goal with Saturday was to do, you know, everything yard-wise.

Procure plants, test and amend the soil, fix the irrigation, set up the stakes and cages, plant everything and gather Bubba for our yearly commandment for everything to GROW.

So, clearly, I procured. I was nearly flattened in the process, but I procured. Four tomato plants and one pepper, to be exact. And, hey, no gaping wounds! Hooray! No small victory there!

But then, still glowing with my Master Gardener's market + nursery finds victory, I arrived home to stare my Real Work in the face.

Ah, soil testing. It is OH so tedious.

And still as high tech as ever.

But I still did it, because obviously. I can't be yarding on you guys about testing your soil if *I'm* not going to do it.

And thank god I've been yarding on you guys about it most aggressively because there were moments where I was all, "You know, it looked so good when I shoveled out the beds and there were so many worms, I bet I don't *REALLY* need to test the soil, what if I just skipped it this year..." but then the fear of a pisspoor year of garden harvest smacked me in the face and I came sadly back to reality.

I must test the soil. No slacking off. And then - TOMATOES WILL HAPPEN.

That's really all I need to motivate me: hundreds of pounds of tomatoes.

Also, the avoidance of public shaming. You know I hate that.

So, I sat out with the test kit and the beds and the soil and the newly not-full-of-bermudagrass yard and tested away, expecting to find that my soil was so nutritious and full of organisms waiting to give life to my vegetable plants that LO I could have skipped soil testing altogether and maybe I won't have to amend at all.

Maybe I will just slam my little ragged book closed on the fabulous results and go off and have myself a midday cocktail while I prepare to plant my seeds!

Wrong.

Good, but not Don't Amend The Soil good.

So, at that point I shelved the midday cocktail idea, went with Bubba for a post-ride taco lunch and then returned to add dried blood and crushed bones to my vegetable beds.

Because I'm an evil mad scientist! Or at least it sounds like I am. Which I like. I like to sound like I could be smart enough to be a scientist even though, obviously no. Thankfully, I can always be described honestly as evil and mad. There's always that.

Once that mess was all over, oh my friends - I planted.

Which is a soul-inflating experience that I look forward to every year. It feels like someone has added water to my shriveled Magic Towel of a soul and POOF it's all big again and ready to absorb whatever that crap was that you spilled on the kitchen floor...wait. Anyway, you see what I'm saying. Planting the spring garden makes me happy deep down.

And my soul says, 'AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH'

I also become happy deep down when I update my garden tracker for a new year and share it with you freaks so you can see how the Melons vs Watermelons show down is going. Though that will be later. Right now, everything is a seed, so I'd wager the weights are about the same. You can still gouge some eyeballs if you feel like, though.

FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT.

Kidding.

My final MAKE ME SO HAPPY garden moment was when Bubba and I, in our yearly ritual, stood at the head of the garden (usually holding our drinks) and commanded the garden to grow in our own special ways.

Me? I'm a Moses type - I throw my arms in the air and yell, "GROW!" in my boomingest, most part-the-seas-before-me voice, while Bubba is more of an evil monkey in the closet type - he stares menacingly at each bed and shakily points while commanding them to "GROW DAMN YOU!"

It's all very silly and effective.

And, after all that, as though I could actually BE happier, my jalapeno popper chili seeds all germinated.

I'm not going to say they "popped" because that would be too far.

So yay! Maybe they'll grow to some sort of sturdiness level that will allow me to transplant them into the garden without totally mangling them!

Though, we shouldn't get our hopes up.

Thankfully, Downhour Gunter will be getting her seeds and book soon and so maybe she'll have better luck with that whole transplanting process than I.  We'll see.

I can say, however, that this book is actually pretty helpful. In the sense that I've already gleaned two bits of very helpful knowledge for the purposes of growing peppers:

1. Pepper seeds (and any seeds really) don't need sunlight to germinate. So, like, put your seeds in a pot and set them somewhere in whatever kind of light. It totally doesn't matter.
2. Pepper seeds germinate faster if watered infrequently (the entire surface of the soil should be dry) and with WARM water. Freaks!

I did both of these things and had 100% germination rate, so YAY for the book.

OK, I think that takes care of Secondly and Thirdly, so I'll go now. Though you should know that I got a new camera lens that I'm resisting the urge to call The Bomb Diggity SMOOCH SMOOCH I love you! so I may be retaking photos of everything because now I can finally do so from the angles I previously was unable to capture.

Also, please forget I said Bomb Diggity. The rest is OK.