sb country n news-organic weed killer

SB COUNTRY N NEWS-ORGANIC WEED KILLER

there are three nemesises in the garden here that we have to fight all the time
at the texas country n there would be grasses that would pop up in the garden that would try to take over
in the beds where shrubs were planted a lot of folks had bermuda which can be almost impossible to get rid of

some folks will spray roundup all it to kill it
if you ever inhale that stuff or get accidentally a taste of it you know how it makes you feel and you realize that stuff is not good for the environment

at the community garden here you have to do everything organically

the three plants that seemed to get into the garden here are
purslane
amaranth
morning glory

now the purslane we use to plant in our garden in texas since we used in in our salads
here there is no need to plant it as it shows up in large numbers
it is easy to remove though so i just do that for the purslane saving some for our salads

the amaranth showed up since someone planted it in their garden
each plant produces lots of seeds
when it pops up in my garden i use the leaves in our salads or saute them with spinach or collards or broccoli
the ones i dont want i just pull up and compost them

so those two are easily managed

the worst plant in the garden that if you let it it will take over is the morning glory
i had tons of it in texas
the bees loved it
but it never invaded my garden

well here it did
it has a strong foothold
its the ban of the garden

this bed in this picture i have weeded twice this spring
it sits between a row of beans and a row of squash
totally dominating both of them

after spending a few hours hoeing this stuff
apparently the roots run real deep down in the soil
its almost impossible to dig up
so hoe it was
again and again

i thought
i wonder if the organic weed killer i used in texas would work

i would use pickling vinegar which is 9% plus orange oil plus dish soap
this worked pretty good there

so
i re researched organic weed killer
the one that seemed to do the best was using a 20% vinegar
i couldnt find it at any local stores
so i amazoned it
it showed up 2 days later
how do they do that
amazing

then i got orange oil at the garden center
then i got the liquid dish washing soap we used

now if you mess with this stuff wear gloves
maybe even goggles and long pants

i took 1 gallon of the 20% vinegar
added 2 oz of orange oil
added 1-2 oz of the dish washing liquid
shook it up real good
poured it into this spray bottle
labeled it good
then
sprayed the long bed of morning glory so that the leaves were soaked good

within two hours they were wilted and dying
the next day 90 % were dead
so i resprayed that 10% again

now its been a week
all that area between the squash and the beans are all devoid of any morning glory

im sure it will return eventually since this stuff probably doesnt get to the roots
but instead of an hour of weeding and hoeing i can just spray it with this
organic weed killer

i have used it up close to veggies
as long as you dont get any on the veggies leaves it doesnt damage the veggies
i used a piece of cardboard to protect the veggies

warning if you get this on your skin it hurts
so wash it off

you want to use this in the middle of a real hot sunny day with no threat of rain for a day or two

be safe
but
be organic in all you do in the garden

the organicgreen doctor

a muddy beach revisited

A MUDDY BEACH REVISITED

5 months ago i wrote this blog a muddy beach about a beach in nearby goleta called the goleta beach
i think it as a poor mans beach
i guess thats why they dumped hundreds of big truckloads of mud and debris and junk and who knows what else in this beach
by digging a deep hole and filling it up so the ocean as the tide would come in and the waves would wash over this what smelled like a cess pool to me
the waves and tide would pull whatever was in that cess pool out into the ocean
the hope was that over time all that stuff would be pulled out to sea and the water around the beach and the beach itself would return to normal

well
it didnt quite worked as planned
why would they dump all that stuff here
i think it was some deal made years ago

this beach has been closed since the first truckload was dumped there
its been closed about 6 months now

if you could look to the left of the above picture
up on a bluff sits the university of california at santa barbara campus
just below the campus and the bluff is a walkway down to the ocean
you can see paddle boaters and surfers and beach activity going on

not far way
just to the right in the below picture
sits that cesspool at goleta beach


ive been their twice
once when i wanted to see for myself what it looked like and smelled like
the second time i brought my wife she with me
we walked out onto the wharf where fishermen were catching fish even though it said no fishing allowed since the water may be poisoned or should i say is poisoned
from there we walked by the cesspool beach
ms be would have said that smells bad  pyoo  wee
from there we wanted up the path around and through the campus to a great lookout over the ocean

this site of the ucsb was once a marine base that was closed
it was shelled by the japanese during ww2 by a sub that surfaced below the cliffs and started shooting away
yes the japanese attacked the mainland during ww2

good thing they werent doing it today they would probably get sick from the water

when you look out over the ocean from there sometimes you see dolphins sometimes whales alot of kelp beds
way in the distance you can see the menacing oil platforms that caused that disaster that almost destroyed santa barbaras tourist industry

we saw no one swimming at all in the beach area
the smell would be enough to keep you from the water
i did worry about the poor folks that caught fish off the wharf and ate them

all that debris and mud and juices with who knows what from the thomas fires and the montecito mudslides getting dumped there
good for montecito
bad for goleta

now over 6 months later they have decided to reopen the beach
the biggest problem was the bacterial counts wouldnt go down
well lets see 100s of big dump trunk loads of $&!(  just got dumped there
sure that areas contaminated
and
it was and probably still is

the day the reporter that wrote this latest story was there
surprise
there was no one swimming in the water even though it was ok to do so

you know
we arent stupid

i sure hope this area recovers back to where it use to be
its a beautiful location just below the campus
it could be a secret place a lot of folks dont utilize

heres hoping for a full recovery

i still dont understand why they were allowed to dump this stuff on this beach
just down from a campus where 25000 students attend

i thought this was a green environmentally sensitive county and state
a definite black spot on its record

the organicgreen doctor

a million will get you one of these

A MILLION WILL GET YOU ONE OF THESE

back in the early digit 2000s when home prices were sky high almost everywhere
i seemed to get a lot of new patients who had moved in to the austin area from california
many had sold their homes they had lived in for 20+ years
they bought larger homes with bigger lots for a lot less money than in california then used the money left from the sell of their homes to retire on

there werent that many folks moving in the other directions since many couldnt affor to buy homes in california

these are the issues we faced when we decided to go the wrong direction and retire here to santa barbara

being a minimalist type folks anyway
we made the decision to do just that
be minimalist

so we looked for an entry level condo where we could move the money from the sell of our beloved country n into a new place to live
we went from a 3000 sq ft house with 10 acres and a 1200 sq ft barn to a 1200 square foot condo

using this minimalist approach and a change of how we wanted to live we moved forward
and
a year later we are quite content
i get to garden and do my volunteer work
my wife she gets to see her family and ms b regularly
we have chickens like in texas they just stay at the communtiy garden
we walk to many of the places we go to like the farmers market downtown or uptown the grocery store lots of restaurants relatives the pharmacy clinics the hospital the bank etc
i dont have to mow or weedeat anything
i put that energy into hiking walking gardening
we are a couple miles from the beach
we are a mile from good hiking into the foothills of the mountains
im ok with it
my wife she is ok with it

folks are always saying
we want to move to santa barbara

well if you got a million
in this article
you can see what you get for a million
no it wont me anything like what we left behind in texas
remember most of you will be going moving the wrong way
it should be west to east not east to west
unless you got a lot more than a million

here is the article
see what you get for that million

yep
were ok with all this
were happy

the organicgreen doctor