Kurt's Miscellany

Won't someone invent a threadless garden hose coupler? It is such a pain to unscrew threaded garden hose ends. I'd like to see something compression based, so all you need to do is pull a lever to separate the two ends, and then push the lever down to re-connect them. That would be great, mm-kay?

I was digging around in one of my flower beds yesterday when I started hearing a vaguely threatening, unusual low droning sound. Having been attacked by yellowjackets twice in the past, I quickly vacated the area. A few minutes later I cautiously crept back and discovered that the place I had been digging was now being thoroughly inspected by some angry-looking yellowjackets.

I gave them a half hour to calm down, retrieved my tools, and now had to figure out how to deal with these unwanted critters. I had no more wasp/yellowjacket poison spray, and didn't want to go out and spend money to acquire more of it. I have also noticed that this spray is often ineffective, since it doesn't seem to get into the hole very deeply. I recalled a conversation I'd had several months previously with a friend who had mentioned pouring boiling water down a fire ant hole. So I resolved to give these yellowjackets a very hot drink.

This evening I waited for the sun to set and laid down a board to flatten the tall grass obscuring the nest opening. Then I boiled a tea kettle full of water, poured two cups of it into a pyrex measuring cup, and tossed it onto the nest. I still saw a few yellowjackets flying out of the nest, so I doused it twice more with additional fresh-boiled water.

Afterwards, I inspected the nest opening and saw no further activity. There was a dead yellowjacket near the entrance. I'm hoping that's the end of this particular nest. Apologies if that sounded a bit cruel, but after having been stung multiple times on two separate occasions I have very little sympathy for these beasties.

I started gardening using the square foot gardening method last year after getting fed up with the constant weeding and soil problems I had experienced using traditional row gardening. This is yet another example of benefitting from reading off-the-wall comments on Slashdot. This year I was quite ambitious, having constructed an additional 9 boxes (118 square feet in various-sized boxes) to the 4 boxes (80 square feet in various-sized boxes) I built over the course of last year. At around 3 hours' preparation time for each box (buying materials, putting boxes together, mixing soil) this was a lot of time to invest, and it was all done over the course of around 5 week-ends.

So far, I have been quite happy with my garden. The weeds have been minimal and the plants have been healthy and productive. I was able to get a lot of things into the ground very early since I didn't have to spend extensive time tilling, etc. In the past this had discouraged me enough to prevent me from starting until it was too late to plant early-spring vegetables. This year, I finally got some radishes, lettuce, broccoli, and peas.

There have been a few problems though:

Slugs

I haven't really had a big problem with slugs as I did when I planted directly in the ground. However, one shady spot has consistently been attacked by the slugs, who have destroyed two petunia seedlings planted in succession. I'm trying copper wiring around the box perimeter to see if this deters them.

Flea Beetles

I had a big problem with them on my eggplants earlier this spring. I got seriously annoyed and started squishing them by hand. Strangely enough, that seemed to work.

I originally saw around 10 on each of my eggplants. I'd catch one between my thumb, the eggplant leaf, and my index finger, then slowly pull my thumb and index finger along the leaf until I had the beetle off the leaf. It was still between my two fingers and thus unable to hop away. Then SQUISH. A few would escape, but the rest would be reduced to a chitinous smudge. Very satisfying.

Over several days I did this repeatedly, and now I only see an occasional one every week or so. The stragglers get the same treatment, and my eggplants seem much happier now. The trick for me seems to be moving in on the beetle slowly so it doesn't jump away.

Yellowing of Zucchini Leaves

I planted a Zucchini in the garden, and it was doing very well until around 2 weeks ago. At that point, I started noticing a yellowing of the bottom-most leaves, starting at the tips. Over about a week, the affected leaves would get yellower and yellower until the only remaining green was along the leaf veins. The rest is dried like parchment, almost a bronze color, and curled up.

The plant as a whole seems to be doing well right now, flowering and producing new leaves. However, it looks like whatever was affecting the older leaves also strikes new leaves about a week after they emerge. The pattern is the same: yellowing around the tips of the leaves, spreading to the base of the leaf over several days, and eventually resulting in a curled-up, dried leaf.

I took a dried leaf to Merrifield garden center to elicit a diagnosis and/or suggestions to fix the problem. Three people looked at it, and none of them knew what the problem was. They said maybe inadequate sunlight, which couldn't be it since the plant gets full sun from around 10 AM to around 6 PM. They thought maybe the soil was too wet, but I don't think this is the problem since the soil feels neither soggy nor powdery when I stick my finger into it. They looked up plant diseases and guessed maybe Cucumber Mosaic virus, but the leaves are evenly dried, there are no dark blotches, and there is no slimy liquid when I cut off a leaf. They said maybe a grub had gotten in and was siphoning off the plant's liquid, but the "trunk" of the zucchini looks pretty healthy to me.

I'm not sure yet what the problem is, but I posted to Gardenweb forums to see if I can get some answers.

Cabbage Worms

This is a green caterpillar that matches the color of the broccoli, cabbage, or brussels sprout plant that it's munching on. So far, I have only been able to fix this by pulling off the worms and squishing them. They keep reappearing, munching on the leaves, and leaving frass everywhere. Also, some other kind of smaller bug looks like it's sapping the plants. I'm not optimistic about getting anything out of these plants this year. Next year I will try floating row covers on all of them.

I had two 6-foot tall clothesline posts in my yard when I bought my house. Seeing as how we're now in the 21st century with such newfangled technology as a clothes washer and dryer, we didn't ever use the clothes line. Since the posts were not very attractive, hard to mow around, and just generally "in the way", I decided I should get rid of them. Last year I tried taking out the first one. As I dug deeper and deeper, cutting through assorted tulip tree roots that were surrounding the concrete base of the steel post, I discovered that removing them would be more difficult than I had anticipated. Aside from the aforementioned roots, the big difficulty turned out to be that the post was 9 feet long and the lower 3 feet of it were embedded in concrete! It took considerable effort over two days using a pickaxe, iron tamping bar, shovel, and obscene verbiage to eventually get the post out.

Forward to this year, last weekend. I decided that now was the time to take out the second one. Mentally preparing myself, I assembled the same tools and launched my attack. Unfortunately, I hit even more tree roots this time since the second post was even closer to our friendly back-yard tulip tree. Recalling the effort from last year, I started to get discouraged, which slowed me down. Then I ran out of daylight, so I decided maybe I should approach this differently.

This morning, I hauled out my trusty hammer drill and started abusing the concrete. This didn't prove overly effective either, since drilling small holes in a big chunk of concrete apparently fails to magically disintegrate said chunk. So I went to Home Depot looking for a solution. Now I can proudly report that I have found something that works.

If you want to dig out a post embedded in concrete that is buried in the ground, you go get a foot-long masonry spike. It has a pointed tip on one end, and a flat surface for hammering on the other. Get a spike with a handle and plastic hand guard; your wrist will be much happier when it doesn't receive hammer impacts that miss the spike. Also get a 3-pound short-handled steel sledge hammer. Finally, get a 2-foot long crowbar.

Place the spike tip right next to the post, pointing downward into the concrete. Start hammering on the spike. The goal here is to crack the concrete wide enough to give you a hold for your crowbar. Insert the crowbar into the crack and lever out the broken chunks of concrete. These should come out pretty easily if you're pushing them against soft ground. Continue until you get to the bottom of the post, then start pushing the post back and forth to dislodge it from the now-broken concrete. The spike-and-hammer method allowed me to break the remaining 2 1/2 feet of concrete and remove the post in 1 1/2 hours, as opposed to the day it would have taken me otherwise.

So now I have the two clothesline posts out, I am not sure what to do with them. I can't put them in the trash, since they are 9 feet long. I don't feel like hauling them out to the dump. If you are reading this, in the northern Virginia area, and would like some steel clothesline posts, please email me at the address at the top of this page. I will give them to the first person who requests them who is willing to come pick them up.

I have had a really ugly, space-consuming "dry bar" in my living room ever since I moved into my house. Not being big drinkers, we only used it for storage. For several years, I have been meaning to get rid of it. This weekend Mary Ann and I both agreed that now would be the time. Since there was a bit to learn about removing brick, I figured it would be worthwhile to share the most effective techniques I found while maniacally brandishing my demolition tools! So here follows my brick demolition tutorial/how-to.

First off, you have to decide whether you want to try to salvage the brick for re-use. Unless you are really poor or the bricks are really valuable to you, I would recommend against trying to salvage them. In my opinion it is a lot of trouble for little benefit. You have to be careful when removing them so that they don't break. You have to remove all the mortar clinging to each brick even after it's been taken out of the wall. You have to carefully stack each brick in a pile that is probably a pain to walk to several hundred times. Removing each individual brick takes a lot more time when you are trying not to break it. Finally, who can deny the primal satisfaction of smashing a sledgehammer against bricks, then hurling them onto a pile, with dust flying whilst grunting Tim-Allen style! (Well, maybe not that last part)

Now I would highly recommend putting down plywood, even if you don't care about the ground/floor around the area where you will be removing the brick. You probably want real plywood, not particle board. This is because you will be shoveling up all the brick/mortar debris, and it's much easier on a smooth surface such as plywood made from virgin wood. You can never have enough plywood; it's the duct tape of the construction world.

If you are anywhere where brick and mortar dust are going to be a problem, you'll want to put down one or more dropcloths. I used a 10 foot x 25 foot plastic sheet that I bought at Home Depot. I put it over everything in the immediate vicinity of the demolition, and it worked great for protecting my furniture and computer equipment. The computer hosting this web site was sitting under the plastic dropcloth a few feet from the brick-smashing; I didn't even power it off.

So assuming you are ignoring my advice and trying to salvage bricks, you'll need to get a hammer drill. Get a carbide bit as wide as the mortar joints (probably around 3/4 inch). You'll probably want a bit that is hexagonal where the chuck teeth grip it. I unfortunately bought a bit with a round base, so the chuck teeth kept losing their grip on the bit after 5 or 10 drillings. This meant I constantly had to re-tighten the bit. Yes, it gets very tiresome. Now drill holes into the mortar every two or three inches around each brick. You will probably also want to use a hammer to pound a masonry wedge into the mortar. The goal is to weaken the mortar so that you can use a crowbar to lift it out intact. I would recommend against using your masonry wedge to pry out bricks; I broke a big chunk off of mine while trying to do this. Did I mention that you don't want to salvage the brick? This process is precisely as tedious as it sounds.

Onward to true demolition! There is not a whole lot to explain, since it is about as simple as finding a big, blunt hammer and using it to vent your hidden animal aggression on a poor unsuspecting brick edifice. Plywood is even more important here, since you will be raining big chunks of masonry onto the ground and creating piles of magnificent devastation... errr... rubble.

One caveat: if your brick is two or more layers side-by-side, you might want to consider removing layers with a crowbar until you have a single layer left. You can pound a masonry wedge into the mortar, create a space big enough for your crowbar, then pry the brick out. If you pound away on a brick with another brick behind it, you'll probably just pulverize the brick. You'll have big chunks of debris flying around in all directions at high speed, which you may not want if you are inside while you are working.

For smaller jobs indoors, you may want to consider using a small mallet-sized hammer as opposed to a long-handled, heavy sledge hammer. You have more control over your swing this way. Also, since you are using less force for each swing, the debris is not going to fly as fast or as far. If you don't care about flying debris, by all means go bigger!

Once you are done demolishing, you can easily remove the debris with a wide, flat-bottom shovel. You put down plywood first like I suggested, right?

Since this could be construed as advice and we are talking about heavy, real-world mass and machinery, I must tack on some legalese here. I disclaim all responsibility for any pain or injury you may suffer by following my demolition advice. I am not a professional, so you follow my advice at your own risk! Use safety glasses, safety mask, work at astrologically auspicious times, sacrifice a chicken beforehand, etc.

Today is garden clean-up day. The first frost of the season hit last Tuesday, so everything's turned brown except for the carrots and the volunteer butterfly bush. We had a bunch of volunteer papaya seedlings this year; they probably came from the vermicompost soil. This compost contained some discarded papaya parts, including seeds. So wherever I put vermicompost, I got a bunch of papaya seedlings (which I initially mistook for English Ivy).

I let some of them grow in parts of the garden I wasn't using. When the frost hit, it killed them all. As part of today's cleanup, I pulled out the dead stalks; some were almost 4 feet tall. I noticed a really big tuber on the bottom of each one and wondered if it could be eaten. My wife says she doesn't know of any Philippine recipes that use papaya root. So I hit the net, but likewise found nothing. I did find a mention of "papaya root beer", but no recipe. So I guess I'll just have to compost the papaya stalks this time.

So I've been working on building some steps down to my back yard. There's a steep slope down to a narrow flat bit, then another steep slope down to the rest of my yard. Make sense? No, of course not. Anyway: I need some steps. I finally got something tangible today after way too many trips to Home Depot. It was fun, though I must admit to having an overactive imagination with regard to power saws...