remember the hops

I hope I remember the hops... of course i remember them but do I clearly remember that day when I went for the harvest like a Bald Eagle plucking Salmon from a spawning run.

I believe i mentioned earlier about this "wild" hops plant i found in a back alley in Vancouver that had gone ape shit and climbed up to the power lines. Well i made the call that it was Harvest day on a day that i was relatively kid free so i went to the gym to get stretched up for the harvest. In the car i had smartly placed a rake and some bags, and in my head i had a dream. I was a bit sweaty and short sleeved when i began the operation finding a 2 hour parking spot right by the alley where the said plant lives. I started plucking hops flowers from the plant.. one at a time, and then that thing happened that happens when you start to harvest from plants. You become amazed by how much "product" the plant produces. When you look at a plant and you see "fruit"... (hops flowers in this case) you see a bunch but then when you get closer and start handling the plant and looking behind the leaves you see more and more, and then you become in tune with the general structure of the plant and how it produces. Beans are really good for that because the beans hide under the leaves of the plant... it is really fascinating stuff.

Then you notice that your sweaty arms and hands are starting to have an allergic reaction to the hops plants but you say to yourself "I will not be defeated"... "Next time i will bring gloves and a long sleeve shirt but for now this is my window and i can fail or succeed". The history of me is to always overdue it, that's just the way I roll... sometimes i can even start to recognize it when it is happening, but i just want more and more and more free hops. It was about the time i was leaping up in the air with a rake to bring down the plant to harvest level that i ran into one of the local residents. He smiled and said "you making beer", and we talked for a bit... apparently nobody has ever harvested these hops for 9 years, which is a far as he goes back with respect to this neighbourhood. Very Human... apparently there has been a major hops shortage for a while and a major hops plant has been going to waste for years. Well i had to roll after a while to pick my oldest kid up from school so i dumped out the harvest and put some lotion on my arms.



I was running a bit late to the school so i kind of jogged the last few blocks and then it wasn't until i was standing in the hall with all of the other parents that i realized that i smelled like man sweat and hops... perhaps reek is a better word than smelled. Also there was the red blotches all over my skin from the hops irritation.. the good part was that i was given a wide birth in the school hall... no need to get involved with that gossip yappery... our mind needs to focus on curing them hops.





Given that we were set to go to the Bold Point Farm stay and the raw fact that our house is an insane asylum where anybody is just constantly buggering anything they can get their hands on i went for the quick dry (cure) method. I had read about roasted hops and that was my game. You have to look at the big picture in these times:
I have Hops, i want to use hops, how can i make hops available for the future. I had 2 days before we went away for 4 days and Cory wasn't home when the hops man came a calling on his back door... it would have been great... a dedicated friend brewer gets a surprise visit from an overzealous Robertson all shocked up from a few hours of hops picking and feeling generous with the hops.

No problem, hops cured bagged and frozen for winter brewing... only a fool would disagree.




So the city put in a new "roundabout" by my house and i envision a metal "art" statue that a tubor from that hops plant can climb up and produce... i also have big plans for that plant to be subdivided so that it becomes a common species in the back alley behind my house. Remember the biggest part of farming is planning, the plants do the work.

Bold Point road

Make a right from village bay road
September night the wind did blow
Power lines came down
I didn't care because I saw the light
Went to learn about the farming life
And I learned a lot


On bold point road there is a little farm stay
Chickens seed corn the sheep some hay
And watch the raven fly
The chicken mothers eye
Now it's all quiet on bold point road
I had a pen and so I made that note
It’s just the way it goes

In the back there is a forest path
It hits a road with no roadbed
This must have been how the settlers lived
And soon I saw me a gravel road
Lead me to a mighty maple tree
There was a sign by it you see
It said "bold point"

In 1920 the Union Steamships
They used the old wooden cattle bridge
A floating general store
The hotel is no more
Loaded wagons with mining supplies
All the hope in the young men’s eyes
A pet graveyard
Ned, Buckey and Barb

Stars shine in the Quadra night
Hidden from all the city lights
Wood stove it glows
When I look back on bold point road
I have the stories that Rod he told
I made a friend out there
On bold point road






Bold Point Farmstay

I saw this CBC contest about songs about roads, and I have no songs about roads, which is odd having done 4 CD's with a band called Roadbed... I was thinking of throwing in "Willingdon Junction"... about an important train road... i believe i just talked myself into something.

We had a great time at the Bold Point Farm stay. It was a chance to learn about gardening, farming and living in isolation in a sustenance role with the land, and then of course, there is that thing you get when you escape the city... quiet, peace, no computer, no telephone, big trees, big animals and big storms. A chance to stop and observe things, and then you get questions in your head to ask Rod, and then you get answers that spur more questions... Next thing you know you are in the library getting a positive identification on a fungus species that you thought might be chanterelles but in fact is a very deadly fungus... * NEVER eat mushrooms you picked unless you are absolutely positive they are edible. I know very little about Fungus species. I am more of a bird, mammal and vegetable Man myself, but because i knew our hosts knew i figured i could pick, come back and ask and then eat... which i did minus the eating.


To me one of the greatest lessons was in bird behaviour... in particular the chickens reaction to a Chicken Hawk, or a raven. I was standing with a mother and about a dozen chicks and i happened to look up and see a Coopers hawk, at around the same time we heard this call from the mother chicken and the chicks scattered. The mother froze with her eye fixed on the hawk and the hawk moved on. Now this of course opened the conversation about this dynamic which begat a good introduction into "evolving raven behaviour with respect to co-coordinated attack on farm livestock". Apparently a raven beak can snap the head off a chicken if it gets a chance, so in an effort to create that chance the ravens will work in pairs. Two Ravens will fly in the trees by the kill zone corridor (the long driveway road next to the trees) and the chickens will do their thing and then one raven will fly off and the chickens think its all cool, go back to business, then the second raven swoops down and gets a chance at a close range surprise attack... of course the raven does risk taking the business end of a Roosters spur, but everything in life has it's gambles. There is no Insurance for this kind of deal... you need chickens who have "wild farm" smarts.

We talked Vancouver backyard chicken coops and apparently they only want hens, no roosters... but apparently, a hen, in time, can change into a rooster, or at least start to look like a rooster... be good to weird a few people out, and you can imagine the extrapolations, folklore, and city planning meetings.

But this is a gardening blog, and i should talk of the succulent oregano, snapping chard, brilliant beans, garlic, hazelnuts and of course i should mention Uncle Rods Man tomato greenhouse otherwise known as Robertson's secret snack bar.



Check out the design... 1/4-inch re-bar wrapped in PVC, arched for snow weight problems, re-enforced. I'm sold on the tomatoes in a greenhouse, a total no brainier. The bold point farm stay is north and on a moist forested mushroom filled island and Rod's tomatoes are just rocking it... hitting stride. I should have asked him... does he need to open the door to help fertilization? And in this week in Vancouver our blightmatoes are done... that's right blightmatoes is not a word... I am taking the word "blight" and the word "tomato" and fusing them together creating a description of something nobody wants.

On one of the days it was raining so i went for a walk down to Bold Point... I took the back "forest path" route and my mind went from gardening and livestock rearing to the history of the area. There is this crazy old rotten bridge that must have been one hell of a construction project in it's day, and apparently you can still walk across it... it's just that when you get to the other side you are convinced you don't want to walk back. That's what the people who i saw walking up a private driveway told me when i asked them if this was a little "loop". On the other side of the bridge is private property and i imagine the people who live there probably went to live there for a little peace and quiet and may tire of simpletons ending up on their property wondering how to get back afraid of the bridge. Anyway i had to wonder how it all got there, and Rod, as usual, filled me in.

I got some Garlic, some i ate and then rest I am set to plant to keep the strain going, as i find it most delectable garlic. My daughter and Rod harvested hazelnuts for human consumption and jerusalem artichoke greens for sheep consumption. Nothing quite like seeing a kids eyes after they have done things like that... it's actually really exciting rather than the usual manufactured excitement we are trained to plug our children into in order to make then good consumers.

Do yourself a favour go to the Bold Point Farm stay and kick back for 4 days (it takes a while to get there so you need to get away from the travel days for proper mind ease).

Did i mention we saw Orca's on the ferry ride back... a good omen if i don't say so myself.

harvest

Simply put... recall spring time when you meant to plant but you put it off for a week and then another week and then you were furious with yourself for loosing 2 weeks of prime growing time and thus hindering your yield significantly.

Now we are in rain and cold and mold season and by checking out of the garden scene at this time you stand to have all kinds of good things start to rot. This is the time when the pioneers were going ape shit trying to store the food for the long winter. Of course they didn't have the options we have... our sissy society dictates that we make a call on the cell phone about how we are a little ache today so we need to go to a coffee shop and spend nine bones on some fancy coffee and a date square... and we then feel like we have accomplished something. I feel hate just thinking about it... how do you think the local newspapers would like a story about a pro side burned "maniac" going around and laying random beats on coffee shop consumers, all the while calming he is doing a service to society... probably wouldn't fly i say. And it would be wrong of course too, because a man gardener should spend his time bringing in crops.

Remember the spring spinach i froze? made a pizza the other day and sprinkled some of that on and felt rather regal come to think of it. Store food for use now... use refrigeration technology.

Did i ever tell you about my Hops plant? Of course Man hops make man beer and if you are against beer then you are against me, conprendo? So of course as an natural farmer and brew master i was all over getting some hops plants, but they are hard to buy, but with a little research and once you know what the plant looks like you can find it in back alleys all over town. I happened to be coming back from the gym on day, on a bike, down a back alley and i noticed a hops plant so i came back and dug up a tuber (a root portion that will grow a plant) and put it in my yard by the compost and the back fence... it took a while to get rolling but once it got over the fence where it could get full sunlight all day it took off like gangbusters, and i probably have enough hops for a 23 liter brew. Then i got to thinking what about the mother plant? How did it do? so i went back and the plant has climbed the hydro poll and is running along the hydro lines and there must be a few garbage bags full of hops on the plant. I will have to go take a picture because it is actually ridiculous how well that plant is doing... which of course means we need a cherry picker or a couple of good men with a 32 foot Vulcan ladder to reap that harvest. It's odd that my wife was just recently going off on how she doesn't think i should clear the leaves from the eves this year (we do have a very tall house) as it is too dangerous, and apparently she works with some doctor who was talking about how men come in with head injuries due to ladder related falls and there is a total cor-relation to the season and what the men were doing. I guess harvesting hops from a hydro line in a back alley is a bit off the charts, but could go in there with a disastrous apple harvest fiasco. I mean hops aren't that expensive, but again it is the principle... those hops are about to rot... wonder if i could just yank the damn vine down... there is that hydro issue? I'm thinking a fire truck could come in handy... how to get a fire truck there? think think think... we need those hops.

Those hops are now a symbol of everything i stand for... free good useful plant growth about to waste away in front of the eyes of a thousand hammerheads who throw Styrofoam and plastic from their farmed salmon purchase into the landfill thinking all the time that they have it harder than anybody in the history of civilization.

I'm a getting those hops, and I'm a brewing, and then I'm a swilling... that's the way we roll around here.

stay tuned

son of a gun

I had such great hopes for this here blog, funny how the summer can just slip away in a blur of events, and then flinchers rob your ass and stomp the shit out of your garden killing all your seedlings to where you get to the point you think there is nothing to write about but savage failure. But there is always a lesson.

Lets face it, life ain't fair in the natural world... it's a stomp or be stomped game out there... not really but i just like the word stomp. Who cries for the fly that hits the spider web and soon ceases to exist? And in the front yard a bald faced hornet and a yellow jacket are locked in a death battle (my money is on the hornet)... sometimes they both lay stunned for a while on the ground waiting for a bare foot Robertson to take a nasty foot sting. And then life goes on... i bet you there are a few hundred other insects in the area that are just blending into the surroundings, and nobody knows that they are there... these guys don't dig the "stomp or be stomped" vibe... they are more of a "why don't i just blend into the background and do my feeding" kind of insect.

fuck it... what is positive?

I have some nice sunflowers in so what to do?

You see with all of the Salmon feasting that has been going on on the west coast these days we have been having a lot of dinner parties that feature a BBQ salmon and in one of the dishes that arrived was a salad with sunflower sprouts. It was insanely good... so i shall save the seeds and make me some sunflower sprouts this fall. My father made alph-alpha sprouts when we were young, i will carry the torch with home grown sunflower sprouts. My method will be to put the seeds in a small layer of water and let them sprout and then eat the bastards... beware of mold... don't freak out over it but be conscious and observe as a good scientist would.

My plantings that got stomped by tomato and corn flinchers might have been for naught as my neighbour in the garden, lets call her "old cook old sport" to keep names hidden, planted some bock choi and it is small and is starting to flower... she was very distraught... I am wondering if the declining daylight hours are sending a signal to the plants to flower and seed now because the end is near... which is most excellent for some horticulture experiments... My earlier spinach advise might have to be revised, but time is the hunter on that one.

My meeting with Old Cook old sport worked out for the best however as she has no tolerance for wasted food. I have kind of been scared of her lately because the dandelions have been building up in my garden and she has a low tolerance for weeds.. she is on the case and will always point out the fact that i need to weed... i agree.
But none the less in an effort to turn her attention away from my bean, pea, tomato, celery, beet and weed pile i started to point out other neglected gardens and she went bananas... "this is bad you have to pick it now or it will get worse" she cawed... "they wasting money" she exasperated. It was much like having a cheerleader urging me to pilfer neglected gardens.. she even did some of the picking. As a matter of fact she wouldn't not let me pick food from neglected gardens... i loaded up on some neglected peas that were rotting in a pile (but once shelled were fine) to add to my curry, i flinched tomatoes from a garden that looked like it hadn't been cared for in a month (many were on the ground rotting). So there is me loading up with old cook old sport saying things like "you need to pick, it bad for plant you need to take and eat now".... it was king of like one of those old cartoons where the devil was in the characters ear telling him what to do and why to do it, and being a victim of flinching i was weary, but being a member of a garden for 3 years i have witnessed the incredible waste of food that rots into the ground because people get busy or leave town. My policy on this is maintenance... if a plant is full of ripe fruit and below the plant is rotting fruit it probably means this is a situation of gross neglect and i ask myself the question "if i was a gross neglector what would i want to have happen?", and i realize that i would want to be taught a lesson.... just kidding, kidding because the lesson won't be learned because the neglector doesn't know what they are losing. i never take it all just a few so that less fruit will hit the ground so that fewer slugs will populate the region and balance can return to the garden.

And what about my strawberry failure?

A classic Robertson failure which sees our hero doing maximum labour for a negative return. Before i get going on this you know what pisses me off? the fact that right above me labour as in "the word' has a red line below it saying YOU FUCKED UP.. but i didn't in Canada (Man Country) we spell labor labour... labor has no red line under it... i though i set the god damn preferences to Canadian English. Oh well not to worry... many glaring English mistakes around here anyways. So my neighbour... son of a bitch! neighbour now has a line under it but neighbor doesn't... both of those words should totally have the "u"... there is no countries anymore just corporations so can we fuck this "neighbour" "neighbor" horse shit because i have a story to tell about strawberries... Thank Christ that word isn't spelled strowberries in some American dictionary or i just might lose it completely. So my neighbour had an old laundry tub he was getting rid of and i thought it would make a great planter to keep the strawberries contained as strawberries tend to scatter like a pack of 3 year olds after a chocolate treat, so i lugged this dog out to the garden at great effort to myself and then proceeded to counter sink the bastard which took a whole day of labour from a man with 3 kids a band and hockey playoffs, and the strawberries he enjoyed were probably less than 10. The problems... poor drainage, fucking slugs, strawberries just shoot over the edge and scatter anyways, fucking slugs, loss of prime real estate, fucking slugs... you get the picture... I have money i can buy strawberries what i don't have is an appetite for failure. For the record I'll try some hanging strawberries next year.

garden filching

In criminal law, theft is the illegal taking of another person's property without that person's freely-given consent. Someone who carries out an act of or makes a career of theft is known as a thief, and the act of theft is known as stealing, thieving, or sometimes filching.

-Wikipedia

Remember i was barking on about my corn a little while back and i was worried about when to harvest it as to pick it when it was ready, and i was also wondering how the fertilization of the kernels would turn out... well it looks like i don't have to worry about that any more because some thief put a solid flinching on my corn. Not only did the bastards flinch the corn they fractured the stock of the corn plants so that the other cobs would be left to grow on a wounded plant... and it looks like they stood on my new lettuce, spinach, beet and chard plantings to do so.

This all happened shortly after i ran into a corn farmer who i pressed for tips about how to know when your corn is ready... the answer is when the sheath leaves around the cob start to part and bend away from the cob the corn is ready to be harvested... i had 2 cobs ready before the first wave of flinching occurred... it started as an email alert about some sucker in the garden who lost all their peppers and i was kind of like "Phew, good thing i wasn't fool enough to grow peppers... better go water my garden"... which soon turned into "holey shit my fucking corn is gone, son of a bitch, and they fucking broke the plant... AND STOMPED MY FUCKING LETTUCE... OK this is clearly a declaration of war".

After a hard days researching places to purchase razor wire, leg hold traps, poison spikes, mace bomb and lumber to build a tree fort/ hunting blind in the popular trees behind the garden i recalled how i got that massive scar on my shin:



You can't change the world and when you set a trap you are just liable to catch yourself adding insult to injury. I ended up meeting one thief a few days ago... i say one because i believe we are dealing with multiple people due to a significant body of evidence i have accumulated through the course of my investigation. As a Man gardener born and raised in Scarborough i should have by rites laid a beating on this person, but from what i saw was that life was already doing that... so i just tried a lesson. I tried to train that person to harvest food without damaging the plant, but all i could get was a consistent denial that the person even took any food and was just looking at the garden even though i was standing 4 feet away from this person as they ate my tomatoes and walked over my beet seedlings. For a moment i felt like those suckers in Alaska who were ruined by the exxon valdez oil spill, or anybody who tried to take Monsanto to court... basically you lose and the guilty deny any wrongdoing... the good news is that i just lost some vegetables because i was dealing with a poor sociopath, where as a remorseless corporation is a rich sociopath with the court of law bought an paid for. Ok this is getting ugly... i feel hate welling.

I think i said earlier you can't change the world, as a collection of people we are just to stupid to see the light... too distracted by the carrot that is really just a mirage. So what? You have to find a way to live in it... and that is why at this time i would like to declare Corn a "negative crop" (for a community garden). What does that mean? It means that when you plant corn not only do you not get to eat the corn but the plants around the corn are susceptible to a mean clumsy foot stomping and so your yield on the corn is a gross negative. And that is the game of Man gardening... to reap rewards, not suffer troubling setbacks. My beans and broccoli are going strong but my cherry tomatoes are there saying "come over here for a feed and a stomping".

Next year there will be no corn, and the tomatoes will be planted on the edge of the garden so as not to encourage flinchers to go for a little feed and stomp. For the record we have eaten a lot of tomatoes so i can't classify it as a completely negative crop... you just have to keep on it to remove the tempting fruit as it comes ripe. i might actually experiment with a perimeter of stinging nettle around the garden but i fear for my children on that one... however i believe that learning to overcome hazards is a good parenting technique.

The garden is now 3 years old and i am afraid that it has identified itself as a food source for people who may need food more than the rest of us... perhaps we need a decoy garden beside our garden but something tells me that wouldn't fly given the fact that the city workers that care for the park have killed all of the trees by "weed eating" the bark around the base of the trees and they mowed down all of the blueberry bushes around the garden because it was the easiest thing to do (video coming).

One of those "nobody loves you" moments, but you can't let it get you down... i can buy corn, and gardening is about the thrill of being part of your food creation... being robbed is an uninspiring feeling, so you have to know your game and play it properly.

On a better note i harvested some of my celery today as we were making chili for lunch and needed some aromatic vegetables to fry in oil to set the stage for proper seasoning... bingo celery is a winner, even though it has a few known carcinogens in it's makeup... that's life in 2010. Do you know that laws have been passed that give retroactive immunity to oil companies for the carcinogens put in gasoline additives... suck it up suckers.

I have beans

The beans the kids planted are in full gear (planted late June ready early august)... beans can really surprise you as their fruit is hidden under the bean leaves. This is one of the reasons they make a good crop of course... once again a security issue... what people don't see they might not take. A nice ripe tomato is like a neon sign, but a succulent bean is hidden. Most likely a good way to protect the bean from the drying sun as it gets a chance to mature and become seed, which it will if one forgets to harvest it. Mine are a purple striated form of bush beans and they steam up in a most delectable fashion. Young beans are the tastiest and still have a delicate pod... i believe i have heard that beans are a vegetable you should eat cooked for proper digestion and nutrient harvesting... strong fibers. I prefer to steam beans and make sure to shut them down before them become over done.

Harvesting beans is another one where you have to be careful not to damage the plant... just pulling at the beans like a child might do can stress the plant by damaging the roots in the tug of war that will ensue if you choose the rouge harvesting technique. Scissors work well, but hands keep one "in touch" with the garden.

Speaking about in touch with the garden it seems that every bodies lettuce has gone bitter and some of the people with bitter lettuce polluting their plots are not aware of the problem that is plaguing them. I happened to be keenly observing the garden at 1:30 am this morning, in part due to my "Robertson vs. Slug" battle in the strawberry patch (remember big efforts are everything) when i noticed that the gardener down the street has a plot full of bitter lettuce... i was pretty sure this was a key issue the needed to be dealt with ASAP so i went and woke them up to have a little discussion. I brought a liter of stout as a friendship token but apparently this disgruntled gardener doesn't drink much and never at 1:30 am after rising from bed for what she calls an "unimportant issue". When i asked her if she sugared her lettuce she just looked at me... i like to think of it as a moment of enlightenment, and i explained to her the possibilities and the next thing you know she figured it was time for a glass of stout... although i failed in my quest for a late night re-plant we did share some philosophies and i was enlightened to the point where i realized that not everybody thinks the way i do.

Not all are like my apprentice... the new fellow who took over that plot that i had taken over... to keep names non public lets call him "old Tim old sport". This guy is going to make a good gardener, he has the heart of a farmer... when he is standing there munching some fresh produce picked seconds before he is in awe of the flavour and power of life. That is the fire one needs... it's cool to say you have a garden in our new corn fed horse shit society, but it is completely another animal to have your fire stoked by your love of delicious cheap food. You can see it in the garden all the time... people come out like gangbusters in the spring and by fall (harvest time) they have forgotten and the food goes back into the ground, which is natural but wrong in this situation.

When to harvest Corn?

it might be time soon.. i have never grown corn before as i have heard it takes a few rows side by side for proper pollination... time is the hunter on that. Will my corn have just a few kernels here and there, or will i be gloating like a rooster at the crack of dawn with a gut full of corn. The problem is i don't have that much... i don't want to harvest too early... i am a corn rookie, but i won't forget what happens.

in the old days i would sugar the lettuce

Ok people what happens to lettuce when it gets too old? It becomes bitter is the answer. You can see when you pick it that there is a white milky substance that appears when you rip it and it means your lettuce is done, and if you forgot to plant new lettuce like 25 days ago then you are going to be off the lettuce for a bit.

This is the situation i find myself in... when i was a younger "boy" gardener i thought i was a genius and would just sugar coat the lettuce telling myself that it was still good. It was a good effort and even i have to admire the effort of "not losing"... kind of like when you are down 3-2 in a game and your net is empty for the extra attacker and the other teams best player gets a clear break away on the empty net but you still try to chase them down hoping that maybe just maybe a mistake might be made and you can take the puck and go coast to coast and tie up the score. You have to remember that things that are unpalatable often don't digest well so an extra coating of sugar isn't always the best route to go. That is why gardening is a sport of patience and preparation, and cutting corners and going off the game plan can be a fatal turn of events. Sure we have peas in abundance, onions coming out the ying yang, steady beet and broccoli production, corn coming and the tomato and bean surge is almost on us... but why drop the ball on the lettuce?

Does the man gardener think he is so great that lettuce seeds are going to fall magically from the sky, ahead of time for proper feasting? You would think so with this clearly negligent behaviour... i should not be re-learning these lessons again, but i am and that is the life of a gardener. At this time of year things are going crazy and you are overwhelmed with your bounty and it's all positive thoughts, and that's when you make your mistakes... being on the case is everything when it comes to growing food. So i ripped out the great lettuce patch that was by the strawberry failure in a quick burst of "savage attack weeding" and within seconds the wasps were in there like lions on a water buffalo kill by a waning drinking hole in the dry season... i stayed calm and at one with the plants and the garden keeping on my course and allowed the scavenging to continue and in the end i cleared some land for planting and some wasps are now nighting down with bloated abdomens. As a side note because the great lettuce patch (of mixed lettuce) was planted a little tight at the base of the roots was a woody stalk probably to give the lettuce a Darwinian height advantage... bottom line is that the plants wanted to seed and they didn't need some hungry ass hole plucking at their leaves so they took care of it and became unpalatable, or at least non-gourmet... and in so doing they are now compost... and if a wasp did sting me i would stomp that fucker into a paste.

My daughter, or one of them for that matter, washed the onions with the hose to clean the dirt away and they are now set out on newspaper in the garage to dry. The onion patch on the other side of the strawberry failure is now more cleared ground for beets chard and some more lettuce. Lettuce in Vancouver should grow well into November so there is still plenty of game left...

The garden community has responded well to my travesty... i find if you stand in front of a Gardner and tear a strip off yourself for your lettuce failure there is a good chance that they planted too much lettuce and will offer you a chance to harvest some of theirs. Also now is the time many casual Gardeners go off on vacation and look to a professional like myself to lay down some hard core soakings on their plot... sometimes gardens need soakings and a little thinning.

second planting... or manning up again

I am a man who gardens by region, which is a good method for a man who gardens and parents at the same time. Good for the short blasts of focused effort... so today i laid down some more peas, popped in some more beets and nailed down a new scattering of beans.

There is still a lot of time left in the coastal growing season... in a good year one can get a lot of solar power to those little chlorophyll factories we know and love as chloroplasts in August, September and the early October.

Chloroplasts are organelles found in plant cells and eukaryotic algae that conduct photosynthesis. Chloroplasts capture light energy from the sun to produce the free energy stored in ATP and NADPH through a process called photosynthesis.

Basically if you can get the damn plant some sunlight and keep it hydrated the plant can take care of the rest and you can amaze people with your "green fist"... sissies have green thumbs, Man gardeners have green fists... and the reason you have a green fist is for "garden security"... i believe we have been over this, so lets move on.

With the weeding and culling last week i had a chance to see my garden as a larger organism which helped to identify areas of need. Well it happened that we were loving the beets i harvested last week so we need more (beets will have no problem growing into the fall)... we had been feasting heavily on an area of chard and lettuce in an effort to clear out some space and with the weeding i realized that the space was there... so in go the beets... one seed per hole and give then room to grow. Make fun designs with them.... i planted mine in a kind of rainbow pattern, and then filled in under the rainbow with more beets.

I laid down the peas in among the older peas... that will help them climb up to the lattice to spawn the second wave of Robertson Pea devouring... I did damaged a few of the pea plants with my insane "savage weed attack", but it's what you have to write of as collateral damage.

I dumped a few more corn plants off on the new guy who took over from the people who inspired the song "rage hero episode #37". He was late into the garden... late like mid-summer and needs plants to learn about gardening. We had a good little chat... i had this idea of just gardening plots that were abandoned for various reasons but this guy took over the plot after i had taken it over, but he actually legitimately took it over by waiting on a list for a couple of years. Anyway i introduced myself told him how to care for his broccoli plant, and i enlightened him on my philosophy on the history if his plot and made various initial suggestions based mostly on soil preparation. He appreciated that but by then i was on a roll... i had a garden student in front of me... somebody who was listening to me talk... he was standing there nodding his head with a trowel and a corn plant in one hand and a piece of broccoli in the other. Well i had to cut him off from listening to me and we had to get that corn in the ground... so we did and then i gave him another.. it was a corn plant in the entrance to my garden that takes a beating when people try to take a shortcut into the garden if you know what i mean. I laid some beans down there... funny corns and beans... apparently if you are a vegetarian you should eat corns and beans because together the two vegetables have all of the essential amino acids your body needs.

I actually have some corn cobs growing... it will be interesting to see if they got fertilized properly... that is if a local squirrel doesn't make off with the bounty before Robertson teeth get a chance to do some sinking.

That said the Man vs Squirrel comedy is one of the finest ones out there. As a young child the hours of amusement i got from my father who was trying to keep the squirrels out of the bird feeder, was pure genius. And then the chipmunks in the attic at the cottage rolling acorns around at night... brilliance. To my fathers credit he did come out on top... eventually after he systematically deleted their options one at a time.

Plant observe experiment.

You are not growing the plants.. they can do that themselves... you are their guardian and for your efforts you are rewarded with the finest reward... fresh produce.

vacationing and Gardening have their problems

I put everybody and his brother in charge of my garden while i was away... i was going to write a blog about how to prepare for a departure but then i realized that my thousands of followers would be aware of my whereabouts and some of them might be hardened hard core criminals and come and rob be while i was away. So knowing these as clear facts i decided against it and now i have garden confusion... garden confusion can happen very easily... holey shit my wife just walked into the room and i passed the idea that a chair next to me should be reupholstered with a plaid tartan and she agreed... Ok

where was i

Garden Confusion, also know as OGD Overwhelming Growth Disorder

you lose the space between good and bad, right and wrong just a blur of green.

You need a good hour block of "Savage attack weeding", which can have it's problems, the main one being that you get into a rhythm of pulling out weeds and you end up bagging the odd bean plant... and wouldn't you know it the first bean plant i yanked from the ground was the one with the Popsicle stick with my daughters name on it... son of a gun... she knows where it is... it still had some root on it so i stuck it back in the ground and then flooded the area.

One thing i have found with heavy weeding or lettuce harvesting is that it really brings in the stinging insect carnivores. i think it has to do with the fact that when you take away foliage you expose things that were not exposed before... the wasps must be aware of this and in actual fact i saw a wasp on the ground trying to fly away with a large grub but it couldn't so it just bit off a piece that it could fly off with and took off... and then the ants came in to feast in the bountiful man garden.

The other fear you have is weeding around peas... i think sometimes it is better not to pull out the roots of plants that share root territory with you pea roots because you can do a lot of damage to root systems... better to just shut down the green matter on those plants to give the peas the advantage in the game for life. I always loose my mind in times like these... it is because i am an impatient person... sometimes inpatients can be a good thing, like when it's a flowering plant (yuk yuk). Impatience can force the game but is often not the best mix for a long term plan like growing things

I had to weed because my new neighbour, the 70 year old Vietnamese lady put the fear of lazy shame into me

While i was away apparently she stopped certain friends of mine that i had assigned to harvest and eat. She was like a crow on a great horned owl when old clubfoot Sam (local blues player) came to water and pick some peas. This is something i can get behind... that is a gatekeeper for a man garden if i ever saw one! In a more negative side affect she was all over me... she is like a "no weed in the garden" kind of person while i tend to be a more garden by region kind of guy. True that i was away for a few weeks and then last weekend was the folk music festival so i tend to resemble a sun stroked exhausted alcoholic rather than a eager garden master with a keen eye for what is actually happening on the gardenbed level.

But when your garden neighbour reminds you of a few areas of your garden neglect (like weeds and over-ripe produce) you must play it like a hockey game... you had a bad shift so you get scolded and then you fly back out on the ice and come up huge with a big effort that says you know you were wrong and it will never happen again... and if it does than the next time you will place the large dandelion like weed that has insane spikes on it in your underwear for the day to serve as a lesson. The other lesson of course is to let people pick things that are ripe and loosen the ownership curve a bit on bountiful fresh produce that you foster.

Well well, the Man collective has spoken... on tomatoes

So i got a nice email from a fellow MAN gardener and he had this to say:

"trim the bottom leaves off you tomatoes, they get no sunlight, then wrap the stalk with a bit of bare copper wire. no more slugs. originally I was going to put a loop of cu, and a loop of al. poor mr slug would be a battery. ouch. but apparently mr slug won't cross the copper."

Clearly the man is insane, but who isn't around here... when the going gets fucked the fucked get going...

What i do like is the attitude... the man attitude... as the bible kind of insinuated "do unto others before they get a chance to unto to your tomatoes".

the other great thing about this is that he solved the problem... the slugs won't cross the copper wire, but he never would have thought of that... it came out of a need to damage the culprits. Now as a natural scientist i was wondering about things you discover trying to solve other problems. Our Man Andrew discovered that copper wire will keep the slugs at bay... (until they become really hungry perhaps.. time is the hunter on that dog)... but what if you did set up a current? What affect would that have on the tomato plant in terms of raw yield? We defiantly know that currents from electromagnet forces do have an impact on living beings.

I remember in university taking a course in vertebrates and we did an experiment where we stressed fish with currents... that was until "Seed Corn" a guy who's father was a chicken farmer... he was a king hell riot of a guy and a very dangerous person to be around in terms of freak accidents and other tomfoolery... anhyoo Seed Corn ate our fish on a bet and so when the lab instructor came over to our tank to check out our experiment, we had a bit of a "missing fish" dilemma that never really got properly explained.

What I'm getting at is that the right current could be beneficial to the plant's tomato yield by creating an unnatural tomato growth spurt inspired by the effects of the electrical current... i would guess that unnatural= bad, as things usually work that way, but remember bad can be good if it makes money... a uniquely human trait.

But Man gardening is about producing for yourself... about not going to the grocery store but rather to the garden. And our man Andrew is correct in the management of tomato leave plucking... a few of my friends are Italian and there are many stories of people spending a lot of time pinching off tomato leaves to keep the right balance in the plant.

Plants need space to thrive and sometimes they compete with themselves for that space and your job as a Man Gardner is to help the plant make those decisions. Food producing plants have been "selected" over the years of human cultivation ... actually a form of genetic modification, for traits other than learning to grow properly. it's all about the yield, or in Monsanto's case it's about the yield and the elimination of anything that stands in the way of total market domination... but their plants have a team of corporate lawyers happy to bankrupt any opposition who's position is completely logical and necessary in terms of the propagation of life...

getting a bit off topic... nothing quite like a Monsanto rage... Monsanto is a seed corporation that is one of the clearest representation of the devil on this planet.

I myself don't have a problem with slugs on my tomatoes, perhaps that is because i have much tasty lettuce nearby for the slugs to feast on and they leave my tomatoes alone. Our Man Andrew also mentioned that he is actually a balcony gardener so I'm thinking it might be a good idea next year to go with all new soil... or bake the soil he has in his oven to kill off any vagrant slugs... of course he is going to have to recommend that his neighbours who have garden balconies bake all of their soil as well and sometimes if these people are not MAN gardeners they might foolishly thing that baking their soil in small increments is a waste of time... i guess if copper wire works.

kind of fun to imagine the strata meeting where they tell everybody with a balcony that they need to bake their potting soil because the building is about to be wrapped in copper wire and the slugs will be no longer.

I remember running a garden, or a few of them in our last place and when i suggested a rain barrel to collect water for a portion of the garden that had no water access there was a pack of lunatics that were worried that the rain barrel would encourage mosquitoes to live... and that was around the time there was a malaria panic in the news... so that meeting came to an unfortunate conclusion... i was glad i wore my pyjamas to that meeting... sometimes a strata council president needs to make his point... don't worry they were a nice plaid pyjamas.

It's all about the kids

I had the good fortune to lead a class of youngsters on a tour of the community garden. It happened that my oldest daughter's class was doing a study on on the concept of "Community", so i mentioned i could lead them on a tour of the community garden... i failed to mention that it would in fact be a lesson on MAN gardening. I had to fail to mention that otherwise the school commissioner would get all squirrely... if you know what i mean.

Perhaps the exam at the entrance of the garden was a bit too much for a pack of kindergarten, grade one and grade two students... but sometimes you have to just roll with the punches. In a number of ways i am against tests, exams and grades for the younger pupils in our society... I feel it puts unnecessary stress on the student to perform at a level that is completely irrelevant to their development at this time... but gardening is different than primary school... it is actually important! And the purpose of the exam was to inspire curiosity with respect to the ways of our food producing friends.

So what was the plan... a pack of kids in the garden = chaos.

Clearly we needed MAN wisdom so i gave a small lecture on spinach and how spring time is spinach time but summertime is coming so it is now bean time. I had talked to the teachers before hand and had them prepare Popsicle stick like items with the name of the child on it and in the end we have beans planted now in the spinach patch. The kids planted a bean seed and put a stick with their name on it next to the seed... i will photograph later for the record.

It's funny how kids are... they hear they get to plant a bean in a MAN garden and they just form a "task based" line all eager to plant their bean seed. I made sure that we had the bean seeds without the poison... some bean seeds are coated in a poison to keep other life from eating them... for sure one doesn't want to be involved in the poisoning of a bunch of primary school students on a mission that was meant to instill a love for gardening despite the exam and all.

Anyhoo, we got the beans planted, which was something i was meaning to do and the kids were very happy and our collateral damage was very minimal... i lost a corn plant a few lettuce and a a couple of sunflower plants but i got 30-40 beans planted so it's all good. and in the end the kids had a great time and they made me a book with drawings of their memories of their experience at the garden, and that's worth it's weight in gold any day.

for the record we did do a small lecture on bees... as we have a small collection of mason bees in the garden. pollination is everything.

can't go to sleep without a little bone Man Robertson Gardening wisdom

That's right... what was that idea i had...


Gardening is not a competition... but if it can be turned into one, then perhaps, one might be able to spur on greater yield.

What you have to remember with this line of logic is that if it becomes a competition that you don't resort to damaging other peoples plants in an effort to win by default. Think of yourself in in that lineup after a greatly contested hockey game shaking hands with your opponent... win or lose you thank them for playing hard and thus bringing out the best in yourselves as a team. In a game you need good opposition, but fair play is the kinship of sportsmanship. Does that even make sense? Jesus fucking christ i'm trying to write a serious blogaroo and my own lack of English understanding has gotten in the way of of a fine point.

When i was in University, one could say that my maturity level was not up to snuff, but we had some good times for sure. But the one rule in the house was that always the gold standard was to not to fuck with peoples beds. Perhaps you passed out in the living room and as a result you got your head shaved and a tube of a535 wiped on your groin but when you recovered from that, you had your bed that was guaranteed to be free from fuckery. That's the way men roll, most of life is lived to set up the next practical joke, and the other part of life is to relive those practical jokes.

But as a Man i have to say... don't fuck with peoples gardens... a garden represents life, and life is on it's way out of this planet... I don't make the rules i just call them like they are... you should never garden to be better but rather to bring out a side in yourself that strives for food production... or some other lesser purpose like the crazy kook woman flower garden.

When was in a band called "Roadbed", look it up if you dare, we used competition as a great producer... anything that gets you motivated to rule your domain is OK in the Man book. If one of the members wrote a song then the other would immediately think "fuck you you son of a bitch" and write another. Sometimes stubborn son of a bitches need an obvious motivator but never lose track of the big picture.

gardening tip of the day? Blueberries need acidic soil... think coffee grounds and pine needles.

OK

Hobbies are for fun, Man Gardens are for production

As i get older i am slowly able to accept the fact that some people like the idea of doing things better than actually doing them, and doing them right is something all together different.

Gardening has a classic case of this... people come out like gangbusters on a weekend in the spring and plant a ton of stuff, call it a garden, and spend the rest of the summer at social events telling people they are trying to impress that they are indeed gardeners. There is a certain person i know of who for the past 4 years has filled their garden with rows of squash plants. The first year i was very concerned because of course squash plants get very big and for a garden of this person's size i would estimate that 2 squash plants will fill the whole garden. So by planting 30x more you do not actually do better but actually far worse... all the plants fight each other for resources and are overcrowded, are more susceptible to disease, and especially in Vancouver where it is often not hot enough and becomes too rainy for the fruit to properly mature before the blight sets in.

So i pointed this out, thinking that this knowledge could be of use to somebody who was thinking of a squash harvest down the line... they would hear none of it and were emotionally attached to all 60 plants... now when fall came, that plot was a blighty mass of underdeveloped rotting squash plants... on the harvest scale it was a total bust.

So the next year the person did the same thing... i was in disbelief. I tried to remind the person of last years folly but it was if last year never registered and even in that person's memory it seemed, was full of fall squash feasts that never happened. Was i bursting a bubble mentioning this failure? I just wanted to help... no help was needed because their game was to plant 40 squash plants and then spend the summer feeling good that yes indeed they were a gardener. In the second year somebody gave them a nice cherry tomato plant that did great and i watched as the wonderful tomatoes ripened and then fell to the ground and rotted. It caused great conflict in my soul... should i just pillage this plant and eat like a king, but that would be garden theft... and garden theft is for immature scoundrels and McGill Math Professors. In reality i should have done it because that person had got all they wanted from the garden, a licence to walk around with the label "Gardener"... i have learned that it is very important for humans to have labels... it gives a sense of comfort and belonging, and that's fine (hell I'm a MAN GARDENER and fully happy with what that means).

It's all about opportunity... for example a person like this presents a Man gardener with a key opportunity to "silently" tend their garden and have the spoils. A cherry tomato plant (sweet 100) is a perfect one for that (not too much work)... just slip it in a good spot where it will get lots of sun... nail it some water and presto lots of excellent food that you can pillage slowly over time without being noticed. Obviously if you can slip a large tomato plant in somebodies garden without them knowing it's not too hard of an operation. And for comedy, the dream situation would be to attend a party with the said person gulping back tomatoes that you grew on their land as they are explaining to somebody of the opposite sex how they are really into gardening and then you chime in with and I'm loving these ____ special tomatoes (the ___ being the initials of the person)... and then a tumbleweed goes blowing by and people carry on. it's hilarious, nutritious, free and nobody gets hurt and everybody gets what they want.

So the other day who do i see planting a few rows of squash? Un fucking believable... i hope that gardening is just an abnormality in this persons way of life. Is there a word to describe making the same mistakes over and over again and learning nothing. actually that is very human come to think about it... perhaps this person is a politician who gets a tax break if they have a garden... that makes sense. So I threw some basil in the plot and i plan to kill off most of the squash slowly as they grow bigger... clearly i can get away with this as fact retention with respect to gardening has a zero reading with this person... Hell maybe i can make their garden roll and get them into it... but that would cut into my yield... best to let them smile and don't burst any bubbles.

Squash tip of the day... bury a mound of organic material (compost) that makes a hill and plant your squash on top of it (called squash mound). You can even start the plants indoors and transfer them to the squash mound later. Also note that squash like heat... one thing you can do is put black material under the squash fruit... the black will absorb the sun's rays and pump up the temperature to help ripen... but the golden rule is to know your climate... grow the damn food that grows best in your climate. It's like the spinach thing i talked about yesterday... know your plants life cycle and put that plant in it's ideal environment. There are no Mango's in Alaska remember... hell I'd have a mango tree in my yard if it could produce, but it ain't going to happen, but that doesn't mean i don't want it to happen. You have to separate fantasy from reality when dealing with a garden because the garden follows the pure science of growing. That's why i don't grow chili peppers... it ain't right for a Vancouver climate... not that i don't fantasize about one day having a geothermal powered MAN greenhouse... but that is next decade.

spring harvest, Mr. Stingie and some other things

I am loathe to admit that we were at a large "big box" type of store today to load up on milk and other items and one of the things we were looking for was chile powder because i was thinking that chile was the thing to have for dinner, but there was no satisfactory chile powder so we re-planned and i got my head around a BBQ.

And then it was mentioned that we had no vegetables and i had to stop, take a breath and remind the youngins that we were in fact the beneficiaries of a MAN GARDEN.

Spinach, lettuce, beet tops, green onions, broccoli and Swiss chard are always a menu option. Truly amazing how people step into a store and forget where they came from, what they want and what they need. Put that one on your wall.

How to harvest:

Always good to look professional when you go to the garden... you need an aggressive look, a look that Say's "don't fuck with my garden you simple son of a bitch".



Takes me back to my Scarborough roots and getting ready for a road hockey match between the Conlins Road Canada Jays vs. the Bobmar Bobcats... if the game was on Bobmar street and our team walked over from our home turf on Conlins road we felt the need to intimidate before the game begins.

Let the kids worry about crazy old man Robertson in his double Mac attack, all barking on about how good it is that it rained today... it can work to take the focus away from the garden... the proverbial gold.



A good healthy spring harvest for sure, somebody is on the ball as a real man should be. But today's harvest didn't come without it's moments. The other day i allowed a woman to harvest from a Man garden and she apparently found a slug in the lettuce... who knows when and where and how, but for sure they are there. (notice the pro redwood tree in our front lawn). I Harvest lettuce and spinach by the leaf for just such a reason... what you are also doing is thinning and plucking mature leaves from the plants where space is becoming harder to come by. the plants will naturally fill space so if you are in tune with your garden you can have this in mind as you harvest. Again this is an example of the "garden needs love" philosophy and love is knowing what is needed... put that on your fridge in those little magnet letter things... unless of course you went all style on the cheap and got an imitation stainless steel fridge which is non fucking magnetic, which undermines the kitchen, which is the centerpiece and activity hub of the whole damn family unit. Don't cheap out on that shit get a magnetic stainless steel fridge or go old school white because a fridge door is a place for high art and quality reminders like "love is knowing what is needed".

The one leaf at a time plan also gives opportunity for proper inspection of quality and presence of invertebrates. Sitting on one of the leafs i was about to pluck was a hornet that looked at me with those eyes that said "sure i know its Sunday but I'm just aching to sting somebody into next week". The lesson of course is focus and being aware of what you are doing when you are doing it, another beautiful gardening/life metaphor. You need that hornet there because that yellow-man is feeding on the things that are feeding on your man plants, the hornet is your alley in the quest to produce produce. Hey man i just did it... i used the same word as a verb and then a noun... not quite as good as my original rage hero's quote "The fucking fridge is fucking fucked", but perhaps more tasteful... did i just work fridges from a different angle again... Whats the score here MULE... has the Man Nanning blueberry wine eroded my judgment?

I never worry about a wasp or a bee out in the garden... they do what they need to do, and i do what i need to do the main thing being not to grab them or trap them in my clothing. It's when a wasp gets inside the house i start to worry... surely all the signs of armageddon are flashing to the wasps reality telling the wasp "you have to sting what you can, while you can" (for smash). That's what glasses and hardcover books are for... or at least i should say that glasses and hardcover books together have a good secondary function of being able to trap (in a sting proof container) wasps so that they can be released back out to the garden.

And now for the Man gardening tip of the day... your spinach is riding high now, but soon the heat of summer will be too much... it's time to plant beans in that space, it will take a while for the beans to take over but then the spinach will be at the end of it's game and it will be bean time. Nothing beats fresh garden beans, and if you are smart you will have frozen some of your spinach for mis-summer lasagna or curries. And then in mid august you can shock in a few more spinach seeds for a fall harvest which will then again overtake the beans.

OK don't thank me just do it for yourself

and the BBQ... they said you can't BBQ in the rain:

fools



this is the Man BBQ central station... taken in early march... the Magnolia tree hasn't even bloomed and now a good beer brewing hops plant is going ape shit to the left of the Man BBQ station... fully weatherproof so that sissery never gets in the way of a proper BBQ. Always do what you need to do... never let the weather dictate your plans.

Etch that one in stone.

it was a beautiful day

yes indeed a nice cloudy cool day with a touch of rain on and off... a perfect day for some mature spinach plants to lay down some serious vegetative growth. The kind of day that can put a man at ease knowing that his spinach won't be forced into going to seed (which happens in the hot weather). As a thinking man i assumed everybody would be thinking the same but then some crazy kook lady at the park started complaining about the weather... you know the kind of thing a lot of lesser humans do... complain about things they can't control all the while looking at the negative side of things. I reached for my smashing brick, but then remembered that a smashing brick should only be used on charging bears or fitness club stereo Nazi's who kill good classic rock to put on auto-tune pop bullshit.

I though OK, the woman has a pack of kids so it could be that she is just not thinking straight... that can happen... you get those yappers yipping and it goes to that part of your brain that just shouldn't be violated. So i gently pointed out the benefits of this kind of weather but she was steadfast in her denial and dug into the idea that this weather gave her the green light to subject a professional neighbourhood man to some insufferable winery. So then i pointed out that the lack of direct sunlight could be good in that it could save her getting a sunburn on that beak of hers, but then i remembered that the harmful rays can still get through cloud cover so i offered her some sunscreen, but for some bizarre reason she was through with me. I tried to remind her of all of the good man ideas i had brought to our discussion (proper spinach growth, seeing positive in negative, skin care reminder) i though them to be new age, "green", and sensitive topics but there was no dice.

so i just went and did a little weeding... if you keep on it, overwhelming is not a feeling you need to battle... although it is good to battle and defeat "overwhelming"... it is all about compartmentalizing the battle... like in a hockey playoff series you just go out and focus on your one shift and then the next one... don't worry about winning the game or the series... good things will come if you do the little things you need to do... I'm sure there is some sissy version of the metaphor out there, but this is a MAN garden blog.

Nothing is better than Man weeding... you focus on your area and you pluck the weeds out making sure to get all of the roots and then shake the roots to keep that good man garden soil in your man garden... you work for a while and it feels like you have accomplished nothing but later when you stand back and you see the region that you just weeded it looks clean and tidy with only you pro man vegetables in the soil and the sunlight... and that's a real good feeling and an excellent metaphor for life.

Man Green onions

So I was putting together a Man sized lunch for the girls and our lunch guests the Hey Rocks.

A little Tuna salad sandwich would go well with the pasta and soup, and what makes a Tuna salad extra delectable... fresh onion greens, or chives.

If you can't grow chives, please go yo your local tattoo shop and get "I am not Man enough" on your forehead. In time you will see the error of your ways and with the help of mirrors and daily man beard grooming, as well as those awkward moments at social events where you keep having to explain why you have a disparaging word tattoo on your forehead... you will find that chive growth is actually very simple.

I send my children out to harvest the chives...its a plant children can't damage and it's good for them to learn. You wouldn't get a child to harvest your sweet peas (for example), because with that overzealous energy and lack of total focus they would probably damage the main vine and put a major dint in the plants ability to further produce fine peas....

our guests are here...

Strawberries

Five things about strawberries...

1) the name actually comes from the fact that they grow well when straw is laid down for the plants to grow amongst. The main theory is that the straw helps keep the ground moist, in that i protects the ground from the drying rays of sunlight. Of course finding straw in the city is a natural fiasco because of course city planners have been brain damaged for most of the century.

2) the plants spread like weeds sending "Runners", or roots away from the main plant to quickly dominate a region. If one was in a rock and roll band and they had ideas about "spreading the music to the world" they might want to take a look at the mighty Strawberry because things that naturally succeed do so for a reason. The difference between a gaggle of hammerheads talking big to themselves about how their next album is going to be so good it's going to go gold, is shockingly different from a plant that grabs energy and puts it into an underground network to drive solid bases in other communities and then springs out and starts kicking ass.

3) Strawberries are very nutritious but yet are also among the 12 foods on which pesticide residues are found in very high quantity. Therefore you should eat organic Strawberries... or grow your own Man Strawberries.


4) Although Man Strawberry farming is the way to go it perhaps might be a bit too much work to haul you neighbours old concrete laundry tubs out to your garden and countersink them to the ground level so that you can contain your strawberry patch withing you garden. Don't get me wrong... definitely a man thing to do, but it's a lot of work. As a thinking man, if i were to do it again i would just make a foundation and pour fresh concrete walls a few feet high. that way you don't have to loose sleep at night worrying about the drainage in your strawberry patch.

5) Strawberry Beer is made in Belgium and in fact is just flavoured with some sweet strawberry action, rather than fermented with strawberries... as we know, any man worth his guitar callouses will make alcohol with his organic strawberries and you can write that one down

ask not what your garden can do for you but what you can do for your garden

On the way to hockey i was talking to one of my buddies about gardening, he has allowed a community group to come in and garden in his backyard in an effort to learn about gardening and in the spirit of sharing with ones community.

One of the things that came up was that he was told that his garden needed more love and that it was important to have people spend time with his garden so some people (who apparently had background criminal checks... who's worried now) were going to come and spend some time hanging out with his garden... and from what he understood they figured that their presence was going to will the garden into a fest of blossoms that the world has yet to see.

Let me set the record straight... man gardening = pro gardening and company= weeding watering and pest monitoring. What one doesn't need is some groovy hippie sitting in a lawn chair in some Zen prayer, not that I'm against hippies in Zen prayers, but if you really want action get your ass out there in the garden at midnight with a quality headlamp and start picking off nocturnal invertebrates that savage plants. Too much for you little sissy... i say if a man can stand in a bar at midnight toasting the fact that his early spinach salads are delectable (which a man should do) then surely that same man can pop out to the garden @ 1:00 AM for a half hour of quality slug plucking. And then in the morning when the average wuss is sipping a coffee and feeling sorry for himself a real man would pack a coffee and get out there and lay a good soaking on the garden. Any man worth his ginch can suck back a man sized coffee and work a garden hose, and what a way to start your morning! You visualize your plants ready to start the day and they have all they need and then you see yourself in your plants and you transfer that positive man energy into making your day the most productive it can be. All day long you know your plants are taking that sunlight, capturing that energy, an creating nutritious and delicious food... what are you doing? Are you Man enough?

next time we will talk about co- planting, soil preparation and other things that i happen to think of and remember as i harvest dinner.