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.