Spring garden progress report

We shall try to stay on topic this time and not focus on any various non gardening rage issues.  Although gardening does rely on the growth of life which often forays into segments that ideologically oppose our foolish little consumer impulses... but hey who's counting, besides me, and other various loons. Click on the pictures to enlarge if you feel like it.

The good news is that the mason bees have taken quite nicely to their new home... you see i thought i heard one of them hatching so i set up the camera for a little time lapse filming and it turns out what i heard was bees in the little holes doing their mason bee thing.  Multiple bees using multiple cylinders getting down to business.  Even at night tonight i went out and there were multiple bees in their tubes settling in for the night.  Most pleasing for sure!

Of course things are flowering, and pollination needs to happen, strawberries, blueberries and plums are flowering now but it won't be long before we see some pea flowers.

(for the record all the white things are hail stones) I went and put up a vine and veggie trellis net for the peas to climb up using some bamboo stakes and some twine guy lines... i was fairly pleased with the outcome, and then i just did a replant in the spots where there were no peas because squirrels had dug up the damn place.  it should be noted that squirrel families are booming in both of my neighbours houses, and there hasn't been an incredible amount of digging lately.  Perhaps my flying out of the back door slashing a hockey stick has had an effect, but i think it's more the fact that the delinquent rodents are now nursing young and hence don't have time to bugger old man Robertson's set up.

Better them than me, but i have a hard time understanding how people can live in a house infested with squirrels... i actually did once it was in 2001... i remember one of my drunken Quebecois roommates was referring to the squirrel as "Squirrel Laden" because it was hard to catch much like Bin Laden at the time... uh oh teetering on a political rage here... in the end the house smelt like death and one of the guys ended up getting lice...  rent was cheap and i wasn't home much.. i went to work, played in the band ROADBED and hiked mountains on the weekends.. but soon after the squirrel CT and i bought a loft and started living the good life.  If there was a squirrel living in my house now there would be no other focus than evicting the squirrel... period.  In fact squirrel death would be automatic, and then the problem fixed so that new squirrels live without the knowlege that a great place for them exists.

Potatoes are up and rolling... i was talking to a neighbour and he mentioned a system of growing potatoes in a barrel like item and continuing to put more soil in throughout the season and in the end you get a barrel full of potatoes.  My father would "mound' his potatoes pushing dirt up over them which worked on the same principle...  i think i shall experiment with something along those lines... perhaps put a bucket with the bottom cut out of it over the potato plant and fill it in as the plant grows, and see what happens at the end of the season...  probably more potatoes.

The reseeding of tomatoes from the greenhouse baking fiasco is inching along, but that said i went to the local nursery and grabbed a sweet 100 cherry tomato and a Roma tomato... both are large and healthy.  I also split a tray of broccoli with another neighbour so i have 3 plants in the back garden now.    I waffled on where to put them... they do become very large plants with big leaves that produce very well in the pacific northwest, so i threw one in with the row of spinach with the idea being that when the summer heat comes and the spinach is over the broccoli can have that space, and then i threw a few others in spots near the garlic, as Garlic and broccoli are apparently companion plants according to a few websites.  Remember a companion plant is a plant that grows well with it's companion.  That's why i threw in a hops plant... Zeus to be precise... well there was another reason, but a good one is that ladybugs love hops plants, and lady bugs love eating aphids and other garden pests so by having a hops plant one gets the added benefit of a healthy ladybug population for pest control.  Remember i wasn't going to plant a hops, because it is an invasive species, but hell something needs to do battle with the ivy, and seeing that the hood is full of squirrel feeders i hardly see an issue.

Rhubarb-  we bought a good strain from a nursery and put it in the back and i think it was getting too much hot sun cause it didn't look good so i put it in the front yard where it should get some nice shade and we shall see what happens.  Seemed like a pretty easy crop... hopefully i didn't kill it, time will tell.  i have a weird energy with rhubarb... simple thing, always causing me problems.. kind of like a cell phone... which i don't have... just kind of misses me.

Beets, Spinach and carrots- because i was a lazy ass i planted them too heavily randomly sprinkling seeds into the ground and now i am soon due for a little thinning.  One of your key things in growing vegetables is to give each plant the proper space to grow, thrive and survive.

I also picked up a Thia Chili Pepper plant just for laughs to see if these supposed hot Oregon summers can produce.  I have been using a lot of hot peppers lately trying to make various curries and Mexican dinners, so why not try and grow something.  i was thinking of a small greenhouse like structure but remembering the last bright greenhouse idea i had that set me back a few valuable weeks on the basis of a mind boggling gap out I'm not sure... perhaps a fall issue to bring the peppers home.

Oddly enough i planted a ton of cilantro, a plant i have publicly loathed for many years... but for Indian and Mexican food cilantro is a must.  My problem was that i met too many knuckleheads who's idea of a fancy new age salad was too cook up some Bulgar throw in some chick peas and douse the shit out of it with cilantro and think that they were doing something radically "organic" and perhaps "gourmet".  And then you are the in the park trying to toss it into the bushes while some pea-head  raves on asking for a recipe for this nonsense.  The problem is cilantro is not a great primary flavour, I'm sure some might disagree, and i would encourage ridiculing them!  Cilantro is an excellent secondary flavour bringing body to the sensation of hot food... it works well in Mexican salsa, and i have a date with some Mexican people who are going to teach me how to make Mexican food... I will report back.  For my purposes cilantro is an essential ingredient in chicken curry and dahl, which i can dial in now and my family likes to eat, so it makes sense to have a fresh supply.  that is the other key thing... fresh... spices need to be fresh for food to be scintillating.

Of course there is a secondary man garden now as well... you see swell friends  Fire-Man  and Sharon came down for a visit...  i might add that Sharon brought me a hat she wove from my Vancouver B.C. hops vine. It might actually be a fruit bowl which is what it is being used for now although i have worn it around as a hat... what happens is some fool sees me wearing one King hell vine woven hat and tries to be a smart ass by saying something and then the said person gets a pretty thorough lesson on Humulus Lupulus... which is of course Latin for hops... if you hit the bastard with that you can stall them and get ready for a good hops lecture.  So this the initial construction of the secondary garden:

Anytime you get to smash concrete with a 16 lb sledge hammer it's good. Smashing is one of the finest tonics around, but then to have that said smashing turn concrete into full sun garden is the kind of transition that I'm all about.  it is by the sidewalk so it will have it's dog piss issues, but really that is just an honest source of fixed nitrogen.  In reality, my testicles probably have more radioactive nuclear waste in them than they should.. but hey accidents happen... so really worrying about a little dog piss seems a little silly.  For the record no root vegetables... so far 2 blueberry, 3 poppies (cool flowers), a cherry tomato (the sweet 100 i mentioned earlier), a grape vine and some rosemary.... i might fire in a hybrid raspberry from another neighbour this weekend.   I think most of those can have piss protected elevated plant regions, so one at least has an alibi for some paranoia that might jump on his brain from time to time.

Mason Bee... did i mention i was susceptible to rage issues due to the lack of pollinating insects

So this is my mason bee sanctuary on the east wall of our house... the bees like morning sun... that is my kitchen window that looks out over my new Man Garden:

  The little box is the cocoons, approximately a dozen, some are big and some are small... the small ones are the males and they will only be around for a short while to fertilize the females of course, and then the females will go about the business of filling the cylindrical tubes with larvae and packing mud in between the larvae and then on the ends of the tube.  That is why they are called mason bees by the way... for their mason skills.

  Pretty sure this one is a male by the size guesstimates of a professional eye-baller, he was the first one out and then did some sunning and then he was off... it worked out well as I have some plums and some blueberries that need a good pollinating.

 

Later in the day I was on the front porch blasting out some S Robertson style banjo for the neighbours to digest and I saw a very similar bee trying to crawl under the cedar shingles... I tried to alter my song and tell the good bee that the sanctuary was at the back of the house, not this decoy east facing pillar that you seem to be so obsessed with... it got to the point where I was about to put the grab on him, but then I remembered the obvious... he is a free spirit, he will do what he needs... he doesn't owe me anything for the 24 bones I spent on this exercise... and most importantly. Don’t put the grab on things that can sting.  Actually male mason bees cannot sting but years of mental bee sting phobia still play hard on the mind.  What the hell you start going around grabbing male mason bees cause you can and then all the sudden you make an identification mistake and put the grab on a killer bee that whiffs out one of them swarm scents and next thing you know you are writhing around in a ditch being stung 400 times per minute while neighbours try to soak you with underpowered garden hoses. No thanks!

I'll try and do a time lapse of a cocoon hatching tomorrow, I guess they will come when they come.

Oddly enough I was in charge of the mason bees last year at our community garden... I got some smart-ass answers from some Vancouver mason bee suppliers. It is quite possible that I missed the deadline, although it appears that the bee cocoons are kept in a refrigerator and then when you bring them out the heat activates the bee... as which is normal for invertebrates that don't regulate their own body heat internally.  Perhaps it was too late in the season, so what I did in that case was just wash and prepare the mason bee nesting plastic, and put it out as an environment for natural mason bees to find and use.  I guess there is no real guarantee that my bees, or the cocoons I bought will use the house I have for them... I believe our location is optimal (morning sun), so we shall see.  The lady at the bee store... it wasn't actually a bee store, but I kind of like that idea... very human... well she was very nice and walked me through the whole process.  You don't actually have to stuff the cocoons into the holes... just create an exit hole in the box by opening one side and let nature take it's course.

For the record I also replanted a bunch of tomato seeds... my neighbour and I collected a bunch of heirloom varieties... Burbank slicing, Silvery Fur tree and Manitoba... why not try again now.  Buying tomatoes from a greenhouse is always an option, but a wise man takes as many paths as possible, when reasonable of course... reasonable being a word that has great flexibility... reminds me I should some yoga rather than streaming hockey games and cursing events.

That's why the bees make it a good day... I have to say I was pretty stoked to see the first bee.  I like bees, I like the bee mantra... ultimate teamwork... do this! Well I don't feel like it... OK everybody, let's waste no time and sting this fucker to death and keep this machine moving.  You never see an old fat bee trying to tell the other bees they need to do this thing to help make the old fat bee fatter and more comfortable... no no no the others would have dropped his youth full carcass off the edge of the hive the moment the said bee bastard started coasting.

Why are bee colonies collapsing?

They say it's debatable, but those who are "they" happen to make a lot of money making things called insecticides.

Insecticides- icide, meaning kill... death, and of course insect, meaning insect.  Hmmm i think we need more research... perhaps it's this climate change thing we have been denying but also saying it occurs naturally i guess to cover the bases...

Meanwhile the idiot Prime Minister of my home country is fishing for investors of other countries to extract more natural resources from the said country... but that's another story... mother of mercy how did we get to the point where we mentioned that stugot?  Oh yea it was the plight of the bees, and so naturally our hate would be directed at corporate lackeys always interested in selling out human and national long term interest to corporate bidders.

Killer Bees are from south America... perhaps we could all prey that a swarm of killer bees will descend and bring some "sting therapy" to this nonsense... we will probably find out that prayers for impossible things don't happen... which is good to know by the way.

That's why you should dig up your lawn and get a proper habitat in there... to provide bee habitat think natural... they like leaves to shelter ground burrows, different plants that will flower at different times... perhaps we should make new shirts "he who has the greenest lawn is the biggest fool"... I doubt you could sell that, but I have been wrong before

The season is in gear!

There have been some successes and many failures… the greatest failure being the greenhouse fiasco... you see I built this greenhouse:

My problem was that I wasn't in a "greenhouse state of mind"...  I am a greenhouse rookie so to say.  What went wrong?  Two words: Blast furnace!  Put it to you this way... since we went with failure before success lets look at the positive in the failure...  So,  say some moron forgets to open up the greenhouse on some suddenly hot day with peak sun and the temperature rises inside... well we now know that beets are the species most likely to survive this insane indiscretion, followed distantly by kohlrabi, and a lone cherry tomato plant.  Clearly ventilation and temperature regulation are key elements of greenhouse mastery... call it a learning failure... making it a good failure!  Once again I will buy big tomato plants from the nursery paying for the head start (or wait until they start blowing them out… most likely). This growing plants inside in suspect conditions with little children bombing around is perhaps a net negative.   Comparing a small tomato seedling and a large tomato plant from a greenhouse you will see that the greenhouse plant has probably more than a thousand times the chlorophyll filled energy producing green matter.  And that is your head start, and it is a race, make no doubt about it. That plant has to get big, flower and produce tomatoes before the fall monsoon comes in.  On a financial issue it is a failure because seeds are much cheaper but at this level it is about the joy of growing your own food. With that logic we are here to get in touch and to be comfortable with growing food... I would even  go so far to say that it would be negligent to deprive our children from growing up and not seeing food grown by the people that sit at the dinner table.  Too busy my ass... that's the thing, the plant does all the work... you just set the parameters.  Gardening is very spiritual on that level.  I haven't yet abandoned the idea of a shelter for the tomato plants...  my reason being to keep the rain off them and discourage the growth of blight.  Did I mention I might have done the same greenhouse “blast furnace” bit on my neighbours plants... the ones I stood in front of and stated my word as a man gardener that “these plants will not die”... I guess I still have a few weeks to work some magic... I'm thinking of an illusion where I replace the heat baked crumpled sprouts with some king hell plants and just eyeball the bastard when he gets back and say... "Yea that's the way I roll, what can I say, I have a green thumb"... or I could admit failure... but I think if he had some real nice plants he would be happy and I, for some short period, could avoid the tagline "absent minded savage maniac".

Blueberries- I have a Patriot and a Duke by the plum tree... I have 3 Chandler (red stalk), another 3 Duke, 3 Early Blue and a Ruble (keeps leaves)...  these notes are for my use.  That is a lot of blueberry bushes for our hero, but you see I got a deal...  At the local Nursery, which is a very good Nursery the Blueberry plants were going for 20 greenbacks.  I located a guy and his brother that sell bigger plants from a farm down near Salem Oregon for 6 dollars so I went down there before a hockey game I had in Sherwood.  Holey mackerel it is a long way, and I almost missed the game cause some jackass in a sports car tried to turn around on a narrow farm road rather than back up a half a kilometer and got stuck... I was figuring I am not coming back here (due to distance issues... excellent plants I might add) so I bought as many plants as I could fit in the car and for a while, a short while, I became the neighbourhood blueberry broker.  Alarming lack of bees of course, which reminds me to get a mason bee colony... a nice buzzing honey hive would really do the trick... we shall see.

Random planting notes starting with planting a blueberry. Notice the soil prep,.. Potato- every eye will produce a plant cut 21 hours before planting to develop a scab to help prevent mold growth... Plant red onion starts in rows with room to grow... imagine large red onions and plant accordingly.  Strawberries... It was recommended I buy "hood" so I did, CT also bought some ever bearing variety and there are some others that were in the garden before... should give us a good variety, even though as you may remember, I swore off growing strawberries given the Vancouver fiasco.  Basically I have strawberries at the base of the fruit garden (plums and blueberries), and in the rocks that support the garden, so I am not really losing space, I am just using space that is not ideal for vegetables:

Garlic- coming along quite nicely... a few suffered collateral damage from the squirrel insanity, and that whole plot has taken on a new level of mind crushing.  I hate to get off topic again, but we really do need a neighbouhood wide cull of the squirrels… but murder is such a harsh word to the local squirrel sympathizers.  It's really my time for a BB gun; I never had one as a kid... too dangerous, so now as a parent I am moved to the line of justifying bringing one into the home.  Oddly enough my father had a BB gun... he just failed to mention to me that he had one... probably saved him having to replace windows at the cottage... and outdoor light bulbs.  My "community together" project that starts with a major coordinated squirrel eradication, has received divided support, so in pulling a page from the great community activists I have welcomed the dissenting voices to the conversation... "Very interesting you feel that way... perhaps we could get a taxidermist to set a squirrel stuffed pelt on you balcony that you could enjoy until the new squirrels move in for the next scheduled slaughter".

Yes the garlic is growing well.

Beets& Spinach- are up and off to the races... bare patches where fucking squirrels, dug fucking peanuts supplied by fucking neighbour

Peas- are up... similar squirrel issues.

Did I mention I planted again?  The greenhouse fiasco lay hard on my heart... what to do, what to do,… and then we came up with (we... me and silent Internet partner) the idea that a Stanley Cup victory salad garden was in order... plant the salad and by the time the Cup has been won the salad will be ready... excellent idea for sure as it has now begat a salad eating frenzy, and how can that be bad?

Being more experienced this time I used the greenhouse material and some chicken wire to create a seed protected zone (A barrier where squirrels cant get at to dig in peanuts).  I sewed the chicken wire together with the PVC piping... we cannot tolerate this nonsense:

Who knows what new failure is around the corner?  We are better off this month than we were last month.

 I guess I should mention... a man took a poke on the index finger from some chicken wire that he had on his garden plot of land.... he did it too himself.

No pain no gain.