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:
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.
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.
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