My tomato plants are stomping balls... trying to focus on the positive and not mention the "S" word... Let me tell you a fine heartwarming story. Lets say there was this guy Mr. Schnrub... and say Mr. Schnrub went to Home Depo to pick up some bamboo stakes for garden support, because Mr. Schnrubs' wife Mrs. Screetch likes to think tomato cages and hockey sticks are ugly... anyhoo we are getting off topic. Schnrub goes into the store with a pack of maniac children to grab the bamboo, and notices one stack seems a bit fatter, so he just grabs that one, out of natural habit and checks out.
It's not until he is in the backyard later that he realises he bought 9 packages of bamboo for the low low price of one... they were all just taped together... Schnrub went looking for the receipt to rectify the system but ran into a beer, and then another, and next thing you know he was giving lectures to the local wives on "neat ways to stake your peas"... he gave away a lot of bamboo that day.
Mr. Schnrub had no bamboo left when i was poking around looking for some. Being a man who discovered that his tomato plants are killing it, i was in need of stakes. Enter happy Sam... one of the guys on the other side of the street. Actually back up to the other day when i was tying the grape vine up the telephone pole with my dwindling twine collection, and i lost the tail end of my twine collection... gone somewhere into the soul of a healthy vine. Happy Sam is always happy to help out... Hell i still have his tree saw and he is loving my presence.. I ask him for bamboo stakes and twine... he comes up huge with the biggest smile on his face... he had twine in the trunk of his car and the motherload secret. Earl has bamboo.. he gave me a few stakes from Earls plants. Earl had planted the bamboo as a bit of a privacy wall but now the forest was descending... so when i went to ask Earl if he had any surplus Bamboo his face lit up and asked me if i wanted to prune for him... pretty much the answer i was hoping for. Harvest your own Tomato stakes. Bamboo is amazing stuff... I've never gardened it, but i was a bit intrigued. Considering how expensive bamboo stakes are, i had visions of going to the Farmers market selling "artesian tomato stakes" at a grossly inflate price. The selling point would be that these artesian tomato stakes have a series of 1/2 inch leave stock stems which will help to maintain twine line verdical from installation to harvest. It's funny when you start dealing with sticks... you get a full plant specimen and you cut it down to what you need, and then for the first time, when presented with options you realize the possibilities... the kind of thought pattern that can really throw you into one of those "why are humans so fucking stupid mind tirades"... and then you snap out of it and remember to BE the change you would like to see.
But really a fine moment in community. I was faced with driving a car out to a store to buy something when i realized i could harvest a better version of what i needed from my neighbours backyard doing him a service as well. One of my aliases by the name of Ziep Poberson has an album cover titled "everything you ever need you already have", he never made the music, but the music is right there... the answer is learn how to find it, or recognize when it is there.
So i guess I spent the day sorting the tomatoes with a sidebar into custom stake building. It's true i did break out my high powered radial arm saw to make the cuts... i was using the clippers but we were getting stress fractures on the bamboo walls...and the saw kicks ass. Tomatoes like to collpase on themseoves... well they probably don't actually like to but they do as a result of gravity. Stake out the branches finding a balance between space and light and the future. The plants in the pots are so thick i had to find new places for some of them, which i had having eyeballed the sunspace on this new land i farm.
Speaking of tomatoes, my old Man Garden took 10 or so new runt tomato plants that the good people at Home Hardware on Commercial drive gave to Gardener Pete. They charged him for stakes but figured that the tomatoes are kind of late so better to get them out of the store and into the ground somewhere and hope for the best. I think if they get regular regimented watering they will produce some fruit... you never know... one may receive a nice Indian summer (hot september-Mid October). Once those tomatoes get moving... they like to move it move it!
And i had some of Brian and Ann's tomatoes in a diner today... you see I am on water duty and there were a few ripe tomatoes, so of course i took them. Was i being greedy taking them? NO NO NO! This is important... you need to harvest ripe fruit to sent the signal to the plant that it's original mission to reproduce has failed and it needs to make more fruit... you need to exploit this biological trigger for greater gain in the long haul. You plant food to eat food... don't be one of those hammerheads who plants food to say they plant food and then have that food go to waste because you just didn't pick it in time.
Harvests sneak up on you... have you bagged your garlic yet?... you better cause it's about to go bad in the ground... get it up and get it drying in the sun, this can garlic your kitchen an provide you for starts for next years crop.
I hum in B... which makes sense now that i see it, and the mouse clicks in F. I know this because i happen to have a tuner hooked up to the mic on my desk. Just more facts, take them or leave them.
It's not until he is in the backyard later that he realises he bought 9 packages of bamboo for the low low price of one... they were all just taped together... Schnrub went looking for the receipt to rectify the system but ran into a beer, and then another, and next thing you know he was giving lectures to the local wives on "neat ways to stake your peas"... he gave away a lot of bamboo that day.
Mr. Schnrub had no bamboo left when i was poking around looking for some. Being a man who discovered that his tomato plants are killing it, i was in need of stakes. Enter happy Sam... one of the guys on the other side of the street. Actually back up to the other day when i was tying the grape vine up the telephone pole with my dwindling twine collection, and i lost the tail end of my twine collection... gone somewhere into the soul of a healthy vine. Happy Sam is always happy to help out... Hell i still have his tree saw and he is loving my presence.. I ask him for bamboo stakes and twine... he comes up huge with the biggest smile on his face... he had twine in the trunk of his car and the motherload secret. Earl has bamboo.. he gave me a few stakes from Earls plants. Earl had planted the bamboo as a bit of a privacy wall but now the forest was descending... so when i went to ask Earl if he had any surplus Bamboo his face lit up and asked me if i wanted to prune for him... pretty much the answer i was hoping for. Harvest your own Tomato stakes. Bamboo is amazing stuff... I've never gardened it, but i was a bit intrigued. Considering how expensive bamboo stakes are, i had visions of going to the Farmers market selling "artesian tomato stakes" at a grossly inflate price. The selling point would be that these artesian tomato stakes have a series of 1/2 inch leave stock stems which will help to maintain twine line verdical from installation to harvest. It's funny when you start dealing with sticks... you get a full plant specimen and you cut it down to what you need, and then for the first time, when presented with options you realize the possibilities... the kind of thought pattern that can really throw you into one of those "why are humans so fucking stupid mind tirades"... and then you snap out of it and remember to BE the change you would like to see.
But really a fine moment in community. I was faced with driving a car out to a store to buy something when i realized i could harvest a better version of what i needed from my neighbours backyard doing him a service as well. One of my aliases by the name of Ziep Poberson has an album cover titled "everything you ever need you already have", he never made the music, but the music is right there... the answer is learn how to find it, or recognize when it is there.
So i guess I spent the day sorting the tomatoes with a sidebar into custom stake building. It's true i did break out my high powered radial arm saw to make the cuts... i was using the clippers but we were getting stress fractures on the bamboo walls...and the saw kicks ass. Tomatoes like to collpase on themseoves... well they probably don't actually like to but they do as a result of gravity. Stake out the branches finding a balance between space and light and the future. The plants in the pots are so thick i had to find new places for some of them, which i had having eyeballed the sunspace on this new land i farm.
Speaking of tomatoes, my old Man Garden took 10 or so new runt tomato plants that the good people at Home Hardware on Commercial drive gave to Gardener Pete. They charged him for stakes but figured that the tomatoes are kind of late so better to get them out of the store and into the ground somewhere and hope for the best. I think if they get regular regimented watering they will produce some fruit... you never know... one may receive a nice Indian summer (hot september-Mid October). Once those tomatoes get moving... they like to move it move it!
And i had some of Brian and Ann's tomatoes in a diner today... you see I am on water duty and there were a few ripe tomatoes, so of course i took them. Was i being greedy taking them? NO NO NO! This is important... you need to harvest ripe fruit to sent the signal to the plant that it's original mission to reproduce has failed and it needs to make more fruit... you need to exploit this biological trigger for greater gain in the long haul. You plant food to eat food... don't be one of those hammerheads who plants food to say they plant food and then have that food go to waste because you just didn't pick it in time.
Harvests sneak up on you... have you bagged your garlic yet?... you better cause it's about to go bad in the ground... get it up and get it drying in the sun, this can garlic your kitchen an provide you for starts for next years crop.
I hum in B... which makes sense now that i see it, and the mouse clicks in F. I know this because i happen to have a tuner hooked up to the mic on my desk. Just more facts, take them or leave them.
There is a law against planting bamboo around here - or some kind of rule against it - it grows like a weed, takes over, runs wild. I can't imagine going to the store to buy some - it is everywhere. And Andrew built his own tomato cages out of wood and used the bamboo sticks for the beans and peas. When should we pick our carrots?
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