Tacos, turnip and sanity

This is a Kohlrabi, or German turnip for the record, a solid anti-carcinogen as Dad would say... a crisp fresh peppery turnip that was thrown on my plate as a child while the health virtues were toted.

I shave it and lay it on a taco with Mexican cheese, and the man meat of choice... for the record that is how you do tacos.  The hybrid Canadian taco way is to season some ground beef in a bastard "taco" mix and pile with lettuce cheese ET AL.  The pro way to make tacos is to cook something properly, a meat or veggie option, and cover with Mexican cheese and a shaved Cabbage option, and don't forget to hit with fresh lime juice.  You can make different kinds of tacos but the trick is to stick with a simple flavour... we never learned that before... cook something properly and let it be the flavour of the taco... you can make different kinds of tacos, just don't start a competition within the taco. Competitions are good for games, eating should be a win win type of scenario.  It's OK to spell flavour as flavour, but just don't make a taco like some hybrid Canadian might, it's an insult to the culinary art.  For the record, shaved fresh garden carrots will be a good addition to your grilled and cheesed option... don't forget the fresh squeezed lime... and if you are man enough hit it with some hot peppers.

This is the kind of hot pepper a Man can take on his taco... you can do your best dragon imitation and the hydration that comes as a bonus will come in handy later should you fall into an accidental drinking session. By the way that is celery to the left of the pepper plant... good for man made soups.

Speaking of drinking, i have been noticing a sever lack of watering on some of the neighbourhood gardens.  Growing plants is easy... sun and plant genetics take care of most of the battle, all you have to do is make sure your plants are watered... I have heard many bogus watering rituals.. i have a simple one... if it's a hot sunny day you plant is probably thirsty, mind you later in the season like this the garden is lush, or should be, which provides shade for the soil which helps keep the moisture in the soil.

Again, don't wet your tomato leaves... wet the soil... actually soak the soil... we are coming into the blight season and the thing that spreads blight is moisture on the leaves... if you do water them make sure it is in the morning.  Dad's rule was to not water tomatoes after 4:00pm so they would not be wet throughout the night... There will be natural dew that will eventually take down the plant, but there is no point helping this disease.

Again, don't water beets @ peak sun, their leaves don't like that and will turn brown due to some physics magnifying affect... i guess if you believe in physics that is... if you don't believe in physics because science is against your religion then i would suggest praying after watering your beets in peak sun.. that way GOD will know to intervene and fix the human error.

Again, If you stay on task and keep picking your beans then they will flower again and produce more beans.

Also, if your squash, mellon or zuccuni are showing powdery mildew (a fine white coating on the primary leaves), then you want to keep an eye on what's happening.  You need to think in terms of cutting your losses.. will this fruit or will it be a source of disease?

As we close in on the season, we need to remove sources of disease and encourage sources of food. I know i have to kill a few squash plants that just aren't in the right place and big enough to star in the fall.  I of course blame the slugs and the squirrels for setting back my first batch of squash and melons.  Clearly next year i will have to defend better.  How will i do that?  Bigger seedlings, more barriers, set traps and be more vigilant on night killings.  I guess it would be ideal if i could win the lottery and then buy my neighbours house and then bring in the new rodent order over there...  but alas, lotteries are for suckers.  You don't throw random seeds in a garden, fuck off, and then come back to a bounty... it just doesn't happen.  You need to be smart, put in the work, observe, defend and do what is needed.  That's why gardening is a perfect metaphor for life... shit doesn't happen accidentialy, it happens becauese you worked for it.  Happiness is the state of knowing what you are doing is right and it will work out in the end... put that in a tweet and post it.

The best garden is the garden that feeds you

I realize there are a bunch of chuckle heads out there that like to plant a garden and think that they are all "green", whatever the hell that means.  Many of these simpletons forget to harvest the food... perhaps the tumbleweed that is rattling around in their head still makes the sound "I am a gardener".  Who knows, everybody is busy... too busy to get their food... only enough time to slog through traffic to go buy food from a food serving establishment.

If you are a chuckle head  i implore you to find the power within to change your ways, you can do it.  Or get in touch with myself and i will come and harvest your food... we are in that time of year where the weird line between stealing and salvaging start to blur.  Walking around the neighbourhood there are a few roadside gardens with produce starting to rot in them... like they say you can always tell a human but you can't tell them anything.  I'd even be happy to harvest the food for these people and get it to them like it would be in a store, but you know, start messing with somebodies garden, you are messing with their space, and taking their freedom... a real no no.  There needs to be more emphasis on food harvesting... because the stores sell vegetable starts they are promoted and there is a buzz among consumers to buy them and get with the program, but yet there is no consumer triggered response to harvest the food.  We need more harvest festivals... more harvest alerts... community "things we can make with tomatoes" contests.  Yes Yes, frame it in the idea of a contest... we like contests, everybody wants to be a winner!

Don't get me wrong, if planting a garden gets you outdoors in the spring touching the soil, then that's a good thing, i just hate to see waste.  Apparently North Americans throw away 40% of the food they buy... not to mention the idea that we shit in drinking water... but hey we share facebook links promoting environmental stewardship. Sure sure, it's easy to be a critic of a politician who is a puppet for polluting industry, because their line of crap just doesn't jive with reality.  What is reality?  Slippery slope for a gardening blog.  Reality is, if the food you grew is ready to eat you should harvest it.  Cut your broccoli before it is a mess of pretty yellow flowers, grab your tomatoes before they ooze back into the earth... and if your cilantro went to seed, then harvest the seeds... it's coriander, a fine spice.

Heirloom Tomatoes-

I planted a few this year... i will never go back.  Silver fir is a neat one.  They are a bit more susceptible to earwig infestations, but if i were an earwig, that's where i would want to be... inside of a delicious tomato.  The flavour and structure of the fruit is unparalleled and you can cut away the bits that have earwig infestation.  Some people get real squirrley when it comes to bugs in the food, but the alternative is chemicals on the food, or a tasteless tomato bred to look good on a shelf in a store.  I'll put it to you this way... a slug or a bug has probably been on your food  if it's worth eating.. that's why god created running clean water for the chosen folks like us... maybe it was science and technology that created running clean water... it's so hard to tell in these election years what the facts are.

Roma Tomatoes-

These are the tomatoes you cook with, they reduce down to a fine sauce.

Cherry Tomatoes-

Are for snacking on, or throw them into a salad.  Or you can get fancy and cut in half add basil, feta cheese, balsamic vinegar and a touch of spice to make a king hell salad.

We have been eating beans and Swiss chard at will, and a second round of hood strawberries is coming to fruit.  i have eaten a few carrots that my daughters washed up for me, and the beets are looking large.  I did waste the Vancouver Canucks victory salad... i put it back into the earth to fertilize for next season, if you know what i mean.  Will there be a next season? Or will some bizarre global weather phenomenon that nobody could have predicted shut things down.  Ahh the unfortunate side effects of of the human love of money... if i can have more money then screw the masses.

Living with less money should be the foundation of gardening, but it often doesn't work that way.  A poor man with a rich life grows his own vegetables and poaches his own meat, which reminds me to buy a fly fishing rig.  I need trout like i need omega oil. 

It's true... a vegetarian diet will cure what ails the man and the society he lives in, but for tomorrow i might have a BLT, to really use those heirloom slicing tomatoes.