A wise man once said "you gotta get what you can, while you can", right now the pacific Northwest Garden is screaming that at it's caretakers. I have 3 buckets of green tomatoes in my kitchen... gone are the good old days of a fresh tomato off the vine in the morning on a bagel with cream cheese and seasoning. You have to play the game you are in... one of the key things missed by the average chuckle head consumer sheeping around this wonderful planet. Not everything that comes out of a garden has the look of the kind you might come to expect from a lifetime of seeing vegetables on a supermarket shelf only... remember everything has a purpose. I reduced a collection of rogue tomatoes in a pot with garlic and onion for future sauce, it was kind of random and a half distracted on my part... I wasn't really into it but it was that or provide King Hell habitat for the population of fruit flies i seem to have swarming ever so close to the beer brewing carboys. The green tomatoes will turn red in time... make sure you monitor them for trouble areas. Sometimes spots will go bad and you will have to make some executive decisions. I left some of the plants should they manage to keep producing... I've always been kind of a Hail Mary kind of person.. sunny today so perhaps i was on to something.
My melons are in, all 5 of them, and i have a fair collection of peppers, many of them dragon hot... you see i made a salad tonight and cut into what i though might be a small red bell pepper, but that was not the case... as they say in yoga: i was doing a serious round of "lion's breath". I picked all of the beans, but of course you leave the bean roots in the soil, as they will put nitrogen back into the soil, and perhaps squeak out another round of beans. I also picked a bunch of heirloom purple beans from a local neglected garden, which was a good call. I should mention the beans were all dried on the stock from general neglect... they will provide fine seeds next season.
The carrots, beets, chard and spinach can hang for now, in an "eat as you need" type of relationship, and the kale is going steady. I believe i have red Russian kale, and it makes a fine kale chip. I do eat kale chips now... perhaps i mentioned my kale chip experience... i went to learn about Cob house building and the damn hippies were just sitting around making kale chips. Clearly it angered me, but i have changed my tune... or flip flopped as they say in political jargon. Apparently you can't change your position in politics... it's a sign of weakness... gathering facts and re-assessing changing landscapes is for silly fuckers and not strong leaders. Strong leaders have a position and no amount of enlightenment can change that... enlightenment is for the weak, apparently. By the same token oil and salt and secret Robertson spicing methods on baked to a crisp Kale leaves, is also for the weak... i wolfed back a bushel of kale in a day... shit happens. I never would have bet on me eating a bushel of kale in a day, in fact i often associated the word "kale" as synonymous with the word "unpalatable"... live and learn. I was also part of an online community of people who hate cilantro at one time, but that was before i learned ho to properly use it. The lesson... well there are a few... 1) never let some dip shit hippie try to tell you that cilantro, garbanzo beans, brown rice and vinegar is a delectable treat, and 2) Learn from people with strong cultural culinary backgrounds on how to use cooking ingredients. A little bone wisdom for you out there... rather than hate people who come from different cultures, because they are different, embrace them and milk them for culinary and life wisdom. Other gardening note would be that slugs love cilantro.. do unto them before they undo to to, as the bible hints at... it's really a translation issue, my leaders tell me this is the way and i pay them handsomely for the guidance.
Soon i can dig up those potatoes... you see i didn't want to dig around the roots of the other plants to harvest potatoes given that the God damn squirrels were so busy digging up all of the the plants I fell into random planting disorder. Kind of modeled after the sea turtle life cycle survival pattern... the sea turtle lays a shitload of eggs and only a few will mature as they will be picked off by scavengers hungry for an easy meal... so basically i just ended up planting everywhere and hoped something would survive, as my loon neighbour's plan of "hopefully the family of squirrels that i have had living in my porch for 3 generations won't dig the endless supply of peanuts i put out for them and the rats into your garden" didn't really work out... hope is for suckers.
My melons are in, all 5 of them, and i have a fair collection of peppers, many of them dragon hot... you see i made a salad tonight and cut into what i though might be a small red bell pepper, but that was not the case... as they say in yoga: i was doing a serious round of "lion's breath". I picked all of the beans, but of course you leave the bean roots in the soil, as they will put nitrogen back into the soil, and perhaps squeak out another round of beans. I also picked a bunch of heirloom purple beans from a local neglected garden, which was a good call. I should mention the beans were all dried on the stock from general neglect... they will provide fine seeds next season.
The carrots, beets, chard and spinach can hang for now, in an "eat as you need" type of relationship, and the kale is going steady. I believe i have red Russian kale, and it makes a fine kale chip. I do eat kale chips now... perhaps i mentioned my kale chip experience... i went to learn about Cob house building and the damn hippies were just sitting around making kale chips. Clearly it angered me, but i have changed my tune... or flip flopped as they say in political jargon. Apparently you can't change your position in politics... it's a sign of weakness... gathering facts and re-assessing changing landscapes is for silly fuckers and not strong leaders. Strong leaders have a position and no amount of enlightenment can change that... enlightenment is for the weak, apparently. By the same token oil and salt and secret Robertson spicing methods on baked to a crisp Kale leaves, is also for the weak... i wolfed back a bushel of kale in a day... shit happens. I never would have bet on me eating a bushel of kale in a day, in fact i often associated the word "kale" as synonymous with the word "unpalatable"... live and learn. I was also part of an online community of people who hate cilantro at one time, but that was before i learned ho to properly use it. The lesson... well there are a few... 1) never let some dip shit hippie try to tell you that cilantro, garbanzo beans, brown rice and vinegar is a delectable treat, and 2) Learn from people with strong cultural culinary backgrounds on how to use cooking ingredients. A little bone wisdom for you out there... rather than hate people who come from different cultures, because they are different, embrace them and milk them for culinary and life wisdom. Other gardening note would be that slugs love cilantro.. do unto them before they undo to to, as the bible hints at... it's really a translation issue, my leaders tell me this is the way and i pay them handsomely for the guidance.
Soon i can dig up those potatoes... you see i didn't want to dig around the roots of the other plants to harvest potatoes given that the God damn squirrels were so busy digging up all of the the plants I fell into random planting disorder. Kind of modeled after the sea turtle life cycle survival pattern... the sea turtle lays a shitload of eggs and only a few will mature as they will be picked off by scavengers hungry for an easy meal... so basically i just ended up planting everywhere and hoped something would survive, as my loon neighbour's plan of "hopefully the family of squirrels that i have had living in my porch for 3 generations won't dig the endless supply of peanuts i put out for them and the rats into your garden" didn't really work out... hope is for suckers.
Good blog, i enjoyed reading this very much..
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