this weekend gardening notes...

Savage attack weeding... I believe i have been over this before, but since nothing around here is labeled and organized it would be easier to just state it again.

You are basically going on a week killing frenzy, a botanical cleanse so to speak, where the things you don't want growing in the garden are removed (lets call them weeds), which gives more space and less competition of light and nutrients to the plants you want to thrive (your food producers).

Get them out of there... attack a region with vigor and just around the time you think you are getting no where step back and see what you have done... you are doing it.  That's life in a nutshell... apply it across the board.

But remember the dangers of savage attack weeding... you are kicked up into a higher gear and you are on a roll and in your frenzy you remove a good garden plant.  Don't worry, this happens to the best of us from time to time... there will be setbacks.

Watch weeing around the peas however... i find it better to  pinch off the green of the weed sometimes.  If you got lazy and fell behind on your weeding you might find a large weed hidden in your pea rows...  if you pull that weed out there is a real good chance that the pea roots are intertwined with the weed roots so removing one often removes the other, and as peas get larger they have a lot of green matter exposed to the dehydrating sun and air and will not tolerate this root damage well.  That's why it is a real good idea to stay on the pea weeding early.   

Generally you want to try and get the weed's whole root system out by perhaps inserting a trowel into the ground to loosen the soil a bit where the weed is located.  Attacking small weeds early and constantly is the real key to productive gardening.  As i have said before it keeps you in the game.  Weed always in short constant spurts... you stay on task with your head above water.  Weeds are like bad debt, if they get out of control they own your destiny and cast a negative shadow on your operation which can lead to depression, anxiety and failure complexes.  Constant short bursts of weeding keeps the task manageable... Stay on your weeding and you are in control, your positive energy is reinforced leading to euphoria, giddiness and bouts of random song.

I know... lets do a sports analogy.  You are the team coach... but as they say you can't teach scoring, it's just something natural athletes have.  Your job as a coach is to put your players in a position to succeed.  The good news is that you have a garden full of all star athletes... you did buy good quality heritage seeds right?  Please don't tell me you bought rouge seeds at a corporate chain grocery store.  If you did you can still amend this fatal  brain freeze by correcting this fiasco and getting good seeds. 

Get the right seeds for your climate too... as i learned last year i am in a prime tomato and bean climate, and with some serious soil amending (adding sand to the clay) i hope to excel further in the root vegetable category.

Take your tomato for example... a heritage bred tomato is a pure delicacy where as a corporate bred tomato (bred for long shelf life) is a tasteless thick skinned insult to the pallet.  You need to ask yourself what plant you want to to put effort into nourishing.  In fact if you don't have good tomatoes started by now just go get some starts at a fine nursery.  It will cost a bit, but i don't think at this level of agricultural production cost is our real goal here... it has more to to with access to good food, and re-enforcing to yourself and those around you what is actually possible.  As they say, "a kid that grows a carrot eats that carrot", and for all of our bizarre paranoid over protective story lines we have with our youth today, this is an essential lesson.. it's also fun, positive and hands on.

I did some pretty solid weeding at the house garden this weekend, i also put up a pea lattice (a mesh for the peas to grow up).  This garden has really been served well with the over wintering crops.  Not sure i ever really got the over wintering garden concept, but I think it has been taught to me finally.   In fact i had to clip off a few flowers that were forming on some of the red onions... i have heard that you don't want them to go to seed but rather put energy into the onion.  Apparently onions are bi-annual meaning it takes 2 years to go from seed to seed... i wonder how big that onion is under the soil?  You know you have done a good thing with the garden if you are up at midnight pondering your garden... it might be an eating onion right now.  A master gardener i am probably not, but as i have learned in the music recording industry, sometimes knowing too much can interfere with doing things right.  I know it sounds odd from a scholarly perspective, but man gardening is about doing,  being involved and making mistakes... that's how you learn.  Don't be afraid of what you don't know... find out through trial and error.

I also noticed today the i have a bunch of cilantro coming up near where last years cilantro went to seed.  This is excellent news... i also saw a few young tomatoes and some potatoes coming up on a volunteer basis.  I transplanted the potatoes so they are all in one region and this year and i plan on trying this trick. Never done it before but it kind of seems like a no-brain er.   Could you buy potatoes cheaper than buying the lumber and the soil?... perhaps, but remember as a consumer you are trained to buy satisfaction... i rest my case.

I have really bought into space this year as well... give the damn plants space... In fact i came back from the community garden tonight and my neighbour a few doors down was planting his newly installed planter box... i noticed his lettuce was planted too densely and reprimanded him accordingly... and then i offered him a broccoli plant that i started indoors from seed a month ago.. he was pretty happy, so we went over what might grow well in his heavily shaded garden box.  I was thinking carrots, but he had no carrot seeds, so i said no problem and went and got some fine "purple haze" carrot seeds.  I planted them for him trying to emphasize the idea of spacing the seeds to give the plants room to grow.   I sensed mild intimidation but general happiness, so i took the liberty of leaning on him a bit more to get some water on the plot A.S.A.P.   I might give him a tomato next week if he passes his watering test... clearly i can set him up with garlic next year which is an excellent crop for the young budding gardener.  Garlic being one of the "over wintering crops" is an excellent tool to keep the gardener engaged year round.  Progress feeds progress of course and it's a pretty hard crop to screw up.

Plant, water, observe, weed and converse with your local gardening community, and work hard to welcome others into the concept of gardening.  Even if you have to volunteer your time to help somebody, who is perhaps a bit timid, into the field of gardening do it.  If you can share and foster the joy of growing food in your community then that's a better community you get to live in.

A neat note about kale

Kale is a pretty hardy plant and it will survive the pacific northwest winter providing early season food as the mature plant comes alive in the spring and shoots into action.  We got a few good kale feeds in this spring.  My Russian red kale is now going to flower and I'm letting it carry on.  A few years ago in Vancouver my friend Sharon Kallis pointed out to me that the kale flowers are real food in salads.  It gives them some colour (yellow) and a little peppery zip... it's amazing how food plants keep giving.

The other thing that has happened is that i am attracting all kinds of finches and today when i was out in the garden an Anna's Hummingbird cam within a few feet of me to visit the flowers of our fine kale plant.  It is a great little bird chirping and hovering and it pleased me immensely to share a bounty with a loving non destructive animal.

Part of me wants to just let this kale go to seed, and the seeds drop and see if new kale will come.  I do have a melon and some potatoes coming up from from last years recycled seed supply... i actually had a few melons but the slugs killed off the excess.

It was about this time last year when i went to a a city repair home to learn about building cob structures and there was a bunch of hippies with happy grins declaring they were making Kale chips.  Inside i kind of scoffed, but i was wrong. Kale chips are good stuff... if you can salt and spice and oil something to a fine crisp you are doing good.  My brain was on cob structures and it had no time for sitting around waiting for kale chips to bake in an oven, let alone be happy about that fact.

Let me clarify... if you are making something nutritious that you grew, even if it is a bit salty for the kidney... do it.  On that note; remember the loop of Henley.. i had to pass a test on that one time a long time ago, but remember my father was a staunch science teacher, gardener and consummate dietitian strictly adhering to the latest "wellness news" of the hour. Dad never grew kale, he was more of a squash and beans kind of guy... there was an asparagus patch, and carrot rowe's with the son instructed to plant one seed every inch down the line after the line was dug deep with peat and nitrogen based fertilizer. And if the son got lazy and threw too many seeds the later the son learned how to thin carrot seedlings, which in turn taught the son to do it right in the first place. Harsh lesson or good education?  I would go with good education... no point raising some soft fragile kid who thinks that their perspective is the only one that matters... for sure have your opinions and air them but be sure to check them against the facts and proceed accordingly.   Most times kids will naturally do the right thing, their moral compass is astounding... i have often thought that we should have children as judges because their sense of justice is real and not affected by politics or economics.

But this post is about kale right... i think i stated that in the title.. i guess i could could change that now, but that would mean deleting this sentence and rethinking, which might be a good idea on some levels, but goes against the mantra of the SR blog series.

I get my kids to harvest the kale leaves, and my oldest goes to town washing the leaves, and then we make the kale chips.  We use truffle infused olive oil, salt and spice and bake the foliage with a keen eye on not burning it... you can do it at 200-400 on your oven but you have to keep an eye on it.  If you want to really dial it in get some crushed nuts in on the seasoning... then you get some roasted nut salted olive oil infused spiced greens that are good for you...

OK notes on the community garden next...

SR

Squirrel trouble has been greatly reduced, but don't let your guard down

It's been sort of a strange week around here... you see the local squirrel food bank has been shut down due to a generous offer from our former nemesis turned ally.  We are all good people, and it's a bit dicey... I was thinking of baking my neighbour a cake as a token of my gratitude for the smart decision they made in stopping feeding the squirrels.  It's just the the decision didn't come through a gradual understanding of the reality of the situation, but rather a shocking and perhaps horrifying series of events.

I will state as fact that no squirrel was harmed as a result of this wonderful conclusion... perhaps one was traumatized for a few hours, but that bastard had it coming.  It was a known carrot terrorist that had a keen taste for chomping on beet leaves and spitting them out and as a result it spent a few hours in a trap (a Have a Heart™ trap).  The sight of the squirrel in the trap set off a fair amount of chaos and phone calls to various authorities, and i believe what happened was that somebody found out that feeding squirrels is a bad idea.  They are cute, if you are that kind of sucker, but they are a menace and as a  result they are classified as... well these are the facts:

SQUIRREL DAMAGE LAND OR CROPS
Tree squirrels are classified as Predatory Animals (Oregon Revised
Statute 610.002) and as such they may be controlled (killed) by
landowners or land managers if the animals are causing damage to land
(lawns, gardens ornamentals, landscaping), livestock, agricultural crops
or forest crops. (Oregon Revised Statute 498.012).
A permit is not needed from ODFW to kill squirrels unless the
landowner wishes to transport a squirrel to a location where it will be
euthanized. In that case, the local ODFW office must be contacted
and a permit obtained.

Now i don't really want to kill animals, and i don't have anything against squirrels, but when you have 4 of them in your yard always, fighting, and digging holes in your rows of seedlings it can drive you a little crazy after a year.

Luckily it didn't come to that, as the shit hit the fan early that day.  Sometimes in life it's good for the shit to hit the fan... it can sort issues out.   A good life lesson actually. You see we often try too hard to get along... you want to be good to people so you swallow the sewage that comes your way in an effort to get along.  But then one day you blow, because you have just had enough, and you don't give a damn anymore, and all hell breaks loose.  You have forced the issue which is the thing you should have done in the first place.

Good in theory right... that's what they tell you when they are trying to calm you down.  It is your fault, you should have been more clear.

I'll call malarkey on that line of reasoning.  That's like saying i like to play bass at midnight at a frequency the rattles foundations of neighbourhood houses.  It is true... playing bass at face melting volume is truly a good time, and i pity the person who never experienced this wonderful phenomenon.  The thing is i don't do it because i don't believe it is fair to the people around me... and i believe the laws of the city would support this idea.

So now the squirrel feeding hub that was once a mere 20 feet from my garden is now gone, and with it so are the never ending squirrel attacks on the garden.  A truly brilliant turn of events, and one that makes me giddy with delight.  It is actually quite shocking to see how few squirrels there are now... they really are ungrateful bastards.  Mind  you there has still been some damage, perhaps rodents looking for lost peanuts bit it's no longer a non stop daily ritual.

Now there is another loon on the next block over that feeds the squirrels and it would have been interesting to see what affect the feeding stop on our block had to do with the population biology, with respect to squirrels, had on their feeder.  Did the most aggressive squirrel take over that territory?  Probably.  Now the grey bastard that nips at the beet leaves is still calling my house home territory... perhaps some pepper might fix that.  Apparently cayenne pepper, or Capsicum annuum can be used as a garden menace repellant.. i will try.  Luckily living in a town with a large mexican food store market, i should be able to get my hands on some high test cayenne pepper... stay tuned.

When i look back at it there were always 3 distinct squirrel clans waging war in my yard.  Clearly this was a matter of being located next to a never ending food supply.  It was ace territory no doubt. Some people thought i was exaggerating but then they came and saw and the common saying was : "holy shit you are not kidding, that is unbelievable".  Now it can't be good for the squirrels either... you are teaching them to be lazy and fight with each other.  In a perfect world the squirrel population would be a relation to the number of food producing trees there are in the neighbourhood.  I'm always for planting more trees by the way... more trees creating more oxygen, sustaining more life... bring it on.

I'd like to reforest the vast majority of the continent, reduce our energy consumption, and put a focus on growing natural organic food in spaces that were unnaturally hijacked by insane human consumerism.

I was reading in the news the other day about how some company is accepting applications for humans to go live on Mars in 2023.  God willing there will be a reality TV show over the selection process as a means to fund the venture.  Not a bad idea in an economic sense, but kind of horrifying otherwise.

Call me Ishmael, but isn't the planet we live on, that currently sustains life kind of an ace in the hole?  Wouldn't an intelligent view be to maintain this planet's livability.   Now i get that science and politics and money don't see eye to eye... well i guess politics see's eye to eye with money, and money see's eye to eye with money, and science see's the result of the experiment...  and religion which has a great affect on politics seems kind of ridiculous... so that's a bit of a mess.

I think part of the importance of growing food is so that the young people in the world can see how it's done, and that it can be done. And then tell a kid that  a seed/ chemical company is trying to take control over the world's seed, and hence food supply, and the kid will say that is wrong and they should be stopped.  I also think it is important to teach resistance to bad long term agricultural policies to our youth.

It is also slug season.. the slug population is slowly building up around the garden... it's a good time to take it down a notch.  Personally i'm not crazy on the idea of slug poison in the garden no matter how safe the package says the product is safe.  Slugs can mow down seedlings like kids can eat jelly beans.  You need to get out in the garden at night with a flashlight to see what is going on and slugs need to be stopped if the object is to grow food.  A few safe methods of slug control are boards down in the garden and the slugs will hide under there during the day and you can pick them off, or counter sink a shallow tin full of beer that the slugs will be drawn to to drown in.  But that is good drinking beer right?  That's why i like to be out there at night with a headlight... nothing beats seeing what is going on.  It's kind of like hand watering... it forces you to observe your garden more, and the more you observe the more you know, and the more you know the better a guardian you will be for your plants.

Like weeding, as well... it forces you to get in and study the micro environment to see what kind of problems you have.  You see the competition of life... you see things thriving and others struggling, ask why and look for answers.  Every climate, every soil, every light profile is different.  You need to find out what plants work for your garden and where and why, and your garden will reward you with the real gift of life, and i guarantee you will be a better person with a greater appreciation of the finer things in life.  Turn off that TV and do yourself a favour... grow some food  and eat it and share it with children so that they can see a way out of this mess we are leaving for them.

The race is on...

The beauty of growing plants is that once you plant them, they grow.  It's pretty simple.. it's like a religion that actually does what it states what it will do.   Keep on the steady work and let things that are meant to happen happen.   For sure you are the guardian, although i like the term "harvester"... it keeps you lower on the pole so you don't start getting some "God complex".  It's the plants that are holy and they reward the harvester with a bounty if the harvester can keep his head out of his ass and do the damn steady work. 

The peas will need something to climb on now as they are up and reaching to the sky... as the harvester it is my job to provide a lattice of sorts that will give the peas ample support to grow large and produce mightily.  The big thing you need to make sure of now is that you don't provide some candy ass structure that will grow weak when the peas grow heavy and blow over in some wind  leaving you high and dry during the peak harvest period.  Think about how unacceptable that would be, and make sure it doesn't happen... OK.  Also if you haven't planted peas yet then give yourself a punch in the nose... don't let up either.

I have some pretty good broccoli going at the community garden... i am a little bit shy to put it in the backyard after what happened last year.   I have yet to determine how to protect broccoli from the adopted family of squirrels that live next door, as they have for 4 generations, and their endless supply of peanuts.  Most of my broccoli last year got dug up, sacrificed as peanut markers... but one actually got eaten totally.  I know that because it got chewed down to a stump and then the stump got eaten...  why not? Broccoli stalks are good eating.  As a scientist i am not completely sure what animal ate the broccoli, but I'm willing to pin it on a squirrel... because i fucking hate squirrels... I hate them... hate hate hate hate hate!  Squirrels are the re-incarnation of the devil... they look kind of cute to people with small brains and undeveloped logic skills, so people give them things and are repaid with unpleasant repercussions. 

How can somebody who harbors and feeds squirrels come out with the slug poison, herbicides and  pesticides?   It's only because they have the ear of the devil telling them to kill and destroy other things for other reasons but yet look past the clear and omnipresent fuckery that the squirrel itself is dealing.

OK enough about the squirrels, we are dealing better with that menace this year, and as i say... any energy spent thinking about a squirrel is bad energy, and gardens need good energy. 

It's been an interesting year with respect to plants that survived over winter... for example my leeks.  Being a soup man i figured it was time to have access to a king hell supply of leeks last year so i planted a few rows to see what might happen.  Now obviously most of them were dug up for peanuts, but of the few that survived nothing really happened... until this spring.  We have some pretty major leeks kicking in... they might actually look like big leeks you see in a store one day if they don't get dug up for a peanut.  I also stated seedling leeks in the house and have transported them to the community garden... they are alive and growing as of now.  Part of me wonders if the heavy clay soil i had at the house last year and the later start due to moving, the garden construction and the lack of education of the unfavourable rodent micro-environment i was living in had any effect on leek production.  I realize not all humans mill about the earth puzzling over their problems producing enough leeks to make good soups all year round, but i say it's a good problem to solve.

The kale, chard and celery have gone on similar runs this spring.  In fact we had multiple servings of kale this spring from the garden, and the celery is resembling large celery stalks one might find in a store as well.    I mean i use the celery all year long and just cut some as i need it for soups, sauces or other savoury fried delicacies.   I would say we shall be eating chard pretty soon as well.  All of these plants are large enough to survive rodent holes around their root systems... It's clearly not good for them, but it is not fatal.

Obviously the garlic is on pace as well... clearly any man worth his salt has his own private line of garlic.  I know where mine came from... it gives the culinary artist a distinct advantage... you see nobody can truly recreate what you did because they don't have access to the lineage of garlic that belongs as a part of your functional kitchen.  Garlic is almost the easiest thing to grow...  put a clove in the ground in the fall and next year get a bulb... break some of those up and replant and power your kitchen for the year on the rest.  Give me one bulb of fine garlic and in a few years i never have to buy garlic again.  I mean obviously if you can avoid buying things that's good on a great number of levels... the greatest being: seeing that there is another way.  Do not underestimate this... a great number of people on this planet can only see the way they have been told...  People are told to buy things wrapped in plastic and to throw the plastic in the garbage and all will be good. 

There is always another way in life, sure it might take a bit of time and effort but it makes the reward all the more delicious. That's where the "religious" angle to gardening lays a pretty heavy trip... be good to something and it will be good to you... let things be and they will help you to be... foster growth and that growth will foster you... share your bounty with your brothers. 

 This is a squirrel hole dug through chicken wire over a planter box... a innocent young heirloom purple carrot plant was murdered as a result of this terrorist squirrel.  A child has been robbed of precious co-enzymes that help enable sight.  As the prophet Akira once said "you have to see everything" when a terrorist squirrel robs a child of their ability to see in a time when the world needs it's youth to see clearly we need some serious thought.  There are squirrel recipes that call for celery... and there is a saying we used in Canada... it had to do with bears.  It goes, a fed bear is a dead bear.  If you feed a bear the bear will become accustomed to being fed and become a nuisance and since it could kill a human easily humans decide to kill the bear before it kills a human.  Now a squirrel has little chance of killing a human beyond the stroke or backfiring boobie trap it might enable, but a nuisance is a nuisance.  A squirrel that buries natural chestnuts doesn't kill seedlings in the spring because there are no fucking chestnuts to bury in the spring... only a lunatic gives squirrels things to bury in the spring.  Don't be one of those.