I might have picked up another garden

Well you see, i was at a gathering today and the people in the house, who just moved there casually mentioned that they won't be doing much with their garden box this year, due to the fact that the gardener of the house will be in another state for work related reasons.  Hot Damn!  They seemed amenable to the idea of me putting on a clinic in that box, that has good sun and all... I am a bit worried about the neighbours... they have a large American flag and a sign to the effect of removing Obama so that America can get back to the way it should be.  I mean people can believe whatever they want, i guess... my concern stems more in the fact that an honest person in a backyard at 1am killing slugs with glee, might get shot at, should some confusion arise. 

Oh the costs of gardening... those swat team bullet proof suits cost a pretty penny, and people can get a little testy when they see happy men in riot gear in the middle of the night poking around in backyards that aren't theirs.  Could you just plant some things and let them be, and take your chances?  Not too likely... that would be the easy road, and the easy road has no upsets.  Do you go into a big game without a plan?  Not unless you are that reckless child President starting and amoral and illegal war... and how did that end?

Curses... these terrible diversions... but gardening is a war, and don't forget it.  Alien troops of weeds and pests, and don't forget the unusual weather patterns, that apparently have nothing to do with human impact on the planet.

It was a rainy day today, which was good i found out... a good day for the slugs to be out attacking my strawberries in plain light.  I was out there crushing like a bad man, and i did a harvest.  This is my first ever strawberry harvest... i threw a bunch of "hood" strawberries in the rocks holding up my garden last year and they went bananas... there are hundreds of strawberries out there and some are coming ripe... i probably picked about 30 today and i picked some that were under ripe to test an idea.  Will they ripen after being picked... is that the key?  Clearly a delicious aromatic ripe strawberry is too much temptation for the various varmints out there.  I saw the spot where mice are entering my neighbours attic, and i bet you a mouse would like those berries.  Clearly i am in an obsessive game... how do i get the strawberries before others do?  Farming for slugs is suckers work, and as a general rule i don't put industrial products into my gardens... i don't trust them... something that kills slugs might kill earthworms and other beneficial organisms... i believe in natural selection... naturally i select my targets.  Or as my friend Mr. Rummy once said at a party "I never start a fight, but i always finish it". 

You start using these products, and it could put you on the path to the dark side, a path in which you will never recover from... next thing you know you will be sitting on your ass hole chair looking at your manicured lawn that you just doused with roundup™ thinking that you are "Keeping up with the Joneses"... the good news is that there won't be any attack bees coming out to sting  you... you will have done your part.  This is of course ridiculous, but it happens... and in the end it's all just memories... memory is cheap right!

sorry Mule, the devil made me do it!

Those bloody Goldfinches and other points

Did you know that goldfinches eat beet and chard leaves?  It's true, i saw it with my own honest eyes... my first instinct was to freeze and make the identification.  Did i mention that in my youth i was and avid birdwatcher?  I believe i saw 143 different species of birds one day during spring migration at Point Pelee... it was part of the Jim Baillie Bird-a-thon, around 1980.  You would be hard pressed to do that well today given the massive bird habitat destruction that has happened on this planet in the name of money and progress for the good of humankind... apparently.  Let's not step into that dark storm cloud now, the story is far to ugly, stupid and treacherous to kick into on a Friday night that may still have a sliver chance of being productive.

So yea, i like birds, and they haven't actually killed the beets, and at least they are eating them, which is giving them some nutrition, which i can live with.  But they were goldfinch and they were eating the plants... google it if you think I'm spinning you one.

My general rule is that if you are a vertebrate and you are actually eating the food you are attacking then your life will be considered on a case by case basis.  If i feel the need to net the plants i will net them, the way i see int now is that the beets are still thriving... I'll probably pass on eating the beet greens with all of the holes and the bird shit on them... i can live with that.  We can call it fertilizer for the next generation of crops and carry on and tell ourselves that we are doing good.

Glad i started the beets indoors back in February to give them that head start although i was thinking of doing a second planting of seeds to fill in areas of the garden that have space.  Hopefully the more mature beets will act as a decoy, but i can imagine any smart bird will always go for the newest, most tender snacks.

We shall cross that bridge when we get there... a great life philosophy, and one that is poignant in gardening.  You see last week we thought we were in summer with the sweltering sun blasting away and the locals in their summer shorts.  Did i start my tomatoes early enough we were wondering... and now mired in a frigid monsoon we have different concerns.  Perhaps more like should I have constructed a makeshift  tomato hothouse out of plastic and PVC tubing?  If i do tomorrow will that guarantee hot weather to cane me into a "will i burn my plant's paranoia"?  It actually happened to me last year... i build a little greenhouse and fried some plants in a few hot days when i let my guard down.  The bridge was there but i didn't see it because i had my head up my ass thinking i was all pro and all, and i went from being ahead of the game to being behind the game.  It's about recognizing where you are vulnerable and then reading the signs properly to avoid the disaster that has you in it's sights.   Avoiding disasters, is one of the best games known to mankind... that's why thrill seekers have such a blast, pretty much an adrenalin addiction when you look at it with a clear head, or a fogged head focused on a task.  My argument would be... rather than jump off a cliff in a flimsy flying suit to fly past rock mountain faces at incredible speeds that equate to sure death should a mis-calculation occur, why not change the bar with respect to your vegetable plant survival being the life and death line and you reacting accordingly.  You get your obsessive attack orientated daily mindset, which i find healthy, you can scheme, counter attack, pre attack and ride a big harvest... all of the elements are there.

The important thing is to pound yourself on your failures.. make it hurt.. that's what keeps the bar in place... remember of course that this blog is about Man Gardening.  If we were writing about a sissy gardening blog, the kind of blog that doesn't even deserve capitol letters... well it would be different. It would be a different blog... shall we pretend?

"Well i went out to my garden the other day... i hadn't been there for a few weeks because i was feeling a little ache... my psychotherapist thinks I am not getting enough Argon, so i started eating mushroom roots because my roommates bearded cousin came over last weekend and told me a bunch of things i wasn't aware of.  Apparently the best way to absorb Argon from Mushroom roots is to do a lipper... that's right get it in your mouth like a plug of tobacco.  The Argon gas will react with the scintactilaze enzyme naturally occurring in human saliva and your body will set back to natural Argon levels.

When i got to my garden, i smiled and felt good that there was my plot of land and i was a gardener... i figured there was no point snapping into the reality that my garden was in fact a weed infested example of neglect that showed clearly all of my glaring betrayals to the concept of gardening but instead posted a picture of myself on instagram with my gardening hat on... it was then that in noticed that somebody had commented on a post i made in facebook so of course i had to give them a LOL".

OK, enough with that insipid diversion... remember we are just doing comedy here people... don't ride a horse called failure if you ain't ready to be bucked off.  Failure complexes need to be fought through with shit eating grins... and beers of course,  Me, I always like to have an extra hundred beers on hand as a simple insurance policy... seems crazy on paper but say the apocalypse hits and you have the band over for jam... clearly the thing to do in the event of an apocalypse, as I'm sure creative juices will be flowing.  You could easily down 50 beers in scenario like that, which would last you only one more jam... clearly you would be brewing like a badman with a keen focus on securing more propane for the brew kettle and working bartering deals with local wheat and barely farmers, as a reasonable human i have of course already started multiple hops plantations.  Still probably a good idea to have a grain field and a cider plantation, i mean apple orchard, for good measure.

So yea, birds eating greens.. wonder if slugs are on the strawberries... back in a few... not that many out there, and most of them were on the basil and the good news was that they were all very small, which tells us that the garden caretaker has been doing as good job with respect to managing the micro slug population.  I found a few snails on my wife's Hosta plants and dealt with them accordingly.  But i am intrigued  by this idea that basil might be planed as a "decoy plant"... slugs seem to like it the most, so you can attract them there and focus on your killing frenzy when the time is right... like every night.  Clearly it would be better to have chickens to focus on the slug and snail cull, but i don't have enough property to deal with chicken shit at this time. 

Why my pea's are stomping balls.

OK now these are my pea's, I believe they are Oregon Sugar pod II, and Avalanche Snow Pea.. there might even be some Pole Cascadia Sugar Snap peas in there.  You see sometimes in a planting frenzy it's more important to get the food in the ground than to make labels... and if you do make labels make sure you don't use your children's water soluble markers to do it.

Of course in a perfect world one would want to know what is what so they could properly assess yields to maximize harvests, but let's face it, perfect worlds are like mirages, they seem more perfect from a distance and then the more you know about them the less perfect they become.

Let's not slip into philosophy just yet... we shall get there after a couple more beers, right now we need to set the stage.  A lot of people at the Mt. Tabor Community garden have commented on how well my pea's are doing, and they want to know what my secret is... Hot damn! Talk about pitching one down the old pepper (baseball analogy in where the pitcher throws and easy home run ball to the batter).

How did i do it?

1) started early
2) brought in a yard of fine white lightning planting soil (from dean innovation)
3) i show up every day and soak the soil

You see these plots have a lot of clay, which turns hard as a rock and becomes impermeable to water... so you want your clay below but a good layer of rich organic soil above.  The more great soil you have the better... it just cost's money.  For the record i don't think it's cool to take the mulch they have for the outside garden beds for your own plot.  True there wasn't a lot of great soil in these plots to begin with, but they are great plots and one should focus on that.  You have a plot of great sun exposure, with unlimited and easy water access... all the tools are there.    I say that because i have heard grumblings about these things and i encourage people to focus on the good that you do have and not what you are missing.

Another quick note...  A few people have mentioned that they have read updates from this blog, and there is a mild fear that their garden might get ridiculed given the nature in which this blog is written.  The way i see it, if you have a garden you are doing good...  the mantra when i began this years ago was "gardening is not a competition, but if it can be turned into one to create greater yield then do it".

I mean that in the most positive way, and i am a huge fan of comedy, the idea of trash talking, and attempting to motivate others through casual threats... well i just find it funny.   I met a nice woman in the garden tonight who asked me about my peas and why mine were doing better than hers, so i basically told her the 3 steps i mentioned above, and she said she wasn't good at gardening.

I disagree, she is good at gardening, she is there doing it and she is asking direct questions... i believe she is very good at gardening, just not very experienced.  The key thing is getting the answers to the questions that come to mind and then of course remembering and taking action.

I was gardening by the time i could walk, my father was a gardener who believed that son's are had to be labourors (Canadian spelling EH!).  Dad was a production gardener, a graduate from the Ontario Agriculture College.. it was all about maximizing the yield.  But now that I'm an adult i realize too that it is also about a happy place.  For the small garden you can spend a lot of money on soil, seeds, trellis equipment, time... you name it.  In the end you might just break even, but to me it's like a religion, you put in your practice, observe, react and are given your reward with which you can do what you can choose with.  You can share it, store it, darn well better eat it. 

OK enough of this nice talk... don't be a wimp, get in there and garden.  I was actually going to tar and feather my buddy Josh a week ago in this blog... he had yet to do anything in his garden, and i felt he needed some motivation.  In fact i actually photographed my garden and his garden and was set to go to town in a satirical blog post ridiculing his garden, or lack there of... but i checked my swing,... i did threatened him outside Glencoe Elementary school one day when we picked up our children that i was going to write a blog about his no existent garden.  Let's just say he had nervous eyes and tried to explain that they did in fact have a plan... well it turns out that he did, in fact there was even a backup copy of the plan... his garden looks great now, and provided he doesn't slack off on the weeding and watering he should be in great shape.    I'm glad i held back, even though i had some good zingers lined up... perhaps the idea that my threats helped motivate his planting, maybe the did, maybe they didn't, but i did see fear in his eyes as he laughed nervously.

Check this broccoli out:

I started it indoors in February in my kitchen under a florescent light... now the thing is you have to keep an eye on these guys... don't let them come close to flowering.  Just cut the broccoli head off and it will continue to produce all season long.  This one is not ready to be harvested, but that;s the thing about going to the garden every day, i go 2x a day, but I'm pro remember (remember comedy).   Now if you go and water an weed every day then you notice what is happening, you are able to correct your problem before it become a problem.  Like my buddy Josh who's basil is taking a big hit on the slug front, holes all over the leaves and all... the way i see it, well its quarter to midnight at this time... Josh should be in the garden with a headlight bumping off slugs right now... perhaps i should call him now and remind him.  Well that didn't go too well, i guess they were sleeping after a hard day... there was definite confusion over the urgency of the situation with regard to the urgency of slug counter attacks.

Now since I'm on a roll, let me tell you about the importance of regular garden worship.  Check out this plant:

It is a broccoli started at the same time as the earlier broccoli posted.  What happened?  Well it turned out one day i went to the garden and that plant had been pulled out of the ground, and way lying there in peril.  Who knows what happened,  maybe a kid, maybe and animal, maybe a malicious bastard... it doesn't matter, it happens, the good thing was that i was there to put it back in the ground and to pinch off the big leaves (to save on water loss), and i think the plant will survive and thrive in the future.   But this is clearly a result of my devout gardening practice... I appeared when my plant needed me, or you could argue i needed my plants... lets just say we were there for each other, as any fine religion should be... it was fate so to say.

When i was in a community garden in Vancouver Canada, we had a local group that had a plot... let's just say that that it was a group of non gardeners with a pack of unsupervised children who ran amok in the garden over every bodies plots... it was a total disaster, and they ended up being kicked out of the garden, but not before i got a song out of it.  You see when things attack my garden, i go bananas, hence the squirrel theme for the past year, but that has been solved thankfully.  So i tried to build a "security fence" around my garden to keep these children from tromping on my plants and in the end i took one king hell gash on my left shin from a piece of angle iron i  drove into the ground to hold up the "security fence", so in the end i did it to myself: Sung by Genny Trigo...

The real comedy here is that i gave this album to my neighbour John who's hacksaw i dulled up cutting the angle iron... not sure if he ever listened, or if he did he catch the acknowledgement.  Anyhoo, I thought it was funny.

One last thing... i noticed in the community plots tonight that in the communal herb garden somehow we had planted lemon balm and mint, two things that were on the "do not plant in the garden list", the reason for this is that they will take over and you will spend years trying to eradicate from the garden. I was going to bump them off, but since I am not actually the king around here, besides in my own mind (comedy people)  i will wait a few days until consulting.

OK i have to kill slugs now.

Mean spinch harvest tonight

I picked a ton of spinach tonight... well not a ton, to be scientific the dry weight would weigh in multiple ounces.  I could probably salad a party of about 15 if we were having a dinner party right now... but we are not, it's just me drinking in front of a computer screen... so i say's to myself, since there will be plenty more spinach tomorrow from the home garden, how do i deal with this influx?

On the way home from the garden i had a chat with a local and we discussed the idea of "blanching" the spinach before freezing it.  That would be throwing it in boiling water for about 20 seconds before freezing it.  Once you freeze spinach it's good for lasagnas and curries and such, and not much good for "fresh salads".  I might juice some if it tomorrow with carrot and beets, but then i will have those red shits... maybe that was way offside, but it's true.  You drink a beet juice (fine stuff) and then later you have a movement, and you are for a moment alarmed... do you have some intestinal bleeding?  Oh no it was the beet juice... sorry it's not my intention to talk about certain body functions but it is what it is.  Apparently beets have been used for dyes, and a good choice they are... beets are great, but we were talking about spinach before my unfortunate yet noteworthy diversion occurred.

Yes how to freeze spinach... a quick google search will pull up many pages of advise.  I have always just washed it dried it and frozen it and it's good for a few months, but i think i will blanch this batch and see what happens.  The Gardens are full of lettuce and spinach and it's time to eat... don't be a fool and let it go to seed and develop a bitter taste, it's time is now.

Choice and life are everything... people are often stuck on the path of choice, which can be unfortunate.  I think i terms of fate... this is what is available now, use it or lose it, some years are good and some are bad, sometimes a garden doesn't do what you want, but it does what it does, and you as the caretaker needs to harvest the potential.  You grew those nutrients for your body, now make sure you use them.  I love the fact that my dinner plans are dictated by what is coming fresh in the garden... it's life in a nutshell.  This is what we have, so this is what we are doing rather than ask what do i feel like tonight? The less decisions one has to make, the better.

My big key this year is giving each plant space... i started a lot early indoors and then placed them into the garden rather than quickly funneling a pile of seeds into a row, and now my reward is big healthy plants dominating their zone rather than a tight row of plants fighting each other.  Like these people that plant a row of squash plants... do they know that one squash plant can take over a whole garden and produce many squash?  Let's call it an error of the willing...

But seriously, to let your plants thrive they need space.  Look at it this way... say you plant a beet... think about how big you want that beet to be, say 3 or 4 inches in diameter, well then that beet needs  that room to grow, so don't plant another beet 1/4 inch away from it... now i feel a bit treacherous writing in imperial and not metric,, but you can do the conversion if you give a damn and catch my drift... for what it's worth i was doing a job today and we went and bought a bunch of 8 foot 2x4's and i was cutting them at 78 1/4 inches.  As a pure scientist obviously the world would be easier if we were all in metric, but that ain't the case, old habits die hard.

Plant a beet every 7 centimeters should be about right if you happen to be from Canada... let them be.

And water...  i think it's the big thing people don't get about gardening... don't just spray your plants for a second... soak that fucking ground... put moisture deep into the soil.

Did i tell you about my neighbour who started a little garden in front of his house?  I might have, it's late and i'm on a roll so no need to check on the facts now.   He kind of giggles when i scold him for not watering the carrots i planted for him properly, not only that but he has lettuce ready to eat and it is just sitting there about to go to seed... of course I'm on him like white on rice and i believe that generally he is impressed that i would take the time out of my day to pound on his door and scold him for garden neglect... i have noticed a recent fear... he sees me and he starts watering.  My mere presence has him on high alert, and fear of a scolding prompts him into action.  I do what i can for the neighbourhood, if indeed you don't have it in your general conscience to tend your garden properly let it be up to your neighbour to shame you into proper protocol.    He tends to be giddy, happy and easy going, while i try to be the stern influence... don't just grow food, eat it.

It tends to be the main problem... your plant looks great, now eat it, rather than marvel in it's glory and watch it turn to seed.  You garden for your body, to grow food to give you good life, when the time comes the time comes, eat the damn food, or store it appropriately.