It was thanksgiving in Canada last weekend, and i ended up in some Canuck's house down here in Portland and as we sat around the table talking about things we gave thanks to, i went with the old hat... Failure. Yes i am thankful for failure, it gives wise lessons.
It was of course my potato box experiment that was a grand failure... I blame myself of course. I got fewer potatoes out of a big box i constructed, at cost to myself, not to mention the shade tower effect, than i got out of the potatoes right in the ground beside it. Of course i didn't lose my mind and kill the potatoes in the ground trying to get too aggressive with the straw all over the box, in effect killing the potatoes. My man Murray down the street does it, and kills it with boxes and soil. Soil or straw? I believe my experiment was flawed by putting too much straw on the plants and just plain choking them out. I got greedy trying to get more and i crossed the line and snapped the trap on my own paw. It is especially poignant in my case because i spent many summer nights at parties crowing off about the beauty of the potato box. It is a failure i can live with... if it happens next year i punch myself in the face. But it won't happen next year because i go down with my ships, and when you go down with your ships it leaves a stronger impression on you. You see i'm not one of those "Oh i'm not sure what happened, i think i had the wrong seeds" kind of person. It was my fault, i thought killing potatoes was kind of impossible... they just keep coming back i thought... they will but you need to let a good portion of the green matter stay in the light for photosynthesis to happen. I'm not sure i am sold on the straw over dirt argument, but i will monitor the various other potato boxes people i know have and get to the bottom of this. Failure means you tried, it also sings to the fact that you had a goal in mind when you tried... the failure means you didn't reach your goal, you can still learn.
After a month of monsoon rains, i pulled my tomato plants to cull the blight population, and then we got a week of hot sun... perhaps i could have squeezed a few more tomatoes, but i did clear a good patch of the garden to work the soil and get some garlic in. I find some of the late tomatoes don't quite have the flavor that the mid summer one have. And there is only so many hours in the week these days to garden, so sometimes you have to do what you can when you can.
I got some massive bean harvests, i think i need to do what our friend down the street does and just shell the beans and dry them otherwise i will have soggy beans in the crisper. We have all the carrots and beats we can eat for a while, i leave them in the ground until eating time... same problem in that i picked a massive pile of beets and some are going soft in the fridge.
My kids collected a pile of basil seeds from a derelict garden, and i myself have a bunch of purple heirloom carrot seeds ready to harvest. The seed harvesting is a new passion for myself... it really speaks to the old hunter gatherer spirit I have. Why not? For the record hybrid seeds will often be sterile or won't produce the same plants. That's why you want to save the seeds of heirloom varieties if you are looking to get identical plants next season.
Back at home the maple tree out front is shedding its leaves, as Dad would say "that's free compost". Here in America you can opt out of the leaf collection tax if you clean up your own leaves, hey what's more American than getting out of a tax? But seriously, now that the tomatoes are down i can dig some trenches in the garden and fill them with leaves. This is how you work the soil, break up the clay and make a garden. Next year will be my 3rd season in this garden and i can really start to see the soil conditioning paying dividends. Turning your soil is a fantastic exercise to get you back to the roots of what is important in life... i pity the people who think they don't have the time or don't have a place to work some soil. In some ways it is a bit of a garlic dilemma... i have a great line of garlic i need to keep going but if i plant it now then i cant work the soil in that region of the garden anymore this winter. So you have to pick your spots... come to think of it now i could probably plant the garlic in pots and transplant it later, which would give a chance to work the soil some more... gewt the sand and the clay and the organic material all mixed up real good like.
When i was stomping the leaves into the trenches before i buried them i thought of Dad, and i remember how he wasn't the biggest fan of kids jumping in leaves. Most likely because they were raked into piles ready to be transferred into the garden, so the jumping would be a setback to the effort. I then thought that had i tried to sell it as an effort to break up the leaves, much like chewing breaks up the food for digestion i would have had a better chance of selling it to him... he probably would have gone for that, but a few years later what we did was hit the leaves with the lawnmower for just that purpose and then raked up the mulch and put that in the garden. I don't expect too much of a freeze this winter in Portland so I'm sure we can get these leaves composted down by the spring for planting season.
I shall look into cover crops... i think crimson clover might be the ticket.
It was of course my potato box experiment that was a grand failure... I blame myself of course. I got fewer potatoes out of a big box i constructed, at cost to myself, not to mention the shade tower effect, than i got out of the potatoes right in the ground beside it. Of course i didn't lose my mind and kill the potatoes in the ground trying to get too aggressive with the straw all over the box, in effect killing the potatoes. My man Murray down the street does it, and kills it with boxes and soil. Soil or straw? I believe my experiment was flawed by putting too much straw on the plants and just plain choking them out. I got greedy trying to get more and i crossed the line and snapped the trap on my own paw. It is especially poignant in my case because i spent many summer nights at parties crowing off about the beauty of the potato box. It is a failure i can live with... if it happens next year i punch myself in the face. But it won't happen next year because i go down with my ships, and when you go down with your ships it leaves a stronger impression on you. You see i'm not one of those "Oh i'm not sure what happened, i think i had the wrong seeds" kind of person. It was my fault, i thought killing potatoes was kind of impossible... they just keep coming back i thought... they will but you need to let a good portion of the green matter stay in the light for photosynthesis to happen. I'm not sure i am sold on the straw over dirt argument, but i will monitor the various other potato boxes people i know have and get to the bottom of this. Failure means you tried, it also sings to the fact that you had a goal in mind when you tried... the failure means you didn't reach your goal, you can still learn.
After a month of monsoon rains, i pulled my tomato plants to cull the blight population, and then we got a week of hot sun... perhaps i could have squeezed a few more tomatoes, but i did clear a good patch of the garden to work the soil and get some garlic in. I find some of the late tomatoes don't quite have the flavor that the mid summer one have. And there is only so many hours in the week these days to garden, so sometimes you have to do what you can when you can.
I got some massive bean harvests, i think i need to do what our friend down the street does and just shell the beans and dry them otherwise i will have soggy beans in the crisper. We have all the carrots and beats we can eat for a while, i leave them in the ground until eating time... same problem in that i picked a massive pile of beets and some are going soft in the fridge.
My kids collected a pile of basil seeds from a derelict garden, and i myself have a bunch of purple heirloom carrot seeds ready to harvest. The seed harvesting is a new passion for myself... it really speaks to the old hunter gatherer spirit I have. Why not? For the record hybrid seeds will often be sterile or won't produce the same plants. That's why you want to save the seeds of heirloom varieties if you are looking to get identical plants next season.
Back at home the maple tree out front is shedding its leaves, as Dad would say "that's free compost". Here in America you can opt out of the leaf collection tax if you clean up your own leaves, hey what's more American than getting out of a tax? But seriously, now that the tomatoes are down i can dig some trenches in the garden and fill them with leaves. This is how you work the soil, break up the clay and make a garden. Next year will be my 3rd season in this garden and i can really start to see the soil conditioning paying dividends. Turning your soil is a fantastic exercise to get you back to the roots of what is important in life... i pity the people who think they don't have the time or don't have a place to work some soil. In some ways it is a bit of a garlic dilemma... i have a great line of garlic i need to keep going but if i plant it now then i cant work the soil in that region of the garden anymore this winter. So you have to pick your spots... come to think of it now i could probably plant the garlic in pots and transplant it later, which would give a chance to work the soil some more... gewt the sand and the clay and the organic material all mixed up real good like.
When i was stomping the leaves into the trenches before i buried them i thought of Dad, and i remember how he wasn't the biggest fan of kids jumping in leaves. Most likely because they were raked into piles ready to be transferred into the garden, so the jumping would be a setback to the effort. I then thought that had i tried to sell it as an effort to break up the leaves, much like chewing breaks up the food for digestion i would have had a better chance of selling it to him... he probably would have gone for that, but a few years later what we did was hit the leaves with the lawnmower for just that purpose and then raked up the mulch and put that in the garden. I don't expect too much of a freeze this winter in Portland so I'm sure we can get these leaves composted down by the spring for planting season.
I shall look into cover crops... i think crimson clover might be the ticket.
