Notes from November volume I

"My roots I'll never forget, I'll always remember the road i traveled"
     - Burning Spear

I like leaf raking, and I'm glad we have a maple tree, the whole process puts me in touch with my roots.  In previous years i have dug them in, like my father did,  but this year i am going to try to compost them in a pile.  Might it be a ground cover/ fertilizer, or will today's hurricane winds prove my plan to be folly?  I put straw over other layers of the leaves, it's just that i took this picture after a few loads of fresh leaves.  Leaf raking is a good way to maintain a seasonal dominance over your living surroundings, don't be beaten down over "work you have to do" just do it and reap the rewards.  It feels good to also use things on site for other purposes.  If i wanted to be modern i could just leaf blow all my crap onto the street and have the city pick it up for 15 dollars.  Of course living in the U.S.A an honest citizen can opt out of paying this insane "tax" and clean up the leaves myself.  Imagine the idea of some Governmental wing trying to gouge me for 15 big ones, and at the same time rob me of my god given free organic soil amendment. 

It's now that i start to eyeball the neighbors leaf supply... my father in me says it would be a good time to get more organic material for my soil, to help break up the clay, and provide extra nutrients.  If they land on the street i get them fast because of course i am paranoid about importing toxic road compounds.  If they stay on the street for a bit and get wet, i file them into the yard waste container that can deal with a small amount of leaves.

Dad and I use to drive around the the local streets and pick up bags of leaves, like midnight robbers... until that unfortunate time we imported some new weeds... lesson learned, always know the contents of the stuff you compost in your garden.  Again; don't compost your old diseased garden plants IN YOUR GARDEN... it is best to get that disease out of the garden... let the city deal with that stuff... that's what tax dollars are for.

And here is another photo of the oven... but what does it have to do with gardening?  Well a couple points... 1) it's kind of awesome, so it's doesn't really need to be on topic... it's mere existence becomes the topic and super cedes any other topic by default. 2) It's out by the garden, which is more incentive to get out to the garden to bask in the glow of the oven. 3) you could even gloat more by drawing a parallel between using your leaves on site, and using your clay on site. 4) who cares about a stupid garden if we are thinking about firing an oven...

Where was I... i was composting leaves, then i started dreaming about ovens, then i had to eat a bagel... and then i started dissing gardens...

But seriously the garden is life, much like the Ocean... on a roll here.  You have to respect the garden... every season gives the opportunity to "load the spring" for maximum harvest.  A garden is not something  that plays a "2 season game"... we live in a world with 4 seasons, and just because some bearded mouth breather wakes up on a warm spring day and dreams he'd like to be a gardener, that doesn't mean the garden wasn't there for the past half year. 

The garden that brings people together, keeps people together... social living is the best.

Let's go over some failures

Failure:  omission of occurrence or performance.

 Why are the carrot bottoms curving upwards?  Using basic science (i know crazy stuff), i theorize that due to a lack of proper deep ground soaking the carrots had to turn up to get water, because the jackass that runs the operation let the soil dry out and then only watered sufficiently so that the top 3-4 inches of soil got moist.  True they were planted in raised beds, so are more suspect to losing water, but i am aware of these facts... i should do better and not fail. 

 And in figure 2 we see a hooked carrot, a proper carrot and 2 short fat stubby carrots... it would be interesting to see why the short fat stubby ones went that direction, but i suspect it might have to do with the timing of the drought, perhaps a clay pocket, or maybe light.  Soak your soil good so the carrots reach down for the water... a sandier soil works well!

It should be noted that this was my second crop of carrots for the year so they were very young when the hot dry summer came.

A quick note on failure... don't be a wuss and recoil at the negative connotations associated with the word.  Failure is great, one of the finest learning tools in the book, but it is only a learning tool if you face it and look into it's jaws to see where the beast ran wild.  Shutting off in an emotional cocoon upon the mention of the word will only ensure you will meet the same fate again down the road, and perhaps even worse, you may assign a different reason, a wrong reason taking you further off the path of righteousness and spiritual happiness.   I could be a fool and say that the seeds were no good and i got them at this nursery that i thought was a bit suspect so I'm not going to get seeds from that place again cause look what happened.   You can see how not properly dealing with failure can steer you way off course... so don't do it... everybody fails... it makes the successes all the more sweeter... gardening is not about looking good... it's about eating well, and sometimes you have to drink a cup of failure to help the meal go down.

 Figure 3: Is that a baby corn and a stunted white fly breeding ground of a Kale plant?  Hint, there was a large tomato plant in the cage there... those plants got no light and hence produced nothing but weak plants serving as pest cultivation sites.  Bottom line... it probably would have been better to have no plants than those plants.  I did hope the corn would shoot up high over the tomato but obviously it didn't make it... the ones a few feet over were about 10 feet tall... just didn't get that early critical sun to give it the power to escape the shadow.  


Yep it's time to put the garden into a new phase... you have to get stuff out so you can get your garlic in. You can leave some if you are really getting food (lots of Kale), but the tomatoes are not as fine as they were back in august... blight and mold are establishing colonies in your soil... time to cut the loses.  You need to put that garden to sleep, let it rest and don't compost your blight laden or powdery mildew abundant green matter into your garden... that's why God created city green bins... i believe they should have the heat to kill the spores, or at least apply the NIMBY phenomenon (not in my backyard).   Over the past few years i have been observing various gardens and it seems that the ones that fail to remove diseased plants over the winter have a tough time the next year.  It is actually more fun to dig up your garden in the fall... you find surprises and get to properly assess what went down.

People are often come out gangbusters in the spring digging up and bringing in the new, and sometimes they feel defeated or overburdened in the fall and miss this great opportunity.  It can be hard to decommision plants when it looks like they might have a bit left... that's why we focus on the garlic and the leeks. The human brain works better starting things than finishing things... a little Man Robertson tip.  It's like getting a new guitar... you are tricking yourself into writing a new song because you need to justify the decision.  

Know your game, play it well, don't go backwards and don't be sorry.  Embrace failure as a learning exercise... be excited about failure, and if somebody tries to stop you from examining failure, avoid that person.  If failure continues to be negative, work to make it positive or seek professional help... a ball of hate is not positive failure.

Sometimes you eat the garden... sometimes the garden eats you.

I grew Popcorn this year... it's a bit of a different beast than regular corn... which I haven't really grown before either... so lets just say I'm kind of swinging at wild pitches.  But anytime you can garden and use sports analogies, well that's a Man Garden.

I think it is ruby red popcorn... of course I would know that for sure if I had made proper notes, but that is something we can't change now, so lets not let the things we can't change get in the way of progress... that sounds very corporation like, but I digress... Popcorn is kind of like a cob oven... when is it dry enough to use?  Apparently you want to let it dry on the stalk and then bring it in for some more drying, or you can sun dry it, some even talk about oven drying it.  I tried some test pops the other day and they just cracked open a bit yielding tasty little oil soaked snackers.   Apparently you want to dry it but leave a bit of moisture in there to pop.  That of course is the physics in the popcorn... the moisture in the kernel heats up to a point where it creates pressure and "pops" the corn. It's all about the right level of moisture...  drying times can be confusing... drying something in a desert in Arizona will be faster than drying something in the Pacific Northwest rain forest region.  It's all about the eyeball technique mixed with common sense, and of course some vigorous scientific tests (remember the control).    What is a control?  It's a little thing in an experiment... this would be a known batch of working popcorn to throw in with the test popcorn to observe for proper popping conditions.   OK I'm stalling here... this is why.

My other corn went well...  I had to pollinate it by hand as corn is best grown in a field in rows so that the corn tassels (top of the plant), will drop pollen onto the silky hairs of the corncob and thus pollinate.  When corn is planted scattered in spots where a gardener might have been in a "savage attack planting frenzy", it is good policy to grab some pollen from the tassel and manually rub in into the silky hairs of the cob ensuring full kernel production.

That I did all right on... my main corn problem happened today when I went out to cull the garden of plants that have finished their cycle.  The corn is done so I was getting it out of there.  First I tore out the cucumber plant that supplied me with the last batch of pickles I put in the crock the other day, and then I moved on to the corn... I was in a spirited and invincible mood and so I just grabbed a plant by the stalk and ripped it out... you know... a little man strength, some brute force... what could possibly go wrong.  Well one thing that could go wrong is that the plant doesn't want to give and your hand slides up the stalk and the hard plant material slices your hand  up leaving deep cuts on your fingers causing insane bleeding.  I'm not going to lie to you people... sometimes the Man "use brute force and attack first, and then think" mindset, can occasionally backfire... and sometimes those backfires are like sonic booms... It's OK you just have to own it and come back another day.

Unfortunately we were out of useful band-aids  (this happens when you live in a house with 3 children who more often then not need a band-aid).  I rigged something together with toilet paper and since I figured my gardening day was done I set off to the fencing store to buy some brackets to hold a roof over my newly constructed Cob Oven.

It's all about not letting little setbacks become bigger setbacks... unfortunately when signing for the brackets I moved my fingers and split open the wounds again causing an awkward blooding of the service desk at the fencing supply store.

What to do, what to do! Well better go to the studio and check out this new Tabor song mix... and in the process I run into a nurse doing some gardening (indeed we are still on gardening techniques).  It's always interesting running into a pro when you have Macgyver'ed a solution to the problem.  Suddenly the toilet paper held on by kids blue duct tape over my wound looked less genius and more crude... so that got sorted out next thing you know I have a proper wound dressing.... but then I hear what our nurse is up to.  You see she had a bad gardening year, and she is a bit disappointed with this so now is in the process of physically changing the appearance of her garden area.  No point having bad memories flow into next season... get on the change now and be ready for a "fresh new vibe".  Anytime you can do something to dial in the gardening area and help make it more of a "happy place" the better for gardening yield, and the happier our gardener will be.  We do garden for serenity right people... clearly nothing begets serenity like a dominating yield... some may argue that serenity and dominating don't belong in the same statement... those are the people you don't want to listen to... they operate in the technical blind spots of "yield orientated" gardening.  You know, you don't want to let down your guard when mixing spirituality with gardening.  Next thing you know you will be accepting mind-boggling errors as things that were fun anyways.  Instead of cursing yourself for not wearing gloves and swinging a machete, you will have thoughts like... well at least I got out in the sun today.   Basically that is the same as saying that "I risked UV exposure and injured myself and I'm OK with that because I love myself"... sure you should always love yourself, so it kind of sounds good but sometimes a little hate can be a good motivator.  Now if you can't love and hate yourself at the same time then go for love.  But if you can see the hate with love and the hate can help bring a positive change, then this is a good thing... am I wrong? It's like "waking up" a hockey player with a big hit... you know he is out there kind of sleeping through the game and then he gets hit hard, and gets angry and feels a little hate... next thing you know that guy is dominating the game and changing the outcome.

If it's too hard to understand that, then don't try... it might not be the right answer for you... every problem has many different solutions and our job is to find the one that best suits ourselves. Just because I happen to be inspired by disorganization, brute force, irregular cackling, anger and competition doesn't mean everybody is... (hint it's kind of fun)

Namaste

The problems with gardening

Now don't get all bleeping negative over the title... they key to mastering something is to understand the problems associated with the thing in question and then work solutions to the problems.

I'll give you an example... my potato box failed again.  I got a half bag of fine potatoes which isn't too bad but i could have got that just in the ground with mounding.  Why did i fail again? Well it's one of the problems with gardening... gardening happens in the summer and in the summer we take family vacations for a few week in the hot weather.  I am on the other side of the continent while my potato box steams under the blazing sun... well it steams for a bit and then it just becomes a dehydrated cube of soil choking the plants to death.   The potato box is highly suspect to drought being exposed to air and sun on its sides, it is a hotter more hostile environment that when lacking my obsessive maintenance fails. 

By the way, I ripped the melon plant out of the top of it that i planted to try to salvage something... it was like an octopus of disease (powdery mildew) growing rampant through the garden. Given i saw no melons growing at the time... many flowers but the truth is i think it would be a long shot to get one melon at this time of year given the state of year and the plant.  The melon was climbing on the tomatoes so  i figured it was time to take my advise and "go with my horses".  Remember Portland is a bean and tomato kind of town... and you can pickle beans and can tomatoes... all it takes is a massive effort.

I have noticed that my kale is now getting a good dose of whitefly infestation... a bit of a problem with the community garden. Community gardens have large populations of plants that get infected, and some of those plants are neglected which become bases for disease to grow and flourish.  I harvested most of the kale tonight and have frozen it to have in soup for the winter.  You know get all hippie and make some lentil and kale soup... maybe feather some sausage in there and some tomatoes and call it a minestrone or something like that.  So i harvested it and i was just going to prepare it at home so i was about to go outside and de-vein it, but then i got all paranoid about infecting my home garden with whitefly... what to do, what to do... so i went down to the corner with headlamp, cutting board and table and set to work.  Of course i have to run into people that i know who for some reason aren't surprised that it would be me on the corner preparing kale at 9:30pm, and they mention such.  I probably should have gone with my first instinct and done it in Roger's bushes.  Roger has a garden... if you want to call it that... it is a collection of feeble plants staggering towards death due to general neglect on many levels.  My first thought was the Roger wouldn't even notice a whitefly infestation, but then my second thought was that surely i would begin one if it wasn't already the case... and then there would be the awkward conversation of why i was in the shrubbery with a knife and a headlight if i happened to be discovered.  Ahh the problems with gardening run deep when the paranoid lock antlers with the hunter gather.

I did get some corn this year, and my obsessive pollination payed off in spades, but i got greedy and waited too long for them to fatten up.  The first couple were nice and tender and sweet but  then i let the others get a bit too corny, if you know what i mean.  I had actually never grown corn before, and i need to take my own advise... harvest early when the food is sweet and tender.   Fortunately i don't mind a strong corn taste... some call it mealy, i call it manly, but sweet and tender is pretty good too.  Knowing the sweet spot to harvest is always the key to good eating... harvests are usually a bounty, and if gardened properly you will always have more than you need, so therefore you can never start eating too early... corn lesson learned.

It is also interesting to note that the bastard squirrels haven't eaten any of my corn at home... i guess they have been so busy raiding all of the fruit trees around here that they haven't gotten around to it.  They grab a fruit take a few bites and then drop it on the ground and go again... vintage ass hole ungrateful animal... at least eat the whole thing you ungrateful rat with a bushy tail.  I bet you the rat would at least eat it all.

My first batch of pickles were pretty good, i hope this next batch will be better as i will get some fermentation in the crock this time.  I bought a pickling crock from Amazon after driving around town all day trying to buy one from a local store.  My first batch came from a recipe that was titled something like "continuous pickling".  It was a half vinegar, half water and some salt and spices and the idea was that kids could throw all kinds of vegetables in there and just eat out of it, but the trick is to change the brine every two weeks.  This next batch i am following a Russian recipe where it is mostly water, high salt, pickling spices and you throw in a slice of rye bread, and i guess the yeast from the bread will ferment the batch giving it a more sour flavor.  Apparently grape leaves are a key ingredient to keep the pickles crisp... luckily i have a grape vine out front.

My dill savagely underperformed, or perhaps was out competed for space by other plants.  Once again it was my failure putting the plant in a spot where it was in tough to succeed.  I should probably start the dill earlier next year.  In the store it is expensive and often comes in a plastic package and it doesn't have a strong dill flavor... I'm just a bad consumer, i don't smile when given a bum product.

The other question that pops into my mind is that i wonder if i will get a gall stone if i eat all of these salty pickles... Is it a victory if you are able to make so many pickles that you give yourself a gall stone... is that not the ultimate proof of hunter gatherer superiority?  My father just rolled in his grave right now... not a fan of salt or cucumbers for that matter and definitely not one to celebrate health aliments as a sign of victory.

Speaking of health ailments as a sign of victory the hops are ready... but am i ready for the hops?  We have soccer practices, work parties, school clean up, block party rehearsals, cob oven construction all getting in the way of some high end brewing.  I took the Zeuss down and have processed and dried the hops and have a massive bag in the freezer... but alas we need to do a fresh hop brew... when i say "we" i mean "I" of course but i kind of like changing persons in writing... I find it easier to shift guilt, if i can't carry the load alone.  Obviously it would be wise to have a couple hundred bottles of fresh hops IPA in the basement right now... and that may happen next week.  It's the problem with gardening your plant is ready when it's ready, it's not looking at you saying "hey buddy when would be a good time to peak".

It's that crazy time of year when stuff is coming in by the truckload and you have to deal with it and you are reminded of that spring day when you were digging and planting and you thought you were doing a lot of work... well as the song goes "you ain't seen nothing yet".

More mid season garden notes

There i was looking at my onions together as a "stash"... in my head i was thinking "i really didn't get that much... i dropped the ball".  I was going on about the smaller onions that got shaded and didn't do as well and i saw a few that should have been harvested earlier, or perhaps watered less... watering less would have helped them not show signs of rot i believe.  You can make some mistakes in gardening and make up with them for other minor corrections, like for example not soaking the shady onion patch every day as a matter of prescribed blind master principle.   It's like not watering beets or chard in the beating sun.. the leaves will brown and damage the plant's ability to master it's craft... if you know what i mean.

It was about that time somebody walked into the yard and said "holy mackerel that is one incredible pile of onions... did you actually grow all of that... that's incredible".  Something about dreams and levels of achievement... me being a high yield yearning insane maniac would see a result in a different light as somebody that is awed by the wonder of growing a little food for yourself.

More Hops notes... On a hot day the hops plant towers provide a nice column of shade for our hero as he soaks his soil.  It is my determination at this time that the last few spinach plants are benefiting from the shade on these hot days.  Remember of course that the hops plant is a key breeding territory of our good friends the lady bug.

Here is a hot tip for all of you community gardeners... don't grow zucchini cause every time you go to the garden there is some person there who has grown too much zucchini and is trying to give you some.  No need to take up space in your precious plot for that crop... just be social and share your harvests.  Take it from me... you can only eat so much zucchini bread before the mere sight of a zucchini  turns you a slight shade of green.  It's true... put a zucchini under your throat in the sun and you will see a green shade on your neck skin... and that's about as useful as a zucchini can be.  It's a confused vegetable that is actually in a botanical sense a fruit.  Sure you can use it for things, but there will always be a better option if you want to dial in a nice meal.  Apparently deep frying the flowers is a good tip, but i haven't tried it... it sure would help cut down on the amount of insipid zucchini's  one might have to deal with.  I have a summer squash plant and the trick there is to harvest them as immature while the rind is still tender and edible. Apparently  they are called "summer squash" because of their short shelf life, probably due to the tender rind, as opposed to a "winter squash" that has a tough rind and stores well into winter.  Kids loved them and so did the adults... good test.

This is the bulk of one of my 4 carrot patches... I have to start bringing them in as they will go woody and lose their flavor.  In a perfect world you would go and harvest the carrots as you needed them.. i have made this error before.  I think if that is your plan you have to  plant patches a week apart, and that would be a fair bit of work and focus.  When planting i tend to get into what one might call "savage attack planting"... kind of like an aggressive for check in the game of hockey.  A massive blast of work in a time period that you have free on a particular day... sometimes if you get too tentative time just slips on by and it will seem like a thousand miles of space between what you did and what you wanted to do.  Basically we have lots of carrots and some new space opening up in the garden.  With the beets and carrots coming in i think if i got some starts i could squeeze another crop out of this season.

We were talking about this second crop idea around the dinner table as we were shelling peas:

My oldest daughter recounted a story about her and her friend being over at the house and i had just made a fine carrot, beet and ginger juice and i was going on about how delicious it was... apparently I poured them a couple of glassed and low an behold they weren't keen on it (might be a ginger thing)... as the story goes i was in such a state of triumph i wouldn't accept the idea that my offering wasn't a delectable snack that when they tried to escape without finishing it i called them back to finish up, and i guess i was so happy that they didn't want to let me down the choked it back, only near the end was i able to decipher that perhaps my version of "nectar of the gods" was a bit different then theirs.  Sounds like something that could have happened.

Since we are going with the photographs this is my harvest production team braiding up the garlic... as dad always preached it's good to have a lot of hands for these types of jobs... back then it was me...  tuned me into a good worker which is never a bad skill to have.

Heat wave... go with your horses

Coming around the first corner into the back stretch the peas that shot out early are fading fast... peas are not ideal hot weather plants,  the peas that are coming are not as delicate as the ones that came before.  I was in central and eastern North America for the best of the peas this year but i told a hand full of locals to eat their fill while i was away... no need anything going to waste.  I put the pickling cucumbers right beside the peas and they are now booming, and cucumbers are hot weather plants.  They are my horses right now so i cleared the track (trellis) and let them have it.

It's always hard to bump off a plant but sometimes you have to make executive decisions like this.  In fact i am wearing the goat horns tonight... i let the onions go too long, much like i did the garlic earlier in the season.  I guess i can hate myself less because i wasn't here, but there is still a small knot of failure in my system over this.  Notes on onions... field crop and they need space... the ones that had to compete for sun are plenty smaller than the ones that did not.  All in all i have a pretty good yield of red zeplin and walla walla onions.  I will need to dry them for storage, just another one of those tasks in a gardeners life.  It's a good life of course.  Dad would tie them up by the greens, about 8 onions in a bunch and hang them in the garage for a while... I have no garage only a damp basement, so i will have to find the method that works best... like eating non stop walla walla onion rings, and Greek salads.  I will make onion rings but probably not non stop... a couple of good onion ring OD's and i'll be good.  I made a mean risotto with the walla walla onions and i bet you they would be king hell in a salad (they are sweet). 

My potato box took a hit while i was gone... this whole going away on vacation is having an inverse relationship on my potato yield.  Oh well potatoes are cheap and some are still alive, but i put a melon at the top of the potato box.  It will get full sun and be hot as blazes so we shall see what happens... kind of like a side bet... another horse in the race in that spot and we shall see who wins, with the slight chance of a double victory.

Carrots and beets are ideal right now... good size and tasty, and the beans are forming as they take over the onion patch.  True that i often tend to focus on failures... which is a great learning technique by the way. 

Did i mention the hops are epic?  I had a friend water the house hops and he emailed me about all of the bugs on the plants... did i know what they were?  I said they were probably lady bugs, to which he replied "i know ladybugs and it's not them", to which i replied "look up ladybug larvae"... bingo!  Do it... look up lady bug larvae... cool eh!  You have to love the hops not only to they preserve and flavor beer but they provide and ace breeding ground for one of you garden's most trustworthy aphid attackers.  And that folks is our symbiosis moment.

When coming back from vacation it is always a treat to walk into your garden and see what happened... provided of course your assigned caretakers didn't fall asleep at the wheel... that didn't happen to me.  i believe i do a fair job at stressing the seriousness of hydration to my assigned caretakers. A good litmus test is obviously the state of the garden but also a kind of nervous interaction with the caretaker afterward in which they ask if they did OK.  I have always found if the person is nervous about disappointing you they will do a better job... now i also stress they should feed themselves from the garden at the same time as a means to bring them into the holy and spiritual aspect of the caretakers duty.  But with humans, we prefer to be motivated by fear... so be it.

The chard has gone bananas as well...  if i were a vegetarian i could probably eat completely and solely out of the garden... but i'm kind of more of a meatatarian... it just is that way, these canine teeth don't lie.  Truth is sometimes i think of eating less meat, but that means a bit less meat and more vegetables in my world.  I have located some local organically farmed meat and i am working on spending my money on that kind of meat, i won't buy meat that comes in styrofoam, because that is just insane.  For your serving of meat you need to send some plastic wrap and a sheet of styrofoam  to the landfill?   And this is normal?  Oh i forgot if it is wrapped and stamped in plastic it is safe... yes yes...

Still no tomatoes, but soon there will be a mighty bounty... the plot thickens!

Eating time

One thing about gardens... never be afraid to eat a young succulent plant.  There is always this idea that one will wait for the plant to become "optimum" for it's harvest.  This is a fools paradise in our personal gardening world.  For example if you waited for your spinach plants to become all "optimal" you would end up with more food than you could eat in a few days.  Why not start eating it early?

I have been eating my kohl rabbi  now and it is delicious... in past years i waited for it to get bigger thinking i wanted more yield, and then a few hot days and they split and got "woody".  Same deal with the peas... nothing is taster than young fresh peas, but you think oh let them get bigger and then you notice you have hundreds of peas and you can't deal with them all... don't fall into the concept of letting everything mature completely.  Last year i had beets bigger than softballs and many of them are in my basement pickled but for weeks i passed up on eating delicious  beets hoping to get more yield.

If you were on the case in the spring planting like a Man gardener your garden is now at a point where it producing food at an exponential rate.  Obviously you are not going to eat an unripe tomato but if you pluck your kale plants down they have the root system to replace that foliage in a matter of days. So by not eating it now thinking you are waiting for more you are actually going down the path of getting less.  It's like living your life going after money passing up all kinds of opportunities so that you will be "set" one day... and then that day comes and you may not be of mind to realize it.

Don't get me wrong... money is important and you should always be on the right side of the interest conundrum, but that's another blog.  I harvested about 30 peas today and most of them were small and tender, much like you might pay top dollar for in a high class restaurant and the truth is there will be 35 tomorrow.  Of course being a pro i have 4  pea patches each growing like an invasive weed species these days.  It's good for the plant too.. the plants get the message that "holy cow we need to make more seed because some maniac keeps plucking us dry".   It's like milking a mammal... take the milk and the mammal will see a need to replace that milk at that rate.

Clearly there are  a few types of home gardener plants at work here... a spinach or a kale or a pea will keep producing fruit so you need to keep on these plants now.. the younger and more tender the tastier.  Then you have plants like beets, kohl rabbi, carrots that are one off plants.  If you planted 90 beet plants then you can start eating young tender beets early and continue until the beets are larger and older eating the whole time, or you can wait until they are all big and you will have more than you can deal with.  If you go the second route there are donation options (see produce for people), or perhaps bartering options with other gardeners growing different crops, but sadly what i often see is plants in the ground that missed their time to nourish the human that planted them under that idea that they would be nourished.

Now being a Man Gardiner i strive for maximum yield always... it's the way i roll, so what i am saying, and i hope i am making sense is that now is the time to make your dinner out of what you have.  We are into the extreme growing season and soon things will bolt and you will find you missed it.  I missed some leeks this year... they started to flower and when i pulled them up the center of the the stock was solid... or "woody" as they say in the business.  I missed it, so now i will let the remaining ones flower... something for the bees, and perhaps some free seeds, and it might look pretty... onion like flowers are kind of pretty.

Also noted, is that the garlic i planted in the fall is now ready... last year i let it go too long and i suffered some rot on the bulbs. In life often times when you act to want more you end up with less... it's all in the poetic blinding power of greed.  We have too much in our society, where we can let food go to waste... don't commit to that cycle... get what you can while you can... some smart ass songwriter said that once... ahh! it's true.

I look at gardening as practice for the apocalypse... to be self sufficient  you need to be smart... growing plants are like an exponential graph... soon you will be overwhelmed so why not harvest a bit early?  It is a matter of staying on top of things, being ahead of the curve as they say... i realize i am hammering this point but it is a point that i believe needs to be hammered.   It's not  just the rum talking, although it make the points flow in a more fluid manner from my perceptive right now. 

It is now that garden can feed families... with of course the proper meat supplements... I have these canine teeth that dictate the diet of an omnivore... a meat and vegetable eater... but that's just me... in some ways i see the virtue of the vegetarian diet, but in another way i see the need for meat in my diet.  To each his or her own, on my front i try to buy organic, sustainable,  plastic free packaged meat to send my message to our society.   But that's just me, the more vegetables the better... may they be young and tender all the better.

New and improved blog with photos

This is the garden, my best garden to date... i have tweaked some things from last year on the power of new knowledge and the simmering rage of last years defeats.   Speaking about defeats... perhaps i should have titled this little post "new and improved blog with Pics".   By using the word Photos and not pics, i am dating myself as an old school, out of touch and un-hip type of chap and that's no way to blossom a writing career... one needs to identify with the lingo of the kids today... do u hr me?

Houston we have a problem.   I could have started this blog with a nice fuzzy little statement about how many people have commented on how nice the hops look, and how every morning a hummingbird sits up there and sings... quite a nice song by the way.  But that didn't happen... i had to take a few shots and now we are here.  Keep on going... as a leader who leads by example i will now argue how proper gardening mindset states that it is the only option.

Obviously i could just delete and start again, but then where am I?  Paralyzed in fear on what to do and how to continue... IS IT THE RIGHT WAY????   The thing is you can't take back the past... you can only learn from it and presenting a false and calculated image of what you are doing deserves a serious kick in the balls.  If that's your game go get in the entertainment business where every pile of manure is polished until it's shining like a new dime.  In gardening manure is free fertilizer... food for the prize... not decorated like the prize. 

OK lets get serious... i have a new Garden neighbour... a plot mate so to speak... and the good news is she is aware of this blog and as a result of it wanted to be next to me.  Her style is what she calls "free gardening"... anything that is free.  This is the way it should be... people should never have to go to the nursery to buy plants because plants make seeds which make more plants.  To make a long story mid sized i have been deputized "plot manager in charge of errant brainstorming operations, seed distribution and orphan tomato relater".  I know it's a long title, but we revel in being weird here in Portland... for me it's kind of like taking candy from a baby.

 I'm kind of like a plant broker in many circles... i find spots for free plants.  How does one become a plant broker? Let me put it to you this way... i have my ear on the ground and my finger on the pulse of the neighbourhood.  I know what's going on... i know who's doing what... I'm not afraid to ask or tell it like it is.  I have about 20 people around here i keep up with on recurring gardening talk... always looking for a tip... always willing to give some advise.   Good times for comedy too... For example you can be in the school and see Ramsey and yell "what the heck are you trying to disguise your garden as the Sahara desert Ramsey!"  Next thing you know other parents are looking at Ramsey talking under their breaths about the total lack of plant stewardship as Ramsey sweats and tries to utter an uncomfortable and lame excuse.

Check out the beets... a nice cool wet spring has been good to our little red friends at the community garden, and with the absence of the ass hole squirrels (that i have at home) one can actually grow beets. I see squirrels as a notch more annoying as waving inanimate cats... at least the cats can only look annoying as something that is totally useless can.   The squirrel is an oily little devil of a nuisance destroying all kinds of things just in the simple manor of existing.  I like this idea but i imagine the appetite for a venture of this sort will be strong and unfortunate. 

The carrot patch next to the Walla Walla onions is finding it's groove.  Make sure you really soak the soil so the water gets deep so the carrots will reach down to get it.  Of course the key to gardening is good moist soil and full sun.  Now we get full sun at the Mt Tabor community garden, but the soil that is there is a little heavy on the clay which will really interfere with your ability to get the water deep. You really want the clay under your good soil so that your moisture is retained.  I am getting to the point in my garden where the plants are putting up some shade on the soil which really helps to keep the moisture in the soil.  It's funny, in all this talk of global warming and CO2 levels there is so little emphasis on the re greening of the earth.  Think about how much a road or a roof heats up in the sun over what a forest might.  The forest absorbs the light energy and uses that energy to turn CO2 into growth.   Obviously I'm for reducing CO2 production and usage, but there seems to be a rather large other thing we could be doing... but who makes money off letting a forest grow?

I put 2 more panels on this potato box the other day and filled the space with good soil.  I'll take a pass on the straw dream this year... i got about 7 potatoes in the straw box last year, while my man down the street got about 50 lbs out of his dirt box.  Now one test does not make a conclusive experiment... unless you are a corrupt government looking for an answer to support you ideology... in that case it should be fine.  I am careful not to choke out the plants this year... perhaps last year i put too much straw at one time and then went away on vacation in the heat of the summer.  It's important in Gardening to be honest about everything going on... it's the only way you can learn to get it right.  Just another one of those fine life metaphors... maybe you are lucky things are working out... or maybe you have all sorts of little micro adjustments dialed in... ahh the plot thickens.

This is a silver fir tomato in front of a kale and beside the carrot patch.  The silver fir is a unique tomato plant, defined by it's sharp narrow leaves, and the tomato itself is a thing of beauty.  My neighbour turned me on to this variety a few years ago... as a result my plot neighbour has a few in her plot.  Now you won't beat the taste or the elaborate beauty of a slice of this tomato.  This years exercise will be to pinch off all of the early flowers and lower leaves to allow the plant to grow large and strong for the July -August- September tomato season.    Sometimes it is hard to cut back plants... you think you are doing a bad thing when in fact you are actually doing a good thing.  I'd say most gardens i have seen are an overgrown mess of tomatoes rotting come harvest time, and that's not good... it's like parenting where a little tough  love can go a long way.

And now for the peas... i have 4 batches of peas going this year, three are in circular cages like this and one is in a linear trellis.  Now i have always been a linear trellis  kind of guy but i have to say in the circle the plants have an easier time climbing up.  I seem to spend a lit of time coaxing the plants to not reach for the sun and stay on the trellis when it is linear, and when it is circular these problems don't exist.  Now i imagine the linear trellis would be better for the plants getting more exposure to the sun, but it all comes down to yield of course.  I also imagine that the linear trellis might be easier to harvest from, but if there is a will there is a way.

Now what about the home garden? Well there is one king hell strawberry harvest going on now... i can't really measure the load with the kids constantly feasting all afternoon but i know it's a big one.  Between the gardens we have had fresh spinach salad and kale every night for the past week or so, and the peas and raspberries are coming in.   My kids had a bowl of strawberries, peas one blueberry and some raspberries for a snack after school yesterday... and that's why we do this.

off to the races

80 degree weather here this week, that will pay huge dividends for those that have had plants in the ground developing root systems that have been watered adequately.  If not don't worry we have a long season... but get on it!   My hops have reached the top of the line this week to give you an idea of the power we are dealing with.

I just came in from a slug an snail cull, another important thing to get on at this time of the season as you want to really get the population of these pests down.  Sure some softies don't like the idea of bumping off organisms, and i get that in a sort of philosophical way, but in another more harvest centered mindset it makes no sense.  That is why it was easier to sell pesticides to farmers back in the day... this chemical will take care of things and you don't have to witness the horror of the carnage.  The trick is to develop a healthy hate for your pest that will power a will to get out there and meet them Mano to Mano.   Obviously if i had a hundred acre farm i couldn't possibly be out there killing pests one at a time... i would have to choose my crops wisely, and learn.

I could never condone pouring chemicals on the earth... there has to be another way, and the chemicals can only come back to hurt you.  Like the bees... apparently conclusive studies have confirmed that pesticides are mainly responsible for the decline of the honey bee.  Imagine that... a chemical designed to kill insects is killing insects!  But if that chemical makes a lot of money for a said company then perhaps it's OK... that is the story we get apparently... but that is another dark rage to fall into at another time.  For now we need to bask in the glory of the 20 plus snail and slug kill i pulled off tonight... that is 20 less snails and slugs reproducing in my little micro ecosystem.  I get the story all the time from other local strawberry farmers... all my strawberries get eaten by slugs they say... they say.  You see my strawberries have a patrol Sargent with a heart full of hate and a keen eye for late night revenge... but that's just me, and remember I'm a weirdo.

Luckily for me i live in a city the celebrates weirdness... believe me it's a lot easier to be weird than it is to be "world class"... first of all what the hell is "world class"?  The dictionary tells me that it is "being of the highest caliber in the world"... does that mean arrogant, or just a term thrown out as a result of a marketing study to sell sell sell.   Getting off topic here... i love all of the cities i have lived in even if their choice of Mayors is bat shit crazy.

Apparently bat shit makes good fertilizer... most fecal matter does for that matter, bird guano is very good i have been told.  But as fun as it might be to have a colony of blue footed boobies  above my garden, i might regret it on other levels... and it's not going to happen given the geographical limitations.

OK, the garlic i transplanted that i mentioned in the last post is far behind the garlic that i didn't transplant... therefore my assumption about transplanting garlic may have been flawed, although i still say given the price of garlic if you need that space for a better cash crop go for it.  The garlic is alive and doing well, it is just not nearly as robust as the garlic i didn't transplant.  I mention this as a matter of scientific fact that came about from an ill planed man gardening frenzy, that said I'll take a man gardening frenzy over inaction any day.  Looking back i could have done a better job of transplanting taking more of the soil around the root base as i transplanted, but that is the thing... we learn as we go. Don't be afraid to make mistakes if the alternative is inaction, and of course do observe with a mind free of prejudice  to what you thought.  So many times in life people refuse to learn from things gone wrong because they can't accept they might have been wrong.  That's why the garden is the key to life... the garden teaches you how to live if you let it.  It is just life growing under your guidance and the cues and keys are all there if you choose to see them. 

Fluid Gardening

My community garden plot has plants that overwintered (garlic, leeks kale), there are also some annual plants... I call them Blueberries, although an egghead botanist might use the term Cyanococcus within the genus Vaccinium.  As a result, tilling the soil in one swell effort is not really in the cards.  Apparently the garden now has a tiller... which of course will be broken in a few weeks when some hammerhead puts the wrong kind of gas in it... but that's another story.  You have to be fluid. That sounds good too,  I can see a book on "fluid gardening"... it caters to the idea of dealing with the various things that happen... and that is so totally now.  Perhaps statements like  "Now I don't want to force my plants into being something they are not so i am just going to be open to the changes that they present to me over the course of this varied growing season" could be presented in a group setting and then discussed.  Selling points are everything, but i never cared for them myself.. mind , body and garden need to keep fluid.

 You see it's still Man gardening... focusing on techniques like "savage attack weeding", combined with fluid thinking... allowing nature to guide you.  What is this fluid thinking our man is dancing around? WHAT DOES IT MEAN? I'm getting there...

Now your Onions and Garlic and Leeks and such are plants that transplant very well... you need to get them in the ground (often to over winter), and that's OK.. it doesn't mean they have to be in that defined spot forever... you can move them to a spot in the garden where perhaps you need them once you have decided how your garden wants to Flow... get it!  For the record, you can't transplant peas.. they need to go where you want them, but you can transplant Beets with some success, carrots not so much.

Ideally it is best not to transplant... in a perfect world the plant would grow where it needs to grow with the right space around it.  But due to circumstance that can't happen right now, so you do the best you can and you get things in the ground and growing.  You know get the flow happening... start the process... just by getting the process flowing you will do yourself more good than you could ever comprehend from your static viewpoint.  Even if you went in and made a bunch of mistakes, you would do yourself more good than bad because you would be involved.  Just like a molecule of water flowing down the river drawing ever closer to the waterfall... but the waterfall can't hurt you... you are  together with your kind and you will all fall together.  OK lets stick to fluid man gardening and keep away from fluid existentialism gardening.

I started a bunch of beets indoors and put them out in my garden by the house and that little insufferable squirrel ass hole came and ate the tops... so i might have to start again with chicken wire all over that box... Fluid eh!  The squirrels and I are on better terms ever since the peanut feeding stopped, and although i was thursting to avenge the attack I'm OK with it.  I put the plant out there without proper protection, i need to be smarter, more fluid in my thinking.  I hit a block, it could be a rage trigger but perhaps i need to ride this river and flow to another avenue.

So you see, perhaps beets are the thing to grow at the community garden where the squirrel population is less absurd... fluid thinking... don't jam a round peg in a square hole... notice the energy, feel the flow.   So I threw about 50 beet seeds in a square area in front of the peas.. we need to get the beets going.  Now i am not sure if that is the ideal place for them but if it is not i will move them later when i get that sorted.  Most likely i don't move them but since i have embraced fluid gardening i am not afraid to plant them there given i am able to contemplate moving them if need be.   Sometimes think of your garden as one of those plastic tubs you buy vegetable starts in at your local store.  You take them out of the box and put them in your garden.... well get things growing.    I have some Tomatoes started but they will be a while before they get in the ground... perhaps a yield of spinach before that spot gives way to tomatoes... that could be planted in a field of spinach for that matter.  When you have a fluid gardening mind anything is possible.

Should we spend some time ridiculing the opposite... why not.  Probably better than raging on about the asshole cat that has been digging up my peas and then shitting on them.  Imagine that... say i go wandering into the house of that cat and into the kitchen where that cat has it's food bowl and i just take a shit in it... maybe i wipe my ass and drop the toilet paper in the water.  I bet you those cat owners will miss the irony and try to call me crazy and have me arrested or shot, rather than taking responsibility for this outrage.

The opposite of fluid might be rigid, good for a tool brand but not for a farming mindset.  As the old saying goes "things often don't go as planned" so if you are rigid in your gardening you are bound to miss opportunity.   So many people wonder why certain things they plant don't produce, and they try and try again.  There is a mindset that say's "i want to grow this", but if it's not working why box yourself like that.  The plants and the season's particular climate don't give a rat's ass about some vision you have about your garden... get things going and observe what is working and let those observations guide your process.

Fluid... what is the key fluid?  Please tell me you just shouted WATER at your computer screen.  Yes you need to water you garden like an obsessed badman.   Soak it down early every day.  Remember that is my secret... my secret that i typed in CAPS.  The secret that i have been telling people for years, but they manage to forget... It's OK i like being good at something, so thanks... a little thing called garden dedication.

Before we forget lets go over a few things from the previous years on Northwest gardening...  Now I'm not saying it can't be done but these are 7 things i have observed from many plots, my own included.

1) All Brussel Sprout plants infested with aphids... never seen a yield
2) Densely packed squash family plants overcrowded and covered in powdery mildew
3) Too many fucking zucchini
4) Bullshit avant guard forms of zucchini that suck
5) Water starved cabbage plants sickly and covered in aphids using that plant as a base to attack the garden.
6) Tomatoes rotting on overcrowded plants
7) Portland is a Bean and tomato town

I just throw this out because i happen to be a scientist at heart, and maybe you know a way to grow brussel sprouts, that i don't, but i want you to know it and not just think you remember somebody saying something about it one time.  Well of course you can do what you want, i just happen to want yield, and i hope you do too, and think about how nice it would be if the produce for people got some good beets rather than a 9 foot zucchini.   I know, i have been really giving it to the zucchini... I'll give you a tip.  Grow the yellow zucchini and when it get's ripe shred it and then salt it and let it sit... this will bring out the water... then squeeze it out and mix it with Emmental cheese and bake it on a pizza shell as you would a pizza...  It's a winner.

So yes be open to your garden, react to the climate of the summer we will have... we don't know that answer yet... it's OK. Get some oars in the water and some bets on the table, plant things you think you will use, or would be nice to give to somebody... you can never have too many tomatoes if you have the balls to do some mad canning come summertime.  I still make curries and soups with my tomatoes from last year... lots left still.

one more note... the massive kale plant in the left... has the yellow flowers.  The yellow flowers are awesome on salads... also a good thing to have to bring bees into the garden... i saw 5 bees on that plant today.