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".
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".
