The beans the kids planted are in full gear (planted late June ready early august)... beans can really surprise you as their fruit is hidden under the bean leaves. This is one of the reasons they make a good crop of course... once again a security issue... what people don't see they might not take. A nice ripe tomato is like a neon sign, but a succulent bean is hidden. Most likely a good way to protect the bean from the drying sun as it gets a chance to mature and become seed, which it will if one forgets to harvest it. Mine are a purple striated form of bush beans and they steam up in a most delectable fashion. Young beans are the tastiest and still have a delicate pod... i believe i have heard that beans are a vegetable you should eat cooked for proper digestion and nutrient harvesting... strong fibers. I prefer to steam beans and make sure to shut them down before them become over done.
Harvesting beans is another one where you have to be careful not to damage the plant... just pulling at the beans like a child might do can stress the plant by damaging the roots in the tug of war that will ensue if you choose the rouge harvesting technique. Scissors work well, but hands keep one "in touch" with the garden.
Speaking about in touch with the garden it seems that every bodies lettuce has gone bitter and some of the people with bitter lettuce polluting their plots are not aware of the problem that is plaguing them. I happened to be keenly observing the garden at 1:30 am this morning, in part due to my "Robertson vs. Slug" battle in the strawberry patch (remember big efforts are everything) when i noticed that the gardener down the street has a plot full of bitter lettuce... i was pretty sure this was a key issue the needed to be dealt with ASAP so i went and woke them up to have a little discussion. I brought a liter of stout as a friendship token but apparently this disgruntled gardener doesn't drink much and never at 1:30 am after rising from bed for what she calls an "unimportant issue". When i asked her if she sugared her lettuce she just looked at me... i like to think of it as a moment of enlightenment, and i explained to her the possibilities and the next thing you know she figured it was time for a glass of stout... although i failed in my quest for a late night re-plant we did share some philosophies and i was enlightened to the point where i realized that not everybody thinks the way i do.
Not all are like my apprentice... the new fellow who took over that plot that i had taken over... to keep names non public lets call him "old Tim old sport". This guy is going to make a good gardener, he has the heart of a farmer... when he is standing there munching some fresh produce picked seconds before he is in awe of the flavour and power of life. That is the fire one needs... it's cool to say you have a garden in our new corn fed horse shit society, but it is completely another animal to have your fire stoked by your love of delicious cheap food. You can see it in the garden all the time... people come out like gangbusters in the spring and by fall (harvest time) they have forgotten and the food goes back into the ground, which is natural but wrong in this situation.
When to harvest Corn?
it might be time soon.. i have never grown corn before as i have heard it takes a few rows side by side for proper pollination... time is the hunter on that. Will my corn have just a few kernels here and there, or will i be gloating like a rooster at the crack of dawn with a gut full of corn. The problem is i don't have that much... i don't want to harvest too early... i am a corn rookie, but i won't forget what happens.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
in the old days i would sugar the lettuce
Ok people what happens to lettuce when it gets too old? It becomes bitter is the answer. You can see when you pick it that there is a white milky substance that appears when you rip it and it means your lettuce is done, and if you forgot to plant new lettuce like 25 days ago then you are going to be off the lettuce for a bit.
This is the situation i find myself in... when i was a younger "boy" gardener i thought i was a genius and would just sugar coat the lettuce telling myself that it was still good. It was a good effort and even i have to admire the effort of "not losing"... kind of like when you are down 3-2 in a game and your net is empty for the extra attacker and the other teams best player gets a clear break away on the empty net but you still try to chase them down hoping that maybe just maybe a mistake might be made and you can take the puck and go coast to coast and tie up the score. You have to remember that things that are unpalatable often don't digest well so an extra coating of sugar isn't always the best route to go. That is why gardening is a sport of patience and preparation, and cutting corners and going off the game plan can be a fatal turn of events. Sure we have peas in abundance, onions coming out the ying yang, steady beet and broccoli production, corn coming and the tomato and bean surge is almost on us... but why drop the ball on the lettuce?
Does the man gardener think he is so great that lettuce seeds are going to fall magically from the sky, ahead of time for proper feasting? You would think so with this clearly negligent behaviour... i should not be re-learning these lessons again, but i am and that is the life of a gardener. At this time of year things are going crazy and you are overwhelmed with your bounty and it's all positive thoughts, and that's when you make your mistakes... being on the case is everything when it comes to growing food. So i ripped out the great lettuce patch that was by the strawberry failure in a quick burst of "savage attack weeding" and within seconds the wasps were in there like lions on a water buffalo kill by a waning drinking hole in the dry season... i stayed calm and at one with the plants and the garden keeping on my course and allowed the scavenging to continue and in the end i cleared some land for planting and some wasps are now nighting down with bloated abdomens. As a side note because the great lettuce patch (of mixed lettuce) was planted a little tight at the base of the roots was a woody stalk probably to give the lettuce a Darwinian height advantage... bottom line is that the plants wanted to seed and they didn't need some hungry ass hole plucking at their leaves so they took care of it and became unpalatable, or at least non-gourmet... and in so doing they are now compost... and if a wasp did sting me i would stomp that fucker into a paste.
My daughter, or one of them for that matter, washed the onions with the hose to clean the dirt away and they are now set out on newspaper in the garage to dry. The onion patch on the other side of the strawberry failure is now more cleared ground for beets chard and some more lettuce. Lettuce in Vancouver should grow well into November so there is still plenty of game left...
The garden community has responded well to my travesty... i find if you stand in front of a Gardner and tear a strip off yourself for your lettuce failure there is a good chance that they planted too much lettuce and will offer you a chance to harvest some of theirs. Also now is the time many casual Gardeners go off on vacation and look to a professional like myself to lay down some hard core soakings on their plot... sometimes gardens need soakings and a little thinning.
This is the situation i find myself in... when i was a younger "boy" gardener i thought i was a genius and would just sugar coat the lettuce telling myself that it was still good. It was a good effort and even i have to admire the effort of "not losing"... kind of like when you are down 3-2 in a game and your net is empty for the extra attacker and the other teams best player gets a clear break away on the empty net but you still try to chase them down hoping that maybe just maybe a mistake might be made and you can take the puck and go coast to coast and tie up the score. You have to remember that things that are unpalatable often don't digest well so an extra coating of sugar isn't always the best route to go. That is why gardening is a sport of patience and preparation, and cutting corners and going off the game plan can be a fatal turn of events. Sure we have peas in abundance, onions coming out the ying yang, steady beet and broccoli production, corn coming and the tomato and bean surge is almost on us... but why drop the ball on the lettuce?
Does the man gardener think he is so great that lettuce seeds are going to fall magically from the sky, ahead of time for proper feasting? You would think so with this clearly negligent behaviour... i should not be re-learning these lessons again, but i am and that is the life of a gardener. At this time of year things are going crazy and you are overwhelmed with your bounty and it's all positive thoughts, and that's when you make your mistakes... being on the case is everything when it comes to growing food. So i ripped out the great lettuce patch that was by the strawberry failure in a quick burst of "savage attack weeding" and within seconds the wasps were in there like lions on a water buffalo kill by a waning drinking hole in the dry season... i stayed calm and at one with the plants and the garden keeping on my course and allowed the scavenging to continue and in the end i cleared some land for planting and some wasps are now nighting down with bloated abdomens. As a side note because the great lettuce patch (of mixed lettuce) was planted a little tight at the base of the roots was a woody stalk probably to give the lettuce a Darwinian height advantage... bottom line is that the plants wanted to seed and they didn't need some hungry ass hole plucking at their leaves so they took care of it and became unpalatable, or at least non-gourmet... and in so doing they are now compost... and if a wasp did sting me i would stomp that fucker into a paste.
My daughter, or one of them for that matter, washed the onions with the hose to clean the dirt away and they are now set out on newspaper in the garage to dry. The onion patch on the other side of the strawberry failure is now more cleared ground for beets chard and some more lettuce. Lettuce in Vancouver should grow well into November so there is still plenty of game left...
The garden community has responded well to my travesty... i find if you stand in front of a Gardner and tear a strip off yourself for your lettuce failure there is a good chance that they planted too much lettuce and will offer you a chance to harvest some of theirs. Also now is the time many casual Gardeners go off on vacation and look to a professional like myself to lay down some hard core soakings on their plot... sometimes gardens need soakings and a little thinning.
Monday, July 26, 2010
second planting... or manning up again
I am a man who gardens by region, which is a good method for a man who gardens and parents at the same time. Good for the short blasts of focused effort... so today i laid down some more peas, popped in some more beets and nailed down a new scattering of beans.
There is still a lot of time left in the coastal growing season... in a good year one can get a lot of solar power to those little chlorophyll factories we know and love as chloroplasts in August, September and the early October.
Chloroplasts are organelles found in plant cells and eukaryotic algae that conduct photosynthesis. Chloroplasts capture light energy from the sun to produce the free energy stored in ATP and NADPH through a process called photosynthesis.
Basically if you can get the damn plant some sunlight and keep it hydrated the plant can take care of the rest and you can amaze people with your "green fist"... sissies have green thumbs, Man gardeners have green fists... and the reason you have a green fist is for "garden security"... i believe we have been over this, so lets move on.
With the weeding and culling last week i had a chance to see my garden as a larger organism which helped to identify areas of need. Well it happened that we were loving the beets i harvested last week so we need more (beets will have no problem growing into the fall)... we had been feasting heavily on an area of chard and lettuce in an effort to clear out some space and with the weeding i realized that the space was there... so in go the beets... one seed per hole and give then room to grow. Make fun designs with them.... i planted mine in a kind of rainbow pattern, and then filled in under the rainbow with more beets.
I laid down the peas in among the older peas... that will help them climb up to the lattice to spawn the second wave of Robertson Pea devouring... I did damaged a few of the pea plants with my insane "savage weed attack", but it's what you have to write of as collateral damage.
I dumped a few more corn plants off on the new guy who took over from the people who inspired the song "rage hero episode #37". He was late into the garden... late like mid-summer and needs plants to learn about gardening. We had a good little chat... i had this idea of just gardening plots that were abandoned for various reasons but this guy took over the plot after i had taken it over, but he actually legitimately took it over by waiting on a list for a couple of years. Anyway i introduced myself told him how to care for his broccoli plant, and i enlightened him on my philosophy on the history if his plot and made various initial suggestions based mostly on soil preparation. He appreciated that but by then i was on a roll... i had a garden student in front of me... somebody who was listening to me talk... he was standing there nodding his head with a trowel and a corn plant in one hand and a piece of broccoli in the other. Well i had to cut him off from listening to me and we had to get that corn in the ground... so we did and then i gave him another.. it was a corn plant in the entrance to my garden that takes a beating when people try to take a shortcut into the garden if you know what i mean. I laid some beans down there... funny corns and beans... apparently if you are a vegetarian you should eat corns and beans because together the two vegetables have all of the essential amino acids your body needs.
I actually have some corn cobs growing... it will be interesting to see if they got fertilized properly... that is if a local squirrel doesn't make off with the bounty before Robertson teeth get a chance to do some sinking.
That said the Man vs Squirrel comedy is one of the finest ones out there. As a young child the hours of amusement i got from my father who was trying to keep the squirrels out of the bird feeder, was pure genius. And then the chipmunks in the attic at the cottage rolling acorns around at night... brilliance. To my fathers credit he did come out on top... eventually after he systematically deleted their options one at a time.
Plant observe experiment.
You are not growing the plants.. they can do that themselves... you are their guardian and for your efforts you are rewarded with the finest reward... fresh produce.
There is still a lot of time left in the coastal growing season... in a good year one can get a lot of solar power to those little chlorophyll factories we know and love as chloroplasts in August, September and the early October.
Chloroplasts are organelles found in plant cells and eukaryotic algae that conduct photosynthesis. Chloroplasts capture light energy from the sun to produce the free energy stored in ATP and NADPH through a process called photosynthesis.
Basically if you can get the damn plant some sunlight and keep it hydrated the plant can take care of the rest and you can amaze people with your "green fist"... sissies have green thumbs, Man gardeners have green fists... and the reason you have a green fist is for "garden security"... i believe we have been over this, so lets move on.
With the weeding and culling last week i had a chance to see my garden as a larger organism which helped to identify areas of need. Well it happened that we were loving the beets i harvested last week so we need more (beets will have no problem growing into the fall)... we had been feasting heavily on an area of chard and lettuce in an effort to clear out some space and with the weeding i realized that the space was there... so in go the beets... one seed per hole and give then room to grow. Make fun designs with them.... i planted mine in a kind of rainbow pattern, and then filled in under the rainbow with more beets.
I laid down the peas in among the older peas... that will help them climb up to the lattice to spawn the second wave of Robertson Pea devouring... I did damaged a few of the pea plants with my insane "savage weed attack", but it's what you have to write of as collateral damage.
I dumped a few more corn plants off on the new guy who took over from the people who inspired the song "rage hero episode #37". He was late into the garden... late like mid-summer and needs plants to learn about gardening. We had a good little chat... i had this idea of just gardening plots that were abandoned for various reasons but this guy took over the plot after i had taken it over, but he actually legitimately took it over by waiting on a list for a couple of years. Anyway i introduced myself told him how to care for his broccoli plant, and i enlightened him on my philosophy on the history if his plot and made various initial suggestions based mostly on soil preparation. He appreciated that but by then i was on a roll... i had a garden student in front of me... somebody who was listening to me talk... he was standing there nodding his head with a trowel and a corn plant in one hand and a piece of broccoli in the other. Well i had to cut him off from listening to me and we had to get that corn in the ground... so we did and then i gave him another.. it was a corn plant in the entrance to my garden that takes a beating when people try to take a shortcut into the garden if you know what i mean. I laid some beans down there... funny corns and beans... apparently if you are a vegetarian you should eat corns and beans because together the two vegetables have all of the essential amino acids your body needs.
I actually have some corn cobs growing... it will be interesting to see if they got fertilized properly... that is if a local squirrel doesn't make off with the bounty before Robertson teeth get a chance to do some sinking.
That said the Man vs Squirrel comedy is one of the finest ones out there. As a young child the hours of amusement i got from my father who was trying to keep the squirrels out of the bird feeder, was pure genius. And then the chipmunks in the attic at the cottage rolling acorns around at night... brilliance. To my fathers credit he did come out on top... eventually after he systematically deleted their options one at a time.
Plant observe experiment.
You are not growing the plants.. they can do that themselves... you are their guardian and for your efforts you are rewarded with the finest reward... fresh produce.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
vacationing and Gardening have their problems
I put everybody and his brother in charge of my garden while i was away... i was going to write a blog about how to prepare for a departure but then i realized that my thousands of followers would be aware of my whereabouts and some of them might be hardened hard core criminals and come and rob be while i was away. So knowing these as clear facts i decided against it and now i have garden confusion... garden confusion can happen very easily... holey shit my wife just walked into the room and i passed the idea that a chair next to me should be reupholstered with a plaid tartan and she agreed... Ok
where was i
Garden Confusion, also know as OGD Overwhelming Growth Disorder
you lose the space between good and bad, right and wrong just a blur of green.
You need a good hour block of "Savage attack weeding", which can have it's problems, the main one being that you get into a rhythm of pulling out weeds and you end up bagging the odd bean plant... and wouldn't you know it the first bean plant i yanked from the ground was the one with the Popsicle stick with my daughters name on it... son of a gun... she knows where it is... it still had some root on it so i stuck it back in the ground and then flooded the area.
One thing i have found with heavy weeding or lettuce harvesting is that it really brings in the stinging insect carnivores. i think it has to do with the fact that when you take away foliage you expose things that were not exposed before... the wasps must be aware of this and in actual fact i saw a wasp on the ground trying to fly away with a large grub but it couldn't so it just bit off a piece that it could fly off with and took off... and then the ants came in to feast in the bountiful man garden.
The other fear you have is weeding around peas... i think sometimes it is better not to pull out the roots of plants that share root territory with you pea roots because you can do a lot of damage to root systems... better to just shut down the green matter on those plants to give the peas the advantage in the game for life. I always loose my mind in times like these... it is because i am an impatient person... sometimes inpatients can be a good thing, like when it's a flowering plant (yuk yuk). Impatience can force the game but is often not the best mix for a long term plan like growing things
I had to weed because my new neighbour, the 70 year old Vietnamese lady put the fear of lazy shame into me
While i was away apparently she stopped certain friends of mine that i had assigned to harvest and eat. She was like a crow on a great horned owl when old clubfoot Sam (local blues player) came to water and pick some peas. This is something i can get behind... that is a gatekeeper for a man garden if i ever saw one! In a more negative side affect she was all over me... she is like a "no weed in the garden" kind of person while i tend to be a more garden by region kind of guy. True that i was away for a few weeks and then last weekend was the folk music festival so i tend to resemble a sun stroked exhausted alcoholic rather than a eager garden master with a keen eye for what is actually happening on the gardenbed level.
But when your garden neighbour reminds you of a few areas of your garden neglect (like weeds and over-ripe produce) you must play it like a hockey game... you had a bad shift so you get scolded and then you fly back out on the ice and come up huge with a big effort that says you know you were wrong and it will never happen again... and if it does than the next time you will place the large dandelion like weed that has insane spikes on it in your underwear for the day to serve as a lesson. The other lesson of course is to let people pick things that are ripe and loosen the ownership curve a bit on bountiful fresh produce that you foster.
where was i
Garden Confusion, also know as OGD Overwhelming Growth Disorder
you lose the space between good and bad, right and wrong just a blur of green.
You need a good hour block of "Savage attack weeding", which can have it's problems, the main one being that you get into a rhythm of pulling out weeds and you end up bagging the odd bean plant... and wouldn't you know it the first bean plant i yanked from the ground was the one with the Popsicle stick with my daughters name on it... son of a gun... she knows where it is... it still had some root on it so i stuck it back in the ground and then flooded the area.
One thing i have found with heavy weeding or lettuce harvesting is that it really brings in the stinging insect carnivores. i think it has to do with the fact that when you take away foliage you expose things that were not exposed before... the wasps must be aware of this and in actual fact i saw a wasp on the ground trying to fly away with a large grub but it couldn't so it just bit off a piece that it could fly off with and took off... and then the ants came in to feast in the bountiful man garden.
The other fear you have is weeding around peas... i think sometimes it is better not to pull out the roots of plants that share root territory with you pea roots because you can do a lot of damage to root systems... better to just shut down the green matter on those plants to give the peas the advantage in the game for life. I always loose my mind in times like these... it is because i am an impatient person... sometimes inpatients can be a good thing, like when it's a flowering plant (yuk yuk). Impatience can force the game but is often not the best mix for a long term plan like growing things
I had to weed because my new neighbour, the 70 year old Vietnamese lady put the fear of lazy shame into me
While i was away apparently she stopped certain friends of mine that i had assigned to harvest and eat. She was like a crow on a great horned owl when old clubfoot Sam (local blues player) came to water and pick some peas. This is something i can get behind... that is a gatekeeper for a man garden if i ever saw one! In a more negative side affect she was all over me... she is like a "no weed in the garden" kind of person while i tend to be a more garden by region kind of guy. True that i was away for a few weeks and then last weekend was the folk music festival so i tend to resemble a sun stroked exhausted alcoholic rather than a eager garden master with a keen eye for what is actually happening on the gardenbed level.
But when your garden neighbour reminds you of a few areas of your garden neglect (like weeds and over-ripe produce) you must play it like a hockey game... you had a bad shift so you get scolded and then you fly back out on the ice and come up huge with a big effort that says you know you were wrong and it will never happen again... and if it does than the next time you will place the large dandelion like weed that has insane spikes on it in your underwear for the day to serve as a lesson. The other lesson of course is to let people pick things that are ripe and loosen the ownership curve a bit on bountiful fresh produce that you foster.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Well well, the Man collective has spoken... on tomatoes
So i got a nice email from a fellow MAN gardener and he had this to say:
"trim the bottom leaves off you tomatoes, they get no sunlight, then wrap the stalk with a bit of bare copper wire. no more slugs. originally I was going to put a loop of cu, and a loop of al. poor mr slug would be a battery. ouch. but apparently mr slug won't cross the copper."
Clearly the man is insane, but who isn't around here... when the going gets fucked the fucked get going...
What i do like is the attitude... the man attitude... as the bible kind of insinuated "do unto others before they get a chance to unto to your tomatoes".
the other great thing about this is that he solved the problem... the slugs won't cross the copper wire, but he never would have thought of that... it came out of a need to damage the culprits. Now as a natural scientist i was wondering about things you discover trying to solve other problems. Our Man Andrew discovered that copper wire will keep the slugs at bay... (until they become really hungry perhaps.. time is the hunter on that dog)... but what if you did set up a current? What affect would that have on the tomato plant in terms of raw yield? We defiantly know that currents from electromagnet forces do have an impact on living beings.
I remember in university taking a course in vertebrates and we did an experiment where we stressed fish with currents... that was until "Seed Corn" a guy who's father was a chicken farmer... he was a king hell riot of a guy and a very dangerous person to be around in terms of freak accidents and other tomfoolery... anhyoo Seed Corn ate our fish on a bet and so when the lab instructor came over to our tank to check out our experiment, we had a bit of a "missing fish" dilemma that never really got properly explained.
What I'm getting at is that the right current could be beneficial to the plant's tomato yield by creating an unnatural tomato growth spurt inspired by the effects of the electrical current... i would guess that unnatural= bad, as things usually work that way, but remember bad can be good if it makes money... a uniquely human trait.
But Man gardening is about producing for yourself... about not going to the grocery store but rather to the garden. And our man Andrew is correct in the management of tomato leave plucking... a few of my friends are Italian and there are many stories of people spending a lot of time pinching off tomato leaves to keep the right balance in the plant.
Plants need space to thrive and sometimes they compete with themselves for that space and your job as a Man Gardner is to help the plant make those decisions. Food producing plants have been "selected" over the years of human cultivation ... actually a form of genetic modification, for traits other than learning to grow properly. it's all about the yield, or in Monsanto's case it's about the yield and the elimination of anything that stands in the way of total market domination... but their plants have a team of corporate lawyers happy to bankrupt any opposition who's position is completely logical and necessary in terms of the propagation of life...
getting a bit off topic... nothing quite like a Monsanto rage... Monsanto is a seed corporation that is one of the clearest representation of the devil on this planet.
I myself don't have a problem with slugs on my tomatoes, perhaps that is because i have much tasty lettuce nearby for the slugs to feast on and they leave my tomatoes alone. Our Man Andrew also mentioned that he is actually a balcony gardener so I'm thinking it might be a good idea next year to go with all new soil... or bake the soil he has in his oven to kill off any vagrant slugs... of course he is going to have to recommend that his neighbours who have garden balconies bake all of their soil as well and sometimes if these people are not MAN gardeners they might foolishly thing that baking their soil in small increments is a waste of time... i guess if copper wire works.
kind of fun to imagine the strata meeting where they tell everybody with a balcony that they need to bake their potting soil because the building is about to be wrapped in copper wire and the slugs will be no longer.
I remember running a garden, or a few of them in our last place and when i suggested a rain barrel to collect water for a portion of the garden that had no water access there was a pack of lunatics that were worried that the rain barrel would encourage mosquitoes to live... and that was around the time there was a malaria panic in the news... so that meeting came to an unfortunate conclusion... i was glad i wore my pyjamas to that meeting... sometimes a strata council president needs to make his point... don't worry they were a nice plaid pyjamas.
"trim the bottom leaves off you tomatoes, they get no sunlight, then wrap the stalk with a bit of bare copper wire. no more slugs. originally I was going to put a loop of cu, and a loop of al. poor mr slug would be a battery. ouch. but apparently mr slug won't cross the copper."
Clearly the man is insane, but who isn't around here... when the going gets fucked the fucked get going...
What i do like is the attitude... the man attitude... as the bible kind of insinuated "do unto others before they get a chance to unto to your tomatoes".
the other great thing about this is that he solved the problem... the slugs won't cross the copper wire, but he never would have thought of that... it came out of a need to damage the culprits. Now as a natural scientist i was wondering about things you discover trying to solve other problems. Our Man Andrew discovered that copper wire will keep the slugs at bay... (until they become really hungry perhaps.. time is the hunter on that dog)... but what if you did set up a current? What affect would that have on the tomato plant in terms of raw yield? We defiantly know that currents from electromagnet forces do have an impact on living beings.
I remember in university taking a course in vertebrates and we did an experiment where we stressed fish with currents... that was until "Seed Corn" a guy who's father was a chicken farmer... he was a king hell riot of a guy and a very dangerous person to be around in terms of freak accidents and other tomfoolery... anhyoo Seed Corn ate our fish on a bet and so when the lab instructor came over to our tank to check out our experiment, we had a bit of a "missing fish" dilemma that never really got properly explained.
What I'm getting at is that the right current could be beneficial to the plant's tomato yield by creating an unnatural tomato growth spurt inspired by the effects of the electrical current... i would guess that unnatural= bad, as things usually work that way, but remember bad can be good if it makes money... a uniquely human trait.
But Man gardening is about producing for yourself... about not going to the grocery store but rather to the garden. And our man Andrew is correct in the management of tomato leave plucking... a few of my friends are Italian and there are many stories of people spending a lot of time pinching off tomato leaves to keep the right balance in the plant.
Plants need space to thrive and sometimes they compete with themselves for that space and your job as a Man Gardner is to help the plant make those decisions. Food producing plants have been "selected" over the years of human cultivation ... actually a form of genetic modification, for traits other than learning to grow properly. it's all about the yield, or in Monsanto's case it's about the yield and the elimination of anything that stands in the way of total market domination... but their plants have a team of corporate lawyers happy to bankrupt any opposition who's position is completely logical and necessary in terms of the propagation of life...
getting a bit off topic... nothing quite like a Monsanto rage... Monsanto is a seed corporation that is one of the clearest representation of the devil on this planet.
I myself don't have a problem with slugs on my tomatoes, perhaps that is because i have much tasty lettuce nearby for the slugs to feast on and they leave my tomatoes alone. Our Man Andrew also mentioned that he is actually a balcony gardener so I'm thinking it might be a good idea next year to go with all new soil... or bake the soil he has in his oven to kill off any vagrant slugs... of course he is going to have to recommend that his neighbours who have garden balconies bake all of their soil as well and sometimes if these people are not MAN gardeners they might foolishly thing that baking their soil in small increments is a waste of time... i guess if copper wire works.
kind of fun to imagine the strata meeting where they tell everybody with a balcony that they need to bake their potting soil because the building is about to be wrapped in copper wire and the slugs will be no longer.
I remember running a garden, or a few of them in our last place and when i suggested a rain barrel to collect water for a portion of the garden that had no water access there was a pack of lunatics that were worried that the rain barrel would encourage mosquitoes to live... and that was around the time there was a malaria panic in the news... so that meeting came to an unfortunate conclusion... i was glad i wore my pyjamas to that meeting... sometimes a strata council president needs to make his point... don't worry they were a nice plaid pyjamas.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
It's all about the kids
I had the good fortune to lead a class of youngsters on a tour of the community garden. It happened that my oldest daughter's class was doing a study on on the concept of "Community", so i mentioned i could lead them on a tour of the community garden... i failed to mention that it would in fact be a lesson on MAN gardening. I had to fail to mention that otherwise the school commissioner would get all squirrely... if you know what i mean.
Perhaps the exam at the entrance of the garden was a bit too much for a pack of kindergarten, grade one and grade two students... but sometimes you have to just roll with the punches. In a number of ways i am against tests, exams and grades for the younger pupils in our society... I feel it puts unnecessary stress on the student to perform at a level that is completely irrelevant to their development at this time... but gardening is different than primary school... it is actually important! And the purpose of the exam was to inspire curiosity with respect to the ways of our food producing friends.
So what was the plan... a pack of kids in the garden = chaos.
Clearly we needed MAN wisdom so i gave a small lecture on spinach and how spring time is spinach time but summertime is coming so it is now bean time. I had talked to the teachers before hand and had them prepare Popsicle stick like items with the name of the child on it and in the end we have beans planted now in the spinach patch. The kids planted a bean seed and put a stick with their name on it next to the seed... i will photograph later for the record.
It's funny how kids are... they hear they get to plant a bean in a MAN garden and they just form a "task based" line all eager to plant their bean seed. I made sure that we had the bean seeds without the poison... some bean seeds are coated in a poison to keep other life from eating them... for sure one doesn't want to be involved in the poisoning of a bunch of primary school students on a mission that was meant to instill a love for gardening despite the exam and all.
Anyhoo, we got the beans planted, which was something i was meaning to do and the kids were very happy and our collateral damage was very minimal... i lost a corn plant a few lettuce and a a couple of sunflower plants but i got 30-40 beans planted so it's all good. and in the end the kids had a great time and they made me a book with drawings of their memories of their experience at the garden, and that's worth it's weight in gold any day.
for the record we did do a small lecture on bees... as we have a small collection of mason bees in the garden. pollination is everything.
Perhaps the exam at the entrance of the garden was a bit too much for a pack of kindergarten, grade one and grade two students... but sometimes you have to just roll with the punches. In a number of ways i am against tests, exams and grades for the younger pupils in our society... I feel it puts unnecessary stress on the student to perform at a level that is completely irrelevant to their development at this time... but gardening is different than primary school... it is actually important! And the purpose of the exam was to inspire curiosity with respect to the ways of our food producing friends.
So what was the plan... a pack of kids in the garden = chaos.
Clearly we needed MAN wisdom so i gave a small lecture on spinach and how spring time is spinach time but summertime is coming so it is now bean time. I had talked to the teachers before hand and had them prepare Popsicle stick like items with the name of the child on it and in the end we have beans planted now in the spinach patch. The kids planted a bean seed and put a stick with their name on it next to the seed... i will photograph later for the record.
It's funny how kids are... they hear they get to plant a bean in a MAN garden and they just form a "task based" line all eager to plant their bean seed. I made sure that we had the bean seeds without the poison... some bean seeds are coated in a poison to keep other life from eating them... for sure one doesn't want to be involved in the poisoning of a bunch of primary school students on a mission that was meant to instill a love for gardening despite the exam and all.
Anyhoo, we got the beans planted, which was something i was meaning to do and the kids were very happy and our collateral damage was very minimal... i lost a corn plant a few lettuce and a a couple of sunflower plants but i got 30-40 beans planted so it's all good. and in the end the kids had a great time and they made me a book with drawings of their memories of their experience at the garden, and that's worth it's weight in gold any day.
for the record we did do a small lecture on bees... as we have a small collection of mason bees in the garden. pollination is everything.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
can't go to sleep without a little bone Man Robertson Gardening wisdom
That's right... what was that idea i had...
Gardening is not a competition... but if it can be turned into one, then perhaps, one might be able to spur on greater yield.
What you have to remember with this line of logic is that if it becomes a competition that you don't resort to damaging other peoples plants in an effort to win by default. Think of yourself in in that lineup after a greatly contested hockey game shaking hands with your opponent... win or lose you thank them for playing hard and thus bringing out the best in yourselves as a team. In a game you need good opposition, but fair play is the kinship of sportsmanship. Does that even make sense? Jesus fucking christ i'm trying to write a serious blogaroo and my own lack of English understanding has gotten in the way of of a fine point.
When i was in University, one could say that my maturity level was not up to snuff, but we had some good times for sure. But the one rule in the house was that always the gold standard was to not to fuck with peoples beds. Perhaps you passed out in the living room and as a result you got your head shaved and a tube of a535 wiped on your groin but when you recovered from that, you had your bed that was guaranteed to be free from fuckery. That's the way men roll, most of life is lived to set up the next practical joke, and the other part of life is to relive those practical jokes.
But as a Man i have to say... don't fuck with peoples gardens... a garden represents life, and life is on it's way out of this planet... I don't make the rules i just call them like they are... you should never garden to be better but rather to bring out a side in yourself that strives for food production... or some other lesser purpose like the crazy kook woman flower garden.
When was in a band called "Roadbed", look it up if you dare, we used competition as a great producer... anything that gets you motivated to rule your domain is OK in the Man book. If one of the members wrote a song then the other would immediately think "fuck you you son of a bitch" and write another. Sometimes stubborn son of a bitches need an obvious motivator but never lose track of the big picture.
gardening tip of the day? Blueberries need acidic soil... think coffee grounds and pine needles.
OK
Gardening is not a competition... but if it can be turned into one, then perhaps, one might be able to spur on greater yield.
What you have to remember with this line of logic is that if it becomes a competition that you don't resort to damaging other peoples plants in an effort to win by default. Think of yourself in in that lineup after a greatly contested hockey game shaking hands with your opponent... win or lose you thank them for playing hard and thus bringing out the best in yourselves as a team. In a game you need good opposition, but fair play is the kinship of sportsmanship. Does that even make sense? Jesus fucking christ i'm trying to write a serious blogaroo and my own lack of English understanding has gotten in the way of of a fine point.
When i was in University, one could say that my maturity level was not up to snuff, but we had some good times for sure. But the one rule in the house was that always the gold standard was to not to fuck with peoples beds. Perhaps you passed out in the living room and as a result you got your head shaved and a tube of a535 wiped on your groin but when you recovered from that, you had your bed that was guaranteed to be free from fuckery. That's the way men roll, most of life is lived to set up the next practical joke, and the other part of life is to relive those practical jokes.
But as a Man i have to say... don't fuck with peoples gardens... a garden represents life, and life is on it's way out of this planet... I don't make the rules i just call them like they are... you should never garden to be better but rather to bring out a side in yourself that strives for food production... or some other lesser purpose like the crazy kook woman flower garden.
When was in a band called "Roadbed", look it up if you dare, we used competition as a great producer... anything that gets you motivated to rule your domain is OK in the Man book. If one of the members wrote a song then the other would immediately think "fuck you you son of a bitch" and write another. Sometimes stubborn son of a bitches need an obvious motivator but never lose track of the big picture.
gardening tip of the day? Blueberries need acidic soil... think coffee grounds and pine needles.
OK
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