Squirrel trouble has been greatly reduced, but don't let your guard down

It's been sort of a strange week around here... you see the local squirrel food bank has been shut down due to a generous offer from our former nemesis turned ally.  We are all good people, and it's a bit dicey... I was thinking of baking my neighbour a cake as a token of my gratitude for the smart decision they made in stopping feeding the squirrels.  It's just the the decision didn't come through a gradual understanding of the reality of the situation, but rather a shocking and perhaps horrifying series of events.

I will state as fact that no squirrel was harmed as a result of this wonderful conclusion... perhaps one was traumatized for a few hours, but that bastard had it coming.  It was a known carrot terrorist that had a keen taste for chomping on beet leaves and spitting them out and as a result it spent a few hours in a trap (a Have a Heart™ trap).  The sight of the squirrel in the trap set off a fair amount of chaos and phone calls to various authorities, and i believe what happened was that somebody found out that feeding squirrels is a bad idea.  They are cute, if you are that kind of sucker, but they are a menace and as a  result they are classified as... well these are the facts:

SQUIRREL DAMAGE LAND OR CROPS
Tree squirrels are classified as Predatory Animals (Oregon Revised
Statute 610.002) and as such they may be controlled (killed) by
landowners or land managers if the animals are causing damage to land
(lawns, gardens ornamentals, landscaping), livestock, agricultural crops
or forest crops. (Oregon Revised Statute 498.012).
A permit is not needed from ODFW to kill squirrels unless the
landowner wishes to transport a squirrel to a location where it will be
euthanized. In that case, the local ODFW office must be contacted
and a permit obtained.

Now i don't really want to kill animals, and i don't have anything against squirrels, but when you have 4 of them in your yard always, fighting, and digging holes in your rows of seedlings it can drive you a little crazy after a year.

Luckily it didn't come to that, as the shit hit the fan early that day.  Sometimes in life it's good for the shit to hit the fan... it can sort issues out.   A good life lesson actually. You see we often try too hard to get along... you want to be good to people so you swallow the sewage that comes your way in an effort to get along.  But then one day you blow, because you have just had enough, and you don't give a damn anymore, and all hell breaks loose.  You have forced the issue which is the thing you should have done in the first place.

Good in theory right... that's what they tell you when they are trying to calm you down.  It is your fault, you should have been more clear.

I'll call malarkey on that line of reasoning.  That's like saying i like to play bass at midnight at a frequency the rattles foundations of neighbourhood houses.  It is true... playing bass at face melting volume is truly a good time, and i pity the person who never experienced this wonderful phenomenon.  The thing is i don't do it because i don't believe it is fair to the people around me... and i believe the laws of the city would support this idea.

So now the squirrel feeding hub that was once a mere 20 feet from my garden is now gone, and with it so are the never ending squirrel attacks on the garden.  A truly brilliant turn of events, and one that makes me giddy with delight.  It is actually quite shocking to see how few squirrels there are now... they really are ungrateful bastards.  Mind  you there has still been some damage, perhaps rodents looking for lost peanuts bit it's no longer a non stop daily ritual.

Now there is another loon on the next block over that feeds the squirrels and it would have been interesting to see what affect the feeding stop on our block had to do with the population biology, with respect to squirrels, had on their feeder.  Did the most aggressive squirrel take over that territory?  Probably.  Now the grey bastard that nips at the beet leaves is still calling my house home territory... perhaps some pepper might fix that.  Apparently cayenne pepper, or Capsicum annuum can be used as a garden menace repellant.. i will try.  Luckily living in a town with a large mexican food store market, i should be able to get my hands on some high test cayenne pepper... stay tuned.

When i look back at it there were always 3 distinct squirrel clans waging war in my yard.  Clearly this was a matter of being located next to a never ending food supply.  It was ace territory no doubt. Some people thought i was exaggerating but then they came and saw and the common saying was : "holy shit you are not kidding, that is unbelievable".  Now it can't be good for the squirrels either... you are teaching them to be lazy and fight with each other.  In a perfect world the squirrel population would be a relation to the number of food producing trees there are in the neighbourhood.  I'm always for planting more trees by the way... more trees creating more oxygen, sustaining more life... bring it on.

I'd like to reforest the vast majority of the continent, reduce our energy consumption, and put a focus on growing natural organic food in spaces that were unnaturally hijacked by insane human consumerism.

I was reading in the news the other day about how some company is accepting applications for humans to go live on Mars in 2023.  God willing there will be a reality TV show over the selection process as a means to fund the venture.  Not a bad idea in an economic sense, but kind of horrifying otherwise.

Call me Ishmael, but isn't the planet we live on, that currently sustains life kind of an ace in the hole?  Wouldn't an intelligent view be to maintain this planet's livability.   Now i get that science and politics and money don't see eye to eye... well i guess politics see's eye to eye with money, and money see's eye to eye with money, and science see's the result of the experiment...  and religion which has a great affect on politics seems kind of ridiculous... so that's a bit of a mess.

I think part of the importance of growing food is so that the young people in the world can see how it's done, and that it can be done. And then tell a kid that  a seed/ chemical company is trying to take control over the world's seed, and hence food supply, and the kid will say that is wrong and they should be stopped.  I also think it is important to teach resistance to bad long term agricultural policies to our youth.

It is also slug season.. the slug population is slowly building up around the garden... it's a good time to take it down a notch.  Personally i'm not crazy on the idea of slug poison in the garden no matter how safe the package says the product is safe.  Slugs can mow down seedlings like kids can eat jelly beans.  You need to get out in the garden at night with a flashlight to see what is going on and slugs need to be stopped if the object is to grow food.  A few safe methods of slug control are boards down in the garden and the slugs will hide under there during the day and you can pick them off, or counter sink a shallow tin full of beer that the slugs will be drawn to to drown in.  But that is good drinking beer right?  That's why i like to be out there at night with a headlight... nothing beats seeing what is going on.  It's kind of like hand watering... it forces you to observe your garden more, and the more you observe the more you know, and the more you know the better a guardian you will be for your plants.

Like weeding, as well... it forces you to get in and study the micro environment to see what kind of problems you have.  You see the competition of life... you see things thriving and others struggling, ask why and look for answers.  Every climate, every soil, every light profile is different.  You need to find out what plants work for your garden and where and why, and your garden will reward you with the real gift of life, and i guarantee you will be a better person with a greater appreciation of the finer things in life.  Turn off that TV and do yourself a favour... grow some food  and eat it and share it with children so that they can see a way out of this mess we are leaving for them.

The race is on...

The beauty of growing plants is that once you plant them, they grow.  It's pretty simple.. it's like a religion that actually does what it states what it will do.   Keep on the steady work and let things that are meant to happen happen.   For sure you are the guardian, although i like the term "harvester"... it keeps you lower on the pole so you don't start getting some "God complex".  It's the plants that are holy and they reward the harvester with a bounty if the harvester can keep his head out of his ass and do the damn steady work. 

The peas will need something to climb on now as they are up and reaching to the sky... as the harvester it is my job to provide a lattice of sorts that will give the peas ample support to grow large and produce mightily.  The big thing you need to make sure of now is that you don't provide some candy ass structure that will grow weak when the peas grow heavy and blow over in some wind  leaving you high and dry during the peak harvest period.  Think about how unacceptable that would be, and make sure it doesn't happen... OK.  Also if you haven't planted peas yet then give yourself a punch in the nose... don't let up either.

I have some pretty good broccoli going at the community garden... i am a little bit shy to put it in the backyard after what happened last year.   I have yet to determine how to protect broccoli from the adopted family of squirrels that live next door, as they have for 4 generations, and their endless supply of peanuts.  Most of my broccoli last year got dug up, sacrificed as peanut markers... but one actually got eaten totally.  I know that because it got chewed down to a stump and then the stump got eaten...  why not? Broccoli stalks are good eating.  As a scientist i am not completely sure what animal ate the broccoli, but I'm willing to pin it on a squirrel... because i fucking hate squirrels... I hate them... hate hate hate hate hate!  Squirrels are the re-incarnation of the devil... they look kind of cute to people with small brains and undeveloped logic skills, so people give them things and are repaid with unpleasant repercussions. 

How can somebody who harbors and feeds squirrels come out with the slug poison, herbicides and  pesticides?   It's only because they have the ear of the devil telling them to kill and destroy other things for other reasons but yet look past the clear and omnipresent fuckery that the squirrel itself is dealing.

OK enough about the squirrels, we are dealing better with that menace this year, and as i say... any energy spent thinking about a squirrel is bad energy, and gardens need good energy. 

It's been an interesting year with respect to plants that survived over winter... for example my leeks.  Being a soup man i figured it was time to have access to a king hell supply of leeks last year so i planted a few rows to see what might happen.  Now obviously most of them were dug up for peanuts, but of the few that survived nothing really happened... until this spring.  We have some pretty major leeks kicking in... they might actually look like big leeks you see in a store one day if they don't get dug up for a peanut.  I also stated seedling leeks in the house and have transported them to the community garden... they are alive and growing as of now.  Part of me wonders if the heavy clay soil i had at the house last year and the later start due to moving, the garden construction and the lack of education of the unfavourable rodent micro-environment i was living in had any effect on leek production.  I realize not all humans mill about the earth puzzling over their problems producing enough leeks to make good soups all year round, but i say it's a good problem to solve.

The kale, chard and celery have gone on similar runs this spring.  In fact we had multiple servings of kale this spring from the garden, and the celery is resembling large celery stalks one might find in a store as well.    I mean i use the celery all year long and just cut some as i need it for soups, sauces or other savoury fried delicacies.   I would say we shall be eating chard pretty soon as well.  All of these plants are large enough to survive rodent holes around their root systems... It's clearly not good for them, but it is not fatal.

Obviously the garlic is on pace as well... clearly any man worth his salt has his own private line of garlic.  I know where mine came from... it gives the culinary artist a distinct advantage... you see nobody can truly recreate what you did because they don't have access to the lineage of garlic that belongs as a part of your functional kitchen.  Garlic is almost the easiest thing to grow...  put a clove in the ground in the fall and next year get a bulb... break some of those up and replant and power your kitchen for the year on the rest.  Give me one bulb of fine garlic and in a few years i never have to buy garlic again.  I mean obviously if you can avoid buying things that's good on a great number of levels... the greatest being: seeing that there is another way.  Do not underestimate this... a great number of people on this planet can only see the way they have been told...  People are told to buy things wrapped in plastic and to throw the plastic in the garbage and all will be good. 

There is always another way in life, sure it might take a bit of time and effort but it makes the reward all the more delicious. That's where the "religious" angle to gardening lays a pretty heavy trip... be good to something and it will be good to you... let things be and they will help you to be... foster growth and that growth will foster you... share your bounty with your brothers. 

 This is a squirrel hole dug through chicken wire over a planter box... a innocent young heirloom purple carrot plant was murdered as a result of this terrorist squirrel.  A child has been robbed of precious co-enzymes that help enable sight.  As the prophet Akira once said "you have to see everything" when a terrorist squirrel robs a child of their ability to see in a time when the world needs it's youth to see clearly we need some serious thought.  There are squirrel recipes that call for celery... and there is a saying we used in Canada... it had to do with bears.  It goes, a fed bear is a dead bear.  If you feed a bear the bear will become accustomed to being fed and become a nuisance and since it could kill a human easily humans decide to kill the bear before it kills a human.  Now a squirrel has little chance of killing a human beyond the stroke or backfiring boobie trap it might enable, but a nuisance is a nuisance.  A squirrel that buries natural chestnuts doesn't kill seedlings in the spring because there are no fucking chestnuts to bury in the spring... only a lunatic gives squirrels things to bury in the spring.  Don't be one of those.

A Tale of 2 Gardens

Our hero is back, and what's better than one Man garden but two... you see i managed to secure a spot in the new community garden at Mt. Tabor... 200 square feet of garden space far away from any fool who thinks it's a good idea to feed squirrels unlimited peanuts.  Yes indeed i have yet to see a squirrel or a peanut shell anywhere near this new garden, and i have yet to see a single rodent hole dug in this plot... it's like a dream.

An easy thought was that I could do without the cover crop as i have found digging in grasses kind of a pain in the ass so to say... i noticed some people have put burlap over their plots perhaps to kill back the cover crop, me I imported a yard of fine soil called "white lightning" and dug like a savage for many  hours.  The cover crop is re establishing itself, but I'm on it.  I'll have to research cover crops... i know farmers do it so perhaps it is a good idea on a number of levels.  It's the old be presented with some work that you weren't planning on and find a negative, and that's never positive, cause sometimes in life you just have to do some work and you will find opportunities open up.

 And look at this...  a lock on the gate.  No need for any unnecessary loiters  over here.  Some may argue community gardens should be open for the peasants to go wandering through, but i don't mind the lock. 

So far i have filed a blueberry, some garlic, some "Red Zeplin" onions, some peas and some potatoes in there and there is room for plenty more.  I see a lot of food being produced in this fine "squirrel free" zone and it tickles me plenty to be able to say that.

Back at the home front  i have restructured things as well... the big thing in gardening is to learn from the seasons before. Be honest and scientific, what worked and what didn't and why... don't be emotional with your assessment, don't confuse what you want to happen with what will happen, know your strengths and your weaknesses. Remember nature ain't fair and what happens happens and the best suited survive.  My main 2 weaknesses from last year were too much clay soil (bad for water penetration)   and of course, the number one thing being,  fucking ass hole rodents with their unlimited peanuts. Now it's possible for a gardener to become obsessed with certain aspects of their garden and obsessions can from time to time lead to clouded judgement... you know rage brings hate and hate is the path to the Dark Side and once you start down that road forever will it dominate your destiny... or something like that. I like to believe that you can spring back from the dark side if you give your head a shake every once in a while.  One thing i find in life is that if you catch yourself dealing in absolutes then you need to step back and see the big picture and build a different house that you can live in in peace.  Otherwise you spend your life living in the wrong house, unhappy thinking that circumstance has you pinned... this is not the case, your mindset has you pinned.

So i banged in a couple yards of sand and chopped it into the earth, i also had all of the maple leaves from the tree in front of our house in there, so we have our organic material and our sand for drainage... for sure it was many hours of work turning soil, but it's the kind of work i like to do.  Working soil is good for the soul, a great metaphor for life... get involved in a task that appears to be endless but just keep doing it and then some time later you can feel the results.   I also snagged a few planer boxes from a neighbour who had no use for them anymore (be social keep an ear to the ground) and here we are...

 I see me in way better shape this year than last... mind you last winter we just moved here, i had to remove ivy, make the garden, start fresh and learn the ropes of this particular land. I have installed as you can see a few SR squirrel guard 3000™.

 It's is my first time gardening in beds, my father was a field gardening man, and that's how i learned but sometimes you have to break tradition  The planter boxes have been seeded with peas, carrots and beets, with plenty of Canadian Peat, some "white lightning" soil and some sand so the carrots can get down into the ground and grow.  Best of all of course is the fact that the beds are sealed with chicken wire so that some furry prick can't get in there and dig up all of the seeds.

I have of course started many plants inside so that when the get moved to the garden they might be big enough to survive a squirrel attack. Also it's too early for tomatoes to be put outside, that broccoli plant will probably go into the community garden this week although one can still be bitten by a frost this time of year... sometimes you gamble a bit with getting a head start on your garden.  The big thing is not to be too late getting things going... you want an established garden when the prime weather hits so that your growing becomes exponential.  It takes a long time for the roots to become established and the plant to have enough green matter to turn the sun's energy into food growth.  The Oregon farmers almanac tells me potatoes can be planted and this year i will box up the area around the plant adding new soil as needed... apparently this is the trick to growing potatoes... I'll give it a shot and we shall see what happens.  Dad would "mound" his potatoes, meaning putting more soil around the plant with the idea being the plant will fill in the "mound" with more potatoes.  Last year i was stung with the clay soil dilemma that hardened and stressed the plants to the point of little return.

Every day is a new day in life and in the garden, treat it with respect and it will give the same back to you, dream big but understand reality, swing for a home run but take a single when you get it cause at the end of the game you need points.

Monsoon season is upon us

A wise man once said "you gotta get what you can, while you can",  right now the pacific Northwest Garden is screaming that at it's caretakers.  I have 3 buckets of green tomatoes in my kitchen... gone are the good old days of  a fresh tomato off the vine in the morning on a bagel with cream cheese and seasoning.   You have to play the game you are in... one of the key things missed by the average chuckle head consumer sheeping around this wonderful planet.   Not everything that comes out of a garden has the look of the kind you might come to  expect from a lifetime of seeing vegetables on a supermarket shelf only... remember everything has a purpose. I reduced a collection of rogue tomatoes in a pot with garlic and onion for future sauce,  it was kind of random and a half distracted on my part... I wasn't really into it but it was that or provide King Hell habitat for the population of fruit flies i seem to have swarming ever so close to the beer brewing carboys.  The green tomatoes will turn red in time...  make sure you monitor them for trouble areas.  Sometimes spots will go bad and you will have to make some executive decisions. I left some of the plants should they manage to keep producing... I've always been kind of a Hail Mary kind of person.. sunny today so perhaps i was on to something.

My melons are in, all 5 of them, and i have a fair collection of peppers, many of them dragon hot... you see i made a salad tonight and cut into what i though might be a small red bell pepper, but that was not the case... as they say in yoga: i was doing a serious round of "lion's breath".  I picked all of the beans, but of course you leave the bean roots in the soil, as they will put nitrogen back into the soil, and perhaps squeak out another round of beans.  I also picked a bunch of heirloom purple beans from a local neglected garden, which was a good call.  I should mention the beans were all dried on the stock from general neglect... they will provide fine seeds next season.

The carrots, beets, chard and spinach can hang for now, in an "eat as you need" type of relationship, and the kale is going steady.  I believe i have red Russian kale, and it makes a fine kale chip.  I do eat kale chips now... perhaps i mentioned my kale chip experience... i went to learn about Cob house building and the damn hippies were just sitting around making kale chips.  Clearly it angered me, but i have changed my tune... or flip flopped as they say in political jargon.  Apparently you can't change your position in politics... it's a sign of weakness... gathering facts and re-assessing changing landscapes is for silly fuckers and not strong leaders.  Strong leaders have a position and no amount of enlightenment can change that... enlightenment is for the weak, apparently.  By the same token oil and salt and secret Robertson spicing methods on baked to a crisp Kale leaves, is also for the weak... i wolfed back a bushel of kale in a day... shit happens.  I never would have bet on me eating a bushel of kale in a day, in fact i often associated the word "kale" as synonymous with the word "unpalatable"... live and learn.  I was also part of an online community of people who hate cilantro at one time, but that was before i learned ho to properly use it.  The lesson... well there are a few...  1) never let some dip shit hippie try to tell you that cilantro, garbanzo beans, brown rice and vinegar is a delectable treat, and 2) Learn from people with strong cultural culinary backgrounds on how to use cooking ingredients.  A little bone wisdom for you out there... rather than hate people who come from different cultures, because they are different, embrace them and milk them for culinary and life wisdom.  Other gardening note would be that slugs love cilantro.. do unto them before they undo to to, as  the bible hints at... it's really a translation issue, my leaders tell me this is the way and i pay them handsomely for the guidance.

Soon i can dig up those potatoes... you see i didn't want to dig around the roots of the other plants to harvest potatoes given that the God damn squirrels were so busy digging up all of the  the plants I fell into random planting disorder.  Kind of modeled after the sea turtle life cycle survival pattern... the sea turtle lays a shitload of eggs and only a few will mature as they will be picked off by scavengers hungry for an easy meal...  so basically i just ended up planting everywhere and hoped something would survive, as my loon neighbour's plan of "hopefully the family of squirrels that i have had living in my porch for 3 generations won't dig the endless supply of peanuts i put out for them and the rats into your garden" didn't really work out... hope is for suckers.

It's fall now people!

What good is a garden if you are not feasting from it come harvest season?  We are, and have been in harvest season  for some time people.  I kind of got involved in a major project the last few weeks so the garden was a bit neglected, of course it got watered... this is not the kind of criminal neglect that some of the amateur gardeners out there are use to laying on their rookie plots.. I'm talking about the general maintenance... the gentle eye monitoring progress, the constant harvesting and finger tinting that comes with supper preparation.  Me, i was high up on a ladder fighting hurricane winds protecting an investment so to say.

A garden is an investment, but more of a lifestyle investment.  Many people put more money in a garden than food they get out of it if you look at the raw economics of it, given your time and all.  But time spent in a garden is good time, a kind of Zen peace, a footprint model on how to live the good life.  Less trips to the produce store means less passes through the salty snack food isle.

Tonight i made chili and when i got to the part where it asked for a can of tomatoes, and i had none, for a moment  i thought i was in trouble... and then i realized i had many dozen ripe tomatoes all over the place.  My problem was solved before i even knew i had it... i solved that problem i would have in the fall last spring... pretty smart I'd have to say.

This weekend i see a bean and chard feast, a Greek salad and another round of kale chips.  Kale chips are pretty good even thought i thought i hated them before... it was the people making them i hated only because i wanted to learn how to make a cob house and when i got there hippies were making kale chips and very happy about that i might add.  I saw it as a blow to progress, and i also saw kale as an inedible shade creating menace.  i have met many people who claim to love kale, only to later dig out mounds of brown juiced soggy kale from the crisper.  Oil and salt and spice that kale and bake it to a fine crisp (don't fucking burn it) and it's like that tasty seaweed you can get in your fine asian markets, minus the radiation.  It was only a nuclear reactor spilling into the ocean... what could possibly go wrong.  That's why i am against Nuclear energy... as a human that naturally fucks things up i like to look ahead at my losses.  When this goes pear shaped what do i lose? But remember we live in a world where the economy, or some shallow views of it, rule the day.  Maybe if people could go to space and look at the earth as an entity a light might go one and they might think "holy shit, let's not fuck this up".

Did i just go off on another one of those tangents?  When shit get's you down and you start felling the hate walk away, find your love in your hear let it stay.  Ahh lyrics, my bible.

And we've got to get back to the garden...

I think this is a melon... after those bastard slugs murdered my first round of squash/ melon's, because of course i let them... i wasn't out there @ 3am in a killing frenzy, i was stupidly trying to live my life... that won't happen again.  Anyhoo it's getting late in the season so i did this:

I pinched off all of the extra flowers from the plant... the idea being, let's try and bring a few of these melons home.  Never mind trying to produce 30 melons just let me sink my fangs into a few.  For example, as i spoke of before, i believe i spent $3.99 on this plant from the local Portland nursery.  I knew it was late and the garlic was coming to an end in this part of the garden so it was kind of a hail mary pass.  The question is: Will i get a melon from this plant? Cause i could get a melon at the store, one that i chose for less than that.  A minor economic question that deserves consideration, but for me plants are my pets, just as squirrels are my nemesis... the time i spend gardening is as good for my soul as a $15 yoga class or a $25 hockey game.. they are just all different.

I take it personally when things in the garden don't pan out... as Rodney once said "i go down with my ships".. like a true captain.  What is life without passion?  Remember blind rage is just misdirected passion, or perhaps passion that is politically incorrect to flow with.  Speaking of that, isn't politically correct one of those things that makes no sense?  Everything is incorrect about politics, so to be politically correct would be wrong... right?

Little hot Thai chili peppers have a king hell fire to them... i guess i should figure out a way to dry some of these little reds.  My kids have a thing about hot peppers... my bad.. they love broccoli however because no fucking hammerhead has ever told them kids shouldn't like broccoli.

Speaking of broccoli i am getting some in now, after that bastard squirrel ate my whole plants i had to start fresh again with a Portland Nursery special.  I have definitely not got my money's worth yet but then again broccoli can go long into the season... we shall find out what this Oregon fall brings us.

Soon the maple tree will shed it's leaves and i will mulch them into the clay and triple mix soil that i have in an effort to make it better.  It takes a long time to get your garden soil just right, that's why it's best to not move every 5 years, but every negative has it's positives.  In the end it's all just memories and the memories are of the great yields one has from season to season.

Tacos, turnip and sanity

This is a Kohlrabi, or German turnip for the record, a solid anti-carcinogen as Dad would say... a crisp fresh peppery turnip that was thrown on my plate as a child while the health virtues were toted.

I shave it and lay it on a taco with Mexican cheese, and the man meat of choice... for the record that is how you do tacos.  The hybrid Canadian taco way is to season some ground beef in a bastard "taco" mix and pile with lettuce cheese ET AL.  The pro way to make tacos is to cook something properly, a meat or veggie option, and cover with Mexican cheese and a shaved Cabbage option, and don't forget to hit with fresh lime juice.  You can make different kinds of tacos but the trick is to stick with a simple flavour... we never learned that before... cook something properly and let it be the flavour of the taco... you can make different kinds of tacos, just don't start a competition within the taco. Competitions are good for games, eating should be a win win type of scenario.  It's OK to spell flavour as flavour, but just don't make a taco like some hybrid Canadian might, it's an insult to the culinary art.  For the record, shaved fresh garden carrots will be a good addition to your grilled and cheesed option... don't forget the fresh squeezed lime... and if you are man enough hit it with some hot peppers.

This is the kind of hot pepper a Man can take on his taco... you can do your best dragon imitation and the hydration that comes as a bonus will come in handy later should you fall into an accidental drinking session. By the way that is celery to the left of the pepper plant... good for man made soups.

Speaking of drinking, i have been noticing a sever lack of watering on some of the neighbourhood gardens.  Growing plants is easy... sun and plant genetics take care of most of the battle, all you have to do is make sure your plants are watered... I have heard many bogus watering rituals.. i have a simple one... if it's a hot sunny day you plant is probably thirsty, mind you later in the season like this the garden is lush, or should be, which provides shade for the soil which helps keep the moisture in the soil.

Again, don't wet your tomato leaves... wet the soil... actually soak the soil... we are coming into the blight season and the thing that spreads blight is moisture on the leaves... if you do water them make sure it is in the morning.  Dad's rule was to not water tomatoes after 4:00pm so they would not be wet throughout the night... There will be natural dew that will eventually take down the plant, but there is no point helping this disease.

Again, don't water beets @ peak sun, their leaves don't like that and will turn brown due to some physics magnifying affect... i guess if you believe in physics that is... if you don't believe in physics because science is against your religion then i would suggest praying after watering your beets in peak sun.. that way GOD will know to intervene and fix the human error.

Again, If you stay on task and keep picking your beans then they will flower again and produce more beans.

Also, if your squash, mellon or zuccuni are showing powdery mildew (a fine white coating on the primary leaves), then you want to keep an eye on what's happening.  You need to think in terms of cutting your losses.. will this fruit or will it be a source of disease?

As we close in on the season, we need to remove sources of disease and encourage sources of food. I know i have to kill a few squash plants that just aren't in the right place and big enough to star in the fall.  I of course blame the slugs and the squirrels for setting back my first batch of squash and melons.  Clearly next year i will have to defend better.  How will i do that?  Bigger seedlings, more barriers, set traps and be more vigilant on night killings.  I guess it would be ideal if i could win the lottery and then buy my neighbours house and then bring in the new rodent order over there...  but alas, lotteries are for suckers.  You don't throw random seeds in a garden, fuck off, and then come back to a bounty... it just doesn't happen.  You need to be smart, put in the work, observe, defend and do what is needed.  That's why gardening is a perfect metaphor for life... shit doesn't happen accidentialy, it happens becauese you worked for it.  Happiness is the state of knowing what you are doing is right and it will work out in the end... put that in a tweet and post it.

The best garden is the garden that feeds you

I realize there are a bunch of chuckle heads out there that like to plant a garden and think that they are all "green", whatever the hell that means.  Many of these simpletons forget to harvest the food... perhaps the tumbleweed that is rattling around in their head still makes the sound "I am a gardener".  Who knows, everybody is busy... too busy to get their food... only enough time to slog through traffic to go buy food from a food serving establishment.

If you are a chuckle head  i implore you to find the power within to change your ways, you can do it.  Or get in touch with myself and i will come and harvest your food... we are in that time of year where the weird line between stealing and salvaging start to blur.  Walking around the neighbourhood there are a few roadside gardens with produce starting to rot in them... like they say you can always tell a human but you can't tell them anything.  I'd even be happy to harvest the food for these people and get it to them like it would be in a store, but you know, start messing with somebodies garden, you are messing with their space, and taking their freedom... a real no no.  There needs to be more emphasis on food harvesting... because the stores sell vegetable starts they are promoted and there is a buzz among consumers to buy them and get with the program, but yet there is no consumer triggered response to harvest the food.  We need more harvest festivals... more harvest alerts... community "things we can make with tomatoes" contests.  Yes Yes, frame it in the idea of a contest... we like contests, everybody wants to be a winner!

Don't get me wrong, if planting a garden gets you outdoors in the spring touching the soil, then that's a good thing, i just hate to see waste.  Apparently North Americans throw away 40% of the food they buy... not to mention the idea that we shit in drinking water... but hey we share facebook links promoting environmental stewardship. Sure sure, it's easy to be a critic of a politician who is a puppet for polluting industry, because their line of crap just doesn't jive with reality.  What is reality?  Slippery slope for a gardening blog.  Reality is, if the food you grew is ready to eat you should harvest it.  Cut your broccoli before it is a mess of pretty yellow flowers, grab your tomatoes before they ooze back into the earth... and if your cilantro went to seed, then harvest the seeds... it's coriander, a fine spice.

Heirloom Tomatoes-

I planted a few this year... i will never go back.  Silver fir is a neat one.  They are a bit more susceptible to earwig infestations, but if i were an earwig, that's where i would want to be... inside of a delicious tomato.  The flavour and structure of the fruit is unparalleled and you can cut away the bits that have earwig infestation.  Some people get real squirrley when it comes to bugs in the food, but the alternative is chemicals on the food, or a tasteless tomato bred to look good on a shelf in a store.  I'll put it to you this way... a slug or a bug has probably been on your food  if it's worth eating.. that's why god created running clean water for the chosen folks like us... maybe it was science and technology that created running clean water... it's so hard to tell in these election years what the facts are.

Roma Tomatoes-

These are the tomatoes you cook with, they reduce down to a fine sauce.

Cherry Tomatoes-

Are for snacking on, or throw them into a salad.  Or you can get fancy and cut in half add basil, feta cheese, balsamic vinegar and a touch of spice to make a king hell salad.

We have been eating beans and Swiss chard at will, and a second round of hood strawberries is coming to fruit.  i have eaten a few carrots that my daughters washed up for me, and the beets are looking large.  I did waste the Vancouver Canucks victory salad... i put it back into the earth to fertilize for next season, if you know what i mean.  Will there be a next season? Or will some bizarre global weather phenomenon that nobody could have predicted shut things down.  Ahh the unfortunate side effects of of the human love of money... if i can have more money then screw the masses.

Living with less money should be the foundation of gardening, but it often doesn't work that way.  A poor man with a rich life grows his own vegetables and poaches his own meat, which reminds me to buy a fly fishing rig.  I need trout like i need omega oil. 

It's true... a vegetarian diet will cure what ails the man and the society he lives in, but for tomorrow i might have a BLT, to really use those heirloom slicing tomatoes.