Those bloody Goldfinches and other points

Did you know that goldfinches eat beet and chard leaves?  It's true, i saw it with my own honest eyes... my first instinct was to freeze and make the identification.  Did i mention that in my youth i was and avid birdwatcher?  I believe i saw 143 different species of birds one day during spring migration at Point Pelee... it was part of the Jim Baillie Bird-a-thon, around 1980.  You would be hard pressed to do that well today given the massive bird habitat destruction that has happened on this planet in the name of money and progress for the good of humankind... apparently.  Let's not step into that dark storm cloud now, the story is far to ugly, stupid and treacherous to kick into on a Friday night that may still have a sliver chance of being productive.

So yea, i like birds, and they haven't actually killed the beets, and at least they are eating them, which is giving them some nutrition, which i can live with.  But they were goldfinch and they were eating the plants... google it if you think I'm spinning you one.

My general rule is that if you are a vertebrate and you are actually eating the food you are attacking then your life will be considered on a case by case basis.  If i feel the need to net the plants i will net them, the way i see int now is that the beets are still thriving... I'll probably pass on eating the beet greens with all of the holes and the bird shit on them... i can live with that.  We can call it fertilizer for the next generation of crops and carry on and tell ourselves that we are doing good.

Glad i started the beets indoors back in February to give them that head start although i was thinking of doing a second planting of seeds to fill in areas of the garden that have space.  Hopefully the more mature beets will act as a decoy, but i can imagine any smart bird will always go for the newest, most tender snacks.

We shall cross that bridge when we get there... a great life philosophy, and one that is poignant in gardening.  You see last week we thought we were in summer with the sweltering sun blasting away and the locals in their summer shorts.  Did i start my tomatoes early enough we were wondering... and now mired in a frigid monsoon we have different concerns.  Perhaps more like should I have constructed a makeshift  tomato hothouse out of plastic and PVC tubing?  If i do tomorrow will that guarantee hot weather to cane me into a "will i burn my plant's paranoia"?  It actually happened to me last year... i build a little greenhouse and fried some plants in a few hot days when i let my guard down.  The bridge was there but i didn't see it because i had my head up my ass thinking i was all pro and all, and i went from being ahead of the game to being behind the game.  It's about recognizing where you are vulnerable and then reading the signs properly to avoid the disaster that has you in it's sights.   Avoiding disasters, is one of the best games known to mankind... that's why thrill seekers have such a blast, pretty much an adrenalin addiction when you look at it with a clear head, or a fogged head focused on a task.  My argument would be... rather than jump off a cliff in a flimsy flying suit to fly past rock mountain faces at incredible speeds that equate to sure death should a mis-calculation occur, why not change the bar with respect to your vegetable plant survival being the life and death line and you reacting accordingly.  You get your obsessive attack orientated daily mindset, which i find healthy, you can scheme, counter attack, pre attack and ride a big harvest... all of the elements are there.

The important thing is to pound yourself on your failures.. make it hurt.. that's what keeps the bar in place... remember of course that this blog is about Man Gardening.  If we were writing about a sissy gardening blog, the kind of blog that doesn't even deserve capitol letters... well it would be different. It would be a different blog... shall we pretend?

"Well i went out to my garden the other day... i hadn't been there for a few weeks because i was feeling a little ache... my psychotherapist thinks I am not getting enough Argon, so i started eating mushroom roots because my roommates bearded cousin came over last weekend and told me a bunch of things i wasn't aware of.  Apparently the best way to absorb Argon from Mushroom roots is to do a lipper... that's right get it in your mouth like a plug of tobacco.  The Argon gas will react with the scintactilaze enzyme naturally occurring in human saliva and your body will set back to natural Argon levels.

When i got to my garden, i smiled and felt good that there was my plot of land and i was a gardener... i figured there was no point snapping into the reality that my garden was in fact a weed infested example of neglect that showed clearly all of my glaring betrayals to the concept of gardening but instead posted a picture of myself on instagram with my gardening hat on... it was then that in noticed that somebody had commented on a post i made in facebook so of course i had to give them a LOL".

OK, enough with that insipid diversion... remember we are just doing comedy here people... don't ride a horse called failure if you ain't ready to be bucked off.  Failure complexes need to be fought through with shit eating grins... and beers of course,  Me, I always like to have an extra hundred beers on hand as a simple insurance policy... seems crazy on paper but say the apocalypse hits and you have the band over for jam... clearly the thing to do in the event of an apocalypse, as I'm sure creative juices will be flowing.  You could easily down 50 beers in scenario like that, which would last you only one more jam... clearly you would be brewing like a badman with a keen focus on securing more propane for the brew kettle and working bartering deals with local wheat and barely farmers, as a reasonable human i have of course already started multiple hops plantations.  Still probably a good idea to have a grain field and a cider plantation, i mean apple orchard, for good measure.

So yea, birds eating greens.. wonder if slugs are on the strawberries... back in a few... not that many out there, and most of them were on the basil and the good news was that they were all very small, which tells us that the garden caretaker has been doing as good job with respect to managing the micro slug population.  I found a few snails on my wife's Hosta plants and dealt with them accordingly.  But i am intrigued  by this idea that basil might be planed as a "decoy plant"... slugs seem to like it the most, so you can attract them there and focus on your killing frenzy when the time is right... like every night.  Clearly it would be better to have chickens to focus on the slug and snail cull, but i don't have enough property to deal with chicken shit at this time. 

Why my pea's are stomping balls.

OK now these are my pea's, I believe they are Oregon Sugar pod II, and Avalanche Snow Pea.. there might even be some Pole Cascadia Sugar Snap peas in there.  You see sometimes in a planting frenzy it's more important to get the food in the ground than to make labels... and if you do make labels make sure you don't use your children's water soluble markers to do it.

Of course in a perfect world one would want to know what is what so they could properly assess yields to maximize harvests, but let's face it, perfect worlds are like mirages, they seem more perfect from a distance and then the more you know about them the less perfect they become.

Let's not slip into philosophy just yet... we shall get there after a couple more beers, right now we need to set the stage.  A lot of people at the Mt. Tabor Community garden have commented on how well my pea's are doing, and they want to know what my secret is... Hot damn! Talk about pitching one down the old pepper (baseball analogy in where the pitcher throws and easy home run ball to the batter).

How did i do it?

1) started early
2) brought in a yard of fine white lightning planting soil (from dean innovation)
3) i show up every day and soak the soil

You see these plots have a lot of clay, which turns hard as a rock and becomes impermeable to water... so you want your clay below but a good layer of rich organic soil above.  The more great soil you have the better... it just cost's money.  For the record i don't think it's cool to take the mulch they have for the outside garden beds for your own plot.  True there wasn't a lot of great soil in these plots to begin with, but they are great plots and one should focus on that.  You have a plot of great sun exposure, with unlimited and easy water access... all the tools are there.    I say that because i have heard grumblings about these things and i encourage people to focus on the good that you do have and not what you are missing.

Another quick note...  A few people have mentioned that they have read updates from this blog, and there is a mild fear that their garden might get ridiculed given the nature in which this blog is written.  The way i see it, if you have a garden you are doing good...  the mantra when i began this years ago was "gardening is not a competition, but if it can be turned into one to create greater yield then do it".

I mean that in the most positive way, and i am a huge fan of comedy, the idea of trash talking, and attempting to motivate others through casual threats... well i just find it funny.   I met a nice woman in the garden tonight who asked me about my peas and why mine were doing better than hers, so i basically told her the 3 steps i mentioned above, and she said she wasn't good at gardening.

I disagree, she is good at gardening, she is there doing it and she is asking direct questions... i believe she is very good at gardening, just not very experienced.  The key thing is getting the answers to the questions that come to mind and then of course remembering and taking action.

I was gardening by the time i could walk, my father was a gardener who believed that son's are had to be labourors (Canadian spelling EH!).  Dad was a production gardener, a graduate from the Ontario Agriculture College.. it was all about maximizing the yield.  But now that I'm an adult i realize too that it is also about a happy place.  For the small garden you can spend a lot of money on soil, seeds, trellis equipment, time... you name it.  In the end you might just break even, but to me it's like a religion, you put in your practice, observe, react and are given your reward with which you can do what you can choose with.  You can share it, store it, darn well better eat it. 

OK enough of this nice talk... don't be a wimp, get in there and garden.  I was actually going to tar and feather my buddy Josh a week ago in this blog... he had yet to do anything in his garden, and i felt he needed some motivation.  In fact i actually photographed my garden and his garden and was set to go to town in a satirical blog post ridiculing his garden, or lack there of... but i checked my swing,... i did threatened him outside Glencoe Elementary school one day when we picked up our children that i was going to write a blog about his no existent garden.  Let's just say he had nervous eyes and tried to explain that they did in fact have a plan... well it turns out that he did, in fact there was even a backup copy of the plan... his garden looks great now, and provided he doesn't slack off on the weeding and watering he should be in great shape.    I'm glad i held back, even though i had some good zingers lined up... perhaps the idea that my threats helped motivate his planting, maybe the did, maybe they didn't, but i did see fear in his eyes as he laughed nervously.

Check this broccoli out:

I started it indoors in February in my kitchen under a florescent light... now the thing is you have to keep an eye on these guys... don't let them come close to flowering.  Just cut the broccoli head off and it will continue to produce all season long.  This one is not ready to be harvested, but that;s the thing about going to the garden every day, i go 2x a day, but I'm pro remember (remember comedy).   Now if you go and water an weed every day then you notice what is happening, you are able to correct your problem before it become a problem.  Like my buddy Josh who's basil is taking a big hit on the slug front, holes all over the leaves and all... the way i see it, well its quarter to midnight at this time... Josh should be in the garden with a headlight bumping off slugs right now... perhaps i should call him now and remind him.  Well that didn't go too well, i guess they were sleeping after a hard day... there was definite confusion over the urgency of the situation with regard to the urgency of slug counter attacks.

Now since I'm on a roll, let me tell you about the importance of regular garden worship.  Check out this plant:

It is a broccoli started at the same time as the earlier broccoli posted.  What happened?  Well it turned out one day i went to the garden and that plant had been pulled out of the ground, and way lying there in peril.  Who knows what happened,  maybe a kid, maybe and animal, maybe a malicious bastard... it doesn't matter, it happens, the good thing was that i was there to put it back in the ground and to pinch off the big leaves (to save on water loss), and i think the plant will survive and thrive in the future.   But this is clearly a result of my devout gardening practice... I appeared when my plant needed me, or you could argue i needed my plants... lets just say we were there for each other, as any fine religion should be... it was fate so to say.

When i was in a community garden in Vancouver Canada, we had a local group that had a plot... let's just say that that it was a group of non gardeners with a pack of unsupervised children who ran amok in the garden over every bodies plots... it was a total disaster, and they ended up being kicked out of the garden, but not before i got a song out of it.  You see when things attack my garden, i go bananas, hence the squirrel theme for the past year, but that has been solved thankfully.  So i tried to build a "security fence" around my garden to keep these children from tromping on my plants and in the end i took one king hell gash on my left shin from a piece of angle iron i  drove into the ground to hold up the "security fence", so in the end i did it to myself: Sung by Genny Trigo...

The real comedy here is that i gave this album to my neighbour John who's hacksaw i dulled up cutting the angle iron... not sure if he ever listened, or if he did he catch the acknowledgement.  Anyhoo, I thought it was funny.

One last thing... i noticed in the community plots tonight that in the communal herb garden somehow we had planted lemon balm and mint, two things that were on the "do not plant in the garden list", the reason for this is that they will take over and you will spend years trying to eradicate from the garden. I was going to bump them off, but since I am not actually the king around here, besides in my own mind (comedy people)  i will wait a few days until consulting.

OK i have to kill slugs now.

Mean spinch harvest tonight

I picked a ton of spinach tonight... well not a ton, to be scientific the dry weight would weigh in multiple ounces.  I could probably salad a party of about 15 if we were having a dinner party right now... but we are not, it's just me drinking in front of a computer screen... so i say's to myself, since there will be plenty more spinach tomorrow from the home garden, how do i deal with this influx?

On the way home from the garden i had a chat with a local and we discussed the idea of "blanching" the spinach before freezing it.  That would be throwing it in boiling water for about 20 seconds before freezing it.  Once you freeze spinach it's good for lasagnas and curries and such, and not much good for "fresh salads".  I might juice some if it tomorrow with carrot and beets, but then i will have those red shits... maybe that was way offside, but it's true.  You drink a beet juice (fine stuff) and then later you have a movement, and you are for a moment alarmed... do you have some intestinal bleeding?  Oh no it was the beet juice... sorry it's not my intention to talk about certain body functions but it is what it is.  Apparently beets have been used for dyes, and a good choice they are... beets are great, but we were talking about spinach before my unfortunate yet noteworthy diversion occurred.

Yes how to freeze spinach... a quick google search will pull up many pages of advise.  I have always just washed it dried it and frozen it and it's good for a few months, but i think i will blanch this batch and see what happens.  The Gardens are full of lettuce and spinach and it's time to eat... don't be a fool and let it go to seed and develop a bitter taste, it's time is now.

Choice and life are everything... people are often stuck on the path of choice, which can be unfortunate.  I think i terms of fate... this is what is available now, use it or lose it, some years are good and some are bad, sometimes a garden doesn't do what you want, but it does what it does, and you as the caretaker needs to harvest the potential.  You grew those nutrients for your body, now make sure you use them.  I love the fact that my dinner plans are dictated by what is coming fresh in the garden... it's life in a nutshell.  This is what we have, so this is what we are doing rather than ask what do i feel like tonight? The less decisions one has to make, the better.

My big key this year is giving each plant space... i started a lot early indoors and then placed them into the garden rather than quickly funneling a pile of seeds into a row, and now my reward is big healthy plants dominating their zone rather than a tight row of plants fighting each other.  Like these people that plant a row of squash plants... do they know that one squash plant can take over a whole garden and produce many squash?  Let's call it an error of the willing...

But seriously, to let your plants thrive they need space.  Look at it this way... say you plant a beet... think about how big you want that beet to be, say 3 or 4 inches in diameter, well then that beet needs  that room to grow, so don't plant another beet 1/4 inch away from it... now i feel a bit treacherous writing in imperial and not metric,, but you can do the conversion if you give a damn and catch my drift... for what it's worth i was doing a job today and we went and bought a bunch of 8 foot 2x4's and i was cutting them at 78 1/4 inches.  As a pure scientist obviously the world would be easier if we were all in metric, but that ain't the case, old habits die hard.

Plant a beet every 7 centimeters should be about right if you happen to be from Canada... let them be.

And water...  i think it's the big thing people don't get about gardening... don't just spray your plants for a second... soak that fucking ground... put moisture deep into the soil.

Did i tell you about my neighbour who started a little garden in front of his house?  I might have, it's late and i'm on a roll so no need to check on the facts now.   He kind of giggles when i scold him for not watering the carrots i planted for him properly, not only that but he has lettuce ready to eat and it is just sitting there about to go to seed... of course I'm on him like white on rice and i believe that generally he is impressed that i would take the time out of my day to pound on his door and scold him for garden neglect... i have noticed a recent fear... he sees me and he starts watering.  My mere presence has him on high alert, and fear of a scolding prompts him into action.  I do what i can for the neighbourhood, if indeed you don't have it in your general conscience to tend your garden properly let it be up to your neighbour to shame you into proper protocol.    He tends to be giddy, happy and easy going, while i try to be the stern influence... don't just grow food, eat it.

It tends to be the main problem... your plant looks great, now eat it, rather than marvel in it's glory and watch it turn to seed.  You garden for your body, to grow food to give you good life, when the time comes the time comes, eat the damn food, or store it appropriately.

this weekend gardening notes...

Savage attack weeding... I believe i have been over this before, but since nothing around here is labeled and organized it would be easier to just state it again.

You are basically going on a week killing frenzy, a botanical cleanse so to speak, where the things you don't want growing in the garden are removed (lets call them weeds), which gives more space and less competition of light and nutrients to the plants you want to thrive (your food producers).

Get them out of there... attack a region with vigor and just around the time you think you are getting no where step back and see what you have done... you are doing it.  That's life in a nutshell... apply it across the board.

But remember the dangers of savage attack weeding... you are kicked up into a higher gear and you are on a roll and in your frenzy you remove a good garden plant.  Don't worry, this happens to the best of us from time to time... there will be setbacks.

Watch weeing around the peas however... i find it better to  pinch off the green of the weed sometimes.  If you got lazy and fell behind on your weeding you might find a large weed hidden in your pea rows...  if you pull that weed out there is a real good chance that the pea roots are intertwined with the weed roots so removing one often removes the other, and as peas get larger they have a lot of green matter exposed to the dehydrating sun and air and will not tolerate this root damage well.  That's why it is a real good idea to stay on the pea weeding early.   

Generally you want to try and get the weed's whole root system out by perhaps inserting a trowel into the ground to loosen the soil a bit where the weed is located.  Attacking small weeds early and constantly is the real key to productive gardening.  As i have said before it keeps you in the game.  Weed always in short constant spurts... you stay on task with your head above water.  Weeds are like bad debt, if they get out of control they own your destiny and cast a negative shadow on your operation which can lead to depression, anxiety and failure complexes.  Constant short bursts of weeding keeps the task manageable... Stay on your weeding and you are in control, your positive energy is reinforced leading to euphoria, giddiness and bouts of random song.

I know... lets do a sports analogy.  You are the team coach... but as they say you can't teach scoring, it's just something natural athletes have.  Your job as a coach is to put your players in a position to succeed.  The good news is that you have a garden full of all star athletes... you did buy good quality heritage seeds right?  Please don't tell me you bought rouge seeds at a corporate chain grocery store.  If you did you can still amend this fatal  brain freeze by correcting this fiasco and getting good seeds. 

Get the right seeds for your climate too... as i learned last year i am in a prime tomato and bean climate, and with some serious soil amending (adding sand to the clay) i hope to excel further in the root vegetable category.

Take your tomato for example... a heritage bred tomato is a pure delicacy where as a corporate bred tomato (bred for long shelf life) is a tasteless thick skinned insult to the pallet.  You need to ask yourself what plant you want to to put effort into nourishing.  In fact if you don't have good tomatoes started by now just go get some starts at a fine nursery.  It will cost a bit, but i don't think at this level of agricultural production cost is our real goal here... it has more to to with access to good food, and re-enforcing to yourself and those around you what is actually possible.  As they say, "a kid that grows a carrot eats that carrot", and for all of our bizarre paranoid over protective story lines we have with our youth today, this is an essential lesson.. it's also fun, positive and hands on.

I did some pretty solid weeding at the house garden this weekend, i also put up a pea lattice (a mesh for the peas to grow up).  This garden has really been served well with the over wintering crops.  Not sure i ever really got the over wintering garden concept, but I think it has been taught to me finally.   In fact i had to clip off a few flowers that were forming on some of the red onions... i have heard that you don't want them to go to seed but rather put energy into the onion.  Apparently onions are bi-annual meaning it takes 2 years to go from seed to seed... i wonder how big that onion is under the soil?  You know you have done a good thing with the garden if you are up at midnight pondering your garden... it might be an eating onion right now.  A master gardener i am probably not, but as i have learned in the music recording industry, sometimes knowing too much can interfere with doing things right.  I know it sounds odd from a scholarly perspective, but man gardening is about doing,  being involved and making mistakes... that's how you learn.  Don't be afraid of what you don't know... find out through trial and error.

I also noticed today the i have a bunch of cilantro coming up near where last years cilantro went to seed.  This is excellent news... i also saw a few young tomatoes and some potatoes coming up on a volunteer basis.  I transplanted the potatoes so they are all in one region and this year and i plan on trying this trick. Never done it before but it kind of seems like a no-brain er.   Could you buy potatoes cheaper than buying the lumber and the soil?... perhaps, but remember as a consumer you are trained to buy satisfaction... i rest my case.

I have really bought into space this year as well... give the damn plants space... In fact i came back from the community garden tonight and my neighbour a few doors down was planting his newly installed planter box... i noticed his lettuce was planted too densely and reprimanded him accordingly... and then i offered him a broccoli plant that i started indoors from seed a month ago.. he was pretty happy, so we went over what might grow well in his heavily shaded garden box.  I was thinking carrots, but he had no carrot seeds, so i said no problem and went and got some fine "purple haze" carrot seeds.  I planted them for him trying to emphasize the idea of spacing the seeds to give the plants room to grow.   I sensed mild intimidation but general happiness, so i took the liberty of leaning on him a bit more to get some water on the plot A.S.A.P.   I might give him a tomato next week if he passes his watering test... clearly i can set him up with garlic next year which is an excellent crop for the young budding gardener.  Garlic being one of the "over wintering crops" is an excellent tool to keep the gardener engaged year round.  Progress feeds progress of course and it's a pretty hard crop to screw up.

Plant, water, observe, weed and converse with your local gardening community, and work hard to welcome others into the concept of gardening.  Even if you have to volunteer your time to help somebody, who is perhaps a bit timid, into the field of gardening do it.  If you can share and foster the joy of growing food in your community then that's a better community you get to live in.

A neat note about kale

Kale is a pretty hardy plant and it will survive the pacific northwest winter providing early season food as the mature plant comes alive in the spring and shoots into action.  We got a few good kale feeds in this spring.  My Russian red kale is now going to flower and I'm letting it carry on.  A few years ago in Vancouver my friend Sharon Kallis pointed out to me that the kale flowers are real food in salads.  It gives them some colour (yellow) and a little peppery zip... it's amazing how food plants keep giving.

The other thing that has happened is that i am attracting all kinds of finches and today when i was out in the garden an Anna's Hummingbird cam within a few feet of me to visit the flowers of our fine kale plant.  It is a great little bird chirping and hovering and it pleased me immensely to share a bounty with a loving non destructive animal.

Part of me wants to just let this kale go to seed, and the seeds drop and see if new kale will come.  I do have a melon and some potatoes coming up from from last years recycled seed supply... i actually had a few melons but the slugs killed off the excess.

It was about this time last year when i went to a a city repair home to learn about building cob structures and there was a bunch of hippies with happy grins declaring they were making Kale chips.  Inside i kind of scoffed, but i was wrong. Kale chips are good stuff... if you can salt and spice and oil something to a fine crisp you are doing good.  My brain was on cob structures and it had no time for sitting around waiting for kale chips to bake in an oven, let alone be happy about that fact.

Let me clarify... if you are making something nutritious that you grew, even if it is a bit salty for the kidney... do it.  On that note; remember the loop of Henley.. i had to pass a test on that one time a long time ago, but remember my father was a staunch science teacher, gardener and consummate dietitian strictly adhering to the latest "wellness news" of the hour. Dad never grew kale, he was more of a squash and beans kind of guy... there was an asparagus patch, and carrot rowe's with the son instructed to plant one seed every inch down the line after the line was dug deep with peat and nitrogen based fertilizer. And if the son got lazy and threw too many seeds the later the son learned how to thin carrot seedlings, which in turn taught the son to do it right in the first place. Harsh lesson or good education?  I would go with good education... no point raising some soft fragile kid who thinks that their perspective is the only one that matters... for sure have your opinions and air them but be sure to check them against the facts and proceed accordingly.   Most times kids will naturally do the right thing, their moral compass is astounding... i have often thought that we should have children as judges because their sense of justice is real and not affected by politics or economics.

But this post is about kale right... i think i stated that in the title.. i guess i could could change that now, but that would mean deleting this sentence and rethinking, which might be a good idea on some levels, but goes against the mantra of the SR blog series.

I get my kids to harvest the kale leaves, and my oldest goes to town washing the leaves, and then we make the kale chips.  We use truffle infused olive oil, salt and spice and bake the foliage with a keen eye on not burning it... you can do it at 200-400 on your oven but you have to keep an eye on it.  If you want to really dial it in get some crushed nuts in on the seasoning... then you get some roasted nut salted olive oil infused spiced greens that are good for you...

OK notes on the community garden next...

SR

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.