Harvests, second plantings, things done right and things done wrong

We ate a beet the size of a softball the other night, 2 beets feed the family... clearly there is meat involved, and spinach and salad and broccoli soup of course.   Just so you know I'm not like "OK family sit down and have your plate of beets".   That would be silly of course, and silly is not the Portland way... it happens to be weird.  Silly is like the dumb version of weird.  I see silly as ridiculous and weird more like abnormal, but considering what is normal in this world I'll take weird every time.   It's actually fun being weird around an old fashioned knuckle head's because the old fashioned knuckle head has a small mind wrapped around an outdated world view and they think they are right because that's they way they were raised many moons ago no mater what proper logic dictates.

Anyhoo, this is the Man Robertson gardening blog and not the Man Robertson philosophy blog so lets get to the vegetables.

I believe one of my goals was to have a king hell beet harvest, so we can tick that one off the list... probably time for a second planting of beets, I'm sure there is time.  On the negative side i might have planted the beets, spinach and carrots too close together, which is kind of a big failure given plant spacing was another goal this year.  You see i noticed the carrots trying to go to seed... meaning they were trying to sprout flowers by shooting a long "plant thing" up high and flowering.  It was probably their best chance to survive given the garden was going bananas all around them.  I picked one of them and it had a very small carrot so i gave it to the kids who washed it and put it in an ice bath, an invention they called a "carrot cooler".  After gnawing off the carrot they found what they called the "carrot's bone".  I guess the inner core goes hard as the plant shifts to flowering mode... who knew?  The good part is that we know now... that is Man Gardening in a nutshell... fuck the research, just slam plants in the ground and see what happens.   That's when keen observations skills come in handy.  Not all of the carrots went to seed and i harvested all of the spinach and cooked it down in butter and garlic and we wolfed it back.   Perhaps now the carrots can shine and turn that deep purple i was promised back in spring when i had a heart full of hope, and perhaps tried to squeeze too much out of the limited real estate.

A pumpkin came up from last years compost from Halloween' and i let it go for a bit but it was like a god damn attack octopus on speed clawing up all of the tomatoes and spiking me left right and center.  I tried to train it to the back to climb up that loathsome rose bush but it kept trying to force itself into the prime tomato grounds so i had to end it's reign.   When i get the cob house built in the backyard I'll plant a pumpkin next to it next year and it can climb all over that and compete with the Zeus hops, I'm sure the kids would like pumpkins come October, but for now it would cut into me having tomatoes in July, August and September.   Basically it just came up in the wrong spot, sometimes you win sometimes you lose, the key is to make the decision beforehand on where you want to win and where you want to lose, and run with it.

We are getting real close to tomatoes... I am getting a few that are starting to show colour thanks to my February indoor starts.  Peas are coming to a close  and i have many freezer bags full, along with the fact that we have had our fill of peas every day for weeks now.  Today i planted rows of blue pole beans amongst the roots of the peas, so that they can grow and climb on the trellis i had build for the peas.  Of course they will have to compete with the pickling cucumbers i put there too... that's Man gardening... fire the plants in there and see who rules!  Apparently the pea roots are great for fixing nitrogen in the soil so don't pull them out.  There will probably be some delicate trimming involved later, but think of that as as way to better get acquainted with what is happening on that level, cause you know when you are in there there will be some weeding you will realize you need to do.

 Between broccoli and chard harvests we have our steamed vegetables solved for the summer... potato boxes are waist high and the strawberries are pretty much over.  My kids who i nickname "the harvesters" are all over the blueberries but the lone plum will be mine... it's a first year tree... perhaps i should give Kaiya a bite since she helped me pollinate the tree with cue tips.  I could probably buy her off with an ice cream, but then if the twins got wind of that there would be hell to pay.

I love this time of year, as i love all times of year, because i am a lover of course, but this time of year just before dinner the kids and I go out to the gardens and decide what we will be having for dinner... they really get into it, and although it's not really free it kind of feels that way.  I believe the great life decisions are ones made by seeing what is ready, and not particularly by what you think you want, so we have the perfect vehicle to the life lesson.

With regards to the community garden, i did a lap around the garden tonight and conversed with various gardeners, and there was a slight undertone of a perceived "competition" among garden plots.  As i have always said "Gardening is not a competition, but if it can be turned into one to create greater yield then do it".  As a strategist i believe that whatever it takes to motivate you to succeed then use it.  That said i have to say that the biggest problem i see with plots that are under performing has to do with lack of watering.  You need to soak that soil every day, and soak it good... irrigation is really the key to gardening... not that i mind having examples to show my children of plants suffering from drought, but that is what it is.  Obviously you can have better soil that will hold moisture better but if you have no moisture you have no game.   If i were to be serious i would say to some people "water your garden with 100x more water than you have been and see what happens"... of course not everybody's life is structured around their garden for some reason, which seems weird to me, but that's the way it goes.

The potato box is in front of me and has a few more layers on it now, to the right is the tomato patch and i am currently soaking the peas, soon to be beans and cucumbers.

Potatoes in boxes and flowers and peas by the truckload

Part of me is happy that the other gardeners have pea envy, the other part of me can go find a hole to hide in.  Stockpile the victories my man because one day dame fortune will plant a rake in your pathway and you are going to step on that rake and take a whack on the beak and those bastard slugs will look up and laugh. 

But for now there are billions of chloroplasts in the leaves of your plants capturing the hot sun's rays and producing food for you.  This is where the little tweaks pay big dividends.

The potato boxes are really kicking into high gear... i don't have a photo of mine but you get the picture.  My potatoes however have some beautiful blue flowers on them... or i should say had on them.  Yes the smart wisdom is to nip off the flowers as you don't want, at this time, for the potatoes to make seed... you want more potatoes, you are a bloody starch monster and you need yield.  My oldest daughter just loves mashed potatoes and she was over looking at the setup just tinting her fingers.  There also seems to be a common wisdom to fill the potato boxes with straw... apparently this will give more room for potatoes to grow...  this i didn't know until today.  Luckily a gardening neighbour offered me some straw... i wasn't sure what to do with it but now i think i do.  As a side note it's funny how useless some of these "gardening forms" are.. somebody asks a good question and then every idiot and his brain dead brother makes comments but nobody answers the question correctly.  You see i was in the garden chatting with a good man... lets call him Reichel just in case this story turns incriminating...  we were talking about potato flowers.  No we both smartly agreed that as a general rule any plant making food, that doesn't directly come from the result of a flower, should not be allowed to go to flower if one wants continued food production.  So i pinched the flowers off and i agreed to look it up.  Then comes the problem with the internet, where every moron gets his form to clog up avenues to good information and point out the useless things that they think that have no bearing on anything. 

So what i think is right is that when potatoes flower you can grab some young potatoes for a quick dinner if you like tasty young potatoes, but if you nip off the flowers and pack more straw and build the box up higher you will get more potatoes.  So far i have used planter box soil, but i will try the straw next. 

Back at home the strawberries are coming in like gangbusters:

 

I have been getting a bowl like this a day for over a week and I'd say we are at about the mid point mark.  Remember you need to be on slug patrol ever night to keep the population at bay.  If it wasn't a war then you might not enjoy the spoils of victory as much.  My main problem with strawberries is that i live with 3 little strawberry monsters... they will gather around a plate like that and devour it in a few minutes.  They get good position on the bowl and keep their elbows up high to fend off and fathers trying to get in there.  That is of course why GOD made the decoy bowl of strawberries, and while the kids hoard over the decoy bowl of strawberries the father locks himself in the washroom with a bowl of the prime berries and goes to town at his own pace without the intrusion of little hands.

Also i am going to have to start freezing peas for those November stir fries, and i am reminded of the work in harvesting.  To me harvesting is one of the more satisfying things in life... perhaps beaten only by finishing a song in a recording studio where the bed track was nailed.  But it is work, make no mistake about it, a farmers job is never done, but if you like the work it is about as satisfying as it comes.    So many people go to work and their job is to jackal somebody into doing something that is no good for that person, or the community or the planet in general, but they won't get paid if they don't do it, so they do it and on some level must be injured by it.  There was a time i was a stereo salesman, it was a very brief period and i was reamed by management one day when i refused to up-sell a more expensive VCR to a pot breathed kid who needed a VCR to watch movies with his roommates.  They told me i was a failure and if i wanted to succeed i needed to follow the plan... i quit.  I think that's why gardening is my kind of religion... do the right thing and let it happen, it's work but it's honest, and heck even good for all.

Were going on a slug hunt...

I was pretty happy picking up the kids from school today... I got to spend some time at the garden snacking on peas while onlookers gawked at my garden.  I noticed a mistake i made.  I randomly threw in some red spinach that some kind gardener had left some seeds in the seed bank.  It was clearly a plant that went to seed.   Incredible idea... let a plant go to seed and then collect the seeds and then share with a community.  Not really the Monsanto model... but anyway the other day when i was filling my potato boxes with soil i was just grabbing random scoops from the garden, and i kind of forgot about the red spinach.  It happens... we now have some red spinach in the garden and some in the potato box.  Nothing a little transplanting and replanting can't fix.

Then at school i was talking garden with my buddy... lets change his name to Ramsey... yes we will go with that... you see this story may take a few unfortunate turns and we don't want to incriminate anybody.  Well Ramsey was concerned about holes in his plant leaves thinking there might be some kind of moth attacking... i assured him it was slugs and we could go and catch the bastards tonight at the stroke of midnight... and he was Game.

It was going to be Ramsey's first late night slug killing frenzy, and i wanted to make sure it left an impression on him so i spent the afternoon and evening collecting slugs and snails to plant in his garden just before our arrival.  I figured that since we were going there anyway the best thing i could do as a mentor was make it a big eye popping event.

The good news is that a quick trip into a pacific Northwest forest can yield a large supply of really large slugs in short order... the bad news is that those slugs can do a lot of damage in no time.  Obviously i had to ring his garden in baking soda so that the slugs didn't escape into other plots and run amok savaging other gardens... like mine.  As a result Ramsey's garden did have the distinct look of a crime scene, and he reacted accordingly going bananas right off the bat... he was darting around like a squirrel fresh out of a cage mumbling and shrieking.  I figured this was good, i was doing him a favor pointing out, in a exaggerated manor, the dangers of late night gardening neglect... then i remembered that cigar i found on the sidewalk...  it was large and perhaps locally rolled, so i suggested that Ramsey light it and get some good hauls and he could use the cherry to singe those slugs into remission... a bit of a crazy idea of course but since he was in a bit of a state it seemed rational to him.

He was hauling and hacking and stomping, so i went over to my garden and found numerous small slugs and bumped them off accordingly.   It was kind of peaceful  with a half orange moon on the horizon... i was snacking on peas, doing a little weeding and finding the odd slug.  It wasn't as peaceful in Ramsey's plot... i think i heard vomiting and disorientated gibberish and some of the local porch lights were coming on.  I went back to see our friend and things had definitely gone pear shaped... i figured, well a good strong first impression had been made so lets bump those slugs off and enjoy the moon.  From the look on Ramsey's face i began to wonder if that was a blunt and not a cigar as he was looking a little sloppy and he had noticed the thick baking soda boarder around his garden and come to the conclusion that his garden was in fact a giant slug nest and that perhaps if he dug down below he might find the mother cave.  As a pure scientist i was pretty sure there was no slug nest under his garden, but then again as a pure scientist one does need to prove or disprove each hypothesis so i got him a shovel.    His excavation was going well, and me being a good friend, made sure all of the slugs were disposed of... and i found a snail.  I thought it might be kind of funny to kind of slip it on his sweaty neck and then point at him in horror and yell "one is attacking you"... unfortunately he fainted into the pit he had dug which worked out well as a police car pulled up.

i had to kind of bury him a bit and come up with a story about these rabble rousing teenagers who were causing trouble but then darted into the woods of Mt. Tabor ... good thinking on my behalf i thought, and i had to get Ramsey out of there.  Luckily there was a wheelbarrow that i could use to get our good friend home... but i couldn't take the main roads... it would look awkward  me rolling a grown man home through the common pedestrian streets... the only way was up the mountain and down the south side.  Clearly a Herculean effort on my part, but what are good friends for.  We had to elude the law and get things right.   Halfway up the mountain we cut through a little used path far away from the road... this would do quite well i thought, and then i heard an owl... sounded like a barred owl... i hadn't  seen one of those in a while so obviously it was worth a quick check... i couldn't find the owl and silly Ramsey decided to go for a little joy ride down the hill.  Fortunately for him, he ran into a blackberry bush which arrested his decent into the reservoir. I get it, you get a sense of invincibility after a slug domination so you try something crazy... it happens to the best of us.


The truth is there was only one slug in the whole garden, and i felt defeated so i made up this story to give it a little juice.  The last thing we want to do is bore our readers right?  But there is a clinical score here.  This is a new garden and the slug population has yet to really build up... but now that there is food it will.  I think the site of this community garden has long been a city tree farm, not king hell territory for slugs, but with all the new lettuce and such there a single slug can lay 500 eggs per season. So if there are even 20 slugs in the garden it could be ten thousand slugs next year... there was once a band from Vancouver called "the Son's of Freedom" and they had an album called "Never Retreat, Never Apologize".  I think we have to keep this in mind with our slug diligence.

The real comedy occurred when we got back to Ramsey's house and there were like 30 slugs in his personal garden.  It was like that book the alchemist where a man goes on a hunt for the truth and it was right under the tree he started from.

Nobody was harmed in this story.

I might have picked up another garden

Well you see, i was at a gathering today and the people in the house, who just moved there casually mentioned that they won't be doing much with their garden box this year, due to the fact that the gardener of the house will be in another state for work related reasons.  Hot Damn!  They seemed amenable to the idea of me putting on a clinic in that box, that has good sun and all... I am a bit worried about the neighbours... they have a large American flag and a sign to the effect of removing Obama so that America can get back to the way it should be.  I mean people can believe whatever they want, i guess... my concern stems more in the fact that an honest person in a backyard at 1am killing slugs with glee, might get shot at, should some confusion arise. 

Oh the costs of gardening... those swat team bullet proof suits cost a pretty penny, and people can get a little testy when they see happy men in riot gear in the middle of the night poking around in backyards that aren't theirs.  Could you just plant some things and let them be, and take your chances?  Not too likely... that would be the easy road, and the easy road has no upsets.  Do you go into a big game without a plan?  Not unless you are that reckless child President starting and amoral and illegal war... and how did that end?

Curses... these terrible diversions... but gardening is a war, and don't forget it.  Alien troops of weeds and pests, and don't forget the unusual weather patterns, that apparently have nothing to do with human impact on the planet.

It was a rainy day today, which was good i found out... a good day for the slugs to be out attacking my strawberries in plain light.  I was out there crushing like a bad man, and i did a harvest.  This is my first ever strawberry harvest... i threw a bunch of "hood" strawberries in the rocks holding up my garden last year and they went bananas... there are hundreds of strawberries out there and some are coming ripe... i probably picked about 30 today and i picked some that were under ripe to test an idea.  Will they ripen after being picked... is that the key?  Clearly a delicious aromatic ripe strawberry is too much temptation for the various varmints out there.  I saw the spot where mice are entering my neighbours attic, and i bet you a mouse would like those berries.  Clearly i am in an obsessive game... how do i get the strawberries before others do?  Farming for slugs is suckers work, and as a general rule i don't put industrial products into my gardens... i don't trust them... something that kills slugs might kill earthworms and other beneficial organisms... i believe in natural selection... naturally i select my targets.  Or as my friend Mr. Rummy once said at a party "I never start a fight, but i always finish it". 

You start using these products, and it could put you on the path to the dark side, a path in which you will never recover from... next thing you know you will be sitting on your ass hole chair looking at your manicured lawn that you just doused with roundup™ thinking that you are "Keeping up with the Joneses"... the good news is that there won't be any attack bees coming out to sting  you... you will have done your part.  This is of course ridiculous, but it happens... and in the end it's all just memories... memory is cheap right!

sorry Mule, the devil made me do it!

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.