remember the hops

I hope I remember the hops... of course i remember them but do I clearly remember that day when I went for the harvest like a Bald Eagle plucking Salmon from a spawning run.

I believe i mentioned earlier about this "wild" hops plant i found in a back alley in Vancouver that had gone ape shit and climbed up to the power lines. Well i made the call that it was Harvest day on a day that i was relatively kid free so i went to the gym to get stretched up for the harvest. In the car i had smartly placed a rake and some bags, and in my head i had a dream. I was a bit sweaty and short sleeved when i began the operation finding a 2 hour parking spot right by the alley where the said plant lives. I started plucking hops flowers from the plant.. one at a time, and then that thing happened that happens when you start to harvest from plants. You become amazed by how much "product" the plant produces. When you look at a plant and you see "fruit"... (hops flowers in this case) you see a bunch but then when you get closer and start handling the plant and looking behind the leaves you see more and more, and then you become in tune with the general structure of the plant and how it produces. Beans are really good for that because the beans hide under the leaves of the plant... it is really fascinating stuff.

Then you notice that your sweaty arms and hands are starting to have an allergic reaction to the hops plants but you say to yourself "I will not be defeated"... "Next time i will bring gloves and a long sleeve shirt but for now this is my window and i can fail or succeed". The history of me is to always overdue it, that's just the way I roll... sometimes i can even start to recognize it when it is happening, but i just want more and more and more free hops. It was about the time i was leaping up in the air with a rake to bring down the plant to harvest level that i ran into one of the local residents. He smiled and said "you making beer", and we talked for a bit... apparently nobody has ever harvested these hops for 9 years, which is a far as he goes back with respect to this neighbourhood. Very Human... apparently there has been a major hops shortage for a while and a major hops plant has been going to waste for years. Well i had to roll after a while to pick my oldest kid up from school so i dumped out the harvest and put some lotion on my arms.



I was running a bit late to the school so i kind of jogged the last few blocks and then it wasn't until i was standing in the hall with all of the other parents that i realized that i smelled like man sweat and hops... perhaps reek is a better word than smelled. Also there was the red blotches all over my skin from the hops irritation.. the good part was that i was given a wide birth in the school hall... no need to get involved with that gossip yappery... our mind needs to focus on curing them hops.





Given that we were set to go to the Bold Point Farm stay and the raw fact that our house is an insane asylum where anybody is just constantly buggering anything they can get their hands on i went for the quick dry (cure) method. I had read about roasted hops and that was my game. You have to look at the big picture in these times:
I have Hops, i want to use hops, how can i make hops available for the future. I had 2 days before we went away for 4 days and Cory wasn't home when the hops man came a calling on his back door... it would have been great... a dedicated friend brewer gets a surprise visit from an overzealous Robertson all shocked up from a few hours of hops picking and feeling generous with the hops.

No problem, hops cured bagged and frozen for winter brewing... only a fool would disagree.




So the city put in a new "roundabout" by my house and i envision a metal "art" statue that a tubor from that hops plant can climb up and produce... i also have big plans for that plant to be subdivided so that it becomes a common species in the back alley behind my house. Remember the biggest part of farming is planning, the plants do the work.

Bold Point road

Make a right from village bay road
September night the wind did blow
Power lines came down
I didn't care because I saw the light
Went to learn about the farming life
And I learned a lot


On bold point road there is a little farm stay
Chickens seed corn the sheep some hay
And watch the raven fly
The chicken mothers eye
Now it's all quiet on bold point road
I had a pen and so I made that note
It’s just the way it goes

In the back there is a forest path
It hits a road with no roadbed
This must have been how the settlers lived
And soon I saw me a gravel road
Lead me to a mighty maple tree
There was a sign by it you see
It said "bold point"

In 1920 the Union Steamships
They used the old wooden cattle bridge
A floating general store
The hotel is no more
Loaded wagons with mining supplies
All the hope in the young men’s eyes
A pet graveyard
Ned, Buckey and Barb

Stars shine in the Quadra night
Hidden from all the city lights
Wood stove it glows
When I look back on bold point road
I have the stories that Rod he told
I made a friend out there
On bold point road






Bold Point Farmstay

I saw this CBC contest about songs about roads, and I have no songs about roads, which is odd having done 4 CD's with a band called Roadbed... I was thinking of throwing in "Willingdon Junction"... about an important train road... i believe i just talked myself into something.

We had a great time at the Bold Point Farm stay. It was a chance to learn about gardening, farming and living in isolation in a sustenance role with the land, and then of course, there is that thing you get when you escape the city... quiet, peace, no computer, no telephone, big trees, big animals and big storms. A chance to stop and observe things, and then you get questions in your head to ask Rod, and then you get answers that spur more questions... Next thing you know you are in the library getting a positive identification on a fungus species that you thought might be chanterelles but in fact is a very deadly fungus... * NEVER eat mushrooms you picked unless you are absolutely positive they are edible. I know very little about Fungus species. I am more of a bird, mammal and vegetable Man myself, but because i knew our hosts knew i figured i could pick, come back and ask and then eat... which i did minus the eating.


To me one of the greatest lessons was in bird behaviour... in particular the chickens reaction to a Chicken Hawk, or a raven. I was standing with a mother and about a dozen chicks and i happened to look up and see a Coopers hawk, at around the same time we heard this call from the mother chicken and the chicks scattered. The mother froze with her eye fixed on the hawk and the hawk moved on. Now this of course opened the conversation about this dynamic which begat a good introduction into "evolving raven behaviour with respect to co-coordinated attack on farm livestock". Apparently a raven beak can snap the head off a chicken if it gets a chance, so in an effort to create that chance the ravens will work in pairs. Two Ravens will fly in the trees by the kill zone corridor (the long driveway road next to the trees) and the chickens will do their thing and then one raven will fly off and the chickens think its all cool, go back to business, then the second raven swoops down and gets a chance at a close range surprise attack... of course the raven does risk taking the business end of a Roosters spur, but everything in life has it's gambles. There is no Insurance for this kind of deal... you need chickens who have "wild farm" smarts.

We talked Vancouver backyard chicken coops and apparently they only want hens, no roosters... but apparently, a hen, in time, can change into a rooster, or at least start to look like a rooster... be good to weird a few people out, and you can imagine the extrapolations, folklore, and city planning meetings.

But this is a gardening blog, and i should talk of the succulent oregano, snapping chard, brilliant beans, garlic, hazelnuts and of course i should mention Uncle Rods Man tomato greenhouse otherwise known as Robertson's secret snack bar.



Check out the design... 1/4-inch re-bar wrapped in PVC, arched for snow weight problems, re-enforced. I'm sold on the tomatoes in a greenhouse, a total no brainier. The bold point farm stay is north and on a moist forested mushroom filled island and Rod's tomatoes are just rocking it... hitting stride. I should have asked him... does he need to open the door to help fertilization? And in this week in Vancouver our blightmatoes are done... that's right blightmatoes is not a word... I am taking the word "blight" and the word "tomato" and fusing them together creating a description of something nobody wants.

On one of the days it was raining so i went for a walk down to Bold Point... I took the back "forest path" route and my mind went from gardening and livestock rearing to the history of the area. There is this crazy old rotten bridge that must have been one hell of a construction project in it's day, and apparently you can still walk across it... it's just that when you get to the other side you are convinced you don't want to walk back. That's what the people who i saw walking up a private driveway told me when i asked them if this was a little "loop". On the other side of the bridge is private property and i imagine the people who live there probably went to live there for a little peace and quiet and may tire of simpletons ending up on their property wondering how to get back afraid of the bridge. Anyway i had to wonder how it all got there, and Rod, as usual, filled me in.

I got some Garlic, some i ate and then rest I am set to plant to keep the strain going, as i find it most delectable garlic. My daughter and Rod harvested hazelnuts for human consumption and jerusalem artichoke greens for sheep consumption. Nothing quite like seeing a kids eyes after they have done things like that... it's actually really exciting rather than the usual manufactured excitement we are trained to plug our children into in order to make then good consumers.

Do yourself a favour go to the Bold Point Farm stay and kick back for 4 days (it takes a while to get there so you need to get away from the travel days for proper mind ease).

Did i mention we saw Orca's on the ferry ride back... a good omen if i don't say so myself.

harvest

Simply put... recall spring time when you meant to plant but you put it off for a week and then another week and then you were furious with yourself for loosing 2 weeks of prime growing time and thus hindering your yield significantly.

Now we are in rain and cold and mold season and by checking out of the garden scene at this time you stand to have all kinds of good things start to rot. This is the time when the pioneers were going ape shit trying to store the food for the long winter. Of course they didn't have the options we have... our sissy society dictates that we make a call on the cell phone about how we are a little ache today so we need to go to a coffee shop and spend nine bones on some fancy coffee and a date square... and we then feel like we have accomplished something. I feel hate just thinking about it... how do you think the local newspapers would like a story about a pro side burned "maniac" going around and laying random beats on coffee shop consumers, all the while calming he is doing a service to society... probably wouldn't fly i say. And it would be wrong of course too, because a man gardener should spend his time bringing in crops.

Remember the spring spinach i froze? made a pizza the other day and sprinkled some of that on and felt rather regal come to think of it. Store food for use now... use refrigeration technology.

Did i ever tell you about my Hops plant? Of course Man hops make man beer and if you are against beer then you are against me, conprendo? So of course as an natural farmer and brew master i was all over getting some hops plants, but they are hard to buy, but with a little research and once you know what the plant looks like you can find it in back alleys all over town. I happened to be coming back from the gym on day, on a bike, down a back alley and i noticed a hops plant so i came back and dug up a tuber (a root portion that will grow a plant) and put it in my yard by the compost and the back fence... it took a while to get rolling but once it got over the fence where it could get full sunlight all day it took off like gangbusters, and i probably have enough hops for a 23 liter brew. Then i got to thinking what about the mother plant? How did it do? so i went back and the plant has climbed the hydro poll and is running along the hydro lines and there must be a few garbage bags full of hops on the plant. I will have to go take a picture because it is actually ridiculous how well that plant is doing... which of course means we need a cherry picker or a couple of good men with a 32 foot Vulcan ladder to reap that harvest. It's odd that my wife was just recently going off on how she doesn't think i should clear the leaves from the eves this year (we do have a very tall house) as it is too dangerous, and apparently she works with some doctor who was talking about how men come in with head injuries due to ladder related falls and there is a total cor-relation to the season and what the men were doing. I guess harvesting hops from a hydro line in a back alley is a bit off the charts, but could go in there with a disastrous apple harvest fiasco. I mean hops aren't that expensive, but again it is the principle... those hops are about to rot... wonder if i could just yank the damn vine down... there is that hydro issue? I'm thinking a fire truck could come in handy... how to get a fire truck there? think think think... we need those hops.

Those hops are now a symbol of everything i stand for... free good useful plant growth about to waste away in front of the eyes of a thousand hammerheads who throw Styrofoam and plastic from their farmed salmon purchase into the landfill thinking all the time that they have it harder than anybody in the history of civilization.

I'm a getting those hops, and I'm a brewing, and then I'm a swilling... that's the way we roll around here.

stay tuned

son of a gun

I had such great hopes for this here blog, funny how the summer can just slip away in a blur of events, and then flinchers rob your ass and stomp the shit out of your garden killing all your seedlings to where you get to the point you think there is nothing to write about but savage failure. But there is always a lesson.

Lets face it, life ain't fair in the natural world... it's a stomp or be stomped game out there... not really but i just like the word stomp. Who cries for the fly that hits the spider web and soon ceases to exist? And in the front yard a bald faced hornet and a yellow jacket are locked in a death battle (my money is on the hornet)... sometimes they both lay stunned for a while on the ground waiting for a bare foot Robertson to take a nasty foot sting. And then life goes on... i bet you there are a few hundred other insects in the area that are just blending into the surroundings, and nobody knows that they are there... these guys don't dig the "stomp or be stomped" vibe... they are more of a "why don't i just blend into the background and do my feeding" kind of insect.

fuck it... what is positive?

I have some nice sunflowers in so what to do?

You see with all of the Salmon feasting that has been going on on the west coast these days we have been having a lot of dinner parties that feature a BBQ salmon and in one of the dishes that arrived was a salad with sunflower sprouts. It was insanely good... so i shall save the seeds and make me some sunflower sprouts this fall. My father made alph-alpha sprouts when we were young, i will carry the torch with home grown sunflower sprouts. My method will be to put the seeds in a small layer of water and let them sprout and then eat the bastards... beware of mold... don't freak out over it but be conscious and observe as a good scientist would.

My plantings that got stomped by tomato and corn flinchers might have been for naught as my neighbour in the garden, lets call her "old cook old sport" to keep names hidden, planted some bock choi and it is small and is starting to flower... she was very distraught... I am wondering if the declining daylight hours are sending a signal to the plants to flower and seed now because the end is near... which is most excellent for some horticulture experiments... My earlier spinach advise might have to be revised, but time is the hunter on that one.

My meeting with Old Cook old sport worked out for the best however as she has no tolerance for wasted food. I have kind of been scared of her lately because the dandelions have been building up in my garden and she has a low tolerance for weeds.. she is on the case and will always point out the fact that i need to weed... i agree.
But none the less in an effort to turn her attention away from my bean, pea, tomato, celery, beet and weed pile i started to point out other neglected gardens and she went bananas... "this is bad you have to pick it now or it will get worse" she cawed... "they wasting money" she exasperated. It was much like having a cheerleader urging me to pilfer neglected gardens.. she even did some of the picking. As a matter of fact she wouldn't not let me pick food from neglected gardens... i loaded up on some neglected peas that were rotting in a pile (but once shelled were fine) to add to my curry, i flinched tomatoes from a garden that looked like it hadn't been cared for in a month (many were on the ground rotting). So there is me loading up with old cook old sport saying things like "you need to pick, it bad for plant you need to take and eat now".... it was king of like one of those old cartoons where the devil was in the characters ear telling him what to do and why to do it, and being a victim of flinching i was weary, but being a member of a garden for 3 years i have witnessed the incredible waste of food that rots into the ground because people get busy or leave town. My policy on this is maintenance... if a plant is full of ripe fruit and below the plant is rotting fruit it probably means this is a situation of gross neglect and i ask myself the question "if i was a gross neglector what would i want to have happen?", and i realize that i would want to be taught a lesson.... just kidding, kidding because the lesson won't be learned because the neglector doesn't know what they are losing. i never take it all just a few so that less fruit will hit the ground so that fewer slugs will populate the region and balance can return to the garden.

And what about my strawberry failure?

A classic Robertson failure which sees our hero doing maximum labour for a negative return. Before i get going on this you know what pisses me off? the fact that right above me labour as in "the word' has a red line below it saying YOU FUCKED UP.. but i didn't in Canada (Man Country) we spell labor labour... labor has no red line under it... i though i set the god damn preferences to Canadian English. Oh well not to worry... many glaring English mistakes around here anyways. So my neighbour... son of a bitch! neighbour now has a line under it but neighbor doesn't... both of those words should totally have the "u"... there is no countries anymore just corporations so can we fuck this "neighbour" "neighbor" horse shit because i have a story to tell about strawberries... Thank Christ that word isn't spelled strowberries in some American dictionary or i just might lose it completely. So my neighbour had an old laundry tub he was getting rid of and i thought it would make a great planter to keep the strawberries contained as strawberries tend to scatter like a pack of 3 year olds after a chocolate treat, so i lugged this dog out to the garden at great effort to myself and then proceeded to counter sink the bastard which took a whole day of labour from a man with 3 kids a band and hockey playoffs, and the strawberries he enjoyed were probably less than 10. The problems... poor drainage, fucking slugs, strawberries just shoot over the edge and scatter anyways, fucking slugs, loss of prime real estate, fucking slugs... you get the picture... I have money i can buy strawberries what i don't have is an appetite for failure. For the record I'll try some hanging strawberries next year.

garden filching

In criminal law, theft is the illegal taking of another person's property without that person's freely-given consent. Someone who carries out an act of or makes a career of theft is known as a thief, and the act of theft is known as stealing, thieving, or sometimes filching.

-Wikipedia

Remember i was barking on about my corn a little while back and i was worried about when to harvest it as to pick it when it was ready, and i was also wondering how the fertilization of the kernels would turn out... well it looks like i don't have to worry about that any more because some thief put a solid flinching on my corn. Not only did the bastards flinch the corn they fractured the stock of the corn plants so that the other cobs would be left to grow on a wounded plant... and it looks like they stood on my new lettuce, spinach, beet and chard plantings to do so.

This all happened shortly after i ran into a corn farmer who i pressed for tips about how to know when your corn is ready... the answer is when the sheath leaves around the cob start to part and bend away from the cob the corn is ready to be harvested... i had 2 cobs ready before the first wave of flinching occurred... it started as an email alert about some sucker in the garden who lost all their peppers and i was kind of like "Phew, good thing i wasn't fool enough to grow peppers... better go water my garden"... which soon turned into "holey shit my fucking corn is gone, son of a bitch, and they fucking broke the plant... AND STOMPED MY FUCKING LETTUCE... OK this is clearly a declaration of war".

After a hard days researching places to purchase razor wire, leg hold traps, poison spikes, mace bomb and lumber to build a tree fort/ hunting blind in the popular trees behind the garden i recalled how i got that massive scar on my shin:



You can't change the world and when you set a trap you are just liable to catch yourself adding insult to injury. I ended up meeting one thief a few days ago... i say one because i believe we are dealing with multiple people due to a significant body of evidence i have accumulated through the course of my investigation. As a Man gardener born and raised in Scarborough i should have by rites laid a beating on this person, but from what i saw was that life was already doing that... so i just tried a lesson. I tried to train that person to harvest food without damaging the plant, but all i could get was a consistent denial that the person even took any food and was just looking at the garden even though i was standing 4 feet away from this person as they ate my tomatoes and walked over my beet seedlings. For a moment i felt like those suckers in Alaska who were ruined by the exxon valdez oil spill, or anybody who tried to take Monsanto to court... basically you lose and the guilty deny any wrongdoing... the good news is that i just lost some vegetables because i was dealing with a poor sociopath, where as a remorseless corporation is a rich sociopath with the court of law bought an paid for. Ok this is getting ugly... i feel hate welling.

I think i said earlier you can't change the world, as a collection of people we are just to stupid to see the light... too distracted by the carrot that is really just a mirage. So what? You have to find a way to live in it... and that is why at this time i would like to declare Corn a "negative crop" (for a community garden). What does that mean? It means that when you plant corn not only do you not get to eat the corn but the plants around the corn are susceptible to a mean clumsy foot stomping and so your yield on the corn is a gross negative. And that is the game of Man gardening... to reap rewards, not suffer troubling setbacks. My beans and broccoli are going strong but my cherry tomatoes are there saying "come over here for a feed and a stomping".

Next year there will be no corn, and the tomatoes will be planted on the edge of the garden so as not to encourage flinchers to go for a little feed and stomp. For the record we have eaten a lot of tomatoes so i can't classify it as a completely negative crop... you just have to keep on it to remove the tempting fruit as it comes ripe. i might actually experiment with a perimeter of stinging nettle around the garden but i fear for my children on that one... however i believe that learning to overcome hazards is a good parenting technique.

The garden is now 3 years old and i am afraid that it has identified itself as a food source for people who may need food more than the rest of us... perhaps we need a decoy garden beside our garden but something tells me that wouldn't fly given the fact that the city workers that care for the park have killed all of the trees by "weed eating" the bark around the base of the trees and they mowed down all of the blueberry bushes around the garden because it was the easiest thing to do (video coming).

One of those "nobody loves you" moments, but you can't let it get you down... i can buy corn, and gardening is about the thrill of being part of your food creation... being robbed is an uninspiring feeling, so you have to know your game and play it properly.

On a better note i harvested some of my celery today as we were making chili for lunch and needed some aromatic vegetables to fry in oil to set the stage for proper seasoning... bingo celery is a winner, even though it has a few known carcinogens in it's makeup... that's life in 2010. Do you know that laws have been passed that give retroactive immunity to oil companies for the carcinogens put in gasoline additives... suck it up suckers.

I have beans

The beans the kids planted are in full gear (planted late June ready early august)... beans can really surprise you as their fruit is hidden under the bean leaves. This is one of the reasons they make a good crop of course... once again a security issue... what people don't see they might not take. A nice ripe tomato is like a neon sign, but a succulent bean is hidden. Most likely a good way to protect the bean from the drying sun as it gets a chance to mature and become seed, which it will if one forgets to harvest it. Mine are a purple striated form of bush beans and they steam up in a most delectable fashion. Young beans are the tastiest and still have a delicate pod... i believe i have heard that beans are a vegetable you should eat cooked for proper digestion and nutrient harvesting... strong fibers. I prefer to steam beans and make sure to shut them down before them become over done.

Harvesting beans is another one where you have to be careful not to damage the plant... just pulling at the beans like a child might do can stress the plant by damaging the roots in the tug of war that will ensue if you choose the rouge harvesting technique. Scissors work well, but hands keep one "in touch" with the garden.

Speaking about in touch with the garden it seems that every bodies lettuce has gone bitter and some of the people with bitter lettuce polluting their plots are not aware of the problem that is plaguing them. I happened to be keenly observing the garden at 1:30 am this morning, in part due to my "Robertson vs. Slug" battle in the strawberry patch (remember big efforts are everything) when i noticed that the gardener down the street has a plot full of bitter lettuce... i was pretty sure this was a key issue the needed to be dealt with ASAP so i went and woke them up to have a little discussion. I brought a liter of stout as a friendship token but apparently this disgruntled gardener doesn't drink much and never at 1:30 am after rising from bed for what she calls an "unimportant issue". When i asked her if she sugared her lettuce she just looked at me... i like to think of it as a moment of enlightenment, and i explained to her the possibilities and the next thing you know she figured it was time for a glass of stout... although i failed in my quest for a late night re-plant we did share some philosophies and i was enlightened to the point where i realized that not everybody thinks the way i do.

Not all are like my apprentice... the new fellow who took over that plot that i had taken over... to keep names non public lets call him "old Tim old sport". This guy is going to make a good gardener, he has the heart of a farmer... when he is standing there munching some fresh produce picked seconds before he is in awe of the flavour and power of life. That is the fire one needs... it's cool to say you have a garden in our new corn fed horse shit society, but it is completely another animal to have your fire stoked by your love of delicious cheap food. You can see it in the garden all the time... people come out like gangbusters in the spring and by fall (harvest time) they have forgotten and the food goes back into the ground, which is natural but wrong in this situation.

When to harvest Corn?

it might be time soon.. i have never grown corn before as i have heard it takes a few rows side by side for proper pollination... time is the hunter on that. Will my corn have just a few kernels here and there, or will i be gloating like a rooster at the crack of dawn with a gut full of corn. The problem is i don't have that much... i don't want to harvest too early... i am a corn rookie, but i won't forget what happens.

in the old days i would sugar the lettuce

Ok people what happens to lettuce when it gets too old? It becomes bitter is the answer. You can see when you pick it that there is a white milky substance that appears when you rip it and it means your lettuce is done, and if you forgot to plant new lettuce like 25 days ago then you are going to be off the lettuce for a bit.

This is the situation i find myself in... when i was a younger "boy" gardener i thought i was a genius and would just sugar coat the lettuce telling myself that it was still good. It was a good effort and even i have to admire the effort of "not losing"... kind of like when you are down 3-2 in a game and your net is empty for the extra attacker and the other teams best player gets a clear break away on the empty net but you still try to chase them down hoping that maybe just maybe a mistake might be made and you can take the puck and go coast to coast and tie up the score. You have to remember that things that are unpalatable often don't digest well so an extra coating of sugar isn't always the best route to go. That is why gardening is a sport of patience and preparation, and cutting corners and going off the game plan can be a fatal turn of events. Sure we have peas in abundance, onions coming out the ying yang, steady beet and broccoli production, corn coming and the tomato and bean surge is almost on us... but why drop the ball on the lettuce?

Does the man gardener think he is so great that lettuce seeds are going to fall magically from the sky, ahead of time for proper feasting? You would think so with this clearly negligent behaviour... i should not be re-learning these lessons again, but i am and that is the life of a gardener. At this time of year things are going crazy and you are overwhelmed with your bounty and it's all positive thoughts, and that's when you make your mistakes... being on the case is everything when it comes to growing food. So i ripped out the great lettuce patch that was by the strawberry failure in a quick burst of "savage attack weeding" and within seconds the wasps were in there like lions on a water buffalo kill by a waning drinking hole in the dry season... i stayed calm and at one with the plants and the garden keeping on my course and allowed the scavenging to continue and in the end i cleared some land for planting and some wasps are now nighting down with bloated abdomens. As a side note because the great lettuce patch (of mixed lettuce) was planted a little tight at the base of the roots was a woody stalk probably to give the lettuce a Darwinian height advantage... bottom line is that the plants wanted to seed and they didn't need some hungry ass hole plucking at their leaves so they took care of it and became unpalatable, or at least non-gourmet... and in so doing they are now compost... and if a wasp did sting me i would stomp that fucker into a paste.

My daughter, or one of them for that matter, washed the onions with the hose to clean the dirt away and they are now set out on newspaper in the garage to dry. The onion patch on the other side of the strawberry failure is now more cleared ground for beets chard and some more lettuce. Lettuce in Vancouver should grow well into November so there is still plenty of game left...

The garden community has responded well to my travesty... i find if you stand in front of a Gardner and tear a strip off yourself for your lettuce failure there is a good chance that they planted too much lettuce and will offer you a chance to harvest some of theirs. Also now is the time many casual Gardeners go off on vacation and look to a professional like myself to lay down some hard core soakings on their plot... sometimes gardens need soakings and a little thinning.