The new Man Garden

When it comes to Man Gardening one of the fine tasks is the initial preparation of the garden... the separation of the men from the boys. It's your biggest and most unique opportunity to affect your growing medium... you can go soft, or you can go hard, this is where you set your garden's potential... the culling of undesirable plants, the moving of stone and earth, the engineering one has to do while pacing and rolling their moustache ends around their index finger. Peering out the window, watching the sun, calculating what will happen in July, and then just plain getting in to it. Life is an amazing thing... you think you are seeing something but it's not until you get up close and start doing that you really see what is happening... the essence of gardening!

From the photo above you can see where the garden goes and the most obvious problem is the dubious infection of Ivy. Ivy is one nasty bastard, I believe it is called English Ivy and it is a non-native species that does very well... Ivy’s resilience and lush growth make killing it or removing it a difficult task, but difficult tasks is what man gardening is all about... to shy away from labour is a clear admission of failure... totally unacceptable! That said the roots are everywhere and if you think for a second that you got them all you are a simpleton fool with a small mind that would do well to vote Conservative. But that's not Man Gardening... we observe, take knowledge, process facts, and make decisions with respect to gaining the highest vegetable yield. The sun isn't going to rise and set where you want it to, it's going to do what it always does, Ivy will out compete peas and do nothing for the palate... not to mention supply far less Vitamin A, C and K and of course Folate... so the Ivy has to go, and it's up to the man to deliver the Ivy it's walking papers and he does that by digging the damn roots out! That was actually a rose bush (Oregon being the Wild Rose State) that was overrun by Ivy... so to get the Ivy roots out, lets just say the rose bush took a pretty bad hit. It might seem simple but rose bush roots entangled with Ivy Roots and a sawed down cedar tree root make for a gnarly mound of roots that needed to be removed. My wife saw what was left of the rose bush, and immediately identified me as a "savage plant murderer" oozing hate in my general direction, but I was busy sacrificing other species for the greater good to pay it much attention.

On this weekend I filled my own and 2 of my neighbours green bins full of ivy, lemongrass and their roots. Also seen here is a fence part blown into my yard by some natural hurricane that happened that week. Also there was the rock wall that needed to be taken down so that the garden area could be expanded to maximize crop yield... there was a delicate balance between leaving some yard for the children to play in, and some yard for them to learn how to grow food in.

I got 4 yards of triple mix soil, if I could do it again I would have gotten 6 or 7... for some reason I pulled back thinking that, yes I am a natural maniac who has historically overdone everything, and the "new me" will be different... I let it go. I will get more fresh soil next year... I will have a better idea of what happens after next year. Not to mention this fact: I went to a Yoga class last week and while everybody was in their postures breathing deeply, and I was cramped over trying to suck breaths into my fat collapsed diaphragm, the teacher said something prophetic... she said "when you are in your practice, don't be there criticizing what's wrong with your form, if you practice that, that is what you will become good at... criticizing yourself". I kind of have the market cornered on that one, so lets turn the page.
This is 4 yards of soil:

Soil going into the garden... with 2 photobombers Hailie and Emily:

And then Peter, my good neighbour got in on the action... a swell man who said "my doctor said I should get some exercise but the gym costs a lot of money so helping you actually saves me". With a beard like that you might even get a plaque in the "man garden".

After the soil got moved to the garden area I needed some help "stomping down the soil", so like my father before me I put my kids to work... actually my Father put his son to work while his daughter claimed to be too busy with various excuses... I have 3 daughters… equal treatment for all: I puzzled and waffled for a week before I put the rock wall back up... Should I make a staircase up to the garden? But that would create a pathway for the children to lead them for some "stomping... And as I was tinting my fingers thinking about what I was going to do a squirrel came along and buried a peanut in my garden, and then another, and then a rat went by with a peanut. Upon further investigation it appears my neighbour has squirrels living under her roof area of her porch and her answer to that is to feed them peanuts! Perhaps I mentioned that. Yes I did. OK so this is the garden with the soil minus the rock wall:


It takes a while before you accept somebody as a "squirrel enabler", a rodent sympathizer, but in the end all you can do is build your garden and defend it.

The hack is back!

Sorry I disappeared there last fall, I could safely say that I had more chaos going on last fall than most, but as we know when you start making excuses that's when you really deserve a savage beating! So none of that, my life is good, I have garden, will grow vegetables and other brew related vines.

Truth be told I think one of the real reasons I checked out was that I was suffering from a condition known as Incompetent-city-worker-rageitus. Meaning when I thought of the garden all I could see was the paid boneheads that were savaging the plants, and then there was the crazy lady with her "compost" and wild animal feeding piles... move away Robertson, move away.

What did I do to end the season on a positive note? I brought in all the damn tomatoes when they were green (before they could be blight ridden) and we ate tomatoes into December... they were good. I got some broccoli feeds and then I planted a massive pile of Bold Point Road Garlic because the people taking over the garden for me in my absence are having a baby this year and are newbie’s with respect to gardening, so I figure a good garlic crop is an easy tend and a fine crop to have. Still some room for them to do some magic... I'll probably be back a few times this season for some workhorse sessions.

Did I mention I moved to Portland Oregon? Have no fear, our hero is in for a good season, and in the next blog we will go through the preparation of the new Man Garden and outline some of the threats that our gardening space will be under. Like the squirrel population that lives in my neighbours roof, and apparently the method of dealing with that is to feed them peanuts (totally serious). Which means they are not afraid of humans, which means one can easily race out of the house and slash them with a Easton hockey stick... although you can't do that anymore, they are wise to that one after I wrist shot a squirrel high over back into the neighbours yard. Did I mention the rats like peanuts too... did I mention the possum?

Squirrels and rats are rodents, Possums are the only North American marsupials, and they are actually more correctly called Opossum. Possum is a word I can more easily declare war on... apparently they eat anything, as will rats and squirrels and I guess the word is out in the local rodent population that free peanuts are for the having next door.

Honestly I kind of prefer rodents and marsupials as my archenemy over city workers. In essence my tax dollars were paying the city workers to savage my plants, and I had to witness their stupid movements, and listen to their inane excuses and then call lines with automated voices telling me to press digits and stay on the line to file complaints that really never got anywhere. If I were to say... trap a city worker and then drown that said worker, there might be a bit of an outcry. I guess "drown" is a strong word, lets use the word re-locate. The union wouldn't allow the re-location of the city worker because that system is flawed in that manor, and who's to say the next mouth breathing hammerhead on the job cares any more. When a rodent is re-located (to the bottom of the Columbia river), it's not going to get the massive public outcry, and a police investigation. Provided my wife, my kids, and the naughty neighbour aren't a witness to the re-location, everybody will sleep well... well one of us might be chuckling a bit when he should be sleeping, but everything has its price.

Did I mention getting guns in Oregon is about as easy as getting popcorn in a movie theater... not sure about the silencer. My crazy wife is a real stickler when it comes to firearms… one of those liberal loons who believe in the “no gun under any circumstance” philosophy. Truth be told it would be a lot of work to hide a gun and snipe rodents from my daughters bedroom window without being noticed. Basically I'd have to buy a T.V. and put my kids in front of it and then slaughter and hide the carcasses, but in no way do I think it is acceptable to put a child in front of a T.V.

So I guess it comes down to some man made contraptions... man vs. rodent and marsupial... should be fun.

The Plot thickens...

Get it. The Plot of land... fills out.

Facts are facts... I need to lose the "Oh i have been emotionally diminished by unfair forces beyond my control and now i Just Don't Care anymore" Chump Robertson tripe and focus on the positive again. What do you have? And how can you make it better? I have some fucking carrots to get across the finish line... pluck them big ass broccoli leaves that are shading them. Get those damn tomatoes staked up and prune prune prune the blight away.

Other good news is that the beans are flowering and kicking into to another round of production. I'll give myself credit for savage watering that has sent the signals of bounty conditions to the plant's DNA to yes, kick into high gear after that period of inadequate care while i was away. You can always tell a human but you can't tell them anything.

A few days ago i was down on the garden... just not a good year... it was because i had it in my head how things were going to go down and when things went sideways i went over the handle bars and had a swearing fit... good times for sure.

We have Beans, Broccoli and a good tomato crop... there is some wild chard and some beets that look like they should be in a textbook with the heading "Examples of severe drought" And a paragraph about planting seeds at the wrong time... which perhaps might even make a finer point about if you are to plant at the wrong time then make sure you have full surveillance so that you can water regularly and even shade from scalding sun during extreme periods. Instead I plant and go on holiday leaving a human in charge... actually i left 4 of them in charge. A human needs to be inspired to do what needs to be done and i believe in most cases the word "inspired" has been modified to some consumer or pop culture timbit so that the idea of growing food properly is this weird fantasy that is like super cool but you don't really have the time to do it... and then you just shake your head and go into a dream sequence where you imagine the level of co-ordination required if we actually had to do that. i always go back to the Hive... the Bee hive... a model of efficiency... tasks are expected and any stepping out of line means automatic execution. We don't have time to hear you explain why you think you might be right... cause hell if you did it would be January and the hive would be out of honey and the colony would be freezing their ass off probably listening to the jackass bee who in August held up the hive with his fucking whiny ass tale about why he couldn't do 45 pollen runs in a day as expected in the Bee contract union handbook, and now when we are all dying of starvation we have to hear him complaining about his relationship with the Queen bee.

That would be silly... because of course the Queen Bee would be an honest leader and not sitting on a million tons of honey while the workers starved...

OK.

So as i was saying... you have too look at your garden, recognize what you have and bring it home.

Cultivate- to promote or improve the growth of (a plant, crop, etc.) by labor and attention.

Sometimes people think of cultivation as just working the soil... and it does mean that too. But seriously, now is the time for hard decisions... you have to decide what needs to be cut back so that room for others to thrive can be created. Is that Zucchini getting white mould and is it going to produce anymore? Perhaps it just needs to go as it is now a source of disease and is shading other crops. One has to start making calls... what has the best chance right now, and how do i make it's chances better.

Reminder... Build a serious shelter for those tomatoes. it's time to man up a make shift greenhouse... guide what you have home.

Of course I caught the old non English speaking Vietnamese lady ( a friend of the lady that has the plot next to mine) watering my Tomatoes at dusk again... I was trying to tell her to back the fuck off but from her actions i believe she understood that i was telling her to water the tomatoes more to yes, splash the blight around... i think i might have gotten through after a while, but i took a soaked foot in doing it. I need to calm down, I will go to Yoga and clear my mind. Have you ever heard of restorative Yoga? i hadn't either... I'm a kind of sun salutations guy, but in restorative Yoga you just go into gentle rest poses and try to relax... definitely not Man Yoga... and even worse if you happened to be stiff as a board due to anger related issues, alcoholism and general neglect then doing a slight twist leaning on a pillow isn't as relaxing as the sales pitch might make it seem... in fact i could only gulp small breaths while the rest of the class took long breaths counting to five on the inhale and five on the exhale... i could feet the tendon attached to the base of my skull going into spasm but i tried to man it up and breath through it... apparently you are suppose to relax and feel cleansing thoughts. I had an idea... i dig up that old coot's garden, grab the cement out of my garage and turn her garden into a concrete slab perhaps writing the words "water this you simple son of a ..."

I wouldn't do that of course... she means well. The Kook that lives in the apartment behind is another story and a booby trap is coming her way... she leaves a tray of rotting food by my garden every day. I think she might be feeding an imaginary monster as well as some very real rodents.

Apparently you can plant lettuce, spinach, radish's and various greens in September in the Pacific Northwest... I should plant some Radishes this week in the small space i have left... in fact since i have been back i seem to have cultivated the garden back to being a producing machine... need to leave room for garlic of course.

Keep your eye on the whole picture, see the garden thought the plants, and the plants through the garden. You are always at a fork in the road and whichever way you go do it completely, no regrets, never retreat, never apologize. Nature doesn't have emotions... the one who can take advantage of the conditions does the best.

Opps sorry starting to talk in terms of evolution... so to be a fair blog i guess we should present a creationist view of gardening... You don't need to plant anything, God will do it for you, in the meantime you should go to your toilet and put your head in the nice cool water in the bowl and give it a flush. Once you have given yourself a baptism swirly god will know to rain vegetables on you and all your problems will be solved so long as you always vote within you religious doctrine sticking to asinine beliefs and your bubble will be protected.

Various thoughts...

I went to the garden the other day and a couple of aggressive hammerheads ( 2 separate folk) watered my garden for me at dusk... they soaked the shit out of the green leaf matter of my Tomatoes. I appreciate the effort in thinking of helping me by watering my garden, but i also find it frusterating that people always forget the golden rule when watering tomatos in a blight festering climate. You have to keep the damn leaves dry especially at night or the blight will be nurtutred. Clearly this is where a greenhouse comes in in spades (keeps rain off plants), but in absence of a greenhouse don't water your tomatoes after 4PM or if you do soak the ground only.
Seems like a simple thing to remember but remember when you are dealing with humans then you will have problems... I just happen to hate making the same mistake over and over again.

Ok- speaking of mistakes i hauled in the second lot of garlic tonight and I'll be a fatso in a fasting commune if i didn't leave it in the ground too long... Why didn't i pull it all weeks ago when i did the garlic harvest? Because i wanted to learn that if you leave it too late it starts to rot and regenerate in the ground. If i do that next year kill me. Mind you it was the great Bold Point Farm garlic stock and i think i want to replant all of it to get a real good haul next year, so i think it should still be good to replant. I was warned by a fine farming neighbour that it was garlic harvesting time, and i left it too late.. perhaps i have poor drainage in the area, could be one thing, because it was in September that the Garlic was harvested in Bold Point... although it would be reasonable to assume that the Quadra Island season is a few weeks behind the Vancouver season.

Apparently the report is for a cold fall, but seeing that the report was for a hot summer, i like my chances... Chances for fall harvest that is. One thing that turned out to be gangbusters was my Hops plantation... put my hops by a 4 year old compost and let it climb to full sun all day and got one hell of a harvest... the amazing thing here is this is the plant i dug out of a back alley last year and i went back to visit the mother plant and it is way behind. Conditions are really everything. Like berries some are early and others late, depending on the conditions. Clearly a plant with ample nutrients and ample sunlight can do what it needs to do in a shorter period of time... of course reproduction is the name of the game in life... only in humans is the personal "life" more important... and hey it's pretty good... I'm digging it.



I'm making beer with my life and swilling it and then typing shit on a keyboard and perhaps somebody might read it and learn something, or think something that they might otherwise not have. It's hard to say, and in the end it's all just memories.

China Creek park south needs a new caretaker... no question

OK lets get this bad boy over with... i think we can let the photographs tell the story:

So how does one accidentally trim a pea plant at waist height? Can one be so incompetent? Or is the word malicious? Seeing that i have placed rocks around the base of the fence and just the day before trimmed the grass around the edge so the city workers wouldn't have to. (photo from early in the spring) one might think that what happened is unthinkable?
Clearly one needs to maul all the peas as a matter of principle, because of course you can't have peas on a fence in the community garden... that's fucking blasphemous Fuck that guy and his peas... rules say what goes on in the garden stays in the garden... clearly we are too busy doing a real good job keeping the park beautiful.

One of our other instructions is that if you see a piece of garbage like a VHS tape then hit it with the riding mower and spread the shit all over the place and then just fuck off and leave it.

Also when you put thousands of dollars of new trees into a park the best thing you can do is ring the bark off every one of them a few weeks after they are planted right before a heat wave.
lets face it, as a city worker your life sucks and you need to let people know that your life sucks and you can do that by doing the shittiest job possible so that the people of the neighbourhood go to their park and just shake their fucking heads at what an incredible disgrace this thing is. It's not lost on us, your indifference is not lost on me... BTW i put myself through University in part by doing landscaping for a private company.. one of the things we did when we finished a job was to look back and see it and if anything looked wrong we fixed it. Clearly the crew that takes care of china creek south park couldn't care less about the work they do.


As for gardening wisdom, I have this:

Shit hole year for tomatoes... i believe i swore by greenhouses and this cold rainy year brought on the blight in the biggest way. You have to cut that blight away...better to have a blight less twig than a bushy blight ridden plant.

Just harvested a king hell crop of garlic that i planted last fall... cut the tops so they don't seed and put the energy into bulbs.

Beets good, broccoli good, beans good... peas were great until murdered by self serving goateed beer drinking fools with their whole life in front of them like a thundercloud.

Either i planted too much celery or i didn't make enough soups... as a busy father of 3 young kids I'll cut myself some slack. i am now the poet laureate of china creek south park and i spent the day picking up garbage in the park so the idiot lawn cutting crew doesn't shred it putting more plastic Slurpee cups into the fold.

Why do we have lawns and disposable plastic cups?

seriously

Points to ponder

Gardening is an exercise of observation and response where preparation and patience yield results. Like the good student who did their work all semester and then cruises into the exam with some touch up studying and a vibe of total confidence... meanwhile the lazy joking slack ass has to wolf down a few bowls of cereal and jog to the emergency room whiffing exhaust so he (or she) can make a grand entrance bursting in and vomiting everywhere just to get out of writing the exam he (or she) is not prepared to write. It's just life, or as a hockey analysts might say "it's the game within the game"... meaning when your garden is under control and growing in the right direction it just becomes a matter of gentle and regular maintenance.

Things to think about: year to year things are different... For example, last year my spinach crop was just out of this world. In fact i made pizza the other week and threw on some of the spinach from last years garden that i had washed and frozen. This year it's good for a couple little snacks and then we say aloha sucker... old seeds or just not ideal weather at the ideal time? Probably a combination of both when you get down to the raw science of the matter, the real point being is that crops go boom or bust from year to year. That's why of course it's good to diversify your vegetable garden... Holy sheep shit, i sound like a bank selling portfolio advise... I will punch myself in the face after another glass of man Robertson's Hammer time wine. Actually come to think of it what I'm saying is good advise... perhaps i should go punch a banker in the face.. or somebody who is responsible for making commercials for banks in the face. For sure i should go punch the person who makes those "banking profile survey folders" in the face.

The derailments are just horrible around here, fortunately I'm incorrigible so lets move on to our next point... and this time no insane diversions.

Me- i dug a trench behind my garden plot and filled it with rocks so that grass won't grow close to the fence so the retarded city workers in the park might be less likely to kill my pea plants... it should be noted that nothing is guaranteed when it comes to their level of incompetence.




A lot of my rocks came from woMAN gardener as she was the first to go to town on that particular plot. Most of my rocks (that i pulled out of my plot) went under the community garden shed before it was built. woMAN gardener happened to listen to MAN gardener as MAN gardener was frothing off in a rage about the cruel and incompetent manner of the city parks crew and had one king hell idea. She planted her peas in from the fence and is going to run strings from the top of the fence downward to protect them from weed eating stupidity. Well done! Here i am building a trench to defend my territory and she uses the fence as a natural barrier and places the plants away from it. Although i should note she is losing precious territory... her logic is perfect and her plan will work for sure... it's just the you are giving up territory... and that's unacceptable in a war. Lets make no mistake... we are at war with the city parks crew... this is a crew that mowed down about 5% of the grass the other week and of that 5% it included all the blueberry and raspberry bushes that were donated to the garden under the mason bee program... and the crew left the rest of the 95% of the park "UN mowed". They are malicious ass holes and giving up territory is unacceptable now that i think of it... as a matter of fact i have a new idea. Check this: Man Robertson's moat and trout pond... fucking brilliant! Circle the garden with a trout pond so the city landscaping crew can't destroy our stuff on purpose easily, and have a healthy supply of good eating trout. My idea is good there is no doubt about that... it's just a matter of getting an unauthorized excavation crew in there to set it up. I'm sure the parks crew workers would have no problem with the shear math of the Man Robertson trout pond moat= less grass to cut= less work. Which leaves our only real problems at infant/small child drownings and homeless trout poachers as far as i can see. I guess we will need another fence around the trout moat.

There once was a river there, called China creek, but they figured that the best idea going was to turn it into a garbage dump, and then it became full so they threw some rocks and dirt on top and called it a park. So the key question is... how deep does the trout moat need to be to ensure trout survival but yet ward against trout escaping through the underground stream? Perhaps a mesh barrier lining the Man Robertson trout pond. I have to say i think the garden will have more authority with a drawbridge in front of it! Yes yes yes.. these are all good ideas.

overdue

If i only had taken the photos like i meant to to help explain the kind of work a Man needs to do to a man garden in the off season to get ready for the gardening season i could really make some strong points. It didn't happen... but on the bright side for the past 2 weeks as Vancouver has been under Monsoon alert and all the other chuckle heads have been whining about the weather like simpleton humans often do I have been skipping around thinking about my tender Spinach, lettuce, pea, broccoli, potato, garlic and celery plants that are just loving the moisture. i actually had a bit of garden celery in a chicken noodle soup i made today.

As any fine erratic individual would do, i have made a few mistakes already, but nothing that can't be overcome with some hard focus weeding and delicate manure placement. as usual i just happened to be so ahead of the curve i planted some of my garden before the manure showed up... it's all good... lets just say my garden is not totally level at this point in time... i have a lettuce patch and a spinach area that will have to give way to a bean crop in a month or so and at that time i will also harvest the naturally occurring potatoes and do a soil refresh. i have always found life works well when done in stages.

As a parent in the park with 3 children i find the patented technique termed "Robertson region gardening" is good for short bursts and long term success. That said i think my spinach seeds are a bit old as the germination percentage was not where i like it to be... remember to use good seeds and know that i just punched myself in the face for good measure. Man gardeners can't be making rookie mistakes like that... it's just totally unacceptable. garden is growing life and it's success is through managing time... the time of the growing season... if you waste that time on poor seeds you then become what we call "an hammerhead".

Speaking of hammerheads... you see there are some folks in the garden who's plots have basically become "weed infested lawns" and the plan that it looks like they are rolling with is to just throw manure on the grass and dandelions and other weeds, as if to cover them up so that the will not have to look at their annoyingness. The point being that the grass and weeds will love that... it will help them grow stronger and more vigorous... anybody following me?

I'm punching myself in the face because my spinach plants are 70% on the seeds and other people are throwing manure onto grass and calling it a garden.

But there is one... a new one... a woman... who prepared her soil this year and dug out a rock the size of a medium sized dog (no small feat)... she dug 3 feet down and showed up with a 1 ton landscaping truck and a mountain of prime soil. She was sifting rocks and removing every trace of weed root from her soil... This woman will give me a run for the money. You can see when she is on task the task gets bigger the more she explores it, rather than the average human sissy response of finding out the job is bigger than you thought it was even though you weren't thinking... so you just bail on it.

Well she is behind me this year because of this preparation (that i did a few years ago) and i threw weedkiller in her plot just to make sure... can't have some upstart rookie trying to show me up in her first year. OK that was a joke... i would never throw weedkiller in anybodies vegetable garden... that would be plain pathological and wrong on every level imaginable. Weedkiller is for stupid people who think that having a green manicured lawn is a symbol of success and that the buck stops there and are either unaware or just don't care that the water cycle... known as the hydrologic cycle will carry that weedkiller through all components of our living environment... fucking various essential lifeforms as they go. I know i Know... I'm an ass hole... the economy is the only important thing and if people are out there buying weedkiller than they are out there stimulating the economy... yadda yadda yadda.

I think i have derailed this blog for now.

No we need to leave on goodwill... Our new woMan gardener had a massive supply of good rocks and i happened to remember that the city crew that look after the park are as useless as thistle underwear so i built a trench around the backside of my garden ( eliminate weeds from attacking garden, and eliminate the temptation for bonehead city crew workers to kill all my pea plants with a weed eater in a sloppy effort to get those weeds). So i dug the trench and eliminated all the weed roots and then filled in the trench with all the rocks from the woMan garden. A perfect working example of Symbiosis... Symbiosis is a biological term to describe the mutualistic relationship between organisms. In our case we have woMan who did a ton of work and created a pile of rocks she needed to get rid of... and we have Man who did a pile of work and needed some rocks as "fill"... In the end everything is done and everybody is happy... an no politician was involved.