Title without (but with pics de camera nuevo!)

Pulled everything dead and dying - down to one of each of my squashes, some revitalized onions and a broccoli. Covered everything in straw - looks more like a garden than it ever has. A winter blanket. Got me thinking about what I've learned about this season - Oregon climate, soil nutrients and plant deficiencies, watering systems, cultivating, landscape fabric, trellises, and most of all realistic financial investment. This winter, if I'm doing it right, will be even busier garden-wise than the growing season.

Frankenfish

...the GM salmon, growing to harvest weight in half the time, the first GM animal to be released for public consumption. It will arrive unmarked, and largely untested, in an astounding display of FDA corruption and AquaBounty greed. But honestly, why not? The most demoralizing thing is that I can't even come up with a quick someone to blame. That, in my opinion, is a key component of a facebook-status-sized rant, along with a sensationalist name like "frankenfish." Thus, this decidely not-twitter-sized rant.

We will pay AquaBounty, and handsomely, to produce this fish. We do not pay them to consider health benefits or environmental impacts. When, not if, we have proof of the many ways GM salmon is a terrible idea, they will as usual pass the buck to a faulty contractor or the FDA. Even if, in a stroke of genius, we actually manage to hold the company accountable for lying to our faces then their condemnation will be small reconciliation for the human toll and environmental destruction this playing-God will reap.

FDA will approve this fish, and everything else that comes across their table, in time. We pay them to exist, not to protect. This is because they have no accountability. At this point they are, like most governmental regulation agencies, a tax on innovation. You'll get through, it just takes time and money. That doesn't prove your product is safe or wise, just that you have time and money. Even if, in a stroke of genius, we actually manage to hold the FDA accountable for lying to our faces, well, I guess we fire the head and get a new one. If people had any evidence they'd be held accountable, we wouldn't see this parade of corruption scandals (including the previous head of FDA). We would see greedy, reckless companies like AquaBounty pause, even a moment, before condemning our future. That PAUSE, not FDA's mere existence, is our protection.

Accountability, transparency, incentives. In a land where Presidents claim powers that exist nowhere in the books or the Constitution, and where organizations such as the FBI, CIA, FDA conduct irrefutably illegal activities, lie to Congress and us citizens about them for years, get caught and then get...ignored, accountability is nowhere to be found. With it, on the same midnight train out of this country, is any sort of incentive to look beyond one's own paycheck. What has struck me the most recently is the trend of audacity, that people of power need not even pretend they're doing the right thing. I guess, well, at least that's transparency. Isn't that something.

October

The rains are out and the bugs have returned to swiftly coup de grace my suffering crops. As I wait out my last two healthy plants - a crookneck and the pumpkin, I've been thinking of what I really grew in this garden. I guess it doesn't matter - I wasn't counting on any of the food, and I've only begun an understanding of how to incorporate a seasonal harvest into our diet. It only takes a broccoli crown or a couple garden tomatoes in the fridge to realize how artificial our diets really are. I can figure out the best burger in town, go 20 miles to pick it up, bring it home, eat it and clean up easier than I can figure out what the heck to do with a tomato.

I always see gardening as just a piece of a much more encompassing effort. I say, "Gardener" but I think, "Homesteader." Farm animals, with meat and dairy and breeding, compost, greenhouses, outhouses, woodstoves, fruit trees and berry bushes... It all works and interrelates so well. To grow a tomato in a bucket on the porch...is gardening...is to miss the point of gardening. Getting back to our human nature, decoupling ourselves from an irresponsible/unsustainable system, taking ownership of our diets, this is gardening and homesteading in general. I don't think a tomato bucket has much to do with this, but then some think nothing less than a team of work horses, or 100 head of cattle has much to do with it either. I wonder what trait determines where on that scale, if anywhere, a person falls.

October is coming, heralded by my birthday, and ushering in months of short days full of gloomy rain. My spring/summer (Oregon only has two seasons) had plenty of bright spots, but I didn't reach all my goals and spent much of my time/money laying (hopefully solid) foundations for the future. Our garden was the exact same way. I see this winter as a time to come back to present, and if we're still here come spring, well it'll be time to build some memories.




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Sept harvest

I don't actually own a camera. Almost doesn't make running a blog worth it. My girlfriend designing a blog header that is nothing short of incredible, certainly does. Anyway, we have yet to pick some tomatoes, a cuke, some crookneck squash, a birdhouse gourd, broccoli, and some spinach I just sowed. The tomatoes are staying there, because they all taste like...beef? Not fresh beef either, the kind you'd bring back to the store. Every variety (4) and over the last few weeks. It has to be something in the soil, then, not in timing, and I recall the only reason they grew was a 16-16-16 chemical fertilizer I used heavily for them this summer. It's suspicious, since they grew better than the rest of my garden (except the peas) but they're the only crop that tastes off. Visually they look perfect. And look, about those cheap wire tomato cages, even my malnourished, water-starved plants took those down. I don't understand how they keep selling when they can't hold any kind of tomato ever?

As I look on, over my sad kingdom of struggling vegetable citizenry, I realize the true impact of good soil. Wihtout organic matter and/or mulch, the soil couldn't retain water and my plants dried out daily. Without nutrients, vegetables idle, stagnate or turn yellow and wither away, depending on how deprived that variety is. This makes gardening a big waste of time. I'm debating expanding the garden, and going to an automatic drip system, but I will not be debating soil amendments come spring. I can hardly wait, but for now I will preoccupy myself with a "fall crop" of spinach. Mmmm iron.

Growing Onions

Advice is so difficult to follow. Newly inspired by re-visiting my favorite gardening blogs that had become rather inactive this summer, I checked out Backyard Homestead again and got busy with my plans for next year. Ah but I can't get 20 pages without getting into cold frames and floating row covers and north-south orientations. I have pages and pages of this stuff from my homestead reading; these were guidelines when my garden was a dream, helpful pointers that could shape my work into something that would promise returns. But I'm realizing, as I make the switch from design to reality, that they make the switch from guidelines to tools. Tools you have to keep track of, and maintain. They come at a cost to implement. And without having a real clear nut to PUT the wrench on, i.e. context, the wrench is useless. LISTENING to advice makes it a guideline, FOLLOWING advice makes it a tool. Since tools have a cost and you need context to know where to put them, they can be difficult to use. I think this is what makes advice, say, the Golden Rule, receive much enthusiastic head-bobbing, but be put so rarely into practice. I wish I had a picture of a Nasturtium from my garden here to break this up. Let's move on.

Dreams have a way of dying. And it's not by critic, who if they have any effect at all are there to prune the dead leaves and false starts. And it's not by money, though this is everyone's excuse, because people CONSTANTLY don't let a little poverty get in the way of their short-term dream of a drink or a smoke or a new car. Maybe it's laziness, and by that I mean people just don't want it enough. But for those dreams we really do want, and just never get, I think it's time, an invisible but very real deadline for our dreams.

No, not death. Much sooner. I think happiness is a tool our brain uses to get us off the couch, in a sense to realize our dreams, and when our brain figures out that new DIY off-grid cabin isn't cutting it, that we are still sitting here in front of HGTV with no new sustainable forest-themed housing options in our immediate future, it switches to something else. Without the promise of that happiness reward, PSSHT out the window the dream goes. Let's move on.

Look, it took me a long time to figure out exactly how onions grow. Big secret! It's not clear in my books or online or by asking at the feed store. They start from seed, and grow an onion. If the onion stays till spring, like nature intended, it sprouts and has flowers and little onion seeds in time to die that fall. This is the same model as carrots. Onion sets and onion seeds, then, are from the same growing season. Sets just have a headstart of a month or two, which is a big deal as it turns out. Not such a big headstart for carrots, which is why you don't hear about carrot sets. Always grow from sets. My sets doubled in size, and are almost half the size of a real onion! Next year I might even try compost, weeding, and regular watering!

2 cherry tomatoes

Tasted funny, but I get excited about anything in the garden that isn't green.

Tomatoes are very heavy feeders - they are coming along nicely now that they are established, I don't know whether to credit the fertilizer last month or deep roots, but they're finally in full swing. That said, poor soil upon transplanting set them back a month.

Squash are very thirsty. Pumpkin transplanted poorly, finally flowering months later, but all three squash plants wilt on a day to day basis. Must have shallow roots.

Onions haven't gotten very big, in fact nothing produced very heavily. A couple contirbutions from each, and I think overall, without any soil amendments, the garden just gets by.

August 15th

Middle of August is like tax day for vegetables. The hammer drops, I know what made it, what will make it, and what won't. The peppers won't. Look, I just don't think they grow in Oregon. Other home gardens are hurting on the pepper front too - stores are growing decent ones but I doubt they're from around here.

Broccoli! Yesssss. Very easy plant, just takes a lot of patience. Strawberries did fine, but mice get them before I do. Just need protection for next year, that's all. No tomatoes yet, about a dozen for the year, but they are sad. They really need more nutrients than basic Oregon valley soil is prepared to offer. And warmth. Maybe mini-greenhouses next year.

Spinach bolts, and quick. Lettuce hangs around awhile, chard hangs around forever but we can't stand the taste or toughness raw. Cucumber plants are started late, so I will get maybe one green bat each. Pumpkin never took off - I only had one so more test subjects needed before I give up on them. Crookneck is my successful squash, another easy but patient plant. Onions look very small, most toppled over by now - may also be heavy feeders or just not enough sun. Again, sets are the only option here. My birdhouse gourds are weird, havent done anything. Nasturtiums are quick, hardy, beautiful. Peas came in with a light harvest and died - the pole variety produced more and live much longer. Beans are still coming around - easy and patient. Who knows what the carrots are doing - easy but didn't get enough sun in the shadiest part of my garden.

Sure would like a drip system next year. Havent weeded in months - not a real issue because, I suspect, seeds are waiting for the wet season to launch the counterattack. 6-year landscape fabric is half destroyed and crumbles between my fingers already - perhaps from UV since it wasn't covered?

Okie dokie thanks for reading - I'm curious to discover what, if any, of this information will be useful come spring.

Catching up

I've never caught up with this blog. So every day I work in the garden, I don't want to post without catching up, and I get farther behind. So, I'm going to start with today, and just catch up with pictures.

I have a second birdhouse gourd, mysteriously, growing next to my first. I don't want to kill him, of course, but even one of these is about half too many. The cool season crops are explosive - onions, peas, summer squash, spinach. The warm aren't - tomatoes are finally recovering from the shock of the desolate soil, but my peppers are across the board almost complete write-offs. Highs have still only cracked 70 a couple days this year, with one crazy 85 in there.

Much less rain. I've been watering with milk jugs filled up under our leaky kitchen faucet. The garden is by now taking about 2 gallons, and I mean the faucet is bad but it's not THAT bad. The drip system is set up, but it leaks at the spigot where I didn't quite use the right size part, and there's a weak coupler that pops off when the system is pressurized. Finally, 1/2" line just doesn't cut it for distribution, no matter how cheap you can find some. It isn't flexible enough to service individual plants, and is big enough to damage seedlings as it gets knocked around. Either I get 1/4" line, or a watering can which cuts my losses to $3.

We have an aquarium, 20 gal! And a pond, which is really just a bathtub. With a sizable leak. You know, I'm really just digging a hole for it because at this point I don't have much else to do.

Ok I'm caught up! Pics next time.

Plants, time for

This goes best by variety, I think:
2 tomato varieties from seed. 4 starts - these are my backup in case I need to impress someone and everything else sucks. One is a cherry, which we don't really care for, and one is a determinate, which we really don't care for. The third is an Early Girl, which everyone apparently cares for. Then we get a Big Beef for $.32. Immediately the Early Girl, followed by the cherry and determinate, yellow and die from the bottom up. I realize that healthy sod is not an indicator of healthy soil, it might even indicate the opposite, but either way my soil is delicously nitrogen-free. I should have tilled the grass, worked in compost, blah blah expensive. I buy a 50-lb bag of 16-16-16 (recommended is 5-10-10). I spread the overkill in granular form around my plants, too little and they die, too much and they burn, and I have no idea how long it takes to work. So I throw a little food out when I go check on them everyday, even though the stuff from before is still there. It's exactly like caring for a dead hamster.

Field work

She and I make the garden - a 13'x14' plot with 115 sq ft of growing area, fashioned out of a sunny, out-of-the-way plot of grass with a couple of shovels and a hoe. I should mark everything off, the pathway, spots for the big plants, the outside edges. I don't. In the meantime I set up a border of some untreated 8' poles around the downhill half of the garden and move soil downhill to try and level it out some. As it turns out, whatever supplies I need, I will only buy at most half. I don't add more topsoil, so the slope ends up halfway between what it was, and level. And clumpy, because I didn't have a good way of breaking up sod clumps. As grass dies the clumps do seem to disintegrate. I also don't add compost or do any soil testing - this is a point with me. I didn't move to one of the most fertile valleys on the planet to grow plants out of bagged manure.


I mulch with straw, a bale from a feed and seed store. As it turns out, what supplies I do buy, I buy from the first place I find them available. I needed mulch, and I read about someone using straw somewhere once. Actually, this has worked out well so far, doesn't blow around, keeps things weed free on the path. For weeds I use landscape fabric, but I don't buy pins or anything to hold it down (see above). It lets plenty of sun through for the weeds, either way. Seems to slow down the rain, though. For water I use dripper line, 50' of 1/2" (!) for a couple bucks from Habitat for Humanity. The stuff doesn't shape well, and again no pins, so there's serpentine ridges running underneath the fabric. I hook it up with hose from Home Depot (another couple bucks) and hose from a nursery (not just a couple bucks). This means a lot of adapters and cursing to make up for all the slight size discrepancies. Bed, weeds, water. Time for plants.

Something something green

It's Cinco de Mayo, and I have no time for battle plans or comparision shopping. Two $75 trips to pick up my investments and I'm off and running with seeds in a 36 and 72-tray starter. I'm unable to spot the sprouts with pure enthusiasm, and an actual check a week later reveals a crop of struggling lettuce. Green, nonetheless, and drinks are on the house. I wedge them confidentally under my setup: two 4' "plant" bulbs and fixture from Wal-mart. Now I've grown plants from high-intensity special order bulbs before, and I've read about enough people having fine luck with regular bulbs, so I figure this is at least passable till they can go outside. It's on an adjustable height chain from the ceiling, just in case. Which drops a link the next day, and a link, and two links... My first lettuce sprouts snap and fall over just as I bury the bulbs in the soil. From then on the flats go outside every day, and the worthless excuse for lighting hangs idly, never to be used again. My small, early-sprouting seeds: onion, brocolli, lettuce, are the first victims, albeit replaceable ones, of my shortcutting ways. The rest are marked with a number system, the key to which is saved on a computer that died days later. The flats become confusing, crowded masses of unidentifiable and increasingly inseparable green. Oh well, they'll do fine once they get to the garden.

Oh geez

If anything grows in my garden, I want it to be in spite of my efforts, not because of them.

I have a lot of book knowledge and very little experience and very little money to pull off something like this, but I hear the food tastes better when you grow it yourself.

I plant seeds in a 36 and 72-tray starter, put greenhouse cover on them. Lesson 1: Some sprouts will be days old before I catch them, no matter how excited or enthusiastic I am. That puts me behind, me and my leggy albino lettuce starts. I put them under a grow light, a 4' cheap-looking toy from Wal-Mart. Lesson 2: High-intensity lights are worth the expense. I have special-order bulbs from an old aquarium, but they're only 18" and I figured these 4' T12 bulbs looked at least as impressive. Wrong - crap bulbs don't put enough light even if the plants wrap themselves around them, which is what the peas were trying. This puts my plants at risk and weeks later their future is still uncertain. Lesson 2b: The little seeds need a lot more care than the big ones. I take the trays outside and in at night now. I mark trays with plant markers, but use a number system with a key stored on my computer. Lesson 3: Back up critical information. My computer died days later, so I lost my key and my garden plans. Not before the garden was built, thankfully.

She and I make the garden - a 13'x14' plot with 115 sq ft of growing area, fashioned out of a sunny, out-of-the-way plot of grass with a couple of shovels and a hoe. I want to mark everything off, the pathway, spots for the tomato plants, the border, but I don't. I figure out an easier solution for that. In the meantime I set up a border of some untreated 8' poles around the downhill half of the garden and move soil downhill to try and level it out some. Lesson 4: Whatever supplies I need, I will only buy at most half. I do not do soil tests, I do not add compost or more topsoil, so the slope ends up halfway between what it was, and level. And clumpy, because I didn't have a good way of breaking up sod clumps. As grass dies the clumps do seem to disintegrate.

I mulch with straw, a bale from a feed and seed store. Lesson 5: What supplies I do buy, I buy from the first place I find them available. I needed mulch, and I read about someone using straw somewhere once. Actually, this has worked out well so far, doesn't blow around, keeps things weed free on the path. For weeds I use landscape fabric, but I don't buy pins or anything to hold it down (see lesson 4). This means spotty weed control as the wind has its way with it. The fabric is by no means a sieve, so most rain gets redirected into any holes you have, and the rest is very slow to leak into the soil. Don't know if this is a positive yet. For water I use dripper line, 50' of 1/2" (!) for a couple bucks from Habitat for Humanity. The stuff doesn't shape well, and again no pins, so there's serpentine ridges running underneath the fabric. I hook it up with hose from Home Depot (another couple bucks) and hose from a nursery (not just a couple bucks). This means a lot of adapters and cursing to make up for all the slight size discrepancies. Bed, weeds, water. Time for plants.

Tomato starts are embarassingly cheap so three go in. These are my backup in case I need to impress someone and everything else sucks. One is a cherry, which we don't really care for, and one is a determinate, which we really don't care for. The third is an Early Girl, which everyone apparently cares for. Then we get a Big Beef for $.32. So, four starts. Immediately the Early Girl, followed by the cherry and determinate, yellow and die from the bottom up. I realize that, despite all that grass growing there, or perhaps because of it, my soil is delicously nitrogen-free. I should have tilled the grass, worked in compost, blah blah expensive. I buy a 50-lb bag of 16-16-16 (see lesson 5)(recommended is 5-10-10). I spread the overkill in granular form around my plants, too little and they die, too much and they burn, and I have no idea how long it takes to work. So I throw a little food out when I go check on them everyday, even though the stuff from before is still there. It's exactly like caring for a dead hamster.

Whew! 3 week update (has it really been only 3 weeks...).
Onions, 2 varieties, didn't get enough light so I've written them off as too leggy and bought sets. I love sets, they're coming up fine and dandy and I intend to use sets for as long as I live. They're just as cheap.

Carrots, still coming up. 2 varieties. These things give you time to react. Some are too leggy. I know they don't transplant well, direct-sowed some in the ground tonight.

Broccoli, first round a total write-off from the light thing. 2nd round 2 weeks later is doing well with the outdoor-indoor procedure.

Peppers, 2 sprouts. 8 varieties, probably 20 seeds in all, and 2 tiny sprouts so far. They must be waiting for me to figure out what I'm doing. Nah, just kidding, the soil isn't warm enough. It's worth mentioning I have two starts of chili peppers in the garden, but they've been completely dormant since I put them in a week ago.

Tomatoes, 3 starts are all doing badly. 32 cent is doing well, actually, I got him with the 16 from the drop. He entertains caterpillars, alarmingly, since it's only day 2 for him. I have seeds in my trays somewhere but I don't know which ones. 4+2 = 6 varieties in all. I don't eat tomatoes.

Cukes, some started from seeds. Don't know which they are. We don't eat cucumbers anyway.

Squash, crookneck and pumpkin. Two and one really really nice start, respectively (see lesson 2b). Went into the garden tonight. Big big plans for these guys. I want a 100# pumpkin. That white trellis is for the crookneck, though I could use another to brace (see lesson 4). I have birdhouse gourds in the starting tray, but I don't know where. I don't know where they go anyway.

Peas and beans, great starts. Tons of these guys, I love home-grown peas and I have by far the most experience with them. Peas probably make up 50% of my plant material right now, including the starts I've bought. 3 peas, 2 bean varieties. We really don't eat beans. She doesn't eat peas.

Greens, chard and lettuce and spinach. They're all mixed in, lettuce was a light-off write-off so I started more a week later. They don't transplant either but I lost my plans of where I was going to sow them. We don't eat these either. Chard starts look like carrot starts, which is annoying.

Freebies are some nasturtium flowers I started today (to mark the garden path! Brilliant! I got the idea from flowering weeds we have), and strawberries. Any flowers on the plant when you buy it will not set fruit, they will die. Both of mine are setting fruit, but only on the flowers they start AFTER transplanting. Next time I will buy smaller starts. They're happy anyway, though they have spittle bugs and compete with weeds. I also have radishes to direct-sow, and maybe a watermelon somewhere.