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.