A Little Progress

All I have left of the mowing is the western section near the property line and the road frontage, so I thought it was time to repot some mustard seedlings that are overgrowing their 8 cm nursery pots.  I have a good procedure for setting up pots, so I'll lay it out...see what you think of it.

First I take some pots that are overgrown with grass and weeds and clean them out...dump the contents in a wheelbarrow, sort out the twigs I use for drainage, the weeds and grass, and the old landscaping cloth.  The twigs, weeds, and grass go into the pile for shredding...maybe tomorrow on that.  The old landscaping cloth goes into the regular trash if it's deteriorated, along with any plant markers I run across.  I cut up plastic containers to use for plant markers.

Then the soil gets mixed with a little water, compost, and rock powder.  Mix it all up with a shovel till it's all nicely moistened and blended, then dump it all in a big plastic trash barrel for fallowing. The 34 cm pots get washed with a strong jet of water and some rubbing to get rid of PPN eggs, etc.  Then they're set in the sun for a while.  I got three done this morning, about what I need to pot up the mustard seedlings.

PPN will attack mustard roots, but they much prefer okra and eggplant.  The mustard can usually keep on in spite of them, so I'm planting a lot of it right now...I had a really bad plague of PPN this rainy season in my containers.

All I have to do on those three containers now is to lay some pine twigs in the bottom, put in a piece of landscaping cloth to block the soil from escaping out the drain holes, and fill them up with previously fallowed soil.  Then plant with mustard seedlings and mulch to protect the soil from the sun, record everything in my notebooks, and I'm done.  It sounds like a lot, but gardening relaxes me...and my methods usually work very well.  The mustard seedlings I planted about a week ago will be ready for leaf picking soon.

I'll be planting lettuce, kale, bunching onion, and pole beans in the coming weeks...plus a lot of miscellaneous herbs, greens, and hopefully some carrots.  It all depends on how good the air is, and how I feel.  But I always manage to plant something...been doing that for a long time now.  I'm driven by my love of good food in particular...today I picked some purslane that was growing out of my compost pile and more chilis from my pepper bushes.  The purslane is at its best when you pick it just as it's starting to show a few flowers.  A little parboiling, some oil and pepper vinegar, and you have a nutritious and tasty dish to go with anything you cook. The whole plant is good, except for the roots of course.  Once it gets a foothold in your garden, you'll never have to replant it...it makes incredible numbers of tiny seeds that seem to show up everywhere.  Some call it a weed, I call it a gift....so tasty and soothing to the digestion.  It can be used in salads, soups, and stir fries...or as a side dish after a little parboiling.

Sometimes it pays to appreciate what you already have instead of constantly striving for more of everything.

Perils of an Urban Gardener

Almost done mowing for the season, at least I've got the most important stuff done.  With a hectare of land and just a small mower, it ain't easy McGee.  But my electric mower agrees with me, less maintenance and no exhaust fumes in my face to trigger asthma attacks.  So I should stop whining about the small mower. It's 3.5 horsepower, that's enough to get the work done.  An electric mower is always running at full power, unlike a gasoline mower which gradually loses power as it ages or the plug gets fouled.  And I sharpen it every time I use it, that only takes about 20 minutes with a file and a steel.

The mustard will be ready to start picking soon for salad greens. Mustard greens are so much more nutritious than lettuce and to me they taste a lot better.  But I have lettuce seedlings coming up, Kalura this year...it's alleged to be heat-tolerant and it's a Romaine type which I prefer for taste.

The weather cooled down, it was thirteen Celsius this morning...quite a shock to my system I will say.  But the work was much more pleasant in the cool air.

Unfortunately the air smelled like a smoldering garbage dump, mixed with some kind of chemical odor.  I did a lot of coughing and got chest pain from being outside in it.  Every night it's stunk of smoke outside and I've had respiratory issues from it.  Possibly it's worse at night because of something called thermal inversion.  I recently read that according to a report by the World Health Organization, over 90% of the world's population breathes air that's harmful to human health...and it keeps getting worse each year.

So urban gardening has very serious drawbacks...but I'm hoping that it's an overall benefit to my health.  And I'm also hoping for lots of windy weather to clear the air.  I have a powerful urge to go sling those shovels and hoes around...maybe tomorrow if the air is OK.

Still Here

I see I've been neglecting this blog.  I've been trying to get caught up on the mowing and working on a physical rehab program and I've been neglecting the garden lately.  That's never a good idea, I depend on the veggies to keep my nutrition up.  In my defense, I did cut back the rainy-season overgrowth of invasive grasses in the South Garden and did some work with seedlings.  And of course I always keep my compost going no matter what...I have a couple of piles that are ready to incorporate into either potting or bedding soil.

Today I cleaned out three empty 34 cm nursery pots really well, but I didn't fill them yet with potting soil...that can wait for tomorrow.  I laid in fresh pine twigs and new landscaping cloth in the bottom of each one, being careful not to upset a Cuban tree frog who was dozing in the cart.  Those things are so tame that you can work around them and they don't seem to mind at all.  They're pretty groggy in the daytime I suspect.

I used to have one that lived in my watering can.  He used to sit on the lip of the can while I was hydrating my containers and show great interest in all the greenery passing by.  Finally one day he hopped off into some container plants, I guess he saw a bug or something...or a better place to sleep.  I have a lot of frogs and lizards here...and snakes as well.

I'm looking forward to better mustard greens when I plant those 34 cm pots with them.  The greens I'm harvesting now are getting too far along for salads and I just use a little in soup.  If you pick the leaves in the evening while they're high in sugar, the stems near the base are juicy and tangy like fruit with a complex flavor.  It's a nice taste treat for me now and then.  The swamp rabbits are onto this trick, they like to nibble on the stalks of sedges in the evening when they're sweet...specifically yellow nut sedge, which has edible "nuts" on the root system.  It's a common weed in lawns here, and I have lots of it.  Most people think it's grass, which it's not.

I read some things recently about veganism...the myths about it abound.  But the "bottom line" is that vegans are healthier and have fewer digestive issues than meat addicts.  The meat people warn us about protein deficiency and B12 deficiency, but it's just garbage not supported by science.  There are whole areas of India that are entirely vegetarian and they're not in dire straits healthwise compared to other areas in the subcontinent.  Of course you can find malnutrition throughout India, but that results from class barriers and from poverty, not vegetarianism.  I'm sure there are lots of malnourished people throughout the United States as well...for all sorts of reasons.  Vegetarianism is not one of them, I'm sure.  If a vegetarian eats a very restricted diet, they will get sick, but so will a meat eater.  I really don't like food fads and crazy diets.

Time for the news, I'll write more when I get some hoes and shovels going out there.  I have several of each ready to go, they just need my hands to move them around.