Garden Journal #8

Late summer in the garden has been a little slow compared to some of the busy weeks in midsummer. I will try to post some pics from back when the produce was really cranking.

Learning: I never would have thought that okra plants would grow 5 feet tall. They started out as the tiniest little things and it took until the heat came on for them to really start growing. They ended up being quite woody and had a very well developed root structure.

Confusion: I have no idea what kind of peppers these are. They have absolutely no heat to them but they don't look like any of the others we grew. It was a mix called "salsa peppers" so who know what they are. Do you know?

Fall Reprise: The idea of a fall garden sounds neat but it terrifies me. I went a head and took a leap of faith and emptied out the packet of radish seeds leftover from the spring. They popped right up and continue to grow. (I was able to use some of my second batch of compost in the soil!)

An Old Enemy Returns: The rabbit(s) that live(s) under the deck previously feasted on the soya beans though we got a good crop out of them. Now the food of choice is a fall batch of Kyle's "granny" bean and my very late experiment of sweet potatoes. I worked in some of the second batch of compost into this late planting.

Fall Surprise: We pulled our onions after heavy rains when the tops started looking really bad. One box had some onions that a friend planted and they never got as big as the others, but they just kept growing. The tops had rotted off and I decided to pull whatever remained. Most small, but a few bulbed out. I was not expecting them at all!

Garden Journal #7

Carrots and soil conditioning

That's the same bunch twice. This is the first harvest of anything that grew in my own compost. The deep soil was good for growth, but these babies were shaded out by huge and leaning asparagus that will actually be harvested next spring.

What do you do when stuff starts coming out and you have nothing to do? Go ahead and condition the soil. This was a little bit of compost that was almost ready.

Half a bag of manure left over from this spring.

Map of the Day - September 12th

Why would this shock Americans? Basically Americans have been lied to through maps. It's difficult to display the surface of the globe (sphere-ish) on a two dimensional surface. In fact, the way they do it is by basically shining light through a 3D representation of Earth and recording what gets projected onto some other surface be it a flat sheet, curved, etc. The projections all differ according to how they are set up. And they all distort...they distort at least one of six to varying degrees....bearing, distance, direction, area, shape, and scale. You have to pick which inaccurate portrayal of the Earth you want. America picked one that showed our land mass prominently and that is what we are used to. One problem....is distorts badly as you near the poles, so equatorial Africa looks relatively smaller than it actually is. Think the really stretched out looking Canada. Doesn't exist in reality. Compare what you are used to, the Mercator Projection, to a globe. You aren't crazy....something is askew!

I think it's important to take things into perspective. Africa may not have the population of Asia or the wealth of Europe, but it's a huge place. Some say the future of the world lies in Africa. It is being decimated by HIV/AIDS and still suffers from diseases like malaria and tuberculosis. China is buying land rights to huge chunks of agricultural lands. Global climate change may hit Africa hard. We may see huge internal migration that causes strife, civil war, and, yes, even genocide. The world owes Africa.....we have stripped wealth from it for centuries.

Graph of the Day - September 7th

Source

It's funny how many people look back to the 5o's, 60's, and 70's with nostalgia yet they vote hard core corporatist Republican. You would think that people would figure it out that tax and economic policy matters in creating a more equitable society, one that more people enjoy living in. Income equality matters. Everyone doesn't have to make exactly the same, but everything works better when Americans are all playing in the same economy. As is, the wealthy play in completely different economies, often insulated by geography and other barriers.

Map of the Day - September 2nd

Source

Those green dots represent coal mining. The point is that coal mining (especially mountaintop removal) has not benefited the communities to which it claims to be vital. I don't believe in coincidences this strong. Yes that mountain soil doesn't provide a good agriculture base, but mountaintop remove is destroying communities and the extraction of mineral wealth is not taxed nearly enough.

Check out ilovemountains.org