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[Zafer Kaya]

Do you do the square foot gardening thing?  I bet powdery mildew is a bitch if you grow in raised beds that way.

Plants got to breathe.  It prevents the moisture retention that causes the mildew, plus then they are farther apart so the mildew doesn't spread so easily.  Of course if you do that, then you can only grow like half as much stuff.

I don't understand why people even vegetable garden.

Planting is a pain.  Then all the netting and applying organic pesticides that don't work while stuff is growing to keep the bugs and voles and whatever away.  Then you have to harvest.  And then you have to plant cover crop. 

If you actually get it all right, and you get a bumper crop... then what?  What do you do with extra 150 tomatoes?  You can't use them all, so you preserve them.  Why?  You don't need to preserve tomatoes if you have a garden cranking out tomatoes three seasons of the year.  You're only preserving them because you feel like it's a waste if you don't eat them.  But no.  That's not the waste.  You know what the waste was?  You spending all the effort to grow tomatoes.

But that's not even enough.  You got to make it extra hard on yourself.  Pressure treated wood for my raised beds?  Hell no.  That stuff actually lasts a good 25 years.  Who wants that?  I'd much rather spend an extra $500 for cedar that I have to replace every 5 years.

Farmers are not doing well in the US. Think about it.  Their entire livelihood depends on their crops.  They do this 24/7.  And, they don't make it extra hard on themselves with the eco-pesticides and non-GMO.  They have tractors and sprinkling systems and everything you can get to make growing shit as easy as possible.  And it still doesn't work.

Oh but I get 50,000 seeds that yield 1,000,000 tomatoes for like $25!  It's so cheap!  No.  It isn't.  One free tomato seed plus potting soil plus netting plus stakes plus water plus whatever pesticide.  Price that shit out.  It's not cheaper than buying tomatoes at the store.  It's not even cheaper than buying tomatoes at the Farmer's Market from some asshole who tries to grow them the hard way like you do.

The whole thing is just a simple exercise in how well you understand sunk costs.  Everyone fails.

You're not growing a vegetable garden.  You're growing a squash borer habitat and vermin sanctuary.  Which is nice for the wildlife I guess.

[daytime drinking]

we rarely weed or water our small plot.  we throw our compost on the garden bed (i made a raised stone bed a few years ago) after the season's over and right before it starts.  it's mostly tomatoes, peppers, and herbs.  i used to get excited about making spaghetti sauce but now i see three giant tomatoes and don't feel like doing anything about it because i'm already overwhelmed.  i eventually get around to a bumper crop with as little waste as possible.  once i'm actually making the shit, i get back into my groove.  but yeah, we have been growing a less variety of produce.  the tomatoes however, could use a significant pruning.  it's hard to get back there

[daytime drinking]

you are most likely right zafer, but i would think that would pertain more to people such as ourselves in urban environments.  even though some people find every aspect of gardening therapeutic.  weeding has been enjoyable for me when we had a couple plots at various community gardens.  i had room to stretch out and really get my ass in the ground.  fucking chiggers man.  i'm not really great or astute at any aspect of gardening, but it's worth it just to be able to walk outside and pick a green pepper.  the worst that happens is you'll tell em you'll get em next year and halfway believe it because you're putting the garden down with a purpose.  i love putting the garden down.  that shit's fun.  the biggest takeaway with a vegetable garden is that you get to spend time outside and put in some work 

[Zafer Kaya]

Yep.  You nailed it.  That's actually the secret to vegetable gardening that for whatever reason, people don't want to admit.  It isn't about the vegetables. It's the process. 

I just totally kicked ass today.  I bought this garden cart, so I got up today with my tool set.  Assembled it in about an hour.  Then I dug a bed.  The ground was as perfect as I have ever dug, and I have dug a lot.  We had a nice, on and off light rain for two days.  So my edging shovel was just slicing through the grass like a knife through better.  It was coming up in these beautiful crumbly chunks.  You could just grab a big chunk without it falling apart, but slam it in the ground, and the soil was just crumble away.  Toss the grass and roots left in your hand.

The one thing I am really good at is digging beds.  I was in the zone, instantly seeing exactly how much ground I could take up in the next shovel.  I dug out about a 6x10 area in maybe an hour or so.  Then got the turning fork, turned it over.  Got the hie, smoothed it out.

Then I went to the hardware store and in two trips bought like 20 bags of mulch, 10 bags of leaf gro, and a bunch of lumber and stuff.

Came back, threw down the leaf gro, turned it over and smoothed it out again.  Then I laid down the mulch,  and I got to wheel the garden cart back and forth doing all this.

Then I broke out the saw, cut up the lumber, got the tools out and built a 4x6 bed.  Went back to the hardware store, loaded up on  vermiculite, peat moss and compost.  Threw that in, raked it out.  Perfect.

I wanted to dig another bed, but I knew my back would hurt if I pushed it.  So I stopped, but it was still not bad because I know I have another three beds at least look forward to.

But here's the thing with perennials.  Once I plant those beds, it's over.  I will never use the garden cart or the edging shovel or fork, etc again.  In fact that fork was brand new and had been sitting in the basement if my last house for like ten years.

I will still have to mulch, but I won't ever get to just lay down big heaping mounds and rake it all smooth and fluffy.  I'll just do little handfuls at a time.  In 2-3 years maybe the plants can be divided, but that is not fun.  It actually makes your garden look worse for a bit.  And you don't get to eat the plants, you just throw them away.

So yeah, if you vegetable garden, you get to start new and plant all the time.  You are always growing, instead of just tending to what has grown. 

[daytime drinking]

and as i idle away, three juicy ripe tomatoes are going to rot soon.  i saw a squirrel eating one.  should probably put fodder in the bird feeder

[Zafer Kaya]

Man, fuck Monarch butterflies.  Why is every conservation group bending over backwards to suck Monarch dick?  They're not even close to endangered. 

Tired of looking at butterfly sites and they're all like "milkweed!"  You know what species really likes milkweed?  Monarchs and Oleander aphids.  And oleander aphids are invasive. 

If you want to save butterflies, grow goldenrod.  It's much easier to grow than milkweed, it's attractive, and it is a host species/nectar source for 100 species of butterfly instead of 1. 

And it's not even clear that milkweed loss is responsible for the declining population of Monarchs anyway.

[MissKitty]

Man, fuck Monarch butterflies.  Why is every conservation group bending over backwards to suck Monarch dick?  They're not even close to endangered. 

Tired of looking at butterfly sites and they're all like "milkweed!"  You know what species really likes milkweed?  Monarchs and Oleander aphids.  And oleander aphids are invasive. 

If you want to save butterflies, grow goldenrod.  It's much easier to grow than milkweed, it's attractive, and it is a host species/nectar source for 100 species of butterfly instead of 1. 

And it's not even clear that milkweed loss is responsible for the declining population of Monarchs anyway.

Stay gold, Ponyboy, stay gold.

[Zafer Kaya]

I spent from 11:00 to 6:00 doing yard work.  My neighbors were out there the entire time, playing with their dogs and kids and grandkids and grilling.

My yard does not look any better than theirs.  How is this possible?

[daytime drinking]

Man, fuck Monarch butterflies.  Why is every conservation group bending over backwards to suck Monarch dick?  They're not even close to endangered. 

Tired of looking at butterfly sites and they're all like "milkweed!"  You know what species really likes milkweed?  Monarchs and Oleander aphids.  And oleander aphids are invasive. 

If you want to save butterflies, grow goldenrod.  It's much easier to grow than milkweed, it's attractive, and it is a host species/nectar source for 100 species of butterfly instead of 1. 

And it's not even clear that milkweed loss is responsible for the declining population of Monarchs anyway.

and ladybugs eat the aphids.  which are also invasive.  it's a crazy world out there.   i think milkweed is a pretty plant.  it gets those cottony things in the fall.  marvelous fall decor.  decor de jour.  funny story, well maybe.  my wife is a monarch goofball.  she's got her sign in the front yard about being a monarch waystation.  during her pregnancy her serenity espace was that field the monarchs migrate to mexico.  i kind of crushed her spirit when i said people aren't allowed to visit the site because of their protectedness (i'll defer to zk regarding their endangered status, but why'd someone make a big deal out of it?  the liberals?  anyways) .  but i think that made her think it all the more beautiful.  it is a beautiful thought.  a metaphor for the journeys we all take that no one gives a damn about.  a journey is just an idea without some force behind it and who can take your journey but you?  speaking of journeys, and this isn't the right thread, and i do want to talk about monarchs, but i've been on a journey (although touring journey with my father would be memorable), i've recently arrived from the land of journeys.  iceland.  this isn't like the iceland trip that would have occurred had i not pussied out of teaming up with american science in aught ten.  this isn't even the story about that trip.  this is about what happened after, man. 

i've been away for like ten days.  so i had a lot of internetting to do.  i'm about three beers deep, pretty high, and then my fucking laptop crashed.  i was playing madden 96, one of those snes emulator on line things.  i'm slightly embarrassed about playing it.  i haven't played it over a year because of the tyke.  while really getting into it, the laptop sounded like it was starting to overheat pretty hard and i thought, naw naw, blitz.  blitz.  daryl williams snuck in from safety to narrowly miss a sack and an 80 yard pass to hermann moore.  yeah, then so it crashed.  naturally my heart starting racing.  i still had quite a bit of interneting to do.  i hadn't even checked evernote.  and i love to write when i'm high.  so i guess i'll have to do that.  but with a notebook.  i wasn't quite ready for that, and i profess to being a luddite.  so i made sure all the cables were in their proper places and they seemed to be.  i even climbed over the couch and checked a little better than i usually would to see if the shit didn't come unplugged.  yeah, it seemed like i was going to have to write in my notebook to take advantage of being lifted.  i thought ok, this is probably one of those good things.  like, here's this situation you are in.  these are monumental builders of character.  how do you react.  in a minute i will leave you hooligans with this moving parting, it's what happens after the journey. 

i learned that.  reflection is a pivotal moment in the journey.  it's when a new journey begins.  the main reason i posted this in the gardening thread is because this page was open when the laptop died and i was in the process of reply to zafer's post.  so it is all kinda relevant. 

i didn't even get around to the story, which i'm pretty sure my wife is ok with me telling ten people.  so my wife, the butterfly lady, as she's known in a neighborhood full of butterfly ladies, bought a second hand aquarium from my buddy who could really use ten bucks.  we woulda given him fifteen if he said.  so she would set up a little monarch habitat inside and once she found a caterpillar in the wild, she would relocate him.  i knew she had her reservations playing god and she whimpers, i know. 
well anyway,

if you know anything about monarchs, they become a caterpillar than they cocoon and then they become butterflys.  i'm envisioning a stick of room temperature butter hovering about my kitchen.  i digress.  she really loves to see the metamorphosis.  it was my job (this is where the story picks up speed), since i'm home all day, to when those crazy bastards broke free of those chains and learned to flutter to.... make their escape as inconvenient as possible.  i had to do something, which i knew at the time but can't recall now.  one of them clearly wasn't going to make it while the other looked good from what i could tell.  so i turned the aquarium on it's side to help the not so good guy out.   i came back in an hour or so, but the one who seemed to have his shit together seemed to have taken a turn for the worse.  the other might have slightly improved.  so i introduced sticks as a coaxing mechanism, obviously i wasn't much help and you can assume how it ended.  and i feel kinda bad about it.  it's still a good story, like the fable; god.  too many cooks in the kitchen.  or is that an allegory? 

[daytime drinking]

I spent from 11:00 to 6:00 doing yard work.  My neighbors were out there the entire time, playing with their dogs and kids and grandkids and grilling.

My yard does not look any better than theirs.  How is this possible?

you into them monsantos? 

[euro60]

I spent from 11:00 to 6:00 doing yard work.  My neighbors were out there the entire time, playing with their dogs and kids and grandkids and grilling.

My yard does not look any better than theirs.  How is this possible?

Urrrr, maybe you simply suck at gardening?

[Zafer Kaya]

I spent from 11:00 to 6:00 doing yard work.  My neighbors were out there the entire time, playing with their dogs and kids and grandkids and grilling.

My yard does not look any better than theirs.  How is this possible?

Urrrr, maybe you simply suck at gardening?

I don't think I suck at gardening, but sucking at gardening doesn't make things take longer.  You dig a hole, you chuck a plant in there.  It's the same effort whether you do it well or poorly.  If you're bad, you dig the hole in the wrong place for the plant.  And then you don't water or mulch or weed.  So actually, sucking at gardening takes less time now that I think about it.

I think I just leaked a lot of time.  Like, I finally got a trimmer.  So unboxing the trimmer, assembling it, a quick read of the manual and adjusting the handle where I wanted it, then tearing down the box to throw it away probably added 45 minutes.  And then the yard had not been trimmed all year so the trimming took maybe 15 minutes longer than it should have.

Also, their gardens are mature and I am out trying to plant stuff.  Like, I won't be planting four shrubs every weekend. 

But mostly, it's that those guys are retired.  So they can do all the regular lawn stuff like mowing, weeding, watering, trimming, etc. during the weekdays.  It would really only take them 1/2 an hour each day.  But I have to do it all at once.

[Kwyjibo]

But mostly, it's that those guys are retired.  So they can do all the regular lawn stuff like mowing, weeding, watering, trimming, etc. during the weekdays.  It would really only take them 1/2 an hour each day.  But I have to do it all at once.

This.  I'm surrounded by retirees and self-employed types.  Their yards all look amazing, and I get to watch them mow, and weed, and keep their porches painted, and all the other things I'd like to be doing while I sit in my home office saving big-box retailers pennies on their facilities supplies.  It's really pretty demoralizing if I think about it too hard.  All I get is my two day weekends and most of those are so booked up with other things to do that I end up getting nothing done.

[daytime drinking]

my wife said that milkweed is the only plant that a monarch will lay it's eggs on.  it's like a baby and a tit.  i said thanks and told her i had some shit to talk about on the internet

[Zafer Kaya]

A lot of butterflies are like that.

You might have Karner Blue Butterflies near you.  They only lay eggs on lupinus perrenis.  The Karner Blue is way more attractive and endangered than the Monarch.  Lupinus Perrenis is way more attractive and endangered than milkweed.

But no one gives a shit about Karner Blue butterflies and lupinus perrenis.  Because Soros is funding NAMBLA and NABA and pimping out Monarchs to the lamestream media.