Tuesday, July 09, 2013

I still do dumb shit

Yeah, don't let those straight As mislead you, folks. I do just as much dumb shit now as I did before I was laying down straight As like a big fat nerd.

And now the dumb shit I do, particularly that which applies to the garden, is ever the more dumb given that I'm actively being educated on how to do it right.

Don't tell my clients.

So yeah, I MASTER fucking planned my summer garden. As in, I nerded THE FUCK OUT over the winter planning not only the summer garden and managing the winter garden but also tucking in an early spring garden to boot.

I WAS SO ON IT that I probably even dreamed about it, though I have no recollection to that effect. But I can imagine it happening. Especially since I spent the majority of my waking hours that weren't dedicated to school or work on it.

And then I went right ahead and, when the weather was warm enough and the transplants had grown out from seed enough and were perfectly ready to transplant into the garden, I carefully MASTERFULLY constructed this year's summer garden with its special trellises and net supports and staking and tepeeing (not like TPing, obviously WHY DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU THIS SHIT?) so that everything would just be ever so happy and grow ever so tall/wide/over plants that needed shade/etc.

Your perfect growing environment awaits, plants. SO GET TO IT.

And then I went ahead and planted bush beans in the very sacred real estate on the bean tepee that would have been really extra nice to use for more pole beans but I thought that OH NO there isn't enough space and this year the dry beans (cannellini) and green beans (Fortex) will just each have one side and done. I'll live with just a dozen of each plant, but it'll be OK because those pole beans will do just fine with one on one side and the other on the other.

Which would have worked great if they were both pole beans. Ahem.

All was going super well until oh hello these look like bush beans happened just a few stupid weeks into the summer growing season.

Oh.
Yeah.

Well, I went back and forth to High Mowing Seeds a hundred times (ok, like three times) at least to check and make sure that the Silver Cloud Cannellini Beans that I'd ordered were pole beans and I swear on my Hula Hoe that those fucking beans were pole beans but no.

They are not.

My powers of delusion must really be getting good because I swears it that when I checked the first three times, it totally said "Pole" and then once I knew deep down in my heart that they were really bush beans (since they weren't climbing the tepee that I'd so conveniently put right next to them - rude), I went back to the site for the fourth time and, oh sad, "upright bush habit" is right there.

So, I'm an idiot.

I have bush beans growing right next to the tepee lines perfect for pole beans and BOO I don't have enough pole beans growing.

So I put in a pole bean annex and planted more pole beans. Even though it's going to take them forever to climb it and the likelihood that I'm going to get a bumper crop out of that annex is pretty nill, I don't even care.
Everyone, this is the Bean Annex. Bean Annex, this is everyone.

It made me feel better.

And picking the first batch of dry cannellini beans made me feel a little bit better again.

And so now I'm ready to talk about my dumb ass, so here I am.

Also, the rest of the garden is FUCK YEAH.

Ever so soon I will be screaming like a god damned psycho when these Paul Robesons ripen.

The tomatoes cleared their 6' cages about two weeks ago and show no signs of doing anything but going for the sky.

This is 1/50th of my basil plants because I don't know how to stop planting basil.

The Jaune Flamme tomatoes are thisclose to ripe now. THISCLOSE.

Volunteer sunflowers are always welcome in my yard. Even if they act like idiot teenage girls all HEY LOOK AT ME WOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

I've already harvested so many pounds of cucumbers (these are Boothby Blonde) and made so many pickles that, yeah, whoa.

From these, too. National Pickling, I think. Or Homemade Pickles.

This sunflower was sent home for drinking on the job. Clearly.

And my lack of control doesn't just apply to basil. I have over a dozen pepperoncini, jalapeno, ancho and habanero plants because why the hell not.

This year, there will be grapes. SO MANY CONCORD GRAPES. 

My brutal thinning of the apples in the spring has resulted in the chubbiest Gravenstein apples ever.

At least we get a few pole beans. 

As always, these ungrateful fucks are looking for more room.

The ever present kale is...ever present.

SO MANY LANTERNS. And now, so much salsa verde. YES.

Did I mention that I'm growing a lot of basil? I am. There's a lot.

This was the first moment that the cucumbers escaped their beds. Now it's YIKES.

I've told you that I'm growing hops right? I am. These are them - Cascades.

Tell me you don't want to flick that tomato nipple. JUST TRY AND TELL IT TO ME. I won't believe you.

Why yes. The tomatoes did eat their cages awfully fast.

RIPEN ALREADY, DAMN YOU.


So, at least I did some things right.

9 comments:

  1. Can we please make a fresh dry hopped bitter with your hops please? Also my basil is being decimated by snails - beer traps going in tonight.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh, you know Bubba has a plan going for these already. We're going to do something like a Sierra Nevada clone I think...

      If the beer traps don't work on your basil, sprinkle some Sluggo around the plants. It's still organic approved :)

      Delete
  2. BEAUTIFUL pics, as usual. Look at those sunflowers! I have one volunteer really strutting it's stuff. The ones I intentionally planted? No sign of them!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I had the SAME thing happen with my sunflowers. The volunteers work way harder than the stupid seeds.

      :)

      Delete
  3. Funny, because I have some bush beans that look an AWFUL LOT like pole beans. They're all long and waving around aimlessly as if to say "Where's our damn pole, dumbass?" But I have the package which states they're supposed to be bush beans, so it is not my fault. Not that they believe me.

    As for the old pole bean seeds I constructed a teepee for and planted carefully around the legs of this teepee? Not a one germinated. So no pole beans on my poles either.

    Gardening is so good for keeping over-inflated egos in check. Just when you start to think you're getting pretty good at it . . .

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. OUR SEEDS WERE SWITCHED AT BIRTH!

      Or I'm just retarded and your beans were packed by morons. Happens...

      Gardening is the perfect way for me to entertain and cultivate my delusion, that's for damn sure. And this is what I get for being all OOH! I'm so smart! I'm going to split my tepee and avoid an overage of pole beans!

      Wrong.

      Delete
  4. Hops? Planning on making your own beer? Don't you have enough shit to do?!

    We have no gardeny type plants here....the orange and lemon trees are fruiting and, as long as the asshole raccoons don't get at the orange tree too much, we should have a metric fuckton of oranges again. Also, our teeny lemon tree has a ton of baby fruit on it. Little Man likes to go up the lemon tree and kiss the baby lemons. It's the only way I've convinced him not to pull them off.

    We just don't have the room for it with Little Man and Puppy running around.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well, technically Bubba does the beer brewing, so my job is to be the grower - which I can handle. I do help with the brewing, but only to the extent of, like, stirring the mash or something that doesn't require a lot of time or brainpower.

      Of which I have neither.

      So, tell me, are your oranges good? I regularly snatch them from my neighbor's tree for juice and it's soooooooooooooooooo good.

      Tell Little Man that No Means No ;)

      Delete
  5. So glad to read your comment about sunflowers - the flowers that are SO EASY TO GROW that a child can do it! Every year I plant them and every year they don't come up or the tiny seedlings are mowed down in the dark of night. Arghhh.

    Love your basil!
    MV

    ReplyDelete

[2013 update: You can't comment as an anonymous person anymore. Too many douchebags were leaving bullshit SPAM comments and my inbox was getting flooded, but if you're here to comment in a real way like a real person, go to it.]

Look at you commenting, that's fun.

So, here's the thing with commenting, unless you have an email address associated with your own profile, your comment will still post, but I won't have an email address with which to reply to you personally.

Sucks, right?

Anyway, to remedy this, I usually come back to my posts and post replies in the comment field with you.

But, if you ever want to email me directly to talk about pumpkins or shoes or what it's like to spend a good part of your day Swiffering - shoot me an email to finnyknitsATgmailDOTcom.

Cheers.