Gardening Report October 15, 2021

I spent last weekend playing with my train set.

That’s what I call fiddling with the irrigation system at our garden enclosure.

Between this and our original plot/s, we’ve had four or five major overhauls / revamps of our irrigation.

Each 10 x 10 plot at the community garden has its own spigot for hoses and irrigation.

Our combined 10 x 20 plot only has one, which isn’t a problem since the flow is enough to water both plots.

Last summer we used drip tapes, long flat hollow tapes with small emitter holes every six or eight inches.

They worked…but not very well.

The water only seeped into the top layers of soil; everything below the top three inches was pretty hard soil.

That discourages worms and helpful microbes, so not only was the quality of our soil not very good despite all the amendments we added, but the plant roots were very shallow, leading to smaller yields.

So that meant buying a big bag of worm castings to get the soil properly chewed up and softened for planting.

(And by a big bag I mean a big bag.  We’ve got enough to film Squirm II if anybody’s interested.)

Soon-ok likes to water some plants directly with her watering wand since she can adjust the flow and type of spray to her preference.

With only one spigot we couldn’t have the automatic watering timer attached at the same time as the hose, so the first order of business after we uprooted the last of the summer crop was to attach a Y-shaped heavy duty brass nozzle so both hose and watering system could be used simultaneously.

Dissatisfied with the drip tape system, we took that out and replaced it with standard ½ inch hosing.  Rather than run out smaller feeder lines of ¼ in tubes from these lines, or using spray or burbler nozzles, we’ve opted for multi-color small drip emitters we can stick directly into the ½ inch hoses, each color representing a different drip flow.

BTW & FYI, the tool we bought to punch holes in ½ inch hoses to insert the smaller emitters doesn’t work nearly as well as a plain ol’ nail.  Save yourself eight bucks.

Putting the ½ inch hoses in, inserting the emitters, and testing the system (two spectacular blow outs in the process, which required fixing) took two days.

On the third day, instead of resting, Soon-ok planted seeds and seedlings.  We’re not aiming for a big winter crop this year (in fact, much of the soil has what’s called a cover crop seed mix on it, which Soon-ok says will help create a more balanced nutrient and microbe blend in the soil), but we would like to get everything ready for spring 2022.

While Soon-ok was planting, I was weaving wire through the chicken fencing we use on our enclosure to keep rats out (last summer I dug and 18-inch deep trench all around the enclosure to reinforce the heavy wire mesh used to keep gophers out).

We bought the fencing in 3-foot wide roles per the community garden’s building plans for enclosures, but those plans are for 6-foot tall structures.

At 6’1” I present a bit of a problem, so we increased the height to 6 ½ feet.

However, that meant the chicken fencing we put around the enclosure left a 6-inch gap along the top.

So we purchased another roll of chicken fencing and covered the entire structure, draping over the ends and sides to cover the gap.

However (you knew that was coming, didn’t you?), rodents could still slither in between the overlaps so we used plastic zip ties to hold them together.

Plastic zip ties are nice but unless you get the more expensive heavy duty ones for outdoor use, they turn brittle after a few months exposure to the sun (and they look tacky, with their tails sticking out).

So we purchased a role of thin flexible stainless steel wire and bit by bit I’ve been weaving the gaps shut.

The sides are easy because I can use long strands of wire, weaving them in and out of the squares in the chicken fencing (it means constantly going in and out of the enclosure to tug the wire tight and pass it through to repeat the process on the other side, but wot da hey, part of the reason we took up gardening was to get some outdoor exercise).

Since the sides were now laced up all nice and tight, as Soon-ok planted I worked on the overlapping sections of the ceiling chicken fencing.

This can’t be done with long strains because it’s far too cumbersome to drag out ladders to pull the wire up and through the top (not to mention difficult since I’m working above my head).

Instead I cut off 6-to-8 inch lengths of wire, bend them in half at a 90-degree angle then pass them through the chicken fencing from the inside, holding onto one end and maneuvering the L-shape until it comes through a square and I can pull that part through.

That gives me a run of wire that tightly connects 4-to-6 fencing squares, allowing no space for rodents to crawl through.

But it is time consuming…

On the third day, as Soon-ok was planting and I was weaving wire, an adult amateur ball team was talking as they sat around their cars after their game (the community garden shares a parking lot with the athletic fields).

Lots of people play sports for lots of reasons:
To stay in shape, to have some fun, because they really like the game…

…and some because they’re trying to regain lost high school / college glory.

They were talking loudly but three of them were talking especially loudly, and one of the three was the loudest of all.

I wasn’t trying to listen in on their conversation, but at 60-feet away everything these three guys said could be heard clearly.

Listening to them, they sounded hellbent to reinforce every stereotype of privileged white heterosexual male snowflakes (I wouldn’t say these guys were incels because at least one of them had his kids with him and incels are not well known for participating in real world team sports).

They ran through the standard litanies of complaint:
”You can’t say this, you can’t say that, you gotta use the preferred pronouns or you’ll get fired, all those people with skin colors darker than ours are getting preferential treatment, etc., etc., and of course, etc.”

The other team members didn’t challenge these assertions, but one by one they excused themselves -- “Hey, gotta go, promised my wife…” -- and in the end it was just these three guys, and finally they drifted off, too, leaving just the loudest mouth and his increasingly impatient kids as he dawdled, not wanting to leave the scene where he so recently held the stage.

I’ve written about endings before, not just fictional ones but endings in real life, the moment when you realize something is over and it’s never coming back, it’ll never be restarted, and even if you tried to restart it whatever it is you get will not be the thing you so fondly remember but…something else.

So even though I don’t give a rat’s patoot for the loud mouth’s opinions or feelings or hopes…

… I can kinda identify with his anxiety.

Everything he “knew” as an incontrovertible fact as a teenager has been challenged and undermined by an ever changing culture around him.

We know more now than we knew then, but he found comfort in the simple ignorance of his youth, and the complexities of his adult years gnaws at his psyche.

He and his two buddies aren’t willing to invest in the necessary change to make peace with the world around them but take perverse pride in being the gravel in the gears, causing needless problems for others rather than face the truth that the times are always a’changin’ and the time they remember most fondly will never come back.

They don’t have anything to fear in the future, not really, but they’re convincing themselves they do.

Soon-ok plants seeds, hoping for a bountiful crop,
and I weave wire to keep the rodents out.

© Buzz Dixon