Two ten foot runs of gutter and two old 2x4s from the basement. Need to add one more top piece for stability and secure it to the fence with something better than string…

You can’t see it for the weeds growing up the back fence but the fig tree is right next to this beast and is in terrific condition…

One thing I’ve been thinking a lot about as I try and grow as a gardener is knowing when a plant is ready. What do you look for? How do you know that something is ready to bolt?

I’ve blown it with the broccoli. What I know now is that the moment the heads show any sign of splitting apart, you need to harvest. The seeds are pretty and plentiful but the heads are inedible.

I’ve blown it with the arugula. These germinate so well and transplant so well that I thought I didn’t have to pay them much mind. Boom — beautiful flowers and bitter greens. These I’ll just know to get when the leaves are smaller.

It’s like cooking though. How many years did it take me to learn to pull burgers before they were hockey pucks? How many years before I could trust my read of the heat of the coals and the time necessary to cook a fat burger all the way through?

Reading this wonderful book and I’m struck by how many academic disciplines had to cooperate in order for photosynthesis to be understood.

The text makes me want to study biology, chemistry, physics, as well as some of the practical elements of each (how do you build the right machine for the right experiment). My question is this, though: can you do interdisciplinary work without having any basic background knowledge? In other words, I can read this book having taken good bio, chem, and physics classes thirty years ago. I know what an atom is, I know that there are different components to an atom; I know that different elements can combine and I know that carbon forms different sorts of links; I have a basic understanding of photosynthesis.

What if I didn’t have that basic information? Would I still be able to understand this text? How motivated would I have to be to keep reading it? What kind of support would I need to really come to terms with all of the different information contained in a book like this?

It’s a larger philosophical issue of doing interdisciplinary, project-based work, I think: how much can we ask of kids who may have minimal academic background? How much academic background is necessary?

1. Oliver Morton, Eating the Sun: How Plants Power the Planet (New York, NY: Harper, 2008).

Reading and loving this collection of short stories. “Money as a weapons system” is about midway through the book; early in the story comes this line:

“It wasn’t my idea,” said Bob, “We remade the Ministry of Agriculture on free market principles, but the invisible hand of the market started planting IEDs.”

Catch-22 laugh-out-loud funny for the rest of the story. World class critique of institutions and how they move forward with no understanding of context or impact.

Phil Klay, Redeployment, (New York: Penguin Press,2014).

Not just squirrels anymore. I’ve got leaf miners who are destroying the spinach and ensuring that my swiss chard will not grow.

Proud of L_Do

Three kinds of Kale, Three kinds of Chard, Collards, and a few radishes. Everything is 12″ apart but I’m going to harvest the small ones with the goal of 21 strong plants.

The bad news — it poured all weekend and I could not get a single plant or seed into the ground.
The good news — it poured all weekend and there isn’t a single puddle on my raised beds.