Fun galore!

Today we'll have some fun!  If you have some free time, stop by and join the fun!  It's harvest season and it's how we get our data.  Last week the above ground portions of this experiment were harvested, but now it's the below ground portion that gets harvested.  Now here's the thing about roots; they branch and branch again and again and again.  And they really hang on to soil, intimately intertwined you might say.  Extracting roots from soil is never easy especially when you want to save the soil and use it for phase two.  A student is also harvesting their experiment and is washing the soil away from the roots, which while a tough job, is much easier than what we are going to try.  This is the sort of thing that makes you want to be a tube-sucking gel jockey.  It's soil, not dirt.  Dirt is something that you find under your finger nails and in certain types of books and movies, but somehow in the process of doing this, soil becomes dirt.  TPP hopes he can find his apron. 

Who rules in the garden?

As someone who was raised by gardeners and who grew up with gardens, it remains a constant source of amazement what some people don't know about gardening. So here is a big rule for gardening: pick your fruits and vegetables when they are ready. Sorry, your garden is not a grocery store or produce stand where you can just buy a cucumber when you desire one. And your garden is not a good place to store produce either. Bascially fruits and vegetables have a relatively short period when they are in prime condition, and that's when you should harvest and enjoy them. This was something Mrs. Phactor had to learn. Her Mother had lowered herself from urban to sub-urban to raise a family, and in those days a grassy lawn that stretched to the margins of the property line was fashionable and not going to be interrupted by anything as rural as a garden. By habit produce came either from the grocery store or a local produce farmer, and this isn't about the qualitative differences, but the practice of only eating some particular produce item, even if in season, only once a week or so. Gardens do generate a certain tyranny over gardeners; fast growing fruits like peas, beans, and zucchini demand that they be picked when ready or you've just wasted your time and effort. In season, the late summer dinner of my youth consisted of sliced tomatoes and sweet corn virtually every night. But eating produce frequently even when in season was an anathema in my in-law's family. So it took a bit of time, no more than a decade or two, for my dearest to learn that the same fruits and vegetables could be eaten often, and in many different ways to break up the monotony (sadly something that even my family could have learned), and were best in their prime condition. So it pains me greatly, when visiting a gardening neophyte, to see things so in need of picking that my hands must remain in my pockets to prevent automatic harvesting. Sometimes you try something diplomatic, and a bit self-serving. "Say, if you're not going to eat those aubergines, may the Phactor consume them?" At a minimum, this calls attention for the need to harvest, and may pay off dividends if they respond, "Certainly you may have them; we ate eggplant last week." And of course, for some fruits, especially the infamous zucchini, waiting one day too long can transform a delicate and delectable 6 inch fruit into a torpedo only suitable for launching into the compost. How much zucchini bread can one person eat? Not enough to keep up with a zucchini in its productive prime.