Life in Cowtown

I’m probably goring a sacred cow here, but this Earth Day should be recognized for the fraudulent crazyness that it is. All day today across downtown Calgary well intentioned companies were handing out paraphernalia associated with greener living. The offerings ranged from reusable bags to free coffee coupons (not printed on recycled paper), to fluorescent light bulbs.  People, none of this means anything in the unholy mess of impact that we are creating on this planet.  I’m going off a bit of here, so bear with me. 

First lets briefly recap global warming, oh excuse me, climate change.  If you’ve done any research on the subject other than opinion pieces, you are aware that our planet is normally much warmer than it is today. That dinosaurs roamed the earth for millions of years in a more temperate climate. That we are currently exiting the little ice age. More to the point is that all the carbon humans have produced since the beginning of time would not match a good volcanic explosion even a bit. The earth goes through climactic shifts owing to sun cycles, geological phenomena, oceans and orbital rotation and all the carbon and methane in the world cannot match the cycles that it goes through. But what this hand wringing about carbon emissions DOES do is take all the focus off the real critical issues our planet is facing. Some of which are truly horrifying like the great plastic continent in our ocean, the loss of habitat and extinction for species OTHER than ourselves, our genetic engineering of food, our deforestation, all the chemical pollution from our fertilizers, pesticides, factories and industries. These very important issues get shoved aside while some very smart people in legislature propose capping carbon emissions and implementing carbon taxes. Why smart? Because they’re increasing taxes (read raking money in hand over fist) on a non-existent problem while ignoring all the real ones.

Secondly I’d like to take on the fluorescent effing lightbulbs. These atrocities have been legislated into existence via a Canada wide ban on incandescents coming into effect by 2012.  Aside from the fact that the government should not legislate away my right to choose, the whole ban smacks of political stupidity -it’s green washing at its finest.  Even if the whole world switched to these ugly flickering monstrosities the overall effect on climate would be less than miniscule while the impact of all that mercury from improperly disposed of/broken bulbs likely will. Add in the fact that Health Canada is currently investigating the safety of CFL’s to determine their UV and radiation levels and you have a whole ball of stupid. BTW they last nowhere near seven years, they’re just seven times the cost.

Finally, if we are ever to get out of the environmental mess that we’re in, it’s going to take a lot more than turning off your lights for an hour or whatever other measure some retard suggests doing to ‘raise awareness’. It’s going to take a holistic paradigm shift in all areas of our lives – how we raise our food (not on factory farms and conventional agriculture), how we build our dwellings (not full of toxic paints, off-gassing carpets, with oversized footprints and a chemically weed-free lawn), how we produce clothing (not in China with child-labor and chemical dyes), and so on. Virtually every human endeavor to date has ended badly for our environment, either through our ignorance of messing with complex systems we don’t understand well, or through the sheer corruptibility of human nature. From the way we meet our energy needs to our entertainment there are very few pursuits that don’t harm the earth in some way. If you think turning off the lights for an hour and patting yourself on the back for the rest of the year is the solution, then nothing will ever truly change.

If you’re serious about doing your small part for the planet, then make a year round effort to put your money where your mouth is. Buy your food from local farmers who care about the earth and farm organically. (I don’t support current organic standards, but that’s a complex discussion for another day.) Buy meat in bulk from local farmers that don’t torture their animals before slaughter. Choose non-toxic components like paint and furniture for your home, remove toxic cleaners from your house and get simple with basic soap and vinegar based products. Support companies that want to revamp their products from the ground up ala Cradle to Cradle. Read Cradle to Cradle. If you have the business acumen start a company that does business not only without harm, but is actively good for the planet and its citizens. Remove chemicals from your garage and yard.. Buy a water barrel from Clean Calgary for outdoor uses. Grow some tomatoes and carrots and re-discover how screwed we are by the grocery stores.  And remember “A small daily task if it really be daily, will beat the labors of a spasmodic Hercules” – Anthony Trollope.

Awrighty. Now that some of the seedlings have a set or two of leaves, it’s time to start supplementing their soilless growing mix with fertilizers. I’m using a mix of fish and kelp fertilizer and as per the advice of my garden gurus, I’ll be feeding them every other watering or so, at one third the strength. The danger with young seedlings is overfertilizing, which burns and kills them, not under so I want to be quite careful and dilute the liquids properly.

To do that I had to pull out my very rusty and basic math skillz, and work with ratios. Isn’t gardening fun?

The fish fertilizer is some potent stuff – the label says mix about 1 tbsp to a gallon. I needed to figure out how much that would be in 2 cups of water that I was using to water the seedlings.

So… 1 gallon = 16 cups
15 ml = 16 cups
X = 2 cups

Takes ya back to high school don’t it? Solving for the x, I got about 1.9 ml. Since I wanted the fertilizer at about 1/3 strengh, it worked out to be about 0.5ml for 2 cups of water. By the way both fertilizers look like brown sludge, and the fish one smells exactly like what it is. Mmmm.

The kelp fertilizer is a bit more forgiving, allowing 1.5 oz to a gallon. Using the exact same formula as above, I ended up with 1.5 ml of fertilizer per 2 cups of water. I rounded up and down freely by the way, since the quantities we’re talking about are so small.

I’m shooting to fertilize them at this very weak dilution about once a week or every other time I water. The seedlings are thirsty and at this stage I check them daily and water about every three-four days.

Of course I had some help doing this. Thanks Tweaks, couldn’t have done it without ya!

A tiny garden

My seedlings have miraculously survived and thrived despite my tender loving care so far. They are getting their first and second sets of leaves and their roots were spreading way past the peat pods and intertwining in the vermiculite below. I figured it was time to start thinning them and repotting into bigger pots. I had a dozen or so peat pots and several plastic pots for plants that I was giving away to friends and family. Provided they all lived of course. I don’t have extreme faith in my gardening skillz given my past history.

For this project I mixed very roughly 1/3 seed starting mix, 1/3 vermiculite and 1/3 potting mix. Why? No reason other than I had all three items on hand. I mixed them all in a huge mixing bowl by hand, moistening loosely as I went. Note to self: mix all dry matter first THEN add water.

Then it was just a matter of filling up the pots about half full, inserting the peat podded seedling inside, handling very gently so as not to damage the fragile stems, fill up with more mix and water very gently. I screwed up at least two plants – one by tearing off a very long root when I was lifting it from home base, and a couple by repotting them too early – they still had only the cotyledons up, not any true leaves. However, their roots were escaping the pods and entangling with other roots so I figured they’re better off getting their own pots, but both books are silent on this subject so I can’t begin to guess. If they make it it’ll be a miracle.

To help them deal with any shock to the system I left the blind slats open but down to give them a more filtered light than the full beams, but it turned out it doesn’t matter as it’s cloudy and snowing today anyhow. Calgary rocks.

While I was replanting the seedlings, I thinned all the pods (all tomatoes) where all three seeds germinated. Steve Solomon suggests that when a plant has a set of true leaves thin the seedlings down to two, and when they get two sets of leaves leave only one plant. You want to choose the healthiest survivor – the one that’s the most vigorous and bushy. I just used scissors to chop off the stalk at the base and let me tell ya, it felt like murder. I had no idea how protective I felt of each little plant and to thin felt so cruel. They made it! They grew! To snip the tiny little stem was incredibly hard, and the only thing that allowed me to do it was Steve Solomon’s admonition that in order to do right by each plant you cannot have them competing for resources in any way. That stresses the plant and affects it’s future health and productivity. Nature does the same thing he says, only more so. A wild plant will produce thousands of seeds to compensate for all the ones that won’t make it whether eaten by birds or scattered in a hostile environment. When humans signed on to growing plants we made them a deal: you grow what we need, i.e. bigger roots, tops and fruits, sweeter and more fragile produce, longer harvest, and we will ensure that you will grow stress and competition free. So in order to hold my end of the bargain I sighed and thinned.