Cabbage on a Stick

Looks like I'll probably blog on the weekends. That makes sense since I'll mostly be working on the garden on the weekends.

The weather's finally warming up. It was in the 60's this afternoon and pretty comfortable. The peaches are in full bloom. In third grade science, I learned that each flower will eventually become a delicious peach. Growing my own peaches taught me that they'll all be eaten by bugs, infested with worms, or just fall off the tree for no apparent reason.


I spent a little time today fixing some things around the garden. It's still to cold and too early to do much actual gardening. I turned on all the irrigation stuff and found a few drip emitters that weren't dripping. Replaced those with new ones. The openings in these things are so tiny that a speck of dirt will plug them up. I buy the cheap ones so there's no way to take them apart for cleaning. Instead of wasting money on the good ones and keeping them forever. I save money buy buying new ones every few months. I'll have to rethink that.


Drip emitters drip water slowly right at the base of the plant. I turn the water on in the evening and by morning everything's been watered. I use some sort of drip irrigation for the grapes, blackberries, blueberries, asparagus, and strawberries. I've also got some small spray emitters for the fruit trees. I'm a lazy guy. Watering by hand is like work.



When testing everything, I also found some soaker hose that had been cut in several places. Oddly enough, the cut pieces were right in the same spots that I used a machete in the fall to cut my asparagus plants flush to the ground. Mysterious.

Every year, I like to grow some oddities. Last year it was sugar sorghum (like sugar cane but not tropical), birdhouse gourds, parsnips, and sugar beets. I killed the sorghum when I sprayed weedkiller between garden rows on a windy day. The birdhouse gourds did great. We ended up with over a hundred really big gourds. The parsnips never came up and neither did the sugar beets.

This year, I've ordered some oddities again.


I order weird seeds from seedman, the superhero of seeds. He's got a lot of weird stuff. This year I'm going with Anise, Luffa Sponge, more Sugar Cane (I'll just be more careful this time), Peanuts, and Giant Walking Stick Cabbage. I got my seeds in the mail just this week.

The Giant Walking Stick Cabbage was supposed to be started indoors a month and a half ago. Oops. I started it a few days ago in babyfood containers sitting in the laundry room window. If they make it, I'll transplant them outside in another month or so.



I've never seen Giant Walking Stick Cabbage but it's supposed to grow a straight stalk 8' high and then a cabbage like thing grows at the top. You can eat the cabbage like thing and if you dry the stalk it makes a great walking stick. no matter how you look at it, it's a win-win. You get cabbage which everybody hates and a walking stick you probably don't need.

On a non-gardening note: I was checking out my friend, Fairgirl's blog today (don't think just or reasonable. Think albino), and I see she's linked to my blog on hers. So it's only fair (just or reasonable) that I do the same. You can check out the post and her blog here. She gives a disclaimer about some blogs not being politically correct. I think she's talking about me.