There's a thundering hailstorm in Phoenix today, sending drops of frozen hate clattering across the skylight and beating the life out of weak trees. On the outskirts of my peripheral vision, I caught a glimpse of something white and jagged -- the future.
Life as a human right now is akin to having woken up inside the chute of a woodchipper. We may not even recall how we got inside the woodchipper in the first place. The one thing that is clear : the inevitability of the blades.
A feeling like saws chewing into my neck. The sounds of weeping just outside my door. And a cold light knife into my pupil reminds me : This is a world divorced from hope.
When facing a suffocated reality of nonexistent future, what do you do? Here are some options :
1) Lie down and wait quietly for the ice weasels to come. 2) Cry until you're too tired to cry any longer, then die. 3) Fight until death. 4) Put on heavy metal records and rock out for as long as possible.
Now, I don't know which of these sounds most attractive, or which you, the reader, may already be doing. I choose option #4. Here's why :
* Metal music is brain floss. * Metal music improves blood flow to the face. * Metal music is not a norm. * Metal music has no sympathy for your suffering. * Metal music remembers when you were only an animal. * Metal music hasn't heard about your regrets, but it can drench them in molten @#$%^& * Metal music will survive long after the Universe is toast. * Metal music recognizes your true form and can restore it if lost. * Metal music connects you with that aspect of youself that you forgot about. * Metal music is truth erupting from a sea of lies.
There's no future. But with metal music, the present can be made to rock. In these bleak and doomed days, everybody looks for help. Some go to shrinks, some watch TV, and some try in futility to numb the pain with drugs. Well, you all are welcome to your 'cheese' heroin, 'lean,' and amphetamines. I'm an Earache man myself. (52,945)
The storm is coming. You've heard it on the radio; seen it on the TV show. The Latewire has been humming warnings for a long time. A dull echo catches you by the ear -- what's that? That's the sound of hope retreating. It flees because it's impossible to prepare for this kind of storm, even when it's known to be on the way.
Total dissolution of the contemporary lifestyle is about to happen. We're about to be plunged into an era of base servitude and complete debasement. We've managed to use our preference for self-enslavement to facilitate a future of real enslavement -- think "Spartacus" without the good soundtrack and with more degrading "oysters vs snails" problems.
The people who facilitated the collapse did so because the knew that their actions had made it more likely, and that if they bet against our survival, they could win big and move to Tahiti while we get introduced to a new life of total abjection.
While you're waiting, think about how much information about yourself you choose to advertise or give away. It's always used to further demolish your autonomy.
Even though it's far too late to do anything to prevent utter catastrophe, there are steps we can take in a last-ditch effort to survive and stay human: Learn new skills pronto. Trust no interface. Stop the hemorrhaging of your information. (54,985)
Care and maintenance of your soil and ecosystem Now that you've started rocking down to Urban Agronomy Avenue, it's time to take it higher with some maintenance basics. - Ground cover : dying plants and so-called 'cover crops' function as 'living mulch' to protect your soil from excess solar damage, discourage weeds, and keep moisture in the ground. - 'Cover crops' as they're traditionally known are nitrogen-fixing plants that are aggressive and will kick out grass from your garden. Classic species are brassica, clover, and the delightfully-named 'hairy vetch.' Cover crops can be cut down and added back to the soil for a soil nutrient boost. Take care : cover crops will kick out not only noisome Bermuda grass, but a lot of other species as well.
Cycling the addition of compost and amendments : - You need inputs to get output. Plants use up the food you give them, so for best results, follow a regular schedule of 'feeding' the ground mulch, compost, and other amendments every season. Look at the nitrogen cycle diagram to see how the whole soil fertility thing happens :
If a plant looks sickly, feed it with compost. As the seasons pass and you keep up the soil-maintenance schedule, the problem of soil nutrient deficiency will decrease and your soil will stabilize.
Soil deficiencies and their signs : - Purpling of leaf edges = phosphate deficiency - Red + yellow leaves = potash deficiency - Yellow at leaf center : nitrogen deficiency - Red leaf tips : magnesium deficiency - Spotted leaves : disease, not deficiency - Striped leaves : nutrient deficiency, could be several nutrient culprits - Curled leaves : drought, not deficiency - Crazy and messed-up looking : chemical toxicity (remedy with compost tea or so-called "effective microorganisms")
Pests : - Serious pest problems are a sign of an unbalanced ecosystem (such as that seen in monocropping arrangements). Most pests, such as cutworms that chomp on leaves, can be controlled by companion planting and by controlled bird activity (such as letting chickens into the garden for a short while each day -- but be aware that birds like to eat what's growing as much as they like bugs). Below are a few common pests and things you can do to control them : - Cutworms : they're repelled by molasses - Ants : they're repelled by cinnamon, or lure them away with sugar bait - Burrowing pests like groundhogs : bury hardware cloth / wire mesh 24 inches deep around the perimeter of your growing area.
The danger of over and under-watering : take care! Under-watering results in drought, while over-watering leads to fruit splitting and mushy crops. Use your head and read the watering instructions for the crop at hand to avoid these pitfalls.
Pollination : - Pollination is required for food production, and low pollination = low yield. There aren't enough bees to go around these days, so do your best to attract and retain a healthy population of mason / wood bees, which are good native pollinators and don't sting (see the article on bees and their housing at ?k=urban.farming#234 ). Wasps should be dissuaded; if they're really causing problems, a solution of one part bleach in nine parts water will harm them a whole lot. Likewise, honeybees can be kind of a drag with their stinging habit, and if a killer bee queen takes over your honey bee hive it's nightmare city. So, encourage mason bees (with a bee block), butterfiles (with bright red flowers), and hummingbirds (with flowers and a feeder).
Excess carbonaceous material in soil (like dry organic matter) will cause nitrogen leaching as the nitrogen moves into the carbon material in order to break it down and decompose it. [see the article on composting for more detail on how this works : compost#230 ] This is one of the reasons why you want to be sure that compost is fully broken down before you put it into your soil.
Frost can be a problem in winter, even in arid climates. Cover your crops with a light sheet or cloth at night when there's a danger of frost. You can also bury jugs of water underground to store solar heat collected during the daytime.
Protect against sun excess by having good shade structures in place for both summer and winter solar patterns.
When planning, building, and evolving your urban agriculture setup, aim to have each item and plant serve more than one purpose - this is called "stacking function." For example, if you grow grapes over the mesh roof of your chicken coop, they'll keep the chickens cool as well as providing you and the birds with tasty grapes. - Use observation and incremental experimentation to learn how the system works and the most efficient ways to harness it; plan for the next season with the things you learn and look at the "big picture." Write everything down so that you can study what's happened. - An old but useful cliche here is : "The problem is the solution." That is, don't try to fight against natural processes -- instead, harness and work with them. - Things are going to die and crops will fail. Learn from your mistakes, and don't take failure too hard.
Notes : On beans : pintos, etc grow well in summer, but green beans need cooler weather. Bats eat flying pest bugs, give them a bat house.
The bulk of this information is taken from Heather Welch's lecture series "Designing a Vegetable Garden," presented November 2008 courtesy of the Phoenix Permaculture Guild. (147,583)
Looking to raise some capital for your new online turnip twaddler portal enterprise? Noah Dyer from WealthNet Partners and Nicholas DiBiase from Hepnova lay down the rap about how branding, both business and personal, affects your chances with potential investors. Learn to avoid generic muddled garbage and imitating 'The DOC' when in crucial meetings! Don't make those "angel investors" bop you over the noggin with their harps.
Many sites are landscaped with rock and pavement. This creates what is known as the "heat island problem" -- that is, the rocks and paved elements absorb and hold solar heat, raising the temperature of the site, permitting little vegetation or evaporation. Another common landscape approach, xeriscaping, attempts to simulate a natural desert environment by using no deep-rooted plants, but only things like cactus and succulents. The problem with this approach is that it leads to erosion and a soil that is heavily leached and will not retain water; this is not conducive to growing food.
In contrast, permaculture-style landscaping that features a variety of rooted plants and water-managing features raises the water table and, though it requires more water input, may actually conserve water in the long run by cooling the site and creating more in-site moisture recycling (whereas xeriscaping creates a hotter, more arid environment by retaining little water). Plants cool a site, while rocks heat it up. So what's a person with rock on their site to do?
Don't remove the rock -- it's expensive and laborious to do so, and recall that 'using what's on hand' is a guiding permaculture principle. So, instead of removing the rock, redistribute it. Rock's heat-retaining characteristic is directly proportional to its surface area. Therefore, we want to arrange the rock in a way that minimizes the surface area and yet is useful.
The best way to do this is to use the rock on hand to create narrow, deep pathways around your planting areas such that the planting area will be sunken relative to to paths. This will help conserve your precious water -- the water will drain over and through the rock paths and be collected in the sunken beds. Sunken-bed agriculture has long been favored in desert Africa and other arid climates as a key water-management strategy. Repeat : sunken beds and raised paths are the best approach for growing food, especially in hot and arid climates. Raised beds will fry the roots of your crops when the sun beats on them.
Sidebar : the horror of Bermuda grass
Bermuda grass is a 'marginal' or 'fringe' plant -- it exists when land has begun to fail due to erosion and desiccation. It's an especially hardy species that is highly invasive, and is very difficult to control in an edibles-growing setup.
The 'conventional' approach to removing Bermuda grass is to use an herbicide, but smart people know that herbicides are poison and don't use them near their food crops. Instead, use the 'brute force' method : obtain a sod-cutter, "bobcat," or strong shovel (for the Calvinist) and remove the offending grass before planting. Attempt to scrape it off the top of your site. Due to its omnipresence and hardiness, it will continually stage comebacks, but this step will give you a head-start on it. If you're serious about keeping this hardy grass out of your planting beds, don't include removed Bermuda in your regular compost, as some of its seeds may survive the 140-degree temperature and come back to haunt your garden.
One tactic that has proved successful for keeping Bermuda grass at bay is the introduction of red clover, another 'marginal' species that is likewise invasive but has two advantages over Bermuda grass : 1) it attracts bees, which are vital for pollination of your crops, and 2) it smells better than Bermuda grass.
The 'Pre-Landscaped' problem
Many sites will already be landscaped with trees, shrubs, etc, before you arrive. This can be seen as an obstacle to your planting design, but the smart urban agronomist will incorporate existing green features into their plan. Rather than remove existing trees, remember that bees like trees and you need bees. Therefore, introduce gourds, grapes, and other hardy vines to grow up on and around the pre-existing features (including rocks of all sizes). This will create a photosynthesizing, water-producing heat barrier that requires little watering (because these thrive in dry conditions) is excellent at counteracting the effects of the urban "heat island."
Achieving microbial balance
Healthy plants are abetted by numerous symbiotic worms, insects, microbes and fungi living in the soil. Each type of helper organism lives in a certain "trophic level" -- that is, stratum -- of the soil. Microorganisms often move through fungal networks around plant roots to enhance crops' nutrient uptake. Helpful organisms come in several classes : - Bacteria - Fungi - Nematodes - Protozoa - Arthropods - Annileds - Birds and animals are also in symbiosis wit your crop, but we'll treat them elsewhere in this series.
Soil trophic levels are an important consideration in urban agriculture. It's important to work with the organisms in each level, rather than against them, to maximize yield and minimize the amount of work you have to do. The first rule of working with these trophic-level-dwellers is : 'don't upend, displace, and massacre them with a rototiller.'
To dig or not to dig?
Tilling displaces the organisms in each tropic level, disturbing them and causing them to die quickly. A few inches means a lot to microbes and tiny animals. The "no-till revolution" currently under way in urban agriculture allows the trophic levels to remain healthy and undisturbed by specifying that rather than digging and tilling. it's better to layer mulch and compost on top of existing levels to allow the natural action of symbiotic-critter level adjustment as these new mulch and compost layers are watered in and self-percolate.
The "traditional" method of bed preparation, "double-digging," is wherein soil is dug up from one end of the bed and moved to another end. This is disastrous for microbe and fungal colonies and, even worse, is very hard work.
The new method : "Lasagna gardening"
I wish that "Lasagna gardening" was a way to grow lasagnas, but alas, it's only a slang term for building up soil in a layered fashion and avoiding disturbance of the native soil's trophic levels. Here's how to do it :
1) Spray / soak the site liberally with compost tea or "effective microorganisms" to bacterially control pre-existing environmental toxiins 2)Put a layer of black-and-white (only) newspaper over the selected bed site. This is nontoxic and will discourage pre-existing weeds from erupting in your planting beds. (note : stay at least 3 inches away from trees ) 3) Layer equal thicknesses of mulch and compost on top of each other. Ideally, you want an ultimate planting depth that is equal to your root size; this is roughly the same as the height of the above-ground plant greens (hence the old saying "as above, as below"). This may seem daunting and silly, but after the first couple of seasons, the new material will be integrated with the original soil and the landscape will even out. 4) add new layers of mulch and compost after each harvest to continue enriching the site soil.
Kelp meal is a phosphorous-containing soil amendment that many have found to be beneficial to this process. However, those who live in landlocked areas may object to adding sea-based additives to their soil.
Coming soon : Part III
This information principally drawn from the lecture series "Designing a Vegetable Garden" as presented by Heather Welch in late 2008 courtesy of the Phoenix Permaculture Guild. (91,460)
Having just wrapped up one of the most stressful semesters of my life, and my first semester abroad at that, I can honestly say that it is a treat to be able to write and not worry about what some asshole with a PhD thinks of my illegible scribbles. This of course does not excuse my lack of latewire vernacular or my skid-row grasp of grammar, but cut a guy some slack, eh?
When first applying for the Malaysian University of Speculative-Fiction & Applied Nanotechnology study abroad program, I can honestly say I had no great conflict of conscience. It was high time to get away from the frigid witch-twat void that is the American northwest. This exchange of temperatures was entirely worth the trade-off of not being able to blast my Melvins records at 120+ decibels at all hours of the day, which is really saying something. Once you live in a cold environment for long enough the only thing which possibly can convey any true feeling of warmth is usually derived from that most blessed of the poppies, Papaver somniferum. Of course anything capable of making a human being feel halfway alive is really not possible to keep fucking around with for any length of time. And so I traded Rock & Roll for some warmth of the soul, little did I know was that I was dancing the razors edge of yet another black fucking hole.
You see the problem lies not in the faculty or curriculum, not in the construction or architecture of the campus which are both quite breathtaking, the problem lies in the misconception that modern Universities must be the litmus test for every utopian pipedream to be shat forth from the illimitable imaginations of eccentric and post-qualified eggheads worldwide. You see, it is not enough for some bespectacled shits to have a horticulture unit which grows a completely pesticide and herbicide free menu for the students. You’d think the reincarnated soul of Albert fucking Einstein himself would be pleased with an entirely self-sufficient solar/wind/tidal powered campus and that further improvements would be entirely superfluous and unwarranted. Well, you would be dead fucking wrong, just as I was.
You see it is the unneeded further improvements which simultaneously sapped my sanity and also spiced up the education process to a point where my elaborate and scathingly humorous murder-suicide plots were kept in a the single digit territories for perhaps the first time in my life since my testacles descended back in the good old summer of El Niño circa 1994. Now, perhaps this is all hyperbole, and it most likely is, but hear me out on this and you may find your credulity rewarded.
I first started to notice that things were not quite as they seemed in the brochures and telephone interviews when I noticed a cacophonous wailing upon reaching the vestibule to my living quarters. It was as if some sonic portcullis had been concocted for no other fact than the sheer mutilation of my eardrums. Nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to witness, in fact the plane ride over had been sheer fucking bliss with not a single unexpected sound whatsoever, which is rare considering how many overfucked and inbred cunts think taking small children on public airplanes is what constitutes a good idea. The stewardess was one of those most rarest and appreciated of females who understand that nothing quite takes the edge off of travelling at supersonic velocities in an oversized aerodynamic soda can like an expertly crafted vodka martini replete with mini-onion which those in the know refer to as The Gibson. To sweeten an already stevia'd deal this particularly lovely lass also was aware of the fact that flirting for flirting's sake is perhaps the best known way to ease tension which is neither illegal nor involves getting uncomfortably sticky, uncomfortable cleaning up something sticky, or avoiding being made sticky by substances which shall remain nameless. Anyways, back to the mewling of the damned, for as it happened, there was a small family of what appeared to be real-life Pokemon all sitting on a windowsill and rising one hell of a ruckus at my approach. You see some local intellectual authority, probably during a moment of narcotic induced epiphany, had concocted the scheme to slightly modify the biological structure of the imported Asian Palm Civet. A Civet is something of a cross between a raccoon, a cat, and that face your little sister used to make when she shit her diaper as a baby. The thing to note about the Asian Palm Civet in particular is its fondness for that most aromatic of beans (no, not human beans) the coffee bean. What comes as second nature to a Civet is to ingest the coffee fruit whole and later shit out an undigested yet perfectly fermented coffee bean which is ready for to be made into that modern day elixir of life, the café espresso. I think the original goal of the project was to fund the campus's energy expenditures with some kind of home grown cat-shit coffee, for you see the Civet-shat coffee bean is worth more than its weight in gold due to the extreme snobbery of coffee drinking assholes worldwide for reasons only known to caffeine tweaking spastics. This plan must have been implemented before the massive solar and wind farms on the roofs of each lecture hall were installed because as far as I understood it, the University generated so much electricity that it was actually making a profit by selling excess Megawatts back to the local energy companies. Nevertheless, RFID implanted Civet's were a staple of the MUSFAN experience and also the impetus for my abstinence from all forms of coffee, be it shat made or organically grown in the shade. As I later learned, these animals were not quite what one would consider ‘organic’ in regards to mitosis/meiosis and other matters, but that is perhaps for another story.
As awkward and ghoulish as the welcoming committee appeared on first visit it wasn’t long before I had befriended the cute little kits. Though I was never hard up for cash enough to harvest their buttbeans, I did develop something of a love/hate relationship with a few of the more personable buggers (emphasis here being on the love, mind you.) They helped me get through some of the more insane study sessions, including the time I completely forgot the Quadratic formula and had to factor my polynomials the good old fashioned long-ways. Civet fur is remarkably soft and comforting, and even absorbs those most pernicious of tears, the tears of blind rage and sheer frustration. So to say the little bastard Civet’s grew on me would be quite accurate. This relationship with manufactured nature was maintained all the way up until Finals Week rolled around…
Now, every individual who has attended an institution of ‘higher-learning’ is familiar with the manmade Hell that is colloquially referred to as Finals Wee. Most likely this phrase conjures fond memories of holes in walls and significant others with blackened and swollen features along with heavy doses of amphetamines and prescription Adderall abuse. Well just let me add one more image to your stygian rolodex if I may, one which you may or may not soon forget. As familiar as Finals are, the frat-boy is just as recognizable. No matter what class of institution you attend, there will always and forever be those privileged weasels who can afford to leach off their lamprey resembling parents (who in turn leach off the labor of other less lazy individuals.) You will find the vultures everywhere you go in life, it is an unavoidable fact. Now I know the lifestyle of the seven A.M. booze run, so it did not in the slightest phase me to see all manner of lay about sprawled across the sub-tropical campus during finals week, but what really surprised me is the lengths through which caffeine saturated individuals will go to get another fix. Nothing and I mean nothing will scrub from your mind the image of an immaculately groomed and gadget toting societal lamprey suckling the rumpled anus folds of a bewildered and frightened Asian Palm Civet. I have seen the horror, and with mine own two eyes have I become the Evil One Which Sobs. The crunching of beans wailed like the grating of bottle glass scraping across the pavement of a late night murder scene. I covered my face in shame and gnawed upon my lips hoping for some kind of chasm to open beneath my feet and end this dire spectacle. It is after many weeks of deliberation that I have come once again to a genial if not saturnine state of being reminiscent of my former modus operandi and in doing so I have come to discover a noble truth: that all our efforts at the University can hope to eventually equip us with is a generation of children equally as worthless and loathsome as the shitsucking sodomites at MUSFAN. The only viable way around this is to spoil the ragamuffin bastards until the age of 13 and then force them to burn their childhood memories one by one before being shipped off to the salt mines for at least a 7 year stint. Of course a wholly viable alternative is to simply build an inorganic shell with which to infuse your nervous system, soul, and memories. Because honestly folks, at the end of the day ain’t it better to keep your experiences to yourself? Spare the world the creation of another special little someone who wouldn’t hesitate to put lips to shitter and suck like J. Edgar Hoover at a mescaline party. (38,059)
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