Got the results of the soil test and did the biopsy thing. The biopsy went according to expectations – – was knocked out so felt nothing at all. It’s a little sore where the penetration was made but nothing that regular strength tylenol can’t handle. Hard chairs, bad; soft chairs ok. The doctor debriefed Nancy and told her that he actually did 24 samples, whereas I had the impression it would be 100+. I go back tomorrow to have the catheter removed and then on the 14th for the big reveal. I’m supposed to do nothing strenuous for the next couple of days. Wonder if turning the compost piles qualifies as strenuous? Nah. The silver lining is that I got to experiment with pass through time; ie, if you drink something, when does it leave the body. I’m measuring 5 hours but since I only have the bag hooked up for 24 hours, my experimenting time is limited. If I had it just another day, I’d eat a jar of pickled beets and do a stop watch check.

The biggest problem with the soil is that the PH is way too high across the whole garden. It’s running anywhere from 7.2 to 8.2 compared to an ideal of 5.5 to 6.5. They say this is easily corrected by spreading ammonium sulphate at a rate of 10 lbs per 1000 sq ft. As far as fertility is concerned, that’s a mixed bag. Some areas are in pretty good shape, some fair, and one spot was rated poor. This too is easily corrected with standard, commercial fertilizer. Generally speaking the fertility issue has not been a real problem for me because I prep the exact planting spot with a good shot of compost and fertilizer whereas the soil sampling is more a global quality measure. That is, I just picked spots at random to get the soil for the testing. That explains why my single plants, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, squash etc do so well whereas my large area crops, corn and beans, have not done so well. It just so happens that the area in the garden with the worse soil condition is exactly the area where I’ve planted the corn. Still, I need to go buy a bag of fertilizer and just spread it generously.

Now on to more pleasant things. The fire pit garden is full with four tomato plants and eight cabbages. As commented on earlier, the pit has never really produced but I just can’t resist trying to fix it. It’s only about 50 SF but it just nags at me to sit empty. So far, so good. Two of the tomatoes have been living there for close to a month and seem to be settling in and putting on new growth. The other two and the cabbages are just working through their first week so the jury’s out – and will be until harvest day. One surprise from the soil testing was that the fertility rating in the fire pit was good. I’ve also sunk a couple one gallon containers a foot or so from the tomato plants. I drilled a dozen or so holes around the periphery of the jugs so that when I fill them with water, it leaks out and waters the roots deeply. I’m going to use this technique religiously through the season to see if produces differently than the main garden. Aside from deep watering the roots, it would seem to me that keeping the surface drier will hinder weed growth and not lure insects. I think every few weeks I’ll load in a tablespoon or so of Miracle Gro just for insurance. Yep, pulling out all the stops.

A week after Irene missed us by a wide margin, we had a little pop up storm that dropped about 1/4” of rain and this big oak branch. Who needs a hurricane. We get plenty of action on a routine basis. Luckily I have a chain saw and a 100′ 14 gauge extension cord and it fell about 90′ from the closest electrical service outlet. I had it cut down to moveable size in about 20 minutes but the problem was that it was about 500′ from the wood to ash converter, AKA fire pit. It took me 6 trips to move it all. By the time I was finished with the job, I was worn to a frazzle. A cold shower and a bottle of Zipfizz brought me back to life. This was a 3 shower, 3 clothing change day.

I took ten soil samples to the County for evaluation; eight from the main garden, two from the fire pit. I’ve got quite a few seedlings going, some almost ready for transplant to the garden, so I decided to move ahead on letting the pro’s do the analysis. It costs $1 per sample. I’m thinking about getting a soil test kit so I can correlate the results I get with what the County gets. If I get good agreement, then in the future I can do my own testing on an as needed basis with a higher degree of confidence in the results. When I dropped off the samples, the agent asked how many I had and when I said 10 she looked at me like I was an alien. “Most folks only do about 3”. I told her most people weren’t anal about their soil. She looked like she had about 10 more questions but that response shut her down.

My fall crop seedling, that would be some cabbage and broccoli, have gotten to the point where they have to be transplanted into the main garden. Only problem is that I’m fairly certain they wouldn’t be able to handle the afternoon sun for at least another few weeks. So I created a shaded area using my PVC pipes and some old shade cloth tossed away by a local fernery. I think it’s going to work just fine while the roots are grabbing hold of the new homestead. I also created a shaded area over the firepit for a few early cabbages. It’s hard to believe but I have well over 100 seedlings that will be making it to the garden in the next month. I currently have space for, at most, 50 plants so some items will either die away gracefully having done their job or be yanked out in favor of something new. I’ll start getting nervous and jerky by the end of September

So another Solar panel company that was started and nurtured by the Fed’s has crashed. I think in the past month, the two biggest ones, in which we taxpayers invested nearly $1B, have closed their doors in the US. One re-appeared in India but I think the other one just folded the tent. There’s some background noise about the head of the DOE observing early on that this was a bad deal but the guy who got the funding from the feds is a big, big campaign contributor………………… As I’ve said a jillion times – solar doesn’t make any sense with the current level of technology. Sorry greenies, throwing all the money in the universe at it, won’t make it any more feasible. And windmills were understood to be marginal 500 years ago. Quit fighting natural gas which is cheap, clean, and domestically abundant and be glad it isn’t coal. Spend the next 50-100 years figuring out what comes after the fossil fuels are depleted, if ever.

Maybe I need to think about getting a soil test kit. I’ve researched it a bit and found that most commercially available kits are either really difficult to use or just not reliable. A year or so back I took some soil samples to the county extension service and I guess I could do that again. My concern is that the composition at any one location is not representative of a larger section which is further complicated by the fact that it’s a 3D world and the roots tend to grow both horizontally and vertically. Even more complicated by the fact that some plant root structures are very surface oriented whereas others grow deep. So how many samples do I need to take to have any real understanding of what’s going on. My theory has been that over time, it all basically homogenizes as I continue to load it up with compost. But my theory has also been that the compost contained all that was needed to produce bumper crops of anything. I think what I’ll do is another sample set for the extension service but do a better job of collecting the samples. That will give me a starting point going forward.

My neighbor told me that a bear had crashed through the screened porch on another house on the lake. This was the same house where the bear sightings have been fairly regular and detailed – the A-frame at the end of the cove. There was a dog on the back porch so I’m guessing there was also dog food – or maybe the dog was food. The dog was raising hell and the owner turned on the porch light to see what was going on. Reportedly, the bear boogied out the same hole in the screen he’d made on entry. Personally, we’ve seen no signs for a couple of weeks – ever since I started putting the trash can in the shed until pickup day. I keep thinking he’ll find the garden and chow down on the eggplant but so far, so good. It does make me wonder about something. There have been two fatal bear attacks in Yellowstone this summer and a kid had a run in with a polar bear in Canada recently. Do I smell trouble in Jellystone?

Well I’ve already picked the next pres, Perry, so now I have to take care of the veep. Ok, done. Guliani. Perry soaks up the south and conservatives; Rudy picks up the left side of the Republican party. Being from Florida, you might be surprised that I’m bypassing Rubio but I think his day is a few years down the road and I’m feeling another long string of Republicans is in our future. This sequence is getting familiar – we elect a near socialist and then follow with a solid conservative. Then with each following election for a few terms we go Republican but each time a more liberal one. Then the socialist comes back to restart the cycle.