Ivan Stang's video: THE RUDY SCHWARTZ PROJECT - THREE GREAT INSTRUMENTALS

Exploited to Show Off Stang’s Year 2020 ShorDurPerSav: His First Vegetable Garden The Flowers Were an Afterthought Music by THE RUDY SCHWARTZ PROJECT 1. “Foodplay” from Gunther Packs a Stiffy 2. “Le twist gnossien” from Winter Dance of the Koala Sperm Harvest 3. “Field Guidance to Industrial Establishments” from Delicious Ass Frenzy This being the first year in decades that we knew we’d be in one place all year long, I, Stang, started my first serious vegetable garden. It was mostly successful and still is, but I would have done better had I read Gardening for Dummies or something before just diving into it. The Straw Bale Garden approach seemed simple enough… at first… but I ended up buying a lot more big pots and dirt and seeds. Pepper plants of all kinds, and cucumbers, thrived from the beginning. Eggplant and okra lagged behind but have caught up. Our peas and beans failed utterly, but then, I have since learned that I did those all wrong. I documented the garden in tedious detail and later re-organized the pictures into categories, which became the slide shows seen in this 13 minute movie, which is made much less interminable by the music. In fact, I wouldn’t expect anyone but acutely interested gardeners to actually watch this whole thing. The Rudy Schwartz Project tunes however make it a possibly valuable ear-candy “ambient video.” The garden is different now. The bales (which were old and free) just… melted… but that made the okra and cucumbers grow BETTER. I put all the potted plants in a snaking row and ran a drip hose snaking along atop them, which has made all watering much easier. (Watering by sprinkler was a BAD idea and an expensive experiment.) The bales always had a drip hose. We ended up with so much cucumber we were drinking gazpacho with every meal in three different flavors. We had so much eggplant we got sick of ratatouille and eggplant parmigiana. We gave away a lot of hot peppers and have filled our fridge with jars of pickled hot peppers and okra. We’re now dehydrating the peppers and crushing them for storage and gift-giving. I used seeds from a "salsa pack": Jalapeño, Anaheim, Hungarian, Cayenne, tabasco and many red and purple peppers as well. At no time am I without some of my bean/veggie soup as emergency health-food. I make huge pots of it and then freeze it in two-meal containers. The garden has been this year’s ShorDurPerSav for me. I go out there to look at my plant children at least four times a day, and the endless puttering and pruning and education about each plant has been my new Slack since Spring. Next year I’ll understand fertilizing and soil content much better when I start, and, next year goat poop will replace the composted straw bales. Or rather, they shall be raked and shoveled together, with used Miracle Grow Potting Soil, into a glorious admixture that will surely promote great fecundity on the rocky ground and in the giant 15-inch pots! We have not been raided by any varmints besides insects! The livestock fence, chicken wire, 2 loud dogs and three pack-hunting cats, and their respective spoor-stenches, seem to keep out all deer, squirrels, raccoons, rabbits, etc., although yesterday a pesky armadillo somehow got through the defenses. (Hilarity ensued, seen in another video.) I would recommend trying composted straw bales for low-growing things like root vegetables, cabbage etc. Tall caged things like tomatoes and anything climbing poles, and okra and such, tended to topple over as the bales got softer and smaller and the plants got taller. I eventually gave up on the ever-more-complex network of supporting guy-wires, and let the plants grow sideways.