Hunter Gatherers Moving Towards a More Agrarian Society

"There's a big ... machine in the sky, ... some kind of electric snake ... coming straight at us." "Shoot it," said my attorney. "Not yet," I said. "I want to study its habits.” -Hunter S Thompson Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

"Now Chimp," you might say, "You've done a lot of research to move your people from mere hunter gatherers to a more agrarian and civilized people. What have you learned?"

The thesis is all wrong and so your whole concept is bunk. Also I don't have a people, I have a fan base. Feel free to throw "growing" or "shrinking" in front of fan base. Which is why the title card on this page is relevant. I know very little about growing shit. There was that one episode of Little House on the Prarie where the minister had a crisis of faith and decided to become a farmer instead and really sucked at it. So he figured out his crisis and went back to being a minister. I'm trying to avoid that.

I expect to be a minister warrior poet agricola kind of fellow. That's right, I got some Latin, too. Super Intelligent Chimps erat sum or some such nonsense. Here's the deal. Usually people talk about how you should do things or what works for them. I don't know any of that. I wasn't even there. She swore she was 18. So I'm gonna tell you what I am doing, how it's working out, and what damn mistakes I may have made already. To whit:

exhibit 1

How many broccoli plants should you put in a planter? 'One' says the internet.

exhibit 2

Same for peppers. Oh well. And I should thin them, I guess. But They seem happy together. I might move some over to the community garden, but I'm not going crazy.

I fertilized today. First time and will probably do it every two weeks. Miracle Gro tomato formula, but should be good for most of it. The one crazy outlier in the Greek Oregano, Milos. He doesn't get watered every day. I water him when he wilts and he likes it. I mean I just heard you should do it that way, so I'm doing it that way. Gave him some fertilizer today, too.

ll As far as soil, it's lot of Miracle Gro going on. Michelle used it and was a fan and it's all over the place. So yeah, mostly I'm using Miracle Gro potting soil. I got a big bag of Miracle Gro Garden soil and used that for a couple of things and it has...weeds?

Check this out.

The peas I planted are in yellow. The mystery plants have the red arrows pointing at them. "Well, Chimp," you say, "couldn't it just be something wind blown?" I thought that, but it's only the garden soil planters. Those with pure potting soil have none of this. "So weed 'em. More compost." Eh. Who knows? I might rid the bean plant invaders, but I think I'm gonna let the ones in the peas go and see what happens.

This is really my first year of being a more agrarian person. I can fake it some, I guess, but I'm mostly seeing what happens. Not subscribing to a school. Not worrying whether my seeds are non hybrid, non gmo. ("Fitty cents? Hell yeah!") not worrying if the Miracle Gro people (Scotts) are in bed with Monsanto.

I'm thinking about composting, y'know? I'm thinking about how I would go about composting in my situation. Now that the community garden is open to me, I could drop a full on high volume compost bin out there. But I was thinking about small footprint, no access to direct soil composting. I'm, like, thinking about running tests on how to compost in space on my front stoop because that's an Super Intelligent Chimp thing to do.

Point is, I'm not talking best practices on this blog at all. Totally winging it. We'll see how it works. Make suggestions. Maybe I'll take them, maybe I won't. I'll say this, though. There is a satisfaction, a calm that you get from growing that garden. I've heard a few other people express this. My friend Gab's husband Barrett started growing herbs on his balcony and talked to me about how it made things make sense. I didn't get it at the time. Now I do.

I'm going for a lot less fuss. I just want a tomato. Couple of potatoes. A cuke. I'm not looking to do this high yield. I just want to grow something and eat it and move beyond a hunter/gatherer.