Panthy's Garden

With my miniature park squared away for the season I figured it was high time to invade someone else’s park, the State of New York perhaps? Unbeknownst to most New York City residents, the rest of the state is actually quite beautiful, filled with my favorite native species, animals galore, and plenty of things to smash and burn.

My pal Jonah did some searching, map purchasing and plotted a path starting at his mother’s house leading up and back over the great granite domes of… (cue the bagpipes)  

The Harriman Highlands

Never mind that the temperature at night was to dip to a balmy 27 degrees, we had some camping and hiking to do. We laughed in the face of the cold as we packed up whiskey, long underwear and well over 10,000 calories in the form of pork products and cheese. Jeremiah Johnson did this shit in his sleep. Beards, partial beards or none at all, we would last for one lousy night. Even if it killed us.

Just for practice, we spent the night before drinking strange booze from Jonah’s parent’s liquor cabinet and carefully observing the local wildlife. In this case, Jonah’s dogs who like to sit on each other.

We filled the car with as much gear as we could muster and as many dudes as would fit and hit the road after enjoying some mother-prepared eggs, the best kind there is.

It was cold. I decided that dressing like a bizarro Spider Man cyclist/homeless person was the best plan. Everyone else looked pretty normal. Like I give a care.

Hiking in the woods in the fall is the jam. The smell of crisp fall air is a very close second to the burning tire smell of Brooklyn. Falling into the trance-like rhythm of our own footsteps and labored breathing we trooped for a few hours mostly going up or down, rarely just plain level. We clamored over massive granite boulders that looked kinda like moonscapes, but with bonsai trees. We paused occasionally to survey the endless views. And then went down. Then up again. 

We trooped through huge wooded areas with almost no underbrush, forests with a carpet of orange leaves and nothing else for blocks and blocks. To think of all the artisenal cheese shops and overpriced second-hand clothing stores you could fit in this place. It boggles the mind.

We reached our remote destination, a three-walled shelter on the Appalachian Trail and found it to be completely infested by Boy Scouts, crawling all over it, making fart noises and whittling sticks (basically exactly what we had planned to do).

We moved on up the ridge, to the very highest point around and set up camp there, enjoying exactly one Miller High Life tallboy each, which we carefully crushed to be packed out the following day. Cause that’s how we roll.

After securing fire wood Jonah saw fit to just plain beat on a tree, because burning trees wasn’t enough.  

James openly mocked this tree for having a giant deformity on it. Real nice.

Andrew fawned over the lush green moss on the rocks.

I got some rest in a concrete somethingorrather that quite honestly would’ve made a great sub-irrigated planter. We were proving to be great stewards of the park, basically living off the fat of the land.

We spent the night cooking awesome shit over an open fire; jalapeno and cheese sausages, sauteed onions and garlic and foil-wrapped potatoes, washed down with various types of whiskey from flasks.

By the end of the night we were sufficiently warm even as the temperature dropped ominously. I decided it was bedtime well after my condition fooled me into thinking sitting in the woodpile was actually comfortable.

I remember waking up just before dawn and thinking “it’s significantly colder.” It was kinda like waking up in a freezer. I got out of the tent, literally swept frost off our bags of food and got the fire going.

Bacon, biscuits and cheesy eggs cooked in bacon fat took the chill off. Jonah pulled out this magical contraption that made us espresso. Why? Cause we’re New Yorkers you dummy. Shown here in actual size.

Aside from hiking for three hours in a giant circle we escaped the woods with just under 20 minutes of daylight and showed the Harriman Highlands a thing or two in the process. I think.

When we got back to the car a guy at the trail head said, “the first meal back is always the best.” My two donuts and medium “regular” from Dunkies were exactly what he was talking about.

I’ve been closely following the doings of some extremely focused, intelligent, dare I say bold hippies in Chicago. Think you’re awesome for buying fancy local eggs and heirloom apples at the farmer’s market? Well get a load of the guys over at The Plant. They’re about to change how you and me buy and eat food, especially tilapia. You do eat talapia right? Okay good. Allow me to explain:

Jon Edel, the developer of The Plant has taken over an old meat processing facility and is in the process of converting it to a vertical farm that grows organic and sustainable fish and vegetables year-round. And it runs on fish poop and brewery waste. What’s next?! French fry-powered cars? Get the hell outta town.

Now, about the fish poop. The food-growing portion of The Plant will use aquaponics. Wikipedia will tell you that:

“aquaponics is the simultaneous cultivation of plants and aquatic animals in a symbiotic environment where the animal effluents that accumulate in the water are used and filtered out by the plants as nutrients, after which the water is recirculated back to the animals.”

Which really means, you grow fish in a tank to eat later. You have plants growing without soil (hydropronically) using the same water. As it turns out, fish crap makes for great plant food. The plants act as a filter to clean and oxygenate the water for the fish. And now you’re growing healthy fish and high-quality produce, year-round with almost no waste. And you’re a goddamn genius for doing it. And… you’re hired.

Conventional farming produces lots of waste, can pollute the water and of course, takes up a lot of space that cities don’t have. Trucking food long distances takes lots of fuel and can make the vegetables carsick on the way. And then there’s the places around the world that don’t have anywhere to farm, city or not.

Enter vertical farming. The concept has been floating around for a while and boils down to this: tall buildings in the city where every floor grows a different crop, just a few steps from where it will be eaten, kinda like how we make bagels, but on a much larger scale.

Vertical farming expert, Dickson Despommier of Columbia University put this into a context that’s easy for me to understand.

He says us 8 million New Yorkers “consume food that it takes the state of Virginia in land mass to grow.”

Sorry Virginia, not sure what you’re gonna eat. We need our goddamn baby greens or shit’s gonna get REAL.

The vertical concept is kinda brilliant. Grow food locally, in a way that’s sustainable and produces high-quality goods and some jobs. Think shiny, modern, towers of vegetables alongside skyscrapers. Like this crazy shit:

But as Plant developer Jon Edel points out, “you gotta sell a lotta rutabagas to pay back $100 a square foot construction cost.” Sadly, until rutabagas become more valuable than luxury condos and the inevitable douches that live inside them, those lovely rutabaga towers just won’t exist. And if rutabagas are more valuable than luxury condos we’ve got real problems.

The Plant has another approach: take over an existing, cheap, industrial space, renovate it slowly with volunteer help and grants and rent some of it to other sustainable businesses.

A real-life, vertical farm just might exist without the crushing debt of setting up a shiny new facility, kickbacks to the mob, or a crazy Russian billionaire trying to make it a stadium for a crappy basketball team. And a modest revenue stream from rentals buys some additional time to perfect its operation and grow. Uh… agriculturally and business-wise.

This is a vertical farm in the real world.  And they’re gonna pull it off.

For every season turn, turn, turn… zzzzz. In the beginning you obsess over tiny seedlings, nurturing them like little green babies, watering them drop by drop until they can stand on their own rooted feet. Then, they start dating and asking to use your car. They come home stinking of booze and cigarettes. You’re shocked by their freakish size and strength.

By the end of the season they’re all grown up, and worse yet, they’re demented, ugly and leafless. In their final stage they need to be put out of their misery; the cycle of life demands it.

These vegetables took up a lot of mental space over the growing season. I rigged up elaborate watering systems to keep them watered. I spent many a morning checking them for fat disgusting pooping worms. Then there was all the fist shaking and fuck-based slurs I shouted as birds and squirrels ate my beautiful crop. Toward the end, I wandered Panthy’s Garden shocked, with a beer and camera surveying the damage of a tornado that stole my electronic owl’s head.

Now, the pots are empty and the whole mess is neatly stuffed into two white garbage bags. No need to worry about an empty pot. Done.

Sounds like a bummer, but as we all know there’s the next spring, where the proverbial Panthy’s Garden rolls away the stone and comes back to life. Or where the proverbial gardener goes back to the garden center, rolls away a shopping cart filled with lots of new crap to resurrect the garden with.

Before I fully shut it down, surely my other plants, the perennials, needed some special care for the winter. I probably should’ve looked up this information months ago, but I was too busy putting them in dirt, admiring them and making up names for them when people asked what they were.

“Oh yeah, that’s a Blue Tunic Bush with some Lilac Doonsberry underneath it.”

I unearthed all the tags that came with them, Googled em and learned a thing or two. I learned that my Scotch Broom shrub apparently can irritate your skin and is also poisonous if ingested. Perfect for cats! Thankfully, it doesn’t need any special prep for the winter. 

Lavender should be cut back, so that’s what I did, accidentally taking some bees with it. Nobody got hurt. Me and bees are cool, which is why I want to start a bee hive. But that’s a story for another day.

The herbs will come indoors, the Japanese Holly bushes will get some very Soviet-looking burlap sweaters and the beach rose will be tucked behind the planter for protection.

With some general cutting, sprucing and cleaning up, I had Panthy’s looking sharper than it had in months. It’s a blank slate, ready for my much more ambitious third season which will include triple the growing space, SIPs, rain collection, and… bird nets. And shotguns. The cycle continues…

Thanks to a series of beautifully warm days with global warming highs in the 70s my garlic has been fooled into thinking it’s spring. And apparently I’ve been fooled into thinking a few weeks ago was a good time to plant garlic.

Despite the heap of pine bark nuggets over them, garlic scapes have busted through and are ready to party, not realizing a long winter is just minutes away. I’ve never been so disappointed to see healthy vegetable growth. 

But they’re here so let’s not make them feel awkward. Pretty sure the garlic will be fine and will continue its slow growth over the winter producing cloves that will make close conversation near impossible.

The pot I named the Golden Boy, loaded with fresh potting mix and chicken shit Zoom! fertilizer, beat out the more humble Underdog pot that used junky left over cucumber dirt. But only by a nose. I did read that garlic grows best in used soil; one reason might be that the growth is slower and more appropriate for a long snooze over the winter before sprouting up. Using fresh potting mix and vegetable steroids on the other hand, might be a little too quick to the punch.

Perhaps a note for all you budding garlic growers: wait till a frost is imminent, which for New York is probably more November than October. And if you are dead serious and want to impress your friends with your extensive knowledge of how, when and where to plant garlic, you can study this here link. G’luck and may your garlic prosper.