A few Thoughts on The Zimmerman Verdict.

A recent article In our local Contra Costa Slimes written by the black liberal journalist Leonard Pitts Jr. demonstrates, once again, how divorced from reality the liberal press is in this country. The same can be said for the demorats and their simple minded constituents who have been in control of our government, except for a few short years in the 1980s, for the past 60 plus years. Mr. Pitts begins his article by criticizing Florida's stand your ground statute which, of course, is an entirely spurious argument since this was a case of self defense, nothing more nothing less! After all, a person has a right to defend himself when someone is trying to beat him to death in every state in the union, even California! The problem is that the prosecutors of Mr. Zimmerman, and the liberal press, simply couldn't equate screams for help, a broken nose and scalp lacerations with the need for Zimmerman to defend himself from the blows being rained down on him from the hooded monster who was attaching him. After this silly attempt at journalism Mr. Pitts, who insists on digging himself into a deeper and deeper hole, by asking two questions. First, "Why did Zimmerman regard Trayvon Martin as suspicious when all he did was wear a hooded sweatshirt while walking in the rain?" Second Mr. Pitts wonders "Why was Mr. Zimmerman able to go home that same night?" The answer to both questions is pretty simple and straight forward. The community in which Zimmerman lived has been plagued recently by multiple robberies and burglaries, that's why they organized a watch patrol. More to the point, these crimes were invariably committed by young black hoodlums, not by whites or people of any other color but black. Furthermore, young black men from the hood often wear hooded sweatshirts, that's one of the reasons they are called hoodlums, Mr. Pitts (well, not really, I just made that one up, couldn't help myself). As to the assertion that Zimmerman should have been locked up from the get go, there was no evidence, then or now, that Mr. Zimmerman was acting in anything but self-defense; thus, the cops had no reason to arrest him. After all, walking around your neighborhood looking for black men who are up to no good is not a crime in the United States of America, not yet anyway. In fact, it was nearly a month before charges were brought by the an out of town racist prosecutor appointed by the brain-dead republican governor of Florida, Rick Scott. Obviously, the cooked up charge of second-degree murder, a stretch of the imagination if I ever saw one, was only made to pacify race-baiters like Jessie HiJackson, the Reverend Al Sharpton, Obama and our clueless raciest Attorney General, Erick Holder. It took him six paragraphs, but Pitts finally stumbled onto the truth when he lamented that "But truth is, race has been there at every turn." Yes, the ridiculous charge of second degree brought against the Hispanic man George Zimmerman (the press insists on calling him white even though he is no more white than is our first black president Barack Hussein Obama) was entirely based on black racism leveled at anyone who, by any twisted sort of reasoning, can be labeled as white. Let the witch hunts begin! By the way, Mr. Pitts, many of us whites consider, as you say, "Black to be the natural color of criminality." That's because blacks are seven times more likely to commit murder and eight times more likely to commit burglaries than are all other races combined! Somehow, you neglected to mention this statistic in your article, Mr. Pitts. I wonder why? Yes, after 60 years of Johnson's great society and 50 plus years of affirmative action, nothing has changed. The vast majority of blacks are still as illiterate as his girl friend, Rachel Jeantel ( who claims to have a B average in high school but can't read or write) and the majority of young black males are still either in prison or on parole.

The Importance of Artificial Pollination- Assisting the wind and the Bees.

Have you ever wondered why your tomato, zucchini and cucumber plants are loaded with blossoms, but produce so little fruit? The answer most often is inadequate pollination. Plant pollination is not an all or none event; rather, the insufficient transfer of pollen from the male to the female component of a plants flower, like a tomato, can result in the production of small deformed fruit as well as the absence of fruit. The same is true for plants like cucumbers and squash, of the gourd family, in which the male and female components of the plant reside in separate flowers. In either case, inadequate pollination can result in small deformed fruit, or no fruit at all. In nature the wind and bees are responsible for pollination and it is for this reason gardeners plant flowering plants, that attract bees, in their vegetable gardens. However, even under ideal conditions, wind and insect pollination often is incomplete resulting in small crops of deformed fruit, especially early in the growing season. Fortunately, the gardener can assist the wind and the bees by taking steps to artificially pollinate the plants in his garden. In the worse case scenario, if plants are grown in an enclosed space like a green house, which shields the plants from the wind and isolates them from bees, the plants will not produce unless artificially pollinated. So, how is artificial pollination accomplished? First lets deal with plants like tomatoes, peppers and eggplant which are self-pollinating because each flower contains male and female sex organs. Lettuce, beans and peas also are self- pollinating but usually do not require assistance to produce a crop. In self-pollinating plants the female stigma is surrounded by the male stamen. An ovary, which ultimately will become the fruit, is attached to the female stigma at the base of the flower. There are several ways to assist the wind and bees pollinate plants that have both female and male sex organs in the same plant. Expensive vibrators like the Electric Bee have been developed to accomplish this task. Battery operated tooth brushes serve the same purpose. To use these mechanical devices simply place their vibrating tips on the stem below a group of flowers and activate the vibrators for a few seconds. Fortunately, you can achieve the same result simply by gently shaking the stem of each group of flowers for a few seconds with the fingers of your hand. Better yet, if you tie your tomatoes, peppers and eggplants to a stake, as I due, simply shake the stake for a few seconds to simultaneously vibrate all of the plants flowers instantaneously. Members of the gourd family, squash, pumpkins, melons and cucumbers are said to be insect-pollinated because each plant contains a female flower and a separate male flower. Pollen must be transferred from the male to the female flower for fertilization to take place. The male flower is easy to identify because the flower is attached directly to the flower's stem. The female flowers have an enlarged area between the flower and its stem. This small mass is the flower's ovary and, if properly fertilized, will develop into a fruit of the plant. To artificially pollinate plants which has separate male and female flowers I use a medium sized round tipped artists brush to transfer pollen from the male flower to the female flower. This is accomplished simply by inserting the tip of the brush into the open end of the male flower; giving the brush a twist or two; and the inserting it into the open ended female flower, again twisting it around several times. The same thing can be accomplished with a Q-tip or some similar device. Since it is somewhat difficult to distinguish between a female and a male flower in a plant like a cucumber, I just go from flower to flower on the plants without regard to whether I am harvesting pollen from a male flower or depositing pollen into a female flower. In this respect, it makes no difference which type of flower you are dealing with as long as the tip of the pollinating tool has pollen on it when it enters the female flower. To achieve the best results, artificial pollination should be carried out daily around noon when the humility is not to high and the temperature is between 60°F and 80°F. I believe you will be amassed at the results that can be achieved by these simple techniques to asset the wind and the bees in your garden. By the way, if your plants are not producing flowers they, of course, cannot be pollinated. In this case, the problem most likely is a result of a phosphorous deficiency in the soil, so the answer is to fertilize them with a fertilizer rich in phosphorous

The Importance Of Earthworms In An Organic Garden.

I described the different species of earthworms in chapter 16 of The Earthworms Farmers Bible. However, little of the information provided in that chapter will be germane to the organic gardener. Although there are hundreds of earthworm species, only one, the Red Wiggler composting earthworm, plays a significant role in the organic garden. For all practical purposes, earthworms may be divided into two categories. The common fishing worm, or night crawler, is a borrowing earthworm which lives in tunnels deep in the ground. The opening of its tunnels are surrounded by pyramid shaped mounds of earthworm castings. These worms usually are named after the regions in which they are found. Examples of these worms include, the African, Canadian, Arkansas and European Night crawlers. These large earthworms are primarily used for fishing and are inefficient composters; thus, they play a minimal role in the garden. In nature their tunnels help to aerate the soil and their castings serve to fertilize the soil, but their primary purpose is to feed nocturnal birds and animals. The important thing to understand, from a gardeners point of view, is that Red Wiggler Composting earthworms are the same throughout the world. These small reddish colored worms also are commonly referred to as manure worms because they frequently, if not invariably, found in manure piles. Red Wigglers are ferocious composters being capable, under ideal circumstances, of consuming their weight in organic waste every day. They also are ideal worms for composting because they double in number every three months; thus, if you begin with a small number of Red Wigglers you will have a small army of hard working composters before you know it. The reader may be wondering if there is such a thing as a supper hybrid composting earthworm. The answer is no, it is possible to produce a hybrid earthworm but, as with the mule, they are sterile and cannot reproduce. So, if you want to obtain some Red Wigglers for your garden, your will have to purchase them from a breeder or, better yet, get them for free from a manure pile. Now that you understand the difference between a night crawler and a composting earthworm it's time to put them to work in your garden. The first, and by far and away, the most important role of a composting earthworm is to turn organic waste into earthworm casting, the most valuable organic fertilizer on the face of the earth. I will have a great deal more to say about this all important organic fertilizer in a subsequent chapter, but for now understand that earthworm casting are the ideal organic fertilizer, nothing else even comes close! If you have a small organic garden it will be possible to generate enough earthworm castings to meet your gardening needs just by composting your organic kitchen wastes and newspapers in a small indoor tote or covered outdoor wormery. A large garden will require more earthworm casting that you will be able to produce just by composting your household wastes. If that is the case, you will have to find an extraneous source of organic material to feed your composting earthworms. In most areas the raw material will come from a horse stable or some other farming operation that produces an abundance of manure. Alternately, organic waste produced by a restaurant, grocery store or garden maintenance operation may provide a food source for your worms, most often at no cost to you. Composting earthworms also are a valuable asset to your garden because, if conditions are right, they will live in the garden soil and continually fertilize it with freshly produced earthworm castings. In this respect, a significant number of earthworms in the soil around the plants in your garden indicates that you are indeed gardening the organic way and that everything is copacetic in your garden oasis. If, on the other hand, your garden soil is worm less you will have to add generous amounts of manures, humus, worm castings and other organic material to the inhabitable soil to rehabilitate it and make it suitable for the ecosystem necessary to grow plants and vegetables in the absence of the potentially toxic reagents in chemical fertilizers.

Can This Union Be Saved?

Before we answer this question we should address an even more important issue. When all is said and done, is the United States of America, in its present state of disrepair, worth saving? I would argue that it is not and the sooner the union is dissolved the better. We are no longer the land of the free; rather, our once great bastion of freedom is now a land predominated by freeloaders who expect the government to take care of their every need from cradle to grave. Our leaders, on both sides of the isle, care little or nothing about the nation’s wellbeing; instead, their only goal is to retain power so that they can reap the monetary rewards inherent in their political offices. In this respect, how is it that so many of these political hacks started with nothing and ended up as multimillionaires? Do you think for one minute, that people like Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, Barney Frank, Hillary Clinton, Harry Reed, Sheila Jackson Lee, Diane Feinstein or Barack Obama, to name only a few of the most obvious culprits, could have become so wealthy if they had spent their careers in the private sector? The chances of that happening, obviously, would have been slim to none. Just think of what might have been the fate of that witless wonder Joe Biden if he had been forced to work at a real job. Some conservatives, including Rush Limbaugh, still cling to the faint hope, slim though it might be, that our present sorry state of affairs can be turned around at the ballot box. Mr. Limbaugh seems to believe that republicans lost the last election because Mitt Romney ran a bad campaign. Nothing could be further from the truth! In fact, Obama won the presidency for the second time because so many Americans are now dependent on the government, for their very survival, that they have no choice but to vote for the political party that provides day care for their children; puts clothes on their backs ; provides a roof over their heads; and even throws in a comfortable prison environment with accommodating female guards (or male toys as the case may be), weight rooms and flat screen TVs, if they should be unlucky enough to be apprehended while committing their misdeeds. No, the majority of low IQ unproductive democratic voters are not foolish enough to stick their collective fingers in the eyes of those who feed and clothe them. These people may not be the sharpest nails in the keg, but they are not stupid enough to kill the golden goose that feeds them either. Nope, Romney lost because he didn't promise the average voter enough goodies, it's as simple as that! In any case, as things now stand the country is lost. There are not now, and never will be, enough tax payers to fund the enormous welfare state that is twenty-first century America. As I have pointed out many times before, the simple fact is that today, with interest rates at all-time lows of less than 1%, 25% of all federal revenue goes to pay the interest on the national debt. If the economy were to recover, and interest rates were to increase to the historical norm of 3% to 4%, every single dollar the federal government takes in taxes would go to pay the interest on our monstrous national debt, there would not be a dime left over for any federal program including national defense. No, from a financial standpoint, as well as a moral standpoint, we are finished as a country. Before leaving this segment, I want to emphasize the point that there is no way to compromise our way out of this mess. This is so, because the combined debt of the federal and state governments is now so large that it can never be paid off no matter how frugal the State and Federal governments become. Thus, at this point, it makes little or no difference who is calling the shots in the federal government. The same is true for most of the state governments. For example, the unfunded liabilities in the state of California exceed, conservatively, over 200 billion dollars. No one has the slightest idea how this debt will be dealt with when it comes due, no one! None the less, like ostriches with their heads buried in sand, Gerry Brown and his liberal co-conspirators in the state legislature continue to ignore the realities of the situation while crowing about the fact that they have passed the first balanced budget in over ten years, a meaningless exercise in futility if I ever saw one. The reality of two Americas. We are living in a country that is so divided morally and politically that there are, in reality, two Americas. The inhabitants living on the west coast, mid-west and north-east are primarily European Socialists who care nothing about the constitution or the bill of rights. The majority of these people have no moral compass and have little or no concept of fiscal responsibility. They live for the moment with little thought of tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, let alone the tomorrows of our children and grandchildren. The inhabitants of Middle America remain, for the most part, a God fearing group of fiscal conservatives whose views do not differ significantly from those of the country’s founding fathers. They detest the taking of innocent life, especially if it involves the murder of unborn babies, and believe that the right to own a gun is the most important constitutional right of all. They reject, out of hand, sodomy, same sex marriage and the liberal’s attempts turn criminals into victims and victims into the instigators of crime just because they were walking peacefully down the street with a hand bag containing a credit card or two and a few dollars in cash. In short, middle America rejects every aspect of liberal life. The chasm in fiscal responsibility and social morays between a liberal walking the streets of San Francisco or New York and a citizen residing in Oklahoma City is so wide that it cannot be breached by any group of politicians, no matter how great their wish to compromise. After all, when all is said and done, how can you compromise with the devil without giving away everything you hold dear? In this respect, are we really prepared to agree that it is OK to kill babies in utero if they are younger than 22 weeks old but not OK to butcher them if they are a week older? Are we ready to concede that it is OK for Johnny to marry his grandmother or maybe his dog Blackie? Are we prepared to allow primitive peoples with rags wrapped around their heads to practice Sharia Law in the United States of America as long as they confine their barbaric practices to the ethnic communities they establish within our borders (this is exactly what has happened in Great Britten). Finally, are we willing to provide endless economic support to large segments of the population, who refuse to work, as long as they agree to support self-serving liberal politicians when it comes time to vote every couple of years? No, obviously, there is no middle ground that will allow a compromise between the amoral liberal majority who are firmly entrenched in the mid-west and both coasts and the constitutional God fearing conservatives residing in the middle of twenty-first century America (I realize that that there are a conservatives living in places like California and New York, but there are too few of us to make any real difference politically). No, it seems clear that a divorce is inevitable and, I believe, the sooner the better. The question is, how will this come about?

The Evolution of an Organic Garden.

As mentioned in the introduction, although I didn't realize it until many years later, my family grew the fruit, berries and vegetables in our country garden the organic way. During my years in school and during my urology residency in Minnesota there was no time for gardening. However, when we returned to Northern California in 1973 I returned to my roots and began to garden again. In my Danville garden, I grew my vegetables and flowers in two separate areas. In fact, the roses and flowers around the lawn were separated from the vegetables by a solid six foot high redwood fence. When we moved to Alamo a few years later, I repeated the landscaping scheme, again keeping the flowering plants completely separate from the vegetable garden, proving once again, as one of my professors once said, that I was an extremely slow learner. This all changed when we moved, for the last time, to our present home in Alhambra Valley. By this time, I had read Geoff Hamilton's wonderful book on organic gardening and had came to the realization that the goal of the organic gardener was to grow things that pleased the eye and fed his mind, flowers and plants with colorful leaves, in the same beds that he grew the fruits and vegetables that nourished his body. So today, my organic garden is a place of tranquility composed exclusively of a series of small beds connected by winding enchanting paths covered by sections of wood and stone that allow me to wander through the garden without stepping on the soil. The beds contain a variety of dwarf fruit trees, flowering plants and vegetables all of which are randomly mixed together in no particular order, other than to provide sufficient space for each plant to reach its maximal growth potential. Many of the flowers were chosen because they attract honey bees to the garden. Honey bees are essential to a garden because they help pollinate plants like squash, melons and cucumbers that will not bear a crop unless the pollen from the plants anthers reaches the stigma of the plant. The buzzing of the bees also adds greatly to the serenity and peacefulness of the garden. My primary goal for the garden is to have something colorful in the garden to please my eyes as well as something nutritionist that I can gather for our kitchen table during every season of the year. It, admittedly, is easier to achieve this goal in the spring and summer than it is in the fall and winter, but it is rare that there isn't something flowering in my garden at any time and there always is new crop of vegetables for our table, irrespective of the time of year. In conclusion, an organic garden can be, and should be, something more than just a place to grow vegetables and other things to eat. Rather, with a little planning and foresight your garden can be a peaceful place of beauty and a place to shed the troubles of the day and receive inspiration for the days ahead. Peace and serenity are lurking between every plant and flower in your organic garden, trust me it will not be hard to find them.

Deep bed gardening.

In a previous blog I introduced you to the concept of gardening in raised beds. Today, I will discuss a similar gardening technique, deep bed gardening. A deep bed is a way to rehabilitate an extremely inhospitable soil such as one consisting mostly clay, adobe or sand. It also is the way to get the most bang for your buck if you have limited space for a garden; in this respect, deep beds produce at least four times more vegetables than a regular row garden. The idea of deep beds is to provide a soil that encourages plant roots to grow down through the soil rather than sideways as they search for nutrients. Since deep beds do not have paths, the plants are grown in relatively crowded conditions so that their leaves touch; thus, making use of every inch of garden space. Since the gardener never walks on a deep bed, and thus must work from either side of the bed, gardens of this type are usually 4 to 5 feet wide. Deep beds can be as long as desired but usually are limited to around 20 feet in length because of the inconvenience entailed in having to walk around beds that are significantly longer. In this respect, square beds 4 to 5 feet wide are most common. To make a deep bed, the gardener begins by spreading a generous layer of aged manure over the surface of the proposed garden spot. Additional soil amendments such as compost, earthworm castings, rotted leaves and organic fertilizers may be added to the mix at this point. Ultimately, the plants in a the deep bed garden will be grown in a mixture of the surface soil and organic material and fertilizers you add at this point, so error on adding to much rather than to little. Note, that because of the addition of these soil amendments, the surface level of deep bed gardens will be somewhat higher than that of the surrounding garden. This, of course, is a plus if you are dealing with a poorly draining soil. After spreading the aged manure and soil amendments, the next step in the project is to dig a trench about two feet wide, one spade deep and 4 to 5 feet wide (the width of your proposed deep bed garden). Place this mixture of soil with its added amendments in a wheelbarrow and transport it to the opposite end of the new deep bed garden. This soil mixture will be used to fill the last trench in the project. If you are constructing a small 4 to 5 foot square deep bed, simply pile the soil mixture beside the hole you are digging so that you can replace it after completing the next step. After digging the trench (I warned you that this was going to be laborious) use a fork or a pickax to break up the subsoil in the bottom of the trench. I recommend that you add an additional layer of aged manure to the surface of the subsoil before beginning this step so that it can be worked into the subsoil while you are breaking it up. Your plants are going to love this Garden of Eden you are preparing for them, I guarantee it! Before beginning the final step, add another 4 to 5 inches of well-rotted manure to the bottom of the trench. If you are constructing a small square deep bed you will have removed the manure covered surface soil from a 4 to 5 foot square section of the garden and broke up the subsoil with a pickax or fork. To finish the project simply shovel the material you removed to make the hole (in this case the "square" trench), back into what will now be a deep bed. You now have a small deep bed garden that will produce wonderful flowers and vegetables for years to come. You may construct a longer deep bed by repeating the steps described above over and over again until you reach the opposite end of the proposed garden. Let's say your deep bed garden will be 5 foot wide and 20 feet long. To complete the project you will construct ten 2 foot by 5 foot trenches side by side until you reach the opposite end of the garden. After digging the first 2 x 5 foot trench, dig a second identical sized trench right beside it. In this case, the amendment rich soil you remove from the second trench will be placed in the first trench. At this point a third trench is dug beside the second and the soil removed from it is used to fill the second. After repeating this process nine times you will have constructed an 18 foot long 5 foot wide deep bed. To complete the project fill the last two foot wide trench with the amended soil you initially removed and placed in the wheelbarrow from the first trench. Although admittedly laborious, the construction of a deep bed is easier to create than it is to describe. In any case, a 20 foot long deep bed garden will supply enough vegetables for the entire neighborhood. The reader will note that a deep bed is quite similar to a raised bed, in fact, I do not believe there is a dimes worth of difference between the two gardening techniques. Wonderful organic plants and vegetables can be grown in both types of garden. Deep beds usually are cheaper to construct but more laborious to create than raised beds but that may not be the case in your particular set of circumstances. So, do not fret to much while making the decision of which type of organic garden to construct. You really can't make a wrong decision as long as you are gardening the organic way.