A Tale Of Two Cities

While growing up in the 1940's, I visited my Aunt Dot and Uncle Herb many times in the bay area. They lived in a small home in the Oakland hills which had a magnificent view of the south San Francisco Bay. At that time, the city of Oakland was one of the best kept secrets in California. Only a 30 minute electric train ride from idyllic San Francisco, the city of Oakland was quite similar to its more famous cousin across the bay, but it had far better weather. In fact, arguably, Oakland had, and still has, the best climate in California. At that time downtown Oakland's Broadway was a thriving elegant place with everything a city dweller could possibly ask for, and then some. To top it all off, most years the Oakland Oaks routinely beat the pants off the hapless San Francisco Seals. In those days Oakland had a sizable black population which was primarily confined to the west side of East Fourteenth Street. There was an unwritten rule that blacks were not allowed to own property in the Oakland Hill or other white sections of Oakland. By today's standards this was an extremely racist policy but back then, it was accepted by most, if not all, whites as a necessity for maintaining the value of their property and, more importantly, their way of life. This all began to change in the late 1940's and early 1950's when blacks first began to cross the invisible barrier, which was East Fourteenth Street, and buy property in the Oakland Hills. Within a few short decades, with rare exception, Oakland became a black inner city ghetto similar to those of Detroit and Flint Michigan, Baltimore Maryland, Gary Indiana and Washington DC to name only a handful of our worst liberal hell-holes in our country. My aunt and uncle, seeing the writing on the wall, sold their Oakland home and fled through the Caldecott tunnel to Walnut Creek, as did most of their neighbors. But, returning to Oakland, this once thriving metropolis is now a unrecognizable shell of its former self with its boarded up downtown; crumbling inner-structure; and its corrupt, incompetent liberal political machine which lays ruin and devastation to everything in its path, without exception. It is my contention, and reason for writing this blog, that the transformation of beautiful prosperous Oakland into a impoverished wasteland by the blacks and their liberal handlers, represents a microcosm of what when wrong in America during the last century. Despite their supposedly good intentions, everything the liberal do-gooders touch turns to excrement, sooner rather than later. These ignorant despots will stop at nothing in their never ending goal to "make things right for blacks in America" while in reality they are turning America into a despicable third-world country, just as they have done to Oakland.

Pruning Tomato Plants

First, it is important to understand that there are two different types of tomato plants, determinate and indeterminate. Determinate tomato plants are bush varieties that grow close to the ground. Indeterminate varieties have vines that can be trained to grow upward. The name cards on the seedling you buy at the nursery will indicate which type you are dealing with as will the labels on the seed packages you purchase. Determinate tomatoes, which by nature grow as buses close to the ground, should not be pruned. For the best results indeterminate tomato plants that are staked; grown in cages; or trained to grow upward on twine attached to overhead trellises should be pruned. There are at least three good reasons to prune your indeterminate tomato plants. First, judicious pruning deduces plant diseases by increasing airflow throughout the plant. Second, pruning is designed to increase the amount of light which reaches the fruit that is developing on a tomato vine. Finally, it is easier to identify and harvest fruit from vines that grow upright and are pruned correctly. I might add that I believe tomatoes that are bathed in sunlight are more flavorful than those which are grown in the shade of a bushy plant. The primary goal of pruning is to remove the suckers that grow on the stems of the vines and make them bushy. Suckers grow on two areas of a tomato plant. Most commonly suckers appear in the crotch that forms where a leaf joins the main stem of a plant. Suckers should be pinched off as soon as they are identified to keep the plant from forming a second main stem and becoming bushy. Note that blossoms do not form at the junction of the stem and a leaf; rather, blossoms form on portions of the stem that are free of leaves. Blossoms usually form in clusters and, of course, should not be removed. The second, and much less frequent place for suckers to form, is on the end of a cluster of flowers. Suckers of this type appear as extensions of the flower cluster and also should be removed. Finally, in the pruning process, I always remove any leaf on the lower portion of the plant that looks yellowish and any leaf that touches the ground. I also remove leaves, or portions of leaves, as necessary to increase the amount of light that reaches the interior regions of the plant. The judicious removal of leaves to increase light and air flow throughout the plant. Admittedly, suckers may be a little difficult to identify at first for someone not accustomed to pruning tomato plants. Fortunately, there are several instructive videos on the internet to help you learn how to prune tomatoes. Just Google the subject and let the experts teach you how to prune your tomato plants.

Don't Forget to shake Those Tomato Blossoms!

I've written about this before, but a little reminder won't hurt. Whether avid gardeners or not, most people grow a tomato plant or two, often in pots on the deck or patio. If so, they are finally seeing a few blossoms on their plants and are anxiously waiting for fruit to set. Now's the time for a little assisted pollination on the gardener's part. Why you may ask? First, because if you assist nature you will get those delicious vine ripened tomatoes several weeks earlier than you otherwise would. Second, shaking the blossoms increases the number of seeds in tomatoes and by so doing increases their flavor. Tomato blossoms have both sex organs in the same flower. In nature fertilization occurs when the wind or the wings of a bee shake the flower and distribute pollen from the male stamens to the female stigmas. This is a rather hit and miss situations as you might expect. Later in the season, then each plant has hundreds of blossoms it makes little difference whether you intervene or not; however, early in the spring when each plant only has a few blossoms, assisted pollination can make a big difference. Here's how to do it. Female stigmas are ready to be pollinated when the pedals of the blossom curve upward. Assisted pollination works best if performed in the middle of the day, around noon. There are many ways to accomplish this simple task. If your plants are staked or caged, simply shake the stake or cage. If not, gently strike the blossoms with the back of your hand. If you are inclined to go high-tech, touch each blossom, or group of blossoms, with the brush of a battery operated hand held tooth brush. Anything seems to work! Happy gardening.

How to prevent blossom-end rot in tomatoes.

As the name implies, blossom-end rot (BER) is a deformity that occurs at the blossom end of all fruiting vegetables. It is particularly common in tomatoes, squash, and pepper plants. BER begins as a watery-looking area adjacent to the blossom. In time, the lesions enlarge, become brown to black in color, and take on a leathery appearance, which covers the bottom half of the fruit. While edible, the unaffected upper half of the fruit is small and not worth keeping. BER is not caused by a pest or parasite; rather, it is the result of a calcium deficiency in the plant. All plants require significant quantities of calcium to develop correctly, and BER is a sure sign that the plant is not absorbing enough of the mineral for the proper development of fruit. There are two primary causes of calcium deficiency in plants. The first results from a calcium deficiency in the soil. The soil simply does not contain enough calcium to meet the needs of the plant. Alternately, soil conditions are such (usually too wet or too dry) that the plants cannot absorb enough calcium to meet their needs. As usually is the case, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, so begin your program to prevent BER by making sure the soil in your garden is not deficient in calcium. One can add lime, gypsum, and eggshells to increase the calcium content of soils thought to be deficient in the mineral. Eggshells are an excellent safe source of calcium for plants, but it takes a fair amount of time before the calcium in eggshells becomes available to the plant. Lime and gypsum must be used with caution because both materials may make the soil too alkaline for ideal plant growth. I prefer to add ground-up oyster shells yearly to my garden soil at the rate four to six pounds per one hundred square foot to make sure the soil does not become calcium deficient. Now, the hard part. Even if your soil has sufficient calcium, the plants will not be able to absorb the mineral if soil conditions are not right. In this respect, plants may not be able to absorb sufficient calcium if the soil is either too dry or too wet. This is particularly true of the tomato plant, which should be managed on the dry side. Most gardeners tend to over-water their tomato plants. Tomatoes, as garden guru Bob Tanem advises, should be given infrequent deep watering only when they show signs (wilting) of water deficiency in the morning. Now what can you do if your mature plants are developing fruit with BER? At this point, it is too late to amend the soil, and changing your watering habits probably will not make much difference either once the fruit has set. So what, if anything, can you do to salvage what remains of the crop? Liquid calcium sprays provide the only known remedy for this gardening dilemma. Products like Bonide’s Rot-Stop can provide emergency treatment to plants that are, for any reason, deficient in calcium. There is some question as to whether the commonly sold calcium sprays are organic. Thus, it is best to make sure the soil has enough calcium from natural sources like ground-up oyster shells to prevent the condition from occurring in the first place. However, if your mature tomato plants are producing malformed fruit showing BER, a liquid calcium spray will provide a quick fix for the problem. You also can make your own calcium spray by filling a gallon jar with eggshells and water and letting the mixture steep for a month. Filter out the eggshells and use the resulting liquid as a foliar spray, one cup per quart of water. The problem with this way of treating BER results from the fact that it takes a month to produce the calcium spray; thus, unless you anticipate the problem well ahead of time and have the eggshell spray ready for use when you need it, you will be forced to buy a commercial product even though it might not be as organic as you would like. Finally, I should point out that researchers at the University of Nebraska have determined that calcium is not absorbed through the leaves of a tomato plant. They maintain that the only way to prevent BED in tomatoes is to make sure the soil, with respect to pH, water content, etc., is adequate to allow the plants to absorb calcium through the plants’ root system. This is an excerpt from my soon to be published book Gardening The Organic Way.

Who is Barack Hussein Obama?

This is a reality check for those who haven’t figured out who Barack Hussein Obama is! Surprisingly many, if not most, have not! This unfathomable truth is one of the mysteries of the ages for which there is no reasonable explanation. First, let’s consider the obvious. Obama’s mother was a communist as was his father. He spent his formative years under the tutelage of another famous communist Frank Marshal Davis. His early sponsors included the communist sympathizers Bill Ayers and his cop-killer wife Bernadine Dohrn. Obama sat in the pews of Reverend Wright's church for 20 years listening to his anti-American rhetoric. The good reverends famous “God Damn America” sermon tells you everything you need to know about this America hating bastard and his famous parishioner, Barack Hussein Obama, everything! Oh, I forgot to mention that more recently our first black president traded a low-level American Muslim deserter for five high level 9/11 terrorists. Well, he explains, we have to be sure that no American is left behind. In the meantime he does not lift a finger to free the American patriots who languish in the prisons of our enemies throughout the world. As my mother used to say "This guy is a real piece of work." Yes, there can be no doubt President Obama is an anti-American communist sympathizer who firmly believes that America is the root of all the world’s evils, and has been since our countries inception. As president he will do everything in his power to bring America to her knees! So far so bad, but it gets worse! Obama is not a Christian, not by a long shoot. No, he is a dyed in the wool radical Muslim always has been, always will be! This, of course, explains his hatred of Israel; his capitulation to the mullahs in Iran; and his failure to maintain sufficient troops in Iraq to prevent its takeover by ISIS after he ended that war. Obama’s religious bent may be the best kept secret in the civilized world. Yes, when all is said and done, Obama is an anti-American, Muslim communist, nothing more nothing less! American could never be conquered from a foreign entity but thanks to our one man one vote method of governance we have been annihilated from within. It took 239 years for this democracy to kill us, but at long last it has in the name of Barack Hussein Obama and the legions of mindless robots who will follow him to the gates of hell, but not back. If there is a hell, Obama and his minions will roast there until the cows come home, if not longer.

Why are there only male flowers on my squash and cucumber plants?

This is a very common question for which there no completely satisfactory answer. Most gardeners can distinguish male squash and cucumber flowers, which are simply a flower on a stem, from female flowers, which are attached to a small immature squash or cucumber. Gardener's also know the production of these plants can be increased by transferring the pollen from a male flower to a female flower with small artist's paint brush. But, what if there are no female flowers? First, not to panic! Normally the first 10 to 20 flowers on a plant in the gourd family are male flowers. Thereafter, these plants produce 10 to 20 male flowers for every female flower. The reason for this genetic discrepancy is unknown. The gardener simply has to be patent and let nature take its course, the female flowers will come in time and there in nothing one can do to hasten their arrival. For the sake of completeness I should add, that there are gynoecious varieties of cucumbers that produce only, or mostly, female flowers. These seedless types of cucumbers do not require pollination and thus are ideal plants to grow in a greenhouse. In fact, if they are pollinated the resulting fruit is deformed and bitter tasting. These F1 cucumber hybrids include Dove, Raven, Falcon, Luna, Neptune and Diva. This is an excerpt from my soon to be published book Gardening The Organic way.

Ronald Reagan's Biggest Political Blunder.

I believe Ronald Reagan was one of America's greatest presidents, maybe the greatest. However, all of the world's great leaders make mistakes, after all their feet are made of clay similar to yours and mine. Some, like Obama, make nothing but mistakes. In the case of Reagan, many would say that his biggest error in judgment was in agreeing to grant citizenship to millions of Mexican illegal's in exchange for liberals promise to secure our borders. We all know how that turned out, don't we? But Reagan's biggest mistake was not in agreeing to this foolish deal proposed by Tip O'Neill; rather it occurred years before when Reagan was governor of what was then the great state of California. We Californians are still paying for this error in judgment, some 50 years later. When I entered medical school 56 years ago, California had two large mental institutions, one in Newark and one in Napa. The Newark facility, where I served a rotation while in medical school at USC, had over 1,000 patients, the one in Napa was only slightly smaller. In those days the mentally ill were sent to these institutions for treatment and, more importantly, since treatment was most often unsuccessful, for long term care. Then along came the psychiatrists, the dumbest members of the medical profession by far. These mental lightweights convinced Governor Regan, who was all about reducing the cost of government, that the great majority of those institutionalized in mental facilities could be managed with psychiatric medications in an out-patient setting; thus, saving the tax payers hundreds of millions of dollars each year by eliminating the costs of institutionalizing them. There were three major flaws in this ill conserved plan. First, people with mental illnesses most often do not know they are ill; thus, they will not voluntarily return for treatment. Rather, to be treated, they must be confined. Second, not believing that they need treatment, mentally ill people will refuse to take the medications that keep them reasonably sane unless forced to by the medical personal where they are confined. Finally, even if they are willing to take their medications and do so, most, if left to their own devices will, sooner rather than later, come to the conclusion that they are cured and stop coming to the out-patient clinics set up to care for them. Any third year medical student, worth his salt, in the mid 1900s could have predicted the outcome of this flawed and silly governmental program and many of us did! However, reason did not prevail and the large mental institutions in California were closed, or greatly reduced in size, and the institutionalized were turned loose to wreak havoc on society. How so, you may ask? An estimated 70 percent, no one knows the number for sure, of those living under your local freeway overpass are mentally ill or outright insane. Similarly, the criminal insane, who should never have been allowed to roam the streets of America in the first place, make up a significant segment of our prison population. Finally, it has become so bad that the mentally ill are allowed to fly planes filled with innocent passengers into mountain sides. Yes, I know this latest abomination did not occur in California, but it just as well could have! In summary, Reagan's attempt to save money by closing California's mental institutions has been an unmitigated disaster! The resulting toll this flawed policy has had on society, and the mentally ill people it was designed to help, are inestimable! The primary lesson to be learned from this fiasco is that the mentally ill cannot care for themselves and must be cared for by society. Not to do so is self-destructive and inhuman in the extreme. In closing, let me point out that outpatient clinics which supply narcotics to drug addicts have been very successful in reducing drug related crimes and in caring for the drug addict. These programs are successful because the drug addict usually is not mentally ill. Rather, these unfortunates simple have an addiction and we as a society have correctly come to the conclusion that it is simpler, and more cost effective, to supply them with drugs rather than attempt to treat their addiction.