WEEKEND GARDEN BLOGGING

We’ve been so busy battling our ongoing bamboo insurgency this spring that we decided to turn the planting of our raised beds over to our lefty lawn ornament, Gnome Chompsky. With blanket permission to do as he saw fit, Gnome didn’t wait for the weather to warm up; he promptly sowed a bunch of greens and tucked them in under a floating row cover to keep his seedlings snug at night and flea-beetle free (don’t let the raised-bed bugs bite!)

So, thanks to Gnome, we’ve already got some lovely spinach, collards, kale, lettuces, beet greens, bok choy, and a variety of more obscure Asian greens like tatsoi and gai-lan that our little metal migrant developed a taste for in his native China (and yes, he is a documented worker; I have the receipt from Target--although perhaps we should have him tested for lead.)

Anyway, Gnome had the foresight to order a 50’ roll of Agribon AG-19 polypropylene from Fedco along with his seeds, and we have been slapping our foreheads and asking ourselves “How come we never thought of this?” along with the even more obvious question, “Why did we deploy bamboo along our borders without devising a containment strategy?” (If only we had Monsanto’s chutzpah, we could just sue our hapless neighbors for property theft.)

The Agribon row cover offers frost protection down to 28 degrees, lets the rain and 85% of sunlight through, and keeps out creepy crawly crop busters (well, most of them, anyway.) Our raised beds have never been this productive so early in the season.

It just goes to show that we amateur agrarians have a lot to learn from our tiny Target transplant. There’s a misconception that farm work constitutes unskilled labor, but in fact, the poorly paid and often undocumented foreign workers who pick our nation’s produce have a whole range of skills and knowledge that are in woefully short supply in our domestic work force.

That’s why Senator Diane Feinstein has tacked an agricultural guest worker plan offering temporary legal status to 1.35 million illegal immigrant farmworkers on to the $193 billion emergency spending bill whose primary purpose is to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan:

Give Senator Feinstein an “A” for alliteration! Although Lou Dobbs will no doubt give her an “F” for facilitating the flow of foreign farmworkers across our ‘broken borders.’

Speaking of broken borders, maybe we should dispatch Gnome to deal with our rampant bamboo. As an Asian native, he might be able to negotiate an end to the horticultural hostilities. Or, we could just be appeasers, and cede the land to those grassy fascists. Apparently this is what we liberals do, according to Dubya.

Yeah, well, so we planted bamboo without a plan. At least we didn’t bamboozle a nation into an unjust, unwinnable, indefensible war. Good luck with that planting democracy thing, Mr. President—too bad your agricultural expertise consists entirely of hacking away at the brush on your ranch with a chain saw. Is there any form of recreation you enjoy that doesn’t rely on gas? I mean, now that you’ve given up golf to show your support for the troops?