Adventures in Gardening - Part 1: Seed Starting to Hardening-Off

This is my first year attempting to succeed with a community garden plot, and so far, it has been quite the ride!

But let me start at the beginning. Before even knowing whether I would, in fact, be able to rent at plot at the local community garden, I started seeds as if I were sure of the outcome - in other words, I went a little overboard. In fact, I started so many seeds that I was able to supply a good number of my friends with little plants, and fill up a good chunk of my community garden plot. Just imagine what I would have done if I'd only had my (north-facing) balcony to work with!

I ordered all my seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds - well, all except the ones I had left over from last year.

I started eleven different varieties of plants: Three varieties of tomatoes (Pink Tiger, Betalux, and Tiny Tim), two varieties of basil (Genovese Basil and sweet basil from seeds I saved in 2012), Purple of Sicily cauliflower, German Chamomile, two types of sweet peppers (Friariello Di Napoli as well as  Mini Bell Peppers), Oregano/Wild Zaatar and Ground Cherries. I started the seeds in peat pellets, and ended up with 200 (!) pellets, divided between the 11 varieties. This is what my set-up looked like:

 I watered the pellets, distributed the seeds, labeled everything, and covered it with plastic wrap to create a little green-house of sorts.

This was on March 11, which, in retrospect, turned out to be a little early for Wisconsin. My plants germinated very quickly - the cauliflower after only two or three days, the ground cherry within about two weeks, and everything else somewhere in between - and I had pretty decent germination rates, ranging from 100% for some plants (such as the Pink Tiger tomatoes or the cauliflower) to 80% (Tiny Tim tomatoes, though these seeds were from last year). This meant that by March 30, things looked like this:

As you can see, some plants are already in slightly bigger pots. Those were my cauliflower plants, which germinated really quickly and grew surprisingly fast. Despite the fact that I had them under grow lights, and kept the lights really close to the plants, some of the cauliflower plants became slightly leggy. The same was true for the Pink Tiger, which exhibited their most pronounced characteristic (seemingly uncontainable growth!) from the very beginning. The following picture from April 8 shows how big the cauliflower and Pink Tiger seedlings had gotten in just under four weeks.

The following picture is a close-up of one of the Pink Tiger seedlings on April 12 - four weeks after I had planted the seeds! Given this rate of growth, I had to start transplanting most of the seedlings by mid-April, which caused several problems. For one, I had to do this outside, in order to prevent a huge mess in my apartment. I almost lost some of the tomato and basil seedlings to some cold wind. Even though the day I chose for transplanting the temperature was in the mid-40s (and I assumed the plants would be able to handle this for a short period of time), the wind was much colder and the basil and tomato plants quickly became limp and looked almost wilted. They recovered completely after I brought them back inside, but I was pretty worried about them.

The second problem, after the shock of exposing the baby plants to the cold too quickly, was one of space. The bigger pots took up much more space than the peat pellets. I gave away the first few batches of plants around April 25, much sooner than I would have wanted, and before they were fully hardened off. 

The photo below gives you a pretty good impression of why I had to make room for the remaining seedlings to be transplanted. It was taken on April 26, a good three weeks before the average last day of frost in Wisconsin. Some of the tomato plants are already getting very tall, and the seedlings that are still in the peat pellets are quickly running out of room to grow. Because the plants grew so vigorously and I had limited space, I also had a few issues with mold/mildew developing on the peat pellets. I was worried about this causing harm to the plants, from damping off to other fungal infections, so I sprayed the pellets with garlic water about once a week (crush several garlic cloves, soak them in water for at least two hours, strain the liquid and fill it into a spray bottle). Using garlic water too often can do harm, as the fungicidal qualities of the garlic can also harm beneficial soil organisms, but it worked well when applied about once a week. I also set up a box fan to blow air over the seedlings and thus create an airflow for a few hours a day.

I started hardening off the plants in ernest around May 3. Honestly, that was a little too early, but because of my limited space, I did not have a choice. That's another reason I will start my seeds about two weeks later next year. Below is a photo of the plants on May 3, on my balcony. 

They had to stay in that location until May 10. I was out of town for most of that week, and in that time, some of the tomato plants developed some sort of problem. Their leaves became yellow and spotted, which looked a lot like early blight - not a good sign at all. I removed the affected foliage and sprayed the plants with a water-oil-baking soda mixture, which is supposed to kill the fungus causing early blight. Unfortunately, I think I went overboard and made the tincture too strong - which seemed like it was effective against the disease (blight), but also led to the demise of several other tomato leaves - they seemed to dry out from contact with the baking soda-mixture.

I Part 2 I will tell you about planning my garden plot, transplanting my plants, and starting additional varieties from seed.

On Shame

Here's the thing: Shame is not a bad emotion. When do we feel shame? We feel shame when we have hurt someone, when we have done something bad or mean or hurtful, and we finally realize that it was just that. Shame is a social emotion - we feel it because we have harmed someone else and we feel bad about doing it. It is a "good" emotion in that it might prevent us from doing the same harmful thing in the future.

However, shame is also an emotion of social control. We might feel shame not because we have done something bad, or we realize that we have, but because someone else thinks what we did was bad. This might be because our actions were, in fact, hurtful or harmful or cruel, and we are just unable to see it, but we do not want to look bad, so we feel shame, or it might be because what we did was not actually "bad", but is still considered unacceptable to somebody else.

If you are a woman, chances are you have spent most of your life feeling ashamed for something. Sure, we also shame men (for all kinds of actions or inactions), but we specifically enjoy shaming women. You know all these magazines calling out celebrities for becoming fat or old or for wearing the wrong clothes or for being caught naked? Of course, these articles are not really about them - they are there to put us, the readers, in our place. And they are almost always about women. It's women, even famous women, who are bad mothers, who dare to look less than perfect, who sleep with people younger than they are (this has never been a problem for men), who screw up. We judge them, and at the same time, we feel ashamed of our own imperfections.

If you are a woman, you have probably grown up with a feeling that you are constantly being watched, constantly being judged, and that you are not "making the cut" in one way or another. You should be ashamed. 

Women are told to be ashamed of how they look. Ashamed that our bodies grow hair in places they "shouldn't". Ashamed that their bodies bleed once a month (oh, the humiliation of getting your period at the wrong time and discovering a bloody stain on your clothes!). Ashamed of not being a size zero. Ashamed of getting older. Ashamed of wrinkles and loose skin. Ashamed of wobbly thighs and wobbly arms. Ashamed of pregnancy scars on our tummies (think about all the advice we get on how to get a "bikini body" - and the underlying message is: Don't you dare wear a bikini when you don't look like this!). Ashamed of being caught without a bra (your breasts MOVE when you walk!!!), without make-up, in sweat-pants, on a "bad hair day".

We are told that we should feel ashamed of how we feel. Ashamed of feeling desire or lust. Ashamed of feeling hunger. Ashamed of feeling rage, even ashamed of wanting to feel pleasure. We are told to feel ashamed if we don't look "fuckable", and ashamed if we dare to actually want (or have!) sex. Ashamed of loving the wrong person, or loving in the wrong way. Ashamed of being too emotional and hysterical. Ashamed of being unemotional, frigid, and cold. 

We are told to feel ashamed of our relationships. Ashamed that we don't have a boyfriend. Ashamed that we don't want a boyfriend. Ashamed that we have too many boyfriends. Ashamed that we have - or want - girlfriends. Ashamed that we do not want monogamy. Ashamed that we do want monogamy, but at the wrong time or with the wrong person. Ashamed that we are not married yet. Ashamed that we got married too soon. Ashamed that we are divorced. Ashamed that we are the ones who asked for a divorce. Ashamed that we are not the ones who asked for a divorce. 

We are told to feel ashamed of our performance "as women" (yes, being a "woman" is a lot of work!). Ashamed that we are not feminine enough. Ashamed that we are too feminine. Ashamed that we are not serious enough (Really, you cannot be taken serious in a job like this if you use pink, sparkly pens!). Ashamed that we are too serious ("Smile!"). Ashamed that we do not want children. Ashamed that we do want children. Ashamed that we are not stay-at-home moms (After all, what kind of mom would leave her kids with strangers?). Ashamed that we are stay-at-home moms (After all, what kind of lazy slob would sit at home all day and let her husband do all the work?).

We are told to feel ashamed of getting older, of wanting to have sex, of being "inappropriate", of being too loud, too fat, too ugly, too hairy, too bitchy, too angry, too masculine, too girly, too slutty, too prudish, too nerdy, too vain.

We feel shame for never being enough. Not smart enough, not pretty enough, not thin enough, not sexy enough. You know all those blogs and magazines and books out there touting the Perfect Woman, the thin, athletic (but not too strong!), well-groomed (but not vain!), blond, white, smart (but not too smart!), successful (but not too successful!) mother of two (you might get away with one or three, but that's really all that is acceptable, and you might already be pushing it!) kids who works a high-powered job as some sort of important (but not too important!) semi-manager in a big financial company. She does all her own housework (and her house is always clean and spotless!), she cooks dinner from scratch every day, on the weekends she does her own gardening and redecorates the house. She throws elaborate dinner parties and birthday parties, and every night, she is shaved, and oiled, and perfumed, and decked out in lingerie, ready to pleasure her husband (because, of course, sex is a duty, so she performs it well, but she is a good woman, so she does not, herself, feel anything as dirty as desire or lust). If your life does not look like hers, you are taught to feel ashamed. You have failed, as a woman. If you had only tried harder or worked harder or been less lazy or less ugly or less outspoken or less ambitious, you would be her. But you are who you are, never enough and still somehow too much, and so you should be ashamed. And we are. If there is one emotion every woman on this planet has felt more times than she can count, I guarantee you, it is shame. Shame for who you are. Shame for how you feel. Shame for what you want.

Sex, Age, and Objectification

I know I haven't written a blogpost in a long, long time, but several things happened this week that made me decide to take up the pen ... well, the keyboard ... once again.

For some reason, this has been the week for me to come across articles about sexism in all its forms in short order.

On one side, there is what could be called "traditional sexism", as maybe exemplified by this article by Ashley Judd. She talks about the kind objectification that we generally think of when people mention sexism. The sexually explicit threats and taunts. A woman says something you don't want to hear, or behaves in ways you don't want her to behave, so you use this tactic to "put her in her place". Ever wonder why the worst thing you can call a woman is ... well ... a woman (albeit, of course, a "deviant" woman or an "ugly" woman.) Or - worst of all - you could refer to her as part of the female anatomy. This, of course, could be seen as the culmination of successful objectification - you have turned her from a complete human being with wants, needs, flaws, dreams, skills, and wishes, into a body part you threaten to use as you please. Not only have you dismembered her and taken away her agency, but furthermore you have reinforced why you have the right to do - because she is, after all, just a woman, and if and when she misbehaves, you know just what to hold over her head to make her shut up.

Of course, this particular article also serves as a good starting point for thinking about the specific nature of online interactions, and the intersection between online "life" and sexual harassment. In other words, would all these people using sexualized and gendered threats and insults online feel equally comfortable saying the same words to a woman's face - and what would be less disturbing: if the answer to this question was yes, or if it was no? Has social media, and this new way of interacting with each other, propagated this kind of behavior, or are we simply seeing more unfiltered thoughts, but thoughts that have always been there and have always been widespread, even before the advent of the internet? 

From there, it is only a short step to thinking about human nature. What is it that leads us to think it is ok to treat others this way? Why do we think we can violate another human being's bodily autonomy and integrity with threats of violence, or actual violence? And where in our messed-up history have we gotten sex and violence mixed up so profoundly? How did we end up taking something like sex, which is supposed to be about respect, appreciation, pleasure, and intimacy, and have turned it into one of the nastiest weapons, one of the most common and most effective ways to violate, humiliate, and degrade another person. I know many people, especially feminist authors and scholars, have said that rape and sexual assault are not actually about sex but rather about power, and that makes sense. On the other hand, we are deliberately using sex as the means to establish this power structure - which does indicate that, as a species, there is something fundamentally wrong with us. 

Of course, you can't talk about degradation, humiliation and violence without at least acknowledging how we treat other, non-human beings. In other words, the only way to end the objectification of other humans may be ending the objectification of non-humans first. If it is ok for me to objectify a cow simply because she is a cow and I am not, who is to say that I am not going to objectify another human being by the same logic (for example, because she is female and I am not)?

In addition to all these already "rosy" thoughts, I came across an article written a few months ago about the complicated intersection between sexism and ageism. 

Everyone knows that the rules of aging are different for men and women. Think what you may about Madonna, but she is not doing anything that men of her age haven't been doing for decades - and nobody cares. Mick Jagger or Robert Redford can be "sex symbols" way past their 60s, but if a woman in her 50s presents herself as a sexual being, she gets ridiculed. Now you can argue that this is just Madonna, and that she is not the norm when it comes to middle-aged women (which is true), but in the end, that is not the point. The point is that we have a double-standard for men and women. This double-standard starts in early childhood and remains in place through young adulthood and middle-age all the way into old age. The biggest perfidy, though, is how the double standard changes over the course of our lives.

What does this mean? It means that, as a young girl, you are supposed to be well-behaved, pleasant, calm, clean and quiet. As a young woman, you are supposed to be attractive (but God forbid you actually have sex! Make men fantasize about having sex with you, but don't express desire yourself or you are a slut!), sexy, smart (but not too smart or it interferes with your attractiveness!), and once you enter middle-age, you are supposed to disappear.

What does that mean, you may wonder? It means that, as soon as your body does not (or no longer) conform to this standard of youthful beauty, because it is too "ugly", too "fat", or too "old" (see how you will always be "too" something? Too smart, too loud, too bitchy, too fat, too old, too boring, too ... fill in the blank). If you think about it, this demand for women past a certain age (what that exact age is fluctuates a bit, but seems to hover somewhere between 38 and 42) to become invisible is simply the continuation of the sexual objectification is described above. Your body, the object at someone else's disposal, is not supposed to belong to an autonomous being with wishes and desires. What could drive home the point about your worth being tied to an impossible standard of youthful beauty better than the experience of having your worth disappear overnight. We all need to be seen. It is, I would argue, one of the most fundamental needs of human beings - to be seen for who we are. What does it tell you about power structures in our society if we can take away another person's visibility for no reason other than that they have lived for more than x number of years? What could teach them about their inherent worthlessness better than ridicule as an accepted response to the expression of their own needs and desires?

If you read Robin Korth's essay that I linked to above, you may have been surprised by the cruelty and callousness with which the man she calls Dave informed her of her unacceptability as a sexual being. She, he told her, did not conform to his standard of beauty, because she was too old. He informed her what she could do to make herself look younger - and thus more desirable to him.  She writes: "He was totally oblivious to the viciousness of his words. He had turned me into an object to be dressed and positioned to provide satisfaction for his ideas of what female sexual perfection should be." This could be the textbook definition of objectification: for him, her body is an object he has the right to use for his pleasure, and if she does not make it appealing (that is to say, young) enough for him to find her acceptable, she immediately becomes invisible. 

What is, then, the logical consequence of the way we teach young women that their worth is defined by their sexual desirability and then teach them that their worth will disappear when they dare to age? I am sure you guessed it - they will try everything in their power to keep their bodies "young". Plastic surgery, body "re-contouring", breast "enhancements" ... all these are natural consequences of objectification. To add insult to injury, women who torture themselves with botox and surgeries only end up being ridiculed for it. The ultimate punishment: demean human beings for trying to conform to a standard that was impossible to reach in the first place.

So what should we take away from this? Is there some great lesson to be learned from Ashley Judd and Robin Korth? Maybe. If so, the message is that true beauty comes in many shapes, forms, sizes, and ages, and those who are superficial enough treat others this way are not worthy of your time and affection anyway. How much more satisfying and rewarding our relationships would be if we simply related to each other as individuals, truly saw others in their all their unique, glorious, flawed beauty, and treated each other with dignity, kindness, and respect.

So in the end, I think one of the root causes of all this cruelty and objectification we encounter even (or especially?) in what should be our most intimate (and thus safe) relationships has to do with who we view other people.

To put it simply, our lives have become so economized, so governed by business transactions, that we have become unable to relate to others without applying the same principles. A relationship, especially a romantic relationship, thus becomes a business deal. What can you do for me? What can I get out of this? We evaluate and we judge. Instead of trying to connect, for the sake of closeness and intimacy, we connect because we want to own, because we want to possess, because we don't want to be alone, because we want to feel validated, because we want another person to tell us we are loved and important and special. We see them as an investment, thus we basically see them as an object to be used. One of the ways this mindset materializes is through objectification, as discussed above. We - especially women - are trained to "trade" sex for affection. We are trained to not actually want sex, but to use it as a bargaining chip. Men are told that they are allowed to judge the "merchandise" they are investing in. Of course, this has been so internalized that women judge and evaluate other women in the same way. We have accepted that youthful, conventional beauty is our currency, and thus we judge our own and each other's worth based on it.

So how can we get away from this? I have no answer. I know that it took me many years to see these things. It took me many years to realize that it is ok not to want what most others seem to want. It took me many years to realize that the only relationships - may they be friendships or romantic connections or both - worth having are the ones that are based on respect, freedom, and trust. In fact, we are so conditioned to think our worth depends on being partnered that we rarely stop to examine why we should want to form close, intimate ties with someone. Is convenience and convention really a good basis? Shouldn't we try to create a life that we are simply happy to live, on our own and according to our own rules so that, when we choose to connect deeply, to share ourselves intimately, we know we are doing it out of affection and not out of fear? 

These are not easy questions to ask ourselves, and engrained behaviors are hard to shake - they are hard to see. Furthermore, who wants to admit to themselves that they are doing things simply because they have been trained to? I had a couple of long relationships back to back when I was in my early and mid-twenties, and after the last one in that string ended, I decided to do some serious soul-searching. Why was it that I thought I should be out looking for someone, when I was really quite happy on my own? Why did I feel guilty for not dreaming of marriage and children? Why did I feel like others pitied me? Did I pity myself? I realized, after much reflection and meditation, and hours spent writing down what I wanted and felt, hours spent acknowledging, maybe for the first time, some of the wishes and desires that I had kept hidden from myself, that I did not pity myself. I did not feel incomplete, but I did feel like I should be feeling these things. Messed up, I know. I decided then and there that I would never again enter a relationship out of convention or because I wanted to avoid the endless questions ("Have you found someone?") and pitying looks. I promised myself that I would only choose to share myself for the right reasons from now on - out of affection, love, and the wish to connect deeply with that particular individual. I have stuck to this rule ever since, and my life has been that much easier and my connections with others that much more fulfilling. Would a change in perspective, similar to the one I had, help us end objectification in all its forms? Probably not by itself, but it would put us on the right track - towards seeing others as individuals with gifts, flaws, desires, wishes, and traumas, and it would ensure that we see them as souls to connect with because of what we have to give, and not because of what we hope (or expect) to get.