Posted on 07/01/2023 5:40:09 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
“The weeds will still be there tomorrow.”
LOL! Always!
Allergic to tomatoes? May as well make me allergic to my Friday Night Martini, LOL!
Hey! Good news! It’s a L-O-N-G weekend, right? RIGHT? ;)
Absolutely beautiful!
That mixed pot looks so TROPICAL! I’ll bet the bees and butterflies and Hummingbirds love it. :)
“...chitin, the exoskeleton of bugs.”
At least they’re good for SOMETHING! Ugh!
Funny thought: Lobsters and Shrimp are pretty much ‘the bugs of the sea,’ LOL!
There goes the neighborhood. ;)
If we ever took the time to examine just our own back yards, it would look like a Civil War Battlefield, I’d bet!
If it’s something you NEED and something that will push forward your ventures towards self-sufficiency, and it’s ON SALE, I’d snap it up in a heartbeat!
Reminds me of my BFFs daughter. She registered at our local Farm Store, Farm & Fleet, for her Wedding! I could NOT have been prouder! :)
I bought her the fancy dehydrator she wanted...and bought another one for us, since she had done all the research beforehand. It’s awesome. Presto brand. Works like a dream. No regrets. :)
The nightshade allergy is truly tragic, I tell ‘ya.
Yes .... long weekend!
No severe storms (or any storms) have popped up thus far - yay!
Enjoying a bottle of ‘Outlander’ Cabernet Sauvignon I was gifted yesterday ... it’s going fast! The Outlander book series by Diana Gabaldon is my very favorite & most of the knitting patterns I do are based on the costumes for the Outlander TV series. Since the garden is in pretty good shape & I do not have to water after the 1/4” of rain yesterday, I am enjoying some down time wine time :-)
Nature is absolutely AMAZING in its complexity!
Boy, am I underdressed 🤣
It would, including apparently Paratroopers or Space Corps! Totally SciFi!
Gangs of Tiny Worms Ride Electrical Fields to Hitchhike on Passing Bees
Nematodes have mastered the use of static charges to transport themselves up to a passing insect! It would be like one of us jumping up 40 feet to grab the strut on a cessna taking off!
Here is a nematode surfing the static up to a furry bee butt! (Beam me up buzzy!)
Snip..." So, the team set up experiments to investigate. They constructed a simulated dirt substrate and placed an electrode above it. When no electrical field was generated, no C. elegans larvae leaped. In the presence of an electrical field, however, the jumping behavior was rampant. The average jumping speed was 0.86 meters (2.8 feet) per second, which increased as the electrical field intensified.
Next, the researchers experimented with bumblebees. Like many animals, bumblebees can build an electrical charge as they fly and as they rub themselves against pollen-coated parts of a plant. So researchers observed what happened when these bees grew close to the worms.
Sure enough, the worms – which are not parasitic – piled on, likely to catch a ride to disperse through the environment. In some cases, this hitchhiking occurred en masse in columns of up to 80 worms. Scientists knew about this hitchhiking but did not know how the worms got onto flying insects. This research answers that question.
"Worms stand on their tail to reduce the surface energy between their body and the substrate, thus making it easier for themselves to attach to other passing objects," Sugi says. "In a column, one worm lifts multiple worms, and this worm takes off to transfer across the electric field while carrying all the column worms." More at the link!
So an entire "Company" of them transport up! These nematodes did not harm the bees, but there are other parasitic soil dwelling nematodes that prey on larval stage Japanese beetles and other assorted grubs in the soil. (Unlike Root Knot Nematodes!)
(** I keep telling my daughter not to walk around barefoot, hookworm and nail fungus and stuff! If you have to "ground" yourself do it on sprayed off concrete or something! )
I thought you might like that!
Bring back Cocktail Dresses! :)
I’m sure you look just fine in your Goodwill t-shirt and shorts, LOL!
(I’m wearing the same this evening.)
Yup:
“... gut issues like IBS* (irritable bowel syndrome), muscle aches, joint pain, ... and acid reflux/heartburn.”
Also inflammation.
*Seriously beginning to think I had IBS ... a good part of the issue was using Splenda for sweetening, which can cause gut issues. Eliminating nightshades & some other things resolved the inflammation- some arthritis in fingers went away, for one thing.
My Smart Home Automation relay is on it's way and it will run the existing tank sprayer pump that feed my drip system but from a bigger tank. I'll be able to set up any timing I want for watering.
My plan was to just turn power on to the pump manually in the automation software and have it set to automatically shut off in an hour. Don't need automation for something that simple but I'm just doing it to get my feet wet in the automation stuff for future use in the high tunnel.
Then I was on No-Till Growers forum and learned about Pulse Watering. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse_drip_irrigation
Wiki article mentions it being a good technique for germination which makes sense.
It's basically watering for 5-10 minutes, several times a day, every day. Not sure I buy the 50-80% water use reduction but the other items make some sense.
https://www.earthenry.com.au/resources This Aussie lady does it at 6am, 9am, noon, 3pm, 6pm & 9pm.
The pump, SMART relay(switch) and automation software would be a good way to mist plants to keep them cool like Paul R is wanting. I know there are a few market gardeners that manage to grow lettuce all summer by doing that. They water it with a mist every hour or so while the sun is high. They also use most heat tolerant varieties of course and it's leaf lettuce, not heading. They do it for their salad loving customers so they can buy every ingredient for a salad at one booth.
I have nicotania growing like weeds in my flower garden. So its not that. It looks closest to white salvia. Pretty sure. I will probably plant some of those in the ground and just a couple in each planter for height. I just had to keep looking on the internet as I need to do something with these today.
What I have learned about watering, is that as soon as you do so, it will rain, LOL!
But seriously, I ran my watering hose (with Rain Wand attached) into a watering can, and counted. Based upon my water pressure, if I count to a slow ‘8’ Each tomato or pepper plant will get about 1/2 gallon of water with each ‘8’- count. For flowers and other things, I use a ‘4’ -count.
Does that make sense?
It’s not scientific by any means, but that amount of water, coupled with the straw mulch I use, keeps the soil moist enough for quite a few days, depending upon the heat or if it is super-windy. The mulch makes all the difference in my soil moisture, though.
I would agree on the white Salvia guess. I don’t see it much around here - usually the red or blue.
That can take sun. Either way, that was a lovely score on free bedding plants! :)
We got another 2/10” yesterday before the clouds dried up - just shy of an inch for the weekend. Could have used more rain, but we didn’t get the severe winds that the eastern part of Misery did so I’m gonna call it good.
After it cleared up Mrs. Augie and I managed to get the weeds pulled out of the cukes and cantaloupes, and gave the vines a little help making their way up the fencing.
I thinned one of the carrot beds on Saturday. Mrs. Augie ran the thinnings through her juicer and ended up with a full quart.
These few rains we’ve gotten recently came too late to get a crop from the thornless blackberries that we planted along the yard fence, but it was perfect timing for the wild blackberries. We picked half a gallon yesterday afternoon and probably ate that many while we were picking.
The best patch is growing up around one of Pops’ IH B1210 spare parts trucks. I know that sucker is full of wasp nests and we’re out of wasp-n-hornet spray so we left it alone. I’ll pick up a couple cans of foaming liquid aerosol death over lunch today and we’ll go back prepared to defend ourselves from the flying demons while we pick those berries.
The rhubarb that I’ve struggled so hard to get established has finally decided to take off and be happy. We’re going to harvest enough of it tonight to make a pie for our Independence Day celebration.
I could use a nozzle pressurized by the tank sprayer now but wanted to get my feet wet with drip irrigation. LOL
Hardly any wind, ground is moist, fairly cool. I'm going out to work on high tunnel trusses.
This first one is now sitting on some new saw horses I made last week because making this one on the trailer was a major pain in the ... back.
When it gets hot or I get tired, I'm coming back in and putting Home Assistant OS on an old laptop(for now) to run this little relay/switch that will turn the drip pump on/off. Relay should be here by Fri and I have next weekend off to play with it. Might get two of those 275 gallon IBC tanks by then so I can use one just for the garden and quit using up our house water. LOL
These things are cool. They'll run from 12 vdc, 24-48 vdc or 120/240 ac and switch on/off the same variety of voltages. Lot of people use them to turn regular light switches or outlets into SMART things. I'll be using them to open/close high tunnel vents and drop down sides based on temperature inside the tunnel. I also want to get an anemometer so I can mostly close the vents/sides if it gets real windy. Gotta have automation since I work 12 hour days. As of this morning, 2,000 houses were still without power from the storms we had two days ago. Was 5,000 or 27% of the county.
Everything in the high tunnel will be 12 vdc and I have some 12 vdc based solar panels sitting here. Just need new batteries and a charge controller. The tunnel will be off grid and automated.
I don't want to come home to cooked tunnel veggies because we lost power.
12 vdc gearmotor(low rpm, high torque) for operating the vents and sides. Pulls 5.9 amps and the little blue relays can handle 10 amps.
RV pumps are 12 vdc. Aftermarket car/truck electric cooling fans are 12vdc and move a lot of of air. Small form factor computers are DC but not 12 volt(5 or 19 vdc) so I'll have to address that with a DC/DC converter. I see one for $12.
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