Weekly Garden Thread - December 2-8, 2023 [Does Your 'Birth Month Bird' Match Your Personality Edition]

December 2, 2023 | Diana in WI/Greeneyes in Memoriam

[Diana in Wisconsin]

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you.

If you have specific question about a plant/problem you are having, please remember to state the Growing Zone where you are located.

This thread is a non-political respite. No matter what, you won’t be flamed, and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked.

It is impossible to hijack the Weekly Gardening Thread. Planting, Harvest to Table Recipes, Preserving, Good Living - there is no telling where it will go - and that is part of the fun and interest. Jump in and join us! Send a Private Message to Diana in Wisconsin if you'd like to be added to our New & Improved Ping List.

NOTE: This is a once a week Ping List. We DO post to the thread during the week. Links to related articles and discussions which might be of interest to Gardeners are welcomed any time!

[Pollard]

I have wind direction - indoors - in the form of 0-5 vdc = 0-360 degrees (1 degree = 0.013888889 vdc) or 5v divide 360 degrees

0v = 0 or 360 degrees | 1.25v = 90 degrees | 2.50 = 180 degrees | 3.75v = 270

Due North

Nearly due North

Nearly due West (West = 3.75 vdc)

Nearly due East (East = 1.25 vdc)

Could have moved it slightly to get exactly 1.25 VDC for East - 3.75 for West etc but I was just verifying it reads smooth in the full 360 degree circle which it does.

The controller will convert the voltage to degrees as follows;

0.00 vdc = 0 degrees (N)
1.25 vdc = 90 degrees (E)
2.50 vdc = 180 degrees (S)
3.75 vdc = 270 degrees (W)
and so on

I'm going to have to learn degrees as on a compass. Would be easier if my house faced North but it faces S/SE.

Note to self; 315 = cold wind coming down the road(NW) - 180-270 = predominate winds(S-W)

[Pollard]

$160 after shipping. They’re $1,100 new but this one is who knows how old. The manual is copyright 2000. They still sell them and sell every single part for them which is a big thing these days.

[Qiviut]

Wow - super deal!

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

Pollard, from now on you have to include temperature wind direction and windspeed on your posts! You pretty much have the most expensive piece of a weather station. The rest should be easy, a clock, a thermometer, and something for relative humidity, and maybe one of those little white boxes to put them in.

Passing this on. Thirty years ago this would have been something I would have agreed to do. Now, not so much.

From Weather.gov

"Own a Weather Station? We Want Your Data!"

"Do you own a personal home weather station and a computer with a dedicated connection to the Internet, such as fiber, DSL or cable? If you do, the National Weather Service (NWS) and local television meteorologists would love to see your data! The NWS can ingest your frequently-posted weather data into our data and display systems, which can not only improve computer model data (and subsequent weather forecasts) for your area, but also makes the NWS and local television meteorologists aware of micro-climates (unique temperature, wind and precipitation patterns) specific to your local area. (Etc.)

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

It sayes tomato but my brain keeps thinking plum.

[Qiviut]

Lady Alice apples - ever heard of them? I had not. Aldi’s had them yesterday - I wasn’t impressed with their Pink Lady, Gala & Fuji selections, so I tried the Lady Alice. Boy, am I glad I did - just delicious ... crispy, sweet, with a tart edge. This is the best apple I’ve had all year, including the fresh ones I’ve gotten during 2 orchard visits. I am headed back to Aldi’s today to get a 2nd bag.

Here is an article on the Lady Alice which was discovered in 1979 at an orchard near Gleed, Washington, as a chance seedling and is a registered trademark by the Rainier Fruit Company. It is named after Alice Zirkle, a co-founder of the company.

WHAT ARE LADY ALICE APPLES?
https://www.eatlikenoone.com/lady-alice-apple.htm

From the article:

Here is a list of stores that I have known for sure have carried Lady Alice apples. Check with each store for availability.

Kroger
Meijer
Whole Foods Market
Schnuck’s
Sam’s Club
Costco
Trader Joe’s

... and Aldi’s (from my personal experience)

[who knows what evil?]

Anything like SweeTango apples?

[Qiviut]

I am not familiar with SweeTango apples - first time I’ve heard of them!

[Pollard]

Pardon the dark theme but it's too early for bright white.

Already have a temp/humidity sensor. I need to get a second one so I can have one inside the tunnel and one outside. I'll probably get a rain gauge I can connect to as well since I'll be growing outside the tunnel.

Anything can be logged. This is the last 24 hours but it can log up to 30 days or until the allocated space is full, then the older data gets pushed out. The blank spot is when I had the temp/humidity sensor unplugged for a couple of hours yesterday so I could use the 5 vdc reference voltage to test the wind monitor's wind direction signal.

I'm going to try and get Home Assistant home automation software to read data from the system using Modbus protocol. That way I can collect as much data as I want because it would get saved to my hard drive instead of the built in flash memory of the controller. It would be nice to know how much rain I've had for the year. Home Assistant also has much better graphics/graphs. Once connected, Home Assistant would be able to send commands too.

Some really nice dashboards can be created in Home Assistant with data coming from multiple places. Here's someone's weather dashboard with Weather Underground live radar.

Another one that's pulling in the weather forecast. You can add cameras. I could put a video camera in the tunnel and have Tunnel Vision:)

We Want Your Data!

I'll pass on that.

In fact, I don't plan on having the system connect to the internet at all so I won't be able to pull in the weather forecast etc. I have a laptop I can see that on. Some people go overboard with home automation and have their whole house connected to the web so they can control it remotely with their cell phone. I don't need anyone hacking into my system and closing the tunnel when it's 95 degrees etc. The whole point of automation is to have a self running system. When I get my old solar panels hooked up out there, it will be a self powered system too. Bad storms, when I'll want the tunnel sides to close due to high wind, is also when the power is apt to go out.

I access my system from here - http://192.168.1.5/setup.html and you have to be plugged into the network with an Ethernet cable to get to that url. The capability is there to remotely access it but I'm not doing that. Completely closed local system.

And here I go down the rain gauge - tipping bucket rabbit hole.

[Pollard]

Measuring rainfall amounts turns out to be fairly straightforward.

https://www.baranidesign.com/faq-articles/2020/2/18/all-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-choosing-a-rain-gauge

Self-emptying tipping bucket rain gauges are the most popular type of rain gauge"

From another page - The only requirement is that the magnetic switching contact of a rain gauge produces a momentary contact closure when the rain gauge registers its minimum water amount. This type of rain gauge electrical contact is called a “Normally Open” (NO) contact and is found on 90% of rain gauges on the market today.

Concept: Bucket fills up to the point where the weight of the water and design of the 'tipping bucket' tips it over and dumps the water. When it tips, it closes the Normally Open contact for a 'moment'(momentary contact aka push button). Each bucket full and subsequent tip is a certain amount of water that can be translated to rain amount in inches.

I haven't found that inches per bucket tip figure yet but it will depend on the make and model of the bucket. Say it's 0.1 inches. 10 tips would close the contacts 10 times and would be an inch of rain.

The system simply needs a counter which is easy because digital inputs can be a counter already.

Now I just need a tipping bucket rain gauge for the counter to count.

Here's where I'm running into a limitation in the controller software. I can create one counter for each digital input and I can set it to reset at a certain count but that's it. It would be nice to have multiple counters for a single digital input and have the counts reset at different time intervals. That way I could see rain accumulation for this week or this month, year etc.

I'm sure it can be done but it will likely have to be done by writing scripts in the BASIC programming language.

Easy peasy NOT(or simply contact the company and say "Can you give me a script to do this?")

Until I can write or get a script, I can record the monthly amounts in a spreadsheet and reset the counter every year.(once I get a tipping bucket rain gauge)

[Pollard]

Measuring rainfall amounts turns out to be fairly straightforward.

and expensive. $5-600 for most good tipping bucket rain gauges. Rainwise has one for $73 - https://rainwise.com/wired-rain-gauge The 8" diameter tipping bucket rain gauge meets NWS specifications for accuracy. Integrate the standalone rain gauge into your existing solution They also sell them with a data-logger

Better put a link to that in my notebook for next year because that's way down there on the To Get List.

[MomwithHope]

Nice pictures Pete!

[Pollard]

This thing has MS on the tail and there are none on the RM Young website that have that. There's a MA for marine and HD for heavy duty so I emailed them about it.

Evidently these MS units were specially designed for the National Buoy Data Center, part of NOAA/NWS and sure enough, a search for National Buoy Data Center images shows a lot of pics of the buoys with two of them on it.

That explains why the cable is so stiff. Probably heavy duty to begin with and has seen a lot of UV rays out on the water. Also explains why the wire colors don't match up with any manual I've downloaded from RF Young for their current offerings to the public.

I'm guessing my unit has ceramic bearings like they put in the HD and MA/Marine versions as opposed to stainless steel.

[Qiviut]

Ceramic - no corrosion!

[Liz]

Your tomatoes look deliciously edible to me.......
amazing what evo can do to a tomato's taste.

Baked Tomatoes

Just drizzle w/ evo, add combined bread crumbs, Parm, parsley,
chp garlic, fave herbs. Drizzle w/ more evo and bake golden.

[Qiviut]

Beautiful day, sunny & high of 61 degrees. Made it to the garden - woo hoo!

So I was digging up potatoes ... oh wait, I didn't plant potatoes ..... but I WAS digging up my dahlia bushes. These are the roots from ONE bush. My SIL walked across the field to see what I was doing & she almost fell down laughing at how large the roots were - I have a 2nd bush equally as large!

The goal today was to get all the fence panels down & all the plant debris (tomatoes, peppers, spaghetti squash, dahlias & weeds) out of the beds and hauled away. I got close - 2 fence panels left & 1 dahlia bush.

Tomorrow is supposed to warmer and also a very nice day, so I will be back in the garden again :-)

[Qiviut]

Tubers .....

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Yay for Tubers!

My Dahlia were really lush this season, too. But, I don’t keep them. $5 bags of Walmart tubers in the Spring are good enough for me.

We’ve had two days of 50’s temps. You’ll be proud to know that Beau had the mower out yesterday (mowing on December 7th?!) to round up leaves for insulation across the north side of the house, where the kitchen is located...and the only real ‘problem area’ in the house.

I still had Flat-Leaf Parsley to use on steamed potatoes with supper tonight, (Pot Roast - Yay!) and I have Petunias still blooming in the greenhouse in a hanging basket I never dumped into the compost bin.

It’s been a really weird Fall; we’ll most likely pay for all of this come January when we’re snowed in for a few weeks. ;)

[Diana in Wisconsin]

I’ve seen ‘Lady’ Apples in the grocery store. Wonder if they’re the same?

[Diana in Wisconsin]

In all of my tomato-growing DECADES, I have never prepped them that way! We both LOVE Stuffed Peppers, and I have two bags of them in the freezer that I saved for exactly THAT recipe.

But I’ve never stuffed a tomato. ;) I’ll have to try that next season.