Posted on 09/30/2023 5:32:13 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
The lady who is in that apartment is renowned for her work with hummers. Website link and she has another webcam in Ecuador.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/hdesc7/im_carole_turek_a_70year_old_photographer_and_my/
Hmmmmm Ecuador one is not up right now. Link anyway.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZUHgXEGgic
A wet season has a lot to do with it, as that leaches nutrients out of the soil and BS’s are HEAVY feeders!
Mine did fantastic this season - best I’ve ever grown, BUT I had fresh composted tilled in at the start of the season, they were watered enough, but not too much, because we remain in drought conditions. I boosted them twice with straight nitrogen, via Blood Meal applied at the roots and watered in.
Here are the basics for growing great Brussels Sprouts:
https://www.gardeningchannel.com/brussels-sprouts-not-forming/
That sounds like it.
Thanks.
I think that maybe I’ll just pull them up. Seems like I can’t get them to overwinter.
Just a great poem to share, and one of my favorites:
To Be Of Use
~ Marge Piercy
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=fhlklE9wBSY&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fboingboing.net%2F&source_ve_path=Mjg2NjY&feature=emb_logo
Clean running water, but I am not sure if freezing kills them, otherwise you could grow them in Wisconsin! ($100/Lb
https://territorialseed.com/products/wasabi-wasabi currently out of stock.
And now I know...the REST of the story! :)
**For those who do not have the time, the Video is about a Wasabi Grower in Japan. He lives at the bottom of a mountainous valley in Japan. Japanese farmers have developed a method of growing Wasabi in shallow moving water. His family has built a walled area along the streeam that has a sand gravel bottom in which they plant and grow wasabi. They cultivate the stream bottom, set out protective pipe sections in which they plant slips from the mature plants. (It is a lot like growing water cress and t takes 2 years to grow the plant.)
Niche farming: if you have a spring on your property and you can grow water cress in it and it does not get terribly cold I suppose you could grow wasabi (if you can find the plant!) Territorial...when they have it...Sells it for $28 for their slips. The comments at the page for Wasabi at Territorial indicate that most people are treating it like a regular garden plant and fail. If you have a buyer actual wasabi sells for about $100/lb. (Crocus saffron goes for $14,000/Lb! Not sure what Truffles goes for but you can buy small oak trees inoculated with Truffle Mycelium...this would take a while I think!) I think the video gives the best indication of how it could be grown.
Had a bit of rain yesterday and last night. The rain is bringing in a cool front and the low for tomorrow and the next day is high 30s. Highs of 60-70.
Wasn’t it just 100 degrees a few weeks ago?
Pulled out seed packets of this and last year’s cool weather crop varieties. Added to what I just bought, I have 18 varieties of brassica/lettuce/greens and snow peas for Autumn/Winter salads. Doubt I’ll plant them all.
Just went out and cleaned up the little garden. Pulled all the slicer type tomato plants. Topped and thinned all the cherry type that are still producing. Kept one medium sized fruit type, Tappy’s Heritage, because production just recently took off. Six months later, Tappy says, I think I’ll grow some fruit now.
Chopped yellow leaves and over ripe green beans off and left brown pods to dry out from the rain. Once they’re dry again, I can pull them to save for seed and pull the plants. Left the shisitos because they have peppers and flowers and they don’t take up much space. I’ll interplant peas with them and they can take over the nice little raised bed. Probably throw some radish in there too and according to companion planting guides, they all get along just fine.
The remaining tomato plants are along two sides of the garden so that gives me plenty of space for greens. I’m going to direct seed by scattering seed in blocks down the rows and sprinkling fine compost over the seeds.
They’ll actually be taking root in compost mulch. The compost mulch is about 1-2” thick so the roots will be able to grow through that into the soil.
Got an operating system installed on my industrial grade PC and have the industrial touchscreen display hooked up to it.(tap to water) Going to set up a new pulse watering schedule to keep the soil moist at all times until the salad seeds sprout.
All this time looking at automation stuff for a high tunnel, I never thought I’d want to automate anything in the house but I now have a small LED light over the coffee maker that comes on at 4am, same time as my alarm goes off. The coffee maker is set to have coffee made by then. Now I just stumble out of bed and pour a cup and don’t even have to reach for a light switch that I can’t see. The LEDs are red so it doesn’t kill the eyes first thing in the morning. They turn off at 5:05am and I’m usually out the door by 5:00am. The red LEDs are something I had laying around from the electric sign business.
What I ended up with runs the same desktop system as this laptop so I'll have a completely familiar interface. It's Debian KDE and Debian Linux is the complete operating system that Home Assistant and OpenHAB will run best on. The KDE version gives me my Plasma desktop that I love.
They both have their own single purpose OS(based on Linux) but all it will do is fire up a home automation hub. No web browser or any other programs. Gonna need a music player and my music collection in the tunnel. I'll also have access to my cloud for the gardening reference. My notekeeping program syncs to my cloud so I'll also have that in all three places, my laptop, tunnel PC and my hosting where Nextcloud is running.
I've talked about local network only and prefer that for the most part but connecting to my own stuff via the web is fine. Still a closed system with no third party or SAAS.
I'm thinking the Northwest wall of the tunnel is going to be four walls, as in an attached shed. Will be a place for the tunnel PC and a potting shed or even a seed starting room if I insulate and add a little heat.
Home Sweet Home! Our local photo-gal should have some stunning Fall photos up fairly soon. If I know her, she’s tromping through the hills of Iowa County right now, snapping pictures. :)
Acht! And now I will have to deal all day with "Sehnsucht" for places I have never been and a life I might have lived!
(Yes, very good!)
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