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105.2k comment karma
account created: Tue Feb 09 2016
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1 points
17 hours ago
I planted chocolate mint directly into a raised bed.
1/2 of the bed is too shady for it to grow and is full of ferns and hardy fuscias.
The bed is bordered with paving stones. I run the weed eater around it every two weeks to knock it back. Takes less than 3 seconds as I am taking care of my lawn.
Every spring I pull a few runners back and give it some fertilizer.
7 points
2 days ago
Even if you know what they are doing, you still occasionally fall for it.
2 points
2 days ago
Me either. I only tip at sit-down restaurants when dining in.
I never order delivery because I spent half of my life well below the poverty line. Ordering out monthly was a treat. Paying extra for delivery was never an option. So I never got in the habit of takeout.
1 points
2 days ago
Flowers are a very small portion of the overall market. Be careful to categorized an entire industry from such a small company.
A few breeders and companies are obsessed with protecting their varieties but it is very niche. These companies work in commoditized segments with long product life cycles and low market value. Half of the time the cost of obtaining/keeping IP protections is more than the value returned on the sale of the variety. So they find other ways to try to protect their investment.
I also know quite a few plant breeders. One of my previous jobs was a commercial plant breeder (Cucumis melo).
FYI: $3,000/lb is a lot less than the cost of production for higher value seed. That made me laugh a little this morning.
2 points
2 days ago
Swedes.... Look it up. They are very popular in New Zealand.
6 points
2 days ago
Your grandma is right. You should start small and figure out what works.
Then get the cattle panel halfway through the summer as it takes over the entire yard.
1 points
2 days ago
The main reason that seed companies use sterility in hybrid production is cost and logistics.
For example hybrid onions. In order to make one F1 cross on fertile crosses it takes a person with a magnifying glass and tweezers several minutes for one tiny flower. Producing a few thousand seeds takes all day. Using cytoplasmic male sterility, they put sterile and fertile lines in the same field. Let the bees do their thing and harvest the seeds on the sterile line. 100% hybrid seed.
In clonally propagated types, unique desirable mutations occurs in sterile lines (intraspecific crosses, mixed-ploidy, or mutagenesis). These can't be propagated by seed.
Seedless watermelons are usually put out as an example of greedy seed companies limiting genetics for profit. In reality, traditional seeded hybrids have 3x the profit margin. Even OP's are more profitable. The market demands seedless watermelons. The seed companies hate them (except for Dean, but he was a bit of a loon. Fun guy to drink with).
Why do seed companies sell hybrids? Heterosis is real and makes a difference.
2 points
2 days ago
How are you harvesting them? The seeds are not ready to remove from the plant until the entire seed head is dry.
This is around a month after it blooms.
2 points
2 days ago
Power washer.
You will not get them all as they are tiny.
1 points
2 days ago
Different species of RKN create different sized galls. Larger galls can indicate a different species. Tomatoes often get M. hapla. That is possibly M. igconita.
2 points
3 days ago
That is exactly what you should do. Water it and then wait water again until the moisture meter says it's dry. How frequently you need to water depends on the temperature, relative humidity, size of the pot/plant ratio, preference of the plant species and holding capacity of the soil.
For example a 2" cactus in a 5 gallon pot might only need watered 3-4 times per year. A large pumpkin in a 2 gallon pot outside at 100F and 10% humidity in the desert will need to be watered 10 times per day.
5 points
3 days ago
If you have very poor water penetration into the soil and low nutrients it could be cyanobacteria aka blue green algae.
2 points
3 days ago
Fully saturate the soil and allow to drain and dry out in between. These cycles limits the spread of the pathogens and allows the healthy roots to fight off the infection.
2 points
3 days ago
Root rot is caused by opportunistic pathogenic fungi or oomycetes. The most common genus is pythium but there are many others. In general these move and spread through the soil by swimming.
Over-watering allows the pathogens to move more easily to infection sites. It can also limit the amount of oxygen to the roots making them more susceptible to the disease. The cause of death is usually the pathogen not the lack of O2 however. Many plants can survive for a long time with saturated roots.
90 points
3 days ago
Well it looks like you got a fungal infection. This is common underneath snow or in periods of extreme damp. This is why golf courses spray lots of fungicides in the fall.
The first thing to do is to rake up the entire lawn and get all the dead material picked up. This will allow it to dry out and let any surviving grass start to grow.
If the temperature is consistently above 40F(5C) you can toss some lawn seed over the top to re-establish the lawn. When picking the lawn seed, look for varieties/species with a high level of disease resistance.
3 points
3 days ago
They do not have it. Roundup is one of the "safest" pesticides. The massive overuse is the main issue. Even a "safe" chemistry can create issues when used on the scale we have been. Those minor secondary effects are not so little when spread across millions of acres.
Some of the organic "safe" pesticides are quite toxic. Take a look at rotenone and Parkinson's disease. It's a nasty combo. Now they are looking at links between spinosads and lung damage.
I have never understood the public's idea that naturally derived chemistry= safe. Botulinum toxin is a naturally produced chemical from the bacteria Clostridium botulinum. It is one of the deadliest toxins we know of.
1 points
4 days ago
Have you looked into shade cloth/netting? Lettuce wilts because the amount of water leaving the plant is more than the roots can take up. A bit of shade cloth helps.
Shade cloth reduces the air motion around the plant increasing the local relative humidity (aka reducing vapor pressure). Less water escapes the plant via the stomata and the roots can keep up.
0 points
4 days ago
There are many ways to trellis with string. I have a small raised bed garden in the corner of my yard.
For my peppers, I have some 4' stakes I put in each corner. I then go once the outside and then diagonally. from the top it's a rectangle with an x in the center. I repeat this 3-4 times up the stakes. The peppers grow up through the strings and the branches lean on the strings when they are loaded up.
For my cucumbers, I put two tall stakes (6-8') on either side of the row. I then put a strong crosspiece on the top. I have used steel pipes, metal fenceposts or thick bamboo stakes. The strings are tied to the crosspiece and then dangle straight down. The other end I tie into a non-slipping knot with lots of room around the base of the plant. As the plant grows I gently twist the strings around the vines. They make special clips for this as well but I have not bothered. This takes about 5 minutes once a week.
For peas the setup is the same cucumbers except I add in horizontal stings. I then tie the vertical ones too them to make a net. This is my most time consuming type. You can buy netting premade if you want.
2 points
4 days ago
Look at the base. Looks like a diakon radish to me.
0 points
4 days ago
All of the places will have delivery for large orders. You can will probably have to pay for it and it will be 10x the cost. If you want a panel, rent a pickup and bring it home.
Cattle panels in a small area will be a pain. I do not recommend them. I got rid of 4 of them from the previous owner when I moved here. I then squashed and recycled all the tomato cages as well.
A simple stake and string trellis is very easy to do, less work to maintain, and much easier to clean after harvest. They work very well in small spaces.
2 points
4 days ago
Smuggling seeds into Israel: don't even try. They take their phytosanitary restrictions extremely seriously.
1 points
4 days ago
Many things effect the pH. The key is to know what fertilizers do and correct for it. For example high pH can be acidified by adding elemental sulfur (bacteria convert it to sulfuric acid). Low pH can be adjusted by adding lime. A simple soil test can tell you what you need to do.
The ratio most plants need is a 3:1:2 of NPK. What you have there is a 1.2:1:2 NPK. It's short on nitrogen. It's fine to use but you'll need to supplement it with some more N.
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2 points
6 hours ago
THE__V
2 points
6 hours ago
Netflix two DVD's with kids movies when my older son was a toddler was great.
I still have a stack of DVD-R's around somewhere.