When my youngest was born we lived in a dry semi-desert climate where Black Widows were common. One day I got on my hands and knees to retrieve a toy that had rolled beneath her crib, and tucked in a corner on the underside of it was one of these. It could have easily been crawling on her as she slept.

100% germination success on this tray of tomatoes at day 6. The two that haven’t popped above the surface I can see the stem bent over just at the surface. I soaked the peat moss pucks in a very dilute food solution at pH of 7, put a tiny bit of rooting compound in each hole, didn’t go too deep with the seed (3/16”) maintained the ambient temp on the shelf at 70°F, and had the benefit of just a little bit of bottom heat from the fluorescent ballast on the light on the lower shelf. Each day I manually checked the weight of each puck and added a couple squirts of solution to the outside mesh to keep each one just moist enough to not be waterlogged. #gardenstr #grownostr

Lol

Dude. The line about a wife who knows the cost and still says “go bleed”. I lost it.

First sprout 🌱 of the year. 4 days from seed not bad.

Subnautica in Survival Mode. And Star Wars Squadrons in VR.

Here’s a good list of garden survival foods that were common in the Depression years, extracted from a YT video of the same name: 25 Forgotten Vegetables That Grandparents Grew to Survive the Great Depression 1. Rutabaga 2. Mangelwurzel 3. Salsify 4. Jerusalem artichoke 5. Winter radish 6. Parsnip 7. Hamburg rooted parsley 8. Turnip 9. Collard greens 10. Swiss chard 11. Winter cabbage or Danish boarhead 12. Navy beans 13. Kentucky wonderpole beans 14. Ground cherries 15. Field peas 16. Field corn 17. Storage onions 18. Cardoons 19. Skirit 20. Good King Henry 21. American ground nut 22. Runner beans 23. Dandelion 24. Lambs' quarters 25. Seakale #gardenstr #prepping #grownostr

The rare time I use iOS’ pathetic voice to text or Siri, all I can think of is the Blockbuster Video sized product development failure that someone at Apple is going to swing for. I mean, this system can’t even sort out basic context for the proper spelling of four letter words, and it’s clear whoever trained it doesn’t even know the proper spelling or usage of the words in the first place.

I’ve been waiting for 6 months for this night. Truly grateful for time, health, an end of winter, a little space, and good friends. And a full moon to boot! GN animals.

Here’s the plan this year. I don’t have a lot of space and no good spot to do a large garden plot. I did one offsite at a friend’s farm but it wasn’t practical to care for it properly driving to a different site every night. The small squares are stackable 2’x2’ frames that I can vary in height depending on how much soil depth they need for whatever I am growing in a given year. The large squares are 4‘ x 4‘ raised beds and the large rectangles are 2‘ x 6‘ raised beds. For the tomatoes I’m going to try 10 gallon nursery pots and for the peppers I’ve got a bunch of 3 gallon nursery pots that will just be shuffled around to maximize sun exposure. We have such a short growing season here that I’ve never managed to get my red bell peppers all the way to red with mature seeds that I can get to germinate the following year, and I’ve never been able to get wicked ghost peppers to produce fruit just lots of blooms. This year is going to be particularly short because I would normally be getting everything in the ground two weeks from now but the yard is still completely covered in snow, as are most of my beds. I wish I had a couple of 1000 watt high-pressure sodium bulbs in a room in the basement so I could keep the party going and just grow stuff all year from cuttings rather than seed. In the past I’ve had totally bagged rooms with up to 16 lights, CO2 generators, fully automated nutrient delivery and ventilation systems, the works. It would be cool to even just get one of those aero systems again with the six tubes that face each other like bleachers, with the light hanging in the middle. I’ve gotten pretty good yield off of those in the past. But those weren’t food crops 😉

#selfcustody #grownostr

I’m not starting much from seed this year, just big beef tomatoes, red bell peppers, and wicked ghost peppers. Everything else in the garden this year is going to be high nutrition root crops, tubers and curcubits (squash). I wanted to try growing sweet potatoes this year and perpetuating root stock, but they appear to be some sort of highly guarded food technology in Canada. Every outlet that sells slips is out of business and the one I did find in Ontario informed me when I sent in my order, after 2 months of correspondence confirming availability, that they won’t be filling orders this year. No explanation given, just “due to circumstances beyond our control”. They wouldn’t even tell me what happened when I pressed them on it. I’ve tried starting my own with store bought organic sweet potatoes, but I suspect the anti-sprouting compound they spray on them was the reason I couldn’t get them to sprout after several attempts. One experiment I am excited about is doing some totally unattended potatoes and onions at a local spot where tree companies have been depositing wood chips for years. It’ll be cool to see if I get any yield in the piles that have fully composted to soil. #prepping #gardenstr

My wife found the magic bullet for this. - lower cupboard with an upper and lower shelf - top shelf has the containers all nested - bottom shelf has a box that you can pull out that has all the lids in it. Works amazingly well. Easy for the kids to do when putting away clean stuff.

It’s also the magic bullet for turning anxiety into something powerful when you’re about to take on a challenge.

Kind of gives new meaning to the parable about the danger of building one’s house on sand.

Man that’s shaping up. Looking great!