rho @rho@fosstodon.org

The ground cherries are really going off this year! Love these little things. Super productive and a sweet almost tropical strawberry kinda flavor.

#gardening

Potatoes in bags, first harvest.

A couple of our plants saw a lot of insect pressure and started dying back a little early. So we decided to harvest them and see what was going on in there. We got potatoes!

I'm very excited to see the harvest from the plants that fared better with the insects.

#gardening

Update on the growing potatoes in bags experiment.

As the potato plants grew I would mound up around them by adding more soil and unrolling the bag. Eventually the bags were completely filled up. Now it's just a waiting game while they do their thing.

Trialing an analog tech upgrade to the coldframe. This spring loaded arm has a hydraulic piston that expands and contracts with temperature, opening the cold frame lid when things get too hot. A common bit of kit in greenhouses, but looks like it may work out here.

#gardening

One of this year's garden experiments will be trying potatoes in bags. I'm using some insulated reflective bags (and one dog food bag) saved from imperfect produce deliveries earlier in the year. I don't expect they'll hold up too well out in the sun, but figured it was worth a shot just to test the method.

#gardening

A very rare sight on the sunrise loop from GOES-16 this morning. ❄️

Having a Zigbee hub that I control has me much more inclined to have 'smart' things around the house. Local only, running FOSS, no required mobile app, no cloud service, no vendor lock, yet still using off the shelf consumer devices.

Sending out a few gifts from the garden this year. The pain powder power pack.

Pulled the final Orange Thai pepper harvest this weekend. Decided to experiment with smoking a drying for powder. A few hours on Mesquite then finishing them off in a dehydrator. They turned out great! Nice smokey flavor, but still has some punchy heat.
#gardening

Processed some loofa today! This is about half of what's left on the vine.
#gardening

On a related note, this live oak tree is nearly 2000 years old. The last time I saw it I was a young man. It gave me great solace to see it again and spend a short time among it and its daughters.

Ran down to a very empty gulf coast over the weekend; looking to de-stress and tune out for a bit. The weather was perfect and I've never seen the water so clear. It did help to recharge a bit, though I could use a week (or a month).

It was nice to step away from the glowing rectangles and do some light mechanic work today. Swapped out spark plugs and cables, and got the work truck back in service.

Picked up Superflux's "Instant Archetypes" cards somewhat on a whim. I was curious about their choices for mapping on these concepts. They are beautifully done, but I'm disappointed and somewhat surprised with how narrow the context is. May as well be "Archetypes of Big Tech Capitalism."

An XBee Zigbee module arrived today. Hopefully I can get this little thing talking with my local Zigbee mesh. Ultimately I'm aiming to control some low power devices, which seem to be oddly missing in the consumer Zigbee stuff.

Spent some time getting more familiar with Grafana configurations. Finally cleaning up the garden data display.

August is brutal here, but I'd like to be able to get fall garden starts going outside without cooking the seedlings. So I'm experimenting with a new lid and shade cloth on the cold frame. Initial tests are looking promising.
#gardening

Wiring up this little magnetic switching circuit breaker for an old radio, and I cant stop fidgeting with it. Something about the sound and the action, so nice.

Looks like this old Ten-Tec power supply still works! Testing out the endpoints to try and make up a cable to power my Ten-Tec Argosy HF radio.

Having to scale things up with the cucumbers! Fermenting this time; +3% brine, shooting for half sours.

#gardening #fermentation