@HumToTable@ai6yr
If you don't test, it doesn't infect people. I think the CDC is in panic control mode, not infection control mode these days. The main reason we got so much for COVID is everyone panic-bought stuff in March 2020. Before that, it was mandates to not wear masks as that would induce panic, after people panicked, masks were suddenly ok.
@ai6yr I look at an apartment complex in Iowa when I first moved there where everyone had built 5 foot high shelves in their units with all their belongings and furniture on the elevated shelves. Apparently 2-3 feet of flooding was pretty normal in that part of town (and of course no discount on the rent for the flood risk).
#CapeGooseberry or #GoldenBerry is growing well here, looks to be very drought tolerant & best of all produces about 1-2 servings of fruit every few days for months on end. So far, it seems to produce steadily instead of a huge crop and then nothing.
@meganL It is ok. The ground cherries we got in WI were better. But the consistency of production is huge. It is definitely filling in between other fruit crops with less need to eat canned or dried fruits. Also, the chickens don't recognize them as food with the husks on, which is also good.
That project appears to have stopped sending out seeds.🙁
@compost I have extra seeds (especially green onions) and sometimes plants. But is there such a thing as too many seeds?🤔
(I used to send them for "business" day at my kid's school, where they were popular with the kids--they had school cash they earned for good behavior in class they could trade for stuff other kids brought from home to "sell").
@melanie@compost
I usually only send seeds that were harvested in the past year or less. Some seeds will keep several years, decades or even millennia someplace cool & dry (I.e. a seed vault). The store packets have expiration dates so they put out fresh seed every year (stores used to keep stuff on the shelves for years until it sold). There shouldn't be germination issues with "fresh" (under a year old) seed unless it is handled incorrectly.
I have gotten unexpired seeds that wouldn't germinate and have grown from packets that expired a decade ago.
Generally, stores that keep seeds outside (in the plant area) are not as likely to grow as those that are inside (temperature controlled). One store even had rain in its seed area due to no roof in that section.😱
“Thousands of schools across the Philippines, including in the capital region Metro Manila, have suspended in-person classes. Half of the country’s 82 provinces are experiencing drought, and nearly 31 others are facing dry spells or dry conditions, according to the UN, which has called for greater support to help the country prepare for similar weather events in the future. The country’s upcoming harvest will probably be below average, the UN said.”
@pvonhellermannn We had no A/C at our school and never got a day off, even when the high was 115 F. But the school was designed to stay cool in summer. I don't think they design to keep buildings & outside spaces cool without A/C anymore. So our heat-resistant infrastructure is disappearing at the same time temperatures climb. Not a good combination.😭
@ai6yr It's $30/lb for nettles at the one local grocery that carries it dry. So fancy, gourmet, free meals? (It is awesome added to any brothy soup, including instant ramen).
@ai6yr The farmer's markets in WI used to have lots of local flower sellers, but I don't see them as much here even though we have better weather. They can definitely be grown here, but somehow it is probably cheaper to fly them in than to grow them locally.🤔
@ai6yr The flowers in WI weren't that expensive and much nicer than what you typically find in stores, so it can't be 100% labor. It is also infrastructure (the ability to mass produce and sell in bulk "standard" flowers at scale vs. the small growers doing everything on their own in WI with no way to sell nationally).
@meganL Until the 1990s, you could buy a house for the price of a nice car now (said house would be small). But that was before people were investing in mortgage-backed
securities. Now they are doing the same with car loans & the days of decent cash cars are fast disappearing.
Sadly, I see lots of places pushing the idea of renting everything (house, car, furniture and even clothes). Good for investors I guess, but bad for everyone else when it is no longer possible to own anything.
#Spring is here as the #AppleTree is starting to leaf out. Last freeze should be towards the end of May here, but it may have been last weekend (mid-April) by the weather forecast. #ClimateDiary
To us, the best mulch that you can use for the garden beds does not come from the garden center.
It is whatever biomass you have next to you that can be used and that is free.
This year I have used leaves from our trees in the garden beds and chopped weeds into the aisles.
Yes, it is labor-intensive to do that but I know that every year I have this resource available for free. So instead of sending this yard waste to the landfill and creating greenhouse gasses, it is best to find ways to use it in the garden.
I pull the weeds and use them for mulch in designated spots (where they are piled thick). As I am spreading them close to the collection point for weeds & plant trimmings instead of sending them out with the trash, it is less work for a healthier garden. I just leave grass trimmings & leaves where they fall 90% of the time.
I live in a high fire area, the recommendation here is to keep organic mulch to 3 inches (7-8 centimeters) thick or less. I find once the soil is active, it is hard to keep more than a thin layer of mulch due to rapid decomposition. Anything too thick for mulch should be buried or burned (in a fireplace) with ashes returned to the soil (e g. tree branches). No exposed compost piles! (Look up trench composting for something that is ok).
@MsHearthWitch You can grow ginger in a pot & get the tender new growth to eat instead of the hard, fibrous rhizomes that pass for ginger at the grocery. Also has potential to flower.
@ai6yr
This is the major difference between Texas & Iowa drivers.
Iowa drivers won't let them cut in, you are expected to find an alternative route as you failed to get in queue for your exit. (And they will start honking if you try).
Texas drivers come in two types: those that cut across 4 lanes of traffic less than 100 feet from the exit in front of those waiting in queue & the drivers who are waiting patiently to exit who let 3-4 cars cut in front of them before proceeding into the exit.😬
With Google search results having been awful for some time now, I have to assume that Google Scholar results are also less satisfactory.
While I'm old enough to have been in undergrad before the WWW, I wasn't in grad school before the 21st c. For those of you old enough, how were you doing literature review of journal articles back in ye olde days? @academicchatter#Science#AcademicChatter#Library
Ye old days involved card catalogs & knowing the general Dewey Decimal code for what you wanted, then checking out surrounding shelves for related books. For journal articles, you would find a relevant paper (usually from someone more senior in the lab) & then look up the referenced papers. Once you got the referenced papers, you would repeat the process.
Then we got Agricola & PubMed and could search directly for relevant papers.🎉
The first commercial GMO was the Flavor Savor tomato (engineered to ripen off the vine back when tomatoes were picked green & gas ripened). Quickly replaced by greenhouse ripened tomatoes.
(Then came crunchy when canned carrots, but it was the corn modified with peanut allergens that gave GMOs a bad rap).
It depends on the plant. Some plants (like tomatoes) are easy to insert genes into. Others (like corn) are hard & require special equipment not amenable to the home lab.
@ai6yr The parents of the kids I went to high school with. I think they bought what they wanted at that age. (When I was in high school, it was a brand new Porsche 911 when their son turned 16, or a Corvette).
People would think horticulture has nothing to do with accessibility, but it does.
Planting an Acanthus in this narrow spot was already a bad choice even if there were no wheelchair ramp there. You have to design your landscape for the projected mature size of the plant, not the size it is when you buy it.
But having it here and not constantly trimming it means you're just performing accessibility.
It's a beautiful plant but definitely in the wrong spot. There are so many other plants that could fill the whole planter without spilling into the ramp.
@Barbramon1@ai6yr Coconut oil is the vegan substitute for lard. But its best property is being liquid at room temperature/body temperature and a solid on ice cream.😉
@mjausson@ai6yr It's from an anime where they open portals with CERN (Stein's Gate?). Far too many conspiracies start as works of fiction that someone decided to take literally. I just want to be able to enjoy fiction without having to prove it isn't real some days.
