Garden Update – January 16, 2011

The two varieties of pepper plants that had not sprouted yesterday sprouted today.  (Ancho 101 and California Wonder)  I was worried that I killed them by cooking them in the 105 degree F environment of my new seed starter box, but all 4 plants were poking through the soil tonight.  Now my window sill is full, I have to get my grow lights functional and mounted this week.  (need a ballast for the second fixture, and some way to mount everything)



I planted 8 more pots, 2 each of the following:

Fooled You Jalapeno Hybrid

Napoleon Sweet

Yummy Orange

Serrano Tampiqueno

These were put in my homemade newswpaper pots inside plastic bags, then overwatered (not on purpose), and placed in the new seed starter box.  I’ll leave the plastic bags open a little to vent off moisture until the excess water is gone, then close them up until the seeds sprout.

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Pots from Newspaper

I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve been buying peat pots to plant my seeds in.  Using newspaper to make a small pot is so quick and easy, this is the way to go.  I made mine a little bigger than other people, but that is the way I do everything!  Click through the pictures, descriptions are in the titles.

1: Full Sheet - folded in half

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Sims and Glenda’s 40th

We celebrated Amber’s parents 40th anniversary tonight.

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Grow Light Modification

I’m giving my grow light more horsepower this year.  I did a little research on fluorescent bulbs and learned that the bulbs will withstand higher current flow, which results in higher light output.  This higher output comes at the cost of higher energy use and lower bulb life.  A common way of achieving this is ‘overdriving’ the bulbs by rewiring the fixture.  There is lots of information on the interwebs about this, and it is pretty confusing because most of the information seems to be written by people who have accomplished something without understanding what is really going on.  Here is my explanation:

Fluorescent bulbs have the property that they conduct better as they heat up, so it is critical that the current be controlled through the bulb.  This is the job of the ballast.  Traditionally this was done by taking advantage of the fact that standard electricity changes direction 120 times per second and the properties of an inductor to limit fast current changes.  These types of ballasts are known as magnetic, and are the cheapest ones you can buy today.  Modern times brought electronic ballast that are more efficient because they increase the switching frequency to send more pulses to the bulbs per second.

Using an electronic ballast, it is possible to drive a single bulb with the output intended for 2 bulbs (or 3 or 4).  The cheapest (initially) way to accomplish this is to buy 2 cheap shop light fixtures from Home Depot ($10 each), remove the ballast from one of the fixtures and install it in the other fixture.  Rewire both ballast so that each ballast (designed to drive 2 bulbs) drives only one bulb.  So for $20, you have one fixture with 2 ballast, and one fixture that is now a skeleton.  For the fixture that is cannibalized, I’m going to use a single new electronic ballast designed for 4 bulbs, and wire it to power the 2 bulbs.

Notes: Continue reading

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Garden Update – January 15, 2011

Out of the 10 pepper plants I started from seeds 12 days ago, 6 have sprouted.  I moved them to a window sill, and placed the others inside my new seed sprouter box gadget.

Karma – both sprouted

Ancho 101 – none sprouted

Sweet Bell – both sprouted, very small

California Wonder – none sprouted

Mini Red Bell – both sprouted

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Cheap Seed Starter

Rather than buy a heat mat, I wanted to build something instead.  My first plan was to build a wooden box and insulate it, but then I ran across this styrofoam cooler.  I built a little shelf out of scrap plywood, with a 25w lightbulb mounted near the center.  The only thing I didn’t have on hand was the cord plug.  I’ll put my pots on the wood shelf, then cover the top with the lid, or maybe some plastic.

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3 Terrible Things from 1913

There were 3 huge ‘events’ that occurred in the USA in 1913 that have a great impact on our lives today.  Any one of them alone was a big deal, a very big deal, but the fact that all three of these things happened in the same year blows my mind.

16th Amendment: Income Tax – You know the saying, “the only sure things in life are death and taxes”, well, starting in 1913, the federal government obtained the unprecedented power to tax individuals on their income.  This is so wrong on so many levels, but I’ll try to be brief.  Taxing income is bad for individuals, and it is bad for savings.  It stifles the desire to earn more.  Money you make by saving it or investing it is also considered ‘income’, so it stifles these things too.  In addition to that, the federal government was not designed to have lots of power, this just gave them all that power!

17th Amendment: Direct Election of Senators – This one may not be obvious because it sounds better to most people to have government officials directly elected by citizens.  The difference is between a democracy and a republic.  This tipped the scales too far into the democracy realm.  The senators were designed to represent the individual states, and to be elected by state representatives.  There are many nuances about the role, power, and accountability of senators that this changed, and mostly, the importance of the state’s role in the federal government diminished, while the role of the central power increased.

The Federal Reserve Act – This has to be the biggest hose job in history.  This is president Woodrow Wilson’s act that removed the very important power of controlling the money supply from the Senate and gave the power to a group of private central bankers (a cartel) that operate outside of the control of the government or the citizens.  This very thing is explicitly warned against by the founding fathers.  The history leading up to the creation of the banking cartel involved several previous central banks, and panics.  (panics likely created to build support for the creation of the cartel)  The last president who was serious about dealing with this problem was JFK.  Many think this is the reason he was assassinated.

While I don’t really understand how the citizens in 1913 allowed these 3 atrocities to occur, I do understand we have the responsibility and the tools (made possible by the Internet) to educate ourselves about current issues, history, and truth.  One of my top questions is “how bad does it have to get before YOU actually do something about it?”

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Bryson in the Snow

Neither Amber or I are very excited about snow.  Bryson, however, really likes to play in it.  Amber was a good mom and let him stop around a bit this afternoon.

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Dasher’s Warble Fly

This is pretty gross, but also interesting.  You have been warned.

I took Dasher to the vet this morning because he had chewed on a area of his skin to the point that it had a hole in it.  There was a knot in the area, and it was leaking green puss.  When we got to the vet, they clipped the hair around the area, washed it, then started feeling around.  “Looks like a warble”, he said, then I replied, “what did you say, a marble”.

“No, a Warble”

“What’s a Warble”

“Are you sure you want to know?”

So, the vet told me.  I was a little grossed out, and a little amazed.  Then he squeezed the knot like he was popping a pimple.  What happened next made my eyes pop out.  Out of this little hole came a worm.  Not a worm like an earth worm, but a big fat worm, like a grub, except it had an alien head and little hairs all around.  I took a picture.  He asked me if I wanted to take it home.  It was still alive, squirming all around.  I said yes.  They flushed out the the area by squirting stuff in the little hole and said, OK, he will be fine!  Turned out that hole in his skin was from the worm eating his way through, not from Dasher doing it.

The little hole - before

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Can You See Me Now?

If you are reading this blog through a RSS feed and can’t see the inline pictures, let me know what url you are reading it from and I’ll fix it.

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