Seeded 16 tomato plants tonight:
Djena Lee’s Golden Girl
2x Talledega Hybrid VFFNT
2x Bela Rosa Hybrid FFFASTTSWV
2x Eva Purple Ball
Ladybug Hybrid
2x Roma VF
2x Supersweet 100
Brandywine
Riesentraube
Chocolate Cherry
VTO-5805 Costoluto Genovese
I had a huge stockpile of little peat pots, so I just used those instead of making more pots out of newspaper.
Alternate titles: “How free trade creates wealth out of thin air”, or “The problem with the survivalist/isolationist mentality”. Interesting video about the progress of humans. It touches on a subject that is very interesting to me, which deals with ease of exchange of ideas (ie. social networking).
Home Depot sells a 4-bulb instant start ballast for $20. I was going to order a ‘high ballast factor’ ballast for $35, but I decided to buy this one and get it done tonight instead. The new ballast fit perfectly into the cheap shop light fixture, so I didn’t have to drill any new holes or use new hardware. Since the instant start doesn’t heat the end filaments, the wiring is cut in half. I tried to determine if the fixture with 2 2-bulb ballasts or the 1 4-bulb ballast was brighter. I couldn’t determine a difference with my eye. I screwed two more hooks to the ceiling and rigged up some paracord for the second fixture. I was thinking about building a rack, but this setup was quick and easy and will get me through this year. I can always change it up next year if I have excessive time on my hands! (doesn’t ever seem to happen)
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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?”
