Seeds and Songs

[brightly_lit]

I discovered this morning that my sound card died. :-( It was 17 years old, lol. But I thought of it as my "good" sound card, as it's the only one I ever actually installed rather than just using what came with the computer. Meanwhile, the computer seems to have forgotten entirely about the soundcard that it came with; it doesn't even show up in the hardware list, though it's still physically in the computer. So I bought a very cheap little dongle that just has inputs for mic and headphones, so at least I can hear my old favorite casual games and listen to music if I really want to on that computer. And after 17 years, I guess the technology has improved so much that I hardly notice a difference between it and my fancy sound card! *sigh*

I took a chance on a new seed company that was pretty well reviewed on reddit because they had lots of varieties of something it's kind of hard to find seeds for (sorghum). I bought a ton of seeds for a bunch of different kinds of plants, planted at least fifty seeds, and so far, after six weeks, only two have come up! One of which (a pumpkin) randomly died a few days later, and the other of which is still -- just barely -- alive. I'd say it was user error, except that nearly every other seed I've planted from other sources is doing great. So that's a bummer. I was so excited about those seeds.

Also, I'm currently totally obsessed with this hauntingly beautiful song, and this artist. I already loved the songs he contributed to 86, then when I found out he did the AWESOME theme song for To Be Hero X, I went looking for the rest of his stuff. Turns out pretty much everything he does is amazing:

Watch on YouTube

Comments

[vriddy]

Woah, no sound at all anymore yeah that would suck 😱 Glad the new dongle doesn't feel like too much of a downgrade at least!

[abject_reptile]

Ah, the seed mystery! I grow tomatoes (and other things) from seed every year. I sow them in March and plant out in May. The germination rate is always close to 100%. This year all of my tomato seeds came up except for one variety which managed to produce one seedling from eighteen seeds. Why? I have no clue.

Good song.

[brightly_lit]

Yeah, for $7 it was well worth it!

[brightly_lit]

A fellow gardener! I could talk plants allll day. I started tomatoes and peppers indoors, too. The tomatoes did great. With the peppers, all three seeds in the corner cell sprouted and did well, and NONE of the other seeds sprouted at all!! I'm still completely baffled, especially since I replanted multiple times and never got another sprout. I tried a heating pad, I tried more water, less water ... nothin'. But even my fruit trees seem to be producing in different amounts from last year (many more peaches, many fewer apples), so sometimes maybe it's just the vagaries of that year.

[abject_reptile]

My sister-in-law has fruit trees and in some years the weather and the bloom period don't coordinate and the crop is meagre. I pollinate tomatoes by hand until I'm sure they're being pollinated in the usual ways and the same for squash. I have zero experience with peppers. If my tomato seeds are in the same soil in the same location they should sprout consistently - faster if they have bottom heat and more slowly if they don't. Perhaps more slowly for certain varieties. They're not finicky otherwise. I used to grow them in the ground and now I grow them in pots on my deck. It took me several years to find the best varieties for the location (very hot, very sunny), the best fertiliser, and the best pots. But because I'm never sure about the germination rate I sow too many seeds and end up with too many plants. I had so many some years that I turned my deck into a mini-ecosystem which was...interesting. I try not to overdo it now. I have 19 plants this year.

[brightly_lit]

Yes, we have three plum trees, and one of them never produces, though it blooms. My guess is it's very sensitive to frost and the frost kills the blossoms. I plan to make it a frankentree of many different types of fruit trees grafted onto it, lol. Because it never produces fruit, it has plenty of energy to put into growing limbs and leaves and it's crowding out the other two plum trees that do produce, which is frustrating.

Ah, I'm curious as to why you haven't grown peppers. Do you dislike them? I used to hate peppers. Though I've come to love them in certain dishes, I'm not the huge fan of them so many other people seem to be.

Ah you've got me beat on tomato plants, and I planted 13 more than I ever have before: 17 this year. What do you do with all your tomatoes? I have grand ambitions of making all my tomato paste for the year, as well as all my canned tomatoes, and see if I can produce all I need for a whole year. I'd like to come across a reasonably priced tomato mill, which would make the whole endeavor much, much easier, but all the reviews of the ones I've found are pretty negative, involving rusting and gumming up of hidden parts.

I'd love to hear about your mini-ecosystem.

[abject_reptile]

Peppers aren't something that I eat enough of to make it worthwhile wasting a pot on them. Also, I try to grow what I can't get in the stores (certain Chinese and Japanese greens) or veggies that are much better home-grown like tomatoes and scallop squash. I do various things with the tomatoes other than eat them in salads. Some are stewed, some are turned into passata, some are dried (I have a large dehydrator). I don't can, I freeze. They keep that way for years. I use this mill. I've had it for years and it's proven more durable than the smaller Italian one I had before it. I've thought of making tomato leather but as long as I have freezer space for passata there's not much point.

The ecosystem... Well, the tree frogs love the tomato vines and climb into the pots - and sometimes up the vines - at night. Then I started seeing garter snakes on the deck and of course lizards. The finches love the kale, I have sparrows nesting in an oak next to the deck every year, and everyone comes to drink the water I put out. And then there are the pollinators and predators - bee species I'd never seen before, dragonflies, damselflies, many kinds of butterflies. The previous owners kept everything on the property cut back to the ground. I've allowed it to return to what it was before the house was built - to the extent possible - so I have more habitat than most of my neighbours. And then there are the clouds of tomato pollen - great for the bumblebees, not so great for my sinuses or my eczema. I saw a tweet the other day from the UK about the expense of restoring habitat. There's no expense. You just leave it alone and it returns. I realised that when I started seeing unusual plants I hadn't seen before on the land behind the house.

Whatever the variety the non-fruiting plum must be more temperature sensitive. You might have to be ruthless...

[brightly_lit]

Lol, I've thought so many times about chopping down that plum tree, as did the previous owner of this place. But space for fruit trees is limited in the garden, I'm not sure I could eat a whole tree's worth of apricots or sour cherries every year, and there it stands, the perfect "rootstock" for my grafts, so I do hope to turn it into many other kinds of trees, if I can find some good scions. But I might cut off some of the branches that push into the other two trees! Naturally, it splits low on the trunk, with one split heading directly in the direction of the one neighboring tree, the other into the other, sigh.

Your ecosystem sounds awesome! I too love a natural ecosystem on my land as much as is reasonably possible. The land here is very wild, and I've had to let a lot it do whatever it wants out of necessity. I've been amazed this year at the new varieties of plants growing where nothing of the sort grew last year. It's rather beautiful.

I prefer to freeze things, too, but I run out of room in my freezer too fast, so I also can some things. What Chinese and Japanese greens do you grow? I'm growing some mizuna now (and having some success for the first time), and my CSA once gave us shungiku which was interesting, but those are about the only ones I know of besides bok choi.

[abject_reptile]

Arugula (two kinds), senposai, green shiso, tah tsai, garlic chives. I'd recommend senposai and tah tsai. The latter seems less attractive to cabbage worms although that might be due to where I planted them this year. Both are suitable for salads and stir fry and have a mild mustard green/bok choi flavour. It's been very hot the past few days and they've started to bolt.

I feel an obligation about my bit of land because it was part of an endangered ecosystem (Garry oak meadow) and should never have been developed. It should have been part of the eco-reserve higher up the mountain. No doubt whoever comes after me will cut everything back again but for now it's bird habitat. It's fenced to discourage the bigger critters.

You'd need to dry the apricots.