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Deluxestogie Grow Log 2020

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deluxestogie

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deluxestogie Grow Log 2020

Time to get things settled for 2020. Here are my current grow plans.

Garden_Layout2020a.jpg


Unlike last season, I don't have to dig a new bed. (Yay!) I have all my seed. Germination will begin in late February. I may add 3 or 4 potted Orientals for my front steps, since they are so beautiful in full bloom, and attract hummingbirds.

This is immutable for the moment.

Bob
 

deluxestogie

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The forecast for last night was a low of 28°F, and a dusting of snow by morning. I have to turn on the heater in my well's pump house when it gets down to 25°F. I debated whether or not to turn on the heater (gobbles electricity) yesterday, and decided that I would not sleep well if I left it off. So I went out there and switched it on late in the day.

Temp this morning was 23°F, with 3½" of snow. Temps are slowly rising, and the snow may or may not melt by afternoon.

Garden20200107_4923_homeSnow_600.jpg


The local weather forecasts seem to glory in "wind chill" numbers, while being careless with forecasting actual temperatures. Wind chill is important if you go outdoors naked. It applies only to the effect on exposed skin, and not to anything else, like your car or the road surface or your water pipes. Wind chill is about bare, unprotected skin. But wind chill numbers are more dramatic than reality, so that's what they talk about.

Bob
 

deluxestogie

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The number inside parentheses is the number of plants in that bed. The long beds are 5' x 12', so for full-size plants, that comes to 3.75 square feet per plant. The square brackets after Prilep, which is more closely spaced, is the layout grid of plants, 4 x 4. Since the small beds are 5' x 6', this comes to 1.875 square feet per plant.

Bob
 

fimbrew

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Wind increases the heat transfer rate so a warm car will cool faster in wind than without but after a while both will be the ambient temperature. Clothes slow the heat transfer rate so bare hands cool faster than gloved hands. Wind Chill is a "feels like" temperature along with humidity factor. They talk about feels like temps more because they assume people care more about what the weather feels like than what the weather is.
 

deluxestogie

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Fortunately, my car lacks arterioles that constrict blood flow within its sheet metal "skin" when it gets cold. The greatest impact of wind chill on exposed human skin is that the skin's warming mechanism--circulating blood from the body core--decreases or ceases when the skin is chilled. This survival mechanism diverts blood to more "important" stuff, like the brain and abdominal organs.

The compilation of wind chill tables was derived not from the effect of wind on inanimate objects, like my poor Buick, but from the effect of cold wind on the vascular dynamics of exposed skin, and the timing until blood circulation in the dermis is reduced to the point that cellular damage ensues from anoxia. Symptoms of frost bite (cold injury to the tissue) can occur at temperatures above freezing. If skin is vasoconstricted for too long, then simply warming it may not promptly restore its blood supply.

Bob
 

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In Edmonton, the feels like and windchill are depressing. When it's -30, it is bad for your mental state to consider what the feels like is. In fact, your mind state very much has an impact on how cold you feel, and I hypothesize that it can actually affect your physiology. My personal opinion might be that windchill is used by people who want to justify their complaining, but once I saw Churchill Manitoba was +1°C with a windchill of -24, and I realized I needed to experience such a thing for I could dismiss it.
 

deluxestogie

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I don't know what "feels like" really means, since it is always relative to the individual and to prior state. Generally, and with the sensation of skin temperature, our nervous system is pretty good at detecting change, and really poor at detecting status. So the very same temperature "feels like" a different temperature, depending on the immediate, prior temperature exposure of the body part involved.

Years ago, while camping in deep snows and -10°F temps (almost no wind), I was standing outside my tent late at night when the clouds came in and blocked the stars that I had been observing. I was, of course, appropriately clothed for the conditions. I noticed that, with the clouds came a sensation that it had "warmed up". I stepped over to a thermometer that I had hung on a tree branch. Wow! The temperature had instantly risen from -10°F all the way to -6°F! That subtle alteration in ambient temperature was dramatically apparent to my well insulated skin.

If you are sitting on your sofa, surfing Facebook, then step out the front door, I doubt that you would be aware of a difference if it were -10°F or -6°F. "Feels like" always needs a qualifier. Can someone actually "feel" a difference between -34°(?C) and -43°(?C), unless she or he experiences the change from one to the other in real time?

Bob
 

Charly

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OMG ! -34°C ........ ..... ....
The coldest we had was -18°C and it was already quite "cold" by my individual "feels like" system.

P.S. And I agree, I don't want to know what "it feels like", I want to know the temperature.
 

deluxestogie

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I focus on five ambient temperatures:
  1. is my bedroom warm enough?
  2. is it too hot to work in my garden?
  3. is it too cold to smoke a cigar on my porch?
  4. is it cold enough to need to have my pump house heater plugged in?
  5. is it so cold that I have to drip my faucets to prevent my water pipes from freezing?
Everything else is just curiosity and clothing layer adjustments.

Bob
 

deluxestogie

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Today, I was sorting through my collection of tobacco seed. (I really need to better organize it. There must be over 500 little Ziploc bags inside quart Ziploc bags inside a half-dozen different latching, dry-boxes in my dorm-size seed fridge. They are quasi-organized into year of acquisition. Boo!) When I finally came across Swarr-Hibshman, before finding Glessnor, I immediately declared that Swarr-Hibshman was in, and my previously planned grow of Glessnor was out. THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG.

I also stumbled into MD 609--only a tiny number of seeds. So I will plan to put out 4 plants of MD 609, to refresh the seed. The first Little Dutch seed that I located was from 2011, so that will be an interesting test on its viability. If that's a bust, then I'll dig through the collection again, and find more recent Little Dutch seed.

Being absolutely inflexible-ish on the number of plants that I will grow in 2020, I'll do only 12 Swarr-Hibshman, and donate the remaining quarter of that (formerly Glessnor) bed to the MD 609.

Seed for Corojo 99, Piloto Cubano and Olor will be from 2019.

Bob
 

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International Space Station

I watched the ISS zoom across the sky this evening, about 1 hour after sunset. It appeared to move like a passenger jet at low altitude, on a landing approach, crossing most of the sky dome in about 5 minutes. It was way brighter than Venus or Jupiter. Then, about 40° before reaching the far horizon, it just blinked out. Gone.

The light is entirely a reflection of the sun off the space station's solar panels, and it blinks out as soon as it moves into the shadow of the Earth. It doesn't twinkle or blink like an aircraft. Just a very bright light moving incredibly rapidly. It orbits at about 1,300,00 feet altitude, traveling at over 17,000 miles per hour.

Whenever you expect a cloudless early evening, just check out the ISS' current location and expected flyover of your location, using the live, interactive map here:


Bob

P.S. It was 20°F, with an 8 mph breeze, while I stood out there.
 

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We saw it Saturday night here in Central Texas. It's always a thrill to me - never gets old. The wife and I took our two telescopes to an outreach event at Pedernales Falls State Park with the Austin Astronomical Society that night, and I was able to successfully track it (mostly) across the sky with my 8" manual Dobsonian using my widest angle eyepiece. We had a great time sharing the stars with the campers at the park. And it was only 50°F, so not too cold. ;)

Setting Up
2.jpg

First set of campers (30 second time lapse). Ours are the two scopes on the right.
3.jpg
 

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Watching the stars is always a pleasure, and it always reminds me our place in the universe.
You feel so small in front of this ! Our little human problems vanishes when you let your mind travel accross the stars.
 

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Garden20200122_4928_personalSeedBank_700.jpg


This is my seed collection from the past decade. It contains more varieties than the official tobacco seed banks of all but maybe three countries in the world. Why is it all sitting out on my washing machine?

The temperature outside was 9°F when I got up this morning. Then, at 8 am, the power blinked off. Nice timing. (It stayed off for about two and a half hours, and just came back on about 20 minutes ago.) How fast do water pipes freeze? Not that fast. Whew!

My little dorm-size fridge that holds my seed collection was in need of defrosting. What better time than when the power was already off. So I pulled everything out of there, unplugged it, and left the door open. A tray is in the bottom to catch the melt water.

Each of the latched dry-boxes contains a packet of desiccant (from an on-line coin dealer). So I expect most of this seed to remain viable when I am no longer viable.

Nearly every variety is also represented in the FTT seed bank, which is now in the possession of @skychaser. Of these varieties, he has to realistically select those which can repay his considerable effort of producing seed from them. No regrets. He now offers (via Northwood Seeds) the greatest number of varieties you are likely to find anywhere.

Once the fridge has defrosted, I'll return my collection to its usual storage there, where most of it will languish. I'm growing only 7 varieties this year, and 6 of them are repeats. I guess I'm now just a tobacco seed hoarder. [You wouldn't like most of these varieties--funny taste, poor productivity, primitives, disease prone, etc.]

Bob
 
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