A hot-box for germinating seeds and rooting cuttings

Today's project was to load the hot-box I set up to germinate seeds, heal grafts and to callous cuttings and speed rooting.

Mrs ERJ is slightly exasperated because every spring I fill up our master-bathroom (the warmest room in the house) with horticultural projects. I cheerfully bowed to her wishes and spent a little bit of money to fabricate a substitute. 

The pieces-parts I needed showed up yesterday.

I already have several of these.

The only problem with this unit is that the bottom is EXACTLY the size of the multi-cell insert and is too small for the tray that goes beneath it.

The obvious solution, obvious after I had it all buttoned up, was to turn the unit on its side so can take advantage of the taper. The bottom (now the wall that is farthest way) will still crush the tray but I will be able to get my fingers behind it and pull it out when I need to.

20 Watt heating mat on the bottom. A couple of weights to hold it down. A board across the top to hold the Inkbird sensor.

I wanted to make sure that 20 Watts would be enough heat to reach 80F in the 55F basement. That is why I kludged together and made a test run. The back-up plan was to put two, 20 Watt heating mats into the bottom of the cooler hot-box.

80F is 27C. 26.9C is plenty good enough.

80F or 27C seems to be right in the sweet-spot for rapid germination of warm-season crop seeds like tomatoes and peppers. It is also great for generating callous tissue between bench-grafts of grapes and nuts. Most fruit species can callous at much lower temperatures. Callous tissue is also the undifferentiated tissue (similar to stem-cells in mammals) that can morph into roots.

Incidentally, 80F is MUCH warmer than what we keep the master bathroom. Much warmer! So I will be getting more of what I want AND make Mrs ERJ happy. Win-win. 

Here is the box with a 50 cell seeding tray in it.

• 20  Crack Willow (Salix x fragilis) on the left
• 5 cells of a (S. purpurea x S. miyabeana) hybrid. I put two cuttings per cell because the cuttings are small
• 10 White Willow (Salix alba)
• 5 Red Twig Corkscrew willow (Salix matsudana 'Tortuosa',)
• 5 (S. viminalis x  S. miyabeana) hybrid
• 5 Yellow Twig Corkscrew willow 

Seeding after-action report

I was successful at spreading the seeds.

Amazon beat all expectations and delivered the seeder early.

I had to learn the quirks of the equipment.

I followed Lucky Pitman's advice and used Timothy seed as an extender to bulk-up the expensive White Clover seeds*. Timothy seed is not only the same size as the White Clover seeds, but they are the same shape; round. The only real complication is that no seeds came out at "1" the lowest setting and it poured out like water at "2". I could not walk fast enough to spread it thinly enough that the amount of seed that I had would cover the entire three acres.

This is not my first rodeo. My plan was to mix the seed in four "lots" of three gallons each. Those lots would be markers to calibrate how thickly/thinly I would spread the seeds. 

The fix was to add some fluffy Festulolium grass seeds. One gallon of the fluffy seeds added to the three gallons of ball-bearings slowed how quickly the seed poured through the feed slot at the second setting.

YEAH!!!

Lots of trash on the surface courtesy of the brush-hog. I tripped several times.

 

A close-up of a shoe-print to show the tiny seeds. Only 1/6th of those seeds are clover. Most of the seed was swallowed up by the rough surface.

Time elapsed by the clock was six hours. One hour was run off the clock going to the grain elevator to buy seed. Another 90 minutes involved eating lunch and watching Quicksilver while Mrs ERJ had an errand that could not be rescheduled. 

*In addition to the White Clover and Timothy seeds, I added some Medium Red Clover seed and some Birdsfoot Trefoil seeds. The Red Clover because I had it "in stock" and the Birdsfoot Trefoil because it grows well in damp places...like in ditches.

Fine Art Tuesday

 

Stanislav Zhukovsky was born in 1873 in what is now western Belarus of Polish-Russian parents. He fled Soviet Russia and settled in Poland. He died in a Nazi concentration camp in 1944.

Frost seeding

 Today looks like a great day to do some frost seeding.

Southern Belle has about three acres that she is turning into pasture.

Unfortunately, most of it was covered with Asian Honeysuckle and other pucker-brush. She hired a gentleman to brush-hog that down.

As of this morning, approximately two-thirds of the ground is bare dirt. The brush threw such a dense shade that it killed off any ground cover.

Even goats cannot survive eating dirt.

Frost seeding

Frost seeding is the practice of broadcasting (scattering) seeds on top of the soil and counting on the freeze-thaw cycle to "work" the seeds into the ground. Once they are under the surface, the seeds are relatively safe from birds and mice.

The weather pattern of freeze-thaw can be tough to catch. One cue is to watch to see if the people who tap maple trees are moving sap. That same freeze-thaw cycle moves the sap from the roots to the tops and then back down again.

Clover seeds

White Clover* seeds are tiny and it is difficult to spread them evenly. They run about 800,000 seeds to the pound or 1,800,000 per kg.

Seeding rates for White Clover are one or two pounds per acre. It is a pretty neat trick to spread those seeds that finely.

One trick is to add other materials to bulk-up the seeds. It can be cheaper Red Clover seeds. It can be millet seeds or oats or cracked corn (although the last two attract birds).

I have a bunch of old seeds for deer food-plots that were given to me as a gift. They are at least eight years old. I also have a significant amount of grass seed but will only add that to the mix when I am seeding the totally bare areas.

The areas that already have some kind of grass growing in them will only get the clover seed + whatever else I have on hand. 

Ladino Clover

Ladino Clover is a giant form of White Clover. People who plant deer food-plots typically treat it as an annual crop rather than as a component in a perennial pasture.

 

In my part of Michigan, a pasture that is between 20% and 40% clover is considered well managed. If you can keep the needle between those two numbers on the majority of the pasture then you are doing a stellar job as a grazier.

Eight characteristics of low IQ adults

Lack of curiosity

Intelligent people crave information. They want to know how things work. We use that information anticipate the future and make preparations to mitigate possible negative events and exploit positive ones.

People with limited cognitive capacity cannot "crunch" information outside of their swim-lane and continue to function. Trying to do that makes them uncomfortable, and frankly, they cannot envision how knowing more might help them in the future. They just cannot see it.

No desire to improve themselves

They flat-lined because they ran out of brain-cells to assign to learning new tasks. They lack confidence and are deathly afraid of being uncomfortable or looking stupid.

Binary thinking

I see this in stupid people who love to argue. It is beyond their ability to see that the other party can also be (partially) right. They cannot grasp that a synthesis of various viewpoints can be more robust than the first thing that popped into their alleged brain. That intense fear of being perceived as "stupid" also gets in their way.

What they fail to realize is that a person who can concede at least some of the other party's points is much more likable. The person who can concede parts of the argument is also perceived as having more intellectual agility than the dope who clings to his original position(s) like a barnacle clings to a rock. 

Lack of critical thinking

"They assume they are thinking when, in fact, they are merely rearranging their biases like a pensioner rearranging her furniture in a musty room."

Absence of creativity

Creativity is a combination of curiosity and being able to imagine how various components or sequences of events might interact BEFORE building a model.

Combine those cognitive challenges with the fear of failure and you get very little creativity from a low-intelligence person. 

Poor decision making 

We do not choose how fast life happens. It comes at us at whatever speed it wants. 

The low intelligence person has very little ability to take external cues and make reasonable inferences about what might happen next. The speed of life does not need to speed up very much before it is inside of their O-O-D-A loop and they flail away with wildly inappropriate, desperate choices in a desperate attempt to get ahead of the O-O-D-A loop. 

Not able to see beyond this immediate moment

Time is a complex concept. So is "discounting" the probabilities and value or cost of future events. People with low intelligence cannot process potential consequences that are very far into the future. Hence, prisons are full of low intelligence people. 

Poor interpersonal skills

• Lack of self-awareness 
• Lack of humility (Dunning-Kruger effect) 
• Lack of being able to consider consequences
• Severe compartmentalization to break "problems" into bits small enough to process 

How COULD they have great interpersonal skills 

Note: Material borrowed from HERE and modified. 

Blackbirds, fence posts and Communists

 

Approximately 30 fence posts in the back of the truck

The high point of my morning was hearing a Redwing Blackbird singing from the top of a tree. Spring is springing.

Yesterday was a productive but tiring day.

 

Picture taken before I filleted out the wood that was usable for fence posts and firewood. That left the tops in the pasture.

  

My work-day started at 7:25 when I took care of the livestock.

 

Then, I dragged brush out of the pasture and deposited it back into the woods. That took a little more than an hour. Zeus kept me company. He likes my dragging brush better than when I am running a chainsaw.

 

Another 90 minutes was spent loading fence posts into the back of the pickup and driving them up to the house. That is when I noticed that my work gloves keep turning off my stopwatch. That is when I switched to using my smartphone to time my breaks.

 

I took a one hour break to gobble down a couple of sandwiches and to buy a new battery for the riding lawnmower. Sitting while driving counts as a break.

 

Then it was another hour of moving the fence posts out of the back of the truck and stacking them in an 8' by 8' pile until needed.

 

A minor casualty was experienced while moving the wood but it was superficial and I did not need to call the big, toe-truck for aid.

 

Finally, I went over to Southern Belle's house to supervise the installation of drain tile so they can avoid (maybe) their lowest floor flooding. 

 

Suddenly, it was 4:20 p.m. and I was whipped. Oddly, the times didn't add up. Some of that is because when the alarm on the smartphone goes off, it is just a "reminder" to take a break after I complete some part of my work sequence. If I am close to finishing loading the truck then I finish. If I am close to having it completely unloaded, I keep working. Another thing that screwed up my "timing" is that my gloves kept hitting the stop button on my watch.

 

Incompetent Communists

 

There are two ways to tell a lie.

 

One is to tell the truth in such a such a ridiculous and unbelievable manner that it is not believed.

 

The other way is to weave 1% falsehood into 99% truth.

 

Maybe it is ironic, but there are a lot of "truths" woven into the Communist mythology to make the hook palatable to the fish.  

 

It is a sad fact that I, a blogger who would be considered a "moderate" twenty-five years ago, am a "better" communist than Zamdani, perhaps the most most powerful person in America who openly admits he is a Communist.

For example: I believe that power blossoms from the barrel of a gun. Modern Commies like Zamdani believe it comes from having a pen and a phone.

I believe that controlling the means-of-production is critical for long-term viability. Zamdani appears hellbent on driving it away.

 

I believe that "From each according to their ability and to each according to their needs" starts with EVERYBODY works...no free rides. Any receiving happens AFTER the work. I also believe that "needs" means subsistence level supports. That is, 2500 Calories a day of basic foods like rice, beans and lard that need to be cooked. Zamdani wants to throw resources at EVERYBODY with no reciprocal obligation.

 

I believe that if you pay me with imaginary money than you can also imagine that I am not a threat to your fantasy and you can leave me alone.

 

I believe that we are in crisis because the vast majority of people in rich countries feel betrayed and alienated by the rapid changes in society. From a pragmatic standpoint, if they/we feel betrayed, maybe we have been trusting the wrong people, the wrong sources of information and need to make better choices.

Michelob Ultra

 

It has been reported that Progressives are boycotting Michelob ULTRA beer because that is the brand that the Gold Medal winning, US Hockey team was drinking in the locker room after winning against the Canadian team.

The Michelob marketing team responded that Progressives drink, on average, 3.4 bottles of beer a year and that they stand by their decision to provide the beer to the team. 

***Satire***