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Såning 2017

Sidste år (2016) var et godt år for vores chili, mens tomaterne skuffede – måske på grund af vejret, måske fordi vi såede dem lidt for tidligt, således at planterne blev for høre for hurtigt.

Lessons Learned

  • Tidspunkt for chilisåning (22. februar) er fint; tomatsåning den 27. marts måske for tidligt
  • Vi undgik lus på chili ved at have færre planter
  • Chili tørrer fint oven på en varm akvarielampe

Såning

På trods af de bedste hensigter var det allerede marts før vi fik bestilt frø til årets drivhusplanter og de ankom først med posten den 20. marts. Chili blev sået samme aften, hvormed det er det seneste vi indtil videre har sået, siden jeg begyndte at føre journal. Vi får at se til efteråret hvor meget det egentlig betyder.

Til reference, så er sådatoerne fra de foregående år:

2016: Feb 22 (chili), Mar 27 (tomater)

2015: Mar 19

2014: Mar 2

2012: Mar 17 and Apr 1

2010: Feb 28 (chili), Mar 21 (tomatoes & chili)

Her er hvad der blev sået:

Chili 2017

  1. Lucky Seven
  2. Lucky Seven
  3. Lemon Drop
  4. Lemon Drop
  5. Jalapeno
  6. Jalapeno
  7. Habanero
  8. Habanero
  9. Cayenne Long Slim
  10. Cayenne Long Slim
  11. Piementos de Padron
  12. Piementos de Padron

Chili blev sået 20. marts og alle frø fra 2017.

Tomater 2017

Vi prøver nogle nye sorter i år, så de eneste gentagelser er Bloody Butcher og Sun Gold, som plejer at være en god, tidlig cherry tomat.

  1. Cupido (2 stk)
  2. Cupido (4 stk)/Sungold (1 stk i midten)
  3. Bloody Butcher
  4. Bloody Butcher
  5. Indigo Beauty
  6. Indigo Beauty
  7. Sun Gold
  8. Sun Gold
  9. Piccolino (3 frø)
  10. Piccolino (3 frø)
  11. Bottondoro
  12. Bottondoro

Tomater sået Apr 9, alle frø fra 2017

Kartofler blev lagt til spiring i starten af april. I år prøver vi Hansa og den tidlige Frieslander igen.

Journal

Mar 20

Chili sået

Mar 28

De første frø har spirret; først ude af starthullerne er Lemon Drop, Jalapeno og Cayenne

Apr 3

Hætte kommer af chilierne

Apr 9

Tomater sået

Apr 12

Det første tomater spirer

Apr 15

Låget kommet af tomaterne

Maj 4

Så er det mere end tid til at blive plantet om – rigtig flotte tomater, det bliver spændende at se hvordan det fortsætter med dem.

(og omplantet blev de 4. maj)

Chili og tomater i vindueskarmen, morgenen efter omplantning

Maj 21

Drivhuset bliver gjort klar og chili og tomater plantet ud.

Klar til udplantning.

Relaterede Indlæg

Såning 2016

Havejournal 2017

Drivhuset 2017

Steam Incident leaves No One Steaming

This morning I set out installing SteamOS on my desktop computer 1. That turned out instructive and satisfying, though not in the way first intended.

My desktop is a dualboot system running Windows and Linux on separate SSDs, with an extra hard drives for storage, and while I use Windows as my daily driver (even using virtualization t´when I need Linux for work or education purposes), there are enough situations where being able to boot into another operating system is useful. Linux Mint is my distribution of choice and since I had v17 installed and wanted to upgrade to version 18 anyway it was not a big issue to use replace it with another distribution as experiment.

So I went ahead – downloaded the SteamOS installer and loaded it unto a USB stick and then shutdown the PC to do what one should always do when installing a new OS: Disconnect all hard disks except the installation target. After this basic precaution it was all a matter of opening the bootmenu, select USB and follow the instructions inside the installer. Straightforward, though a bit quirky compared to the installers of distributions like Mint or Fedora, but SteamOS is in beta and probably also more intended for products like Valve’s own Steambox than DIY projects like mine. Still, I made it through and up with one running Steam machine.

That’s where trouble started, because I couldn’t get SteamOS to place nice with my usual dual-boot setup (otherwise easily managed with EasyBCD). However, since SteamOS installs it self in EFI mode, it wouldn’t play nice and frustrating troubleshooting followed. it was also time for breakfast and for me to close the box, and let it be reminder to not do things on an empty stomach that at this time I tried a fresh installation of SteamOS with all drives connected. I carefully selected the right drive for installation and once more SteamOs installed. However, gone was my Windows installation too. Initially I suspected a corrupted bootloader and tried out the repair utilities on my Windows installation disk, but to no prevail and the disk appeared to be dead (it has happened to an SSD of mine before, so OK, stuff happens). My last troubleshooting step was to boot into Linux from a live DVD and that’s when I saw it and understood. Regardless how careful I was when I selected which disk to install on, the SteamOS installer had still applied the same partition scheme to my Windows disk as on my Linux disk, but without installing. Thankfully not to my data disks though, although given that I have a double cloud backup of my data, the worst thing would have been waiting for data to be downloaded and restored.

Reinstalling Windows then took only a couple of hours until I was up and running with most of my standard software (how online installation files and fast internet changes things! )

Looking back, on the one hand side I feel a bit silly for not taking the basic precaution of disconnecting all hard drives before installing a new OS; however, I am almost cheerful (perhaps even smug) to see how having proper backup would leave me safe in a not-quite worst case scenario, and how my basic rules of keeping OS and data on separate disks kept me safe (I have broken that rule once in 23 years, which is also the number of times a system disk has failed – coincidence? Murphy says “no”)

I probably got rid of a few unnecessary applications at the same time,got my start menu sorted and upgraded to Mint 18 as planned anyway, so no issue there. I also got to know EFI and I understand why some communities are concerned about it.

Finally, my wife always tells me that reinstalling an OS once in a while seems to make me happy. Having written this I believe she is right. Of course she is…

 

Happy New Year

Hello Dear Reader, thanks for stopping by and all wishes for a Happy New Year to you.

The turning of the year is a time with plenty of traditions. There are fireworks, Xmas and everything with family… Then web media is filled with articles listing the Best of Year X, The Worst of Year X and what to look forward to in year X+1. And there is the personal opportunity to check a few more things on the To-Do List and do some general cleanup in order to start the new year with a clean slate.

My checklist was topped by new lamps for the living room and closing a hole in an old, unused chimney (and thanks to the relative who let me help him do it). The new years cleanup focused on vacuum packing children’s clothes, sorting books and throwing away two big boxes full of all the cases for my CD collection, which felt surprisingly good. And then there was was the question about what to do with this blog.

2016 has not been a productive year for this blog and I keep having a nagging feeling because of that. When I come across blogs on the net I usually check if they are alive with recent and regular posting, or if they are dead without activity, and this blog has held on to dear life, but I go this a nagging feeling for a long  time now, with me not being satisfied with the blog not meeting my own ambitions. At the same time, there are some perfectly good reason why I don’t get much Done on the blog:

  • First I got this annoying kind of perfectionism, where I tend to delay working on a task until I sufficient time in order to produce the perfect output. Because of this, many posts never make it out of my head, or at most they became bullet outline list in perpetual draft documents.
  • Second there is the matter of time, which I am sure most people with little children recognize: My (blog) productivity dropped when our second daughter was born, so regardless how great an idea for a post I got in my head, when I wake up 5:30 in the morning, then before I have picked up the kids after work, cooked dinner, read a story and served dinner and put everyone to bed, cleaned the kitchen and done the rest of today’s Work, I don’t get a lot writing done (similarly my gamer career is effectively on hold, with my 2016 PC gaming of the year being less than 24 hours according to Steam).

There just are other things that must be done first.

Still, I really like writing and even though it was only my second season keeping log of the garden and greenhouse, I already found it useful to go back and check what was done last year.

So to get some writing done I could start by going through my drafts posts:

  • Finish all posts that are work-in-progress, like my Smartphone MuSCoW series.
  • Add those that are missing, like the one about Disney Princesses as role models (which only has to be translated to English and have a lot of hyperlinks added)
  • Delete those that aren’t interesting anyway or just not relevant any longer relevant, like the one about Microsoft’s 26.7 Billion used acquisition of LinkedIn, which filled the news for almost a week in June until everyone with an opinion had shared it (except myself, obviously, but noting that the market for mature, well-grown social networks is small, and even smaller if you want them to be relevant for your CRM business, doesn’t need an entire post). Likewise, I also missed the opportunity to comment on Microsoft joining the Linux foundation, but Marc Andreesen covered the essentials already in 1995, which is many versions of Windows and Web Browsers ago (and Windows outlasted Netscape), but as an Office 365 user I can only agree that the OS and desktop software has been commoditized.
  • Keep the journal posts going for 2017.

Then, thinking back to the ambition of this site – creating some sensible content for the web when time permits, I might still get something written. Or perhaps improve my gamer stats.

Happy new year!

Garden Diary 2016

<- Last Year (2015) — Next Year (2017) ->

Key events in the garden (2016)

  • Feb 22: Seeds sown for greenhouse chilies
  • Feb 24: Gardener fells the magnolia that was damaged by snowfall last year and prunes the willow tree
  • Mar 19: First family workday in the garden; pruned the apple espalier and started the spring cleaning
  • Mar 27: Chilies re-potted  and tomatoes sown
  • Apr 1: Rose hedge trimmed (down to 30-40 cms, significantly shorter than previous years)
  • Apr 9: First Rhododendron blooming (Cilpinense)
  • Some weeks with cold and uninspiring weather,
  • Apr 28: First lawn mowing
  • May 1: Moved Hamamelis to new spot on house’ north side
  • May 7: Prepared greenhouse, laid potatoes, moved white canadense to (hopefully) better spot and Pieris to new spot
  • May 8: Chilies and tomatoes moved to greenhouse; Raised bed prepared for sowing
  • Jun 30: First potatoes ready
  • Jul 4: Berries are ripe
  • Aug 4: Wisteria pruned
  • Oct 20: Lawn mowed for the last time
  • Nov 12: Planted crabapple, magnolias, syringa and forsythias

Related Posts

Garden Diary 2015

Sowing the Seeds of 2016

Growing the Seeds of 2016

Growing the Seeds of 2016

Chilies and tomatoes were planted out in the greenhouse today – a very wam May 8th. A bit earlier than other years, but the plants were ready and it looks like the warm weather will last.

From the sown seeds the following made the cut:

Tomatoes

  • 2 x Gardener’s Delight
  • 2 x Bloody Butcher
  • 2 x Sungold
  • 2 x Tangidel
  • 2 x Rosadel
  • 2 x Black Cherry
  • 2 x Tumbler (bush tomatoes planted in pots, to be placed outside)

Chilies

  • 1 Cayenne Long Slim
  • 1 Friars’ Hat
  • 1 Jalapeno
  • 1 Lemon Drop

All planted on top of capillary trays.

That leaves us with 4 slots free to use for additional plants, e.g. a cucumber and some special varieties of chili and tomato.

Following some good results with herbs last year, I also put some between the tomatoes: A parsley that survived the winter in the greenhouse; and some mint and chive that I salvaged from a herb bed that needs major maintenance.

Greenhouse 2016 - May 22
Greenhouse 2016 – May 22

May 8

Tomatoes and Chilies planted out.

20160508 Greenhouse
New home – the day the chilies and tomatoes moved out.

May 22

Went to plant nursery Toftegaard Gartneri after additional plants:

  • Cucumber ‘Fitness’
  • Chili ‘Habanero’
  • Chili ‘Trinidad Perfume’
  • Tomato ‘Favorita’
  • Basil and Thai-basil

All planted out as per the greenhouse plan above. Also bought an additional bush tomato ‘Deluxe’.

Jun 1

First tomato tied up.

Jun 30

First cucumbers harvested.

Jul 5

First tomatoes ripe – Sun Gold.

Sep 6

The last tomato plants taken away.

Oct 9

Last chilies harvested.

Oct 16

Green house cleaned out, capillary boxes stored away.

 

Related Posts

Sowing the Seeds of 2016

Garden Diary 2016

Growing the Seeds of 2015