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Sowing the Seeds of 2017

This post was discontinued – the story of my seed-sowing in 2017 continues -> here.

Last year (2016) was a good chili year, whereas the tomatoes under performed. Maybe it was the weather, maybe we sowed them a bit too early, so that the plants rached max height too early.

Lessons learned

  • Chili sowing time (Feb 22) was good, tomatoes (Mar 27 perhaps a little too early)
  • Fewer chili plants worked well to avoid lice
  • Drying chili on top of an aquarium worked great
Sowing

In spite of the best intentions it was way into March before we ordered the seeds for his year and they arrived by mail on Mar 20. We sowed the chilies the same evening, which still makes it the latest chili sowing data on record, beating 2015 with one day. We shall see in fall how much that matters.

For reference, these are the sowing dates from previous years;

2016: Feb 22 (Chilies), Mar 27 (Tomatoes);

2015: Mar 19

2014: Mar 2

2012: Mar 17 and Apr 1

2010: Feb 28 (Chilies), Mar 21 (Tomatoes & Chilies)

Here is what was sown:

Chilies 2017

This year we will probably have a little fewer tomatoes.Because we use capillary boxes we only expect to have seven chili plants this year. Since we will buy the milder chili plants, we only sow five different sorts this year.With the sparse

  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

Chilies sown on Mar 20, all seeds from 2017

Diary

Mar 20

Chilies sown

Mar 28

The first seeds have sprouted, first movers are Lemon Drop, Jalapeno and Cayenne.

Related posts

Sowing the Seeds of 2016

Garden Diary 2017

Growing the Seeds of 2017

Urter i Vindueskarmen

Af een eller anden grund har jeg aldrig rigtig forsøgt mig med krydderurter i vindueskarmen. Måske fordi jeg aldrig har haft gode rutiner når det kom til at vande stueplanter. Det er dog noget jeg arbejder på: Endnu en smart mulighed med en smartphone er at den regelmæssigt kan minde om at det er tid til at vande blomster.

Så for et par uger siden solgte mit lokale supermarked et sæt med purløg, persille og basilikum i fine blanke potter, og jeg tænkte “hvorfor ikke”  – i det mindste kunne det være sjovt at plante og passe dem med min døtre.

Urter i vindueskarm – dag 0 (26. marts)

De blev sået samme (søn-) dag og allerde om torsdagen kiggede de første basilikumspirer frem, snart efterfulgt at purløgen (de første spirer i persillepotten ligner basilikum, uautoriseret plantet af min yngste).

Urter i vindueskarm – dag 4

Sådan ser det ud efter 12 dage:

Urter i vindueskarm – dag 12

Og så gik det ellers meget godt og jeg begyndte at lave planer for hvad der nu skulle ske, når planterne voksede ud af potterne. Jeg glemte bare at vande…

Urter i Vindueskarmen – dag 34. Jeg håber at huskede at vande tids nok.

Det ser ud til at jeg har heldet med mig – persillen kommer igen igang. Og den 6. maj serveres der frisk, hjemmelavet basilikum.

Den 21. maj lukkes projektets første fase: Planterne i de tre potter flyttes i drivhuset hvor der tidligere har været succes med at sætte krydderurter imellem tomaterne.

Sidste dag i vindueskarmen – dag 56. De mangler vist gødning.

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!