Gardening Arcanepotato • 3 days ago • 100%

Captions in imgur link

Gardening Arcanepotato • 4 days ago • 93%

It's canning time

Gardening Arcanepotato • 1 week ago • 100%

Captions in imgr post Friendly reminder for visitors from the fedverse - this is a vegan instance. Don't provide tips on "pest control", aka murder.

Gardening Arcanepotato • 2 weeks ago • 100%

Captions in imgur link. The weather was absolutely perfect this weekend. I did a tonne on Monday too, but didn't take many photos.

Vegan Home Cooks Arcanepotato • 2 weeks ago • 98%

Potato, tomato, beans and greens (dill) all from the garden. Hummus and burgs store bought.

Gardening Arcanepotato • 2 weeks ago • 100%

The link is just to the image dump, all the info is in this post. *** I have a very turbulent relationship with growing tomatoes. They have excellent germination and transplant success, and start to grow very well, but if I don't keep on top of them or if there are a lot of bacterial issues, we don't get a lot of fruit. My climate is very hot and humid in the summers. *** Here are some links to reputable websites about diagnosing tomato issues: - [Texas A&M Extension Office](https://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/vegetable/problem-solvers/tomato-problem-solver/) - [University of Maryland Extension Office](https://extension.umd.edu/resource/key-common-problems-tomatoes/) - [Ontario Integrated Pest Management - Tomatoes](https://cropipm.omafra.gov.on.ca/en-ca/crops/tomatoes) - [Some fertilizer company with really good diagnostic photos - sorry!](https://www.yara.co.uk/crop-nutrition/tomato/nutrient-deficiencies-tomato/) *** Okay, on to my tomatoes. Here are a few photos of their general appearance and growing conditions. These photos are mostly after clean up. I am growing a few varieties of plum tomatoes as well as Super Sweet 100s which are a cherry tomato. They are woven into the trellis as they grow and we try and keep them airy by removing suckers and pruning. Another priority is keeping the bottoms of the plants clear to minimize slugs.        *** The following photos are of some of the problems on the plants and what I think they are, based on the above links.  I think this one is pretty clearly powdery mildew. These are "extra" plants in a different bed than the ones I showed above and they are crowded and not pruned well. I need to make sure they are being watered from the bottom and not splashing the soil. ***  I'm not sure what the issue is here. The tomatoes are falling off before ripe, but the stem is yellowing. It is starting at the fruit, versus at other parts of the plants like a disease might. If you have any thoughts, please do share! ***   I think this is blossom drop, which the ontario site says is due to stress. In addition to weather stress, nutrition deficiencies and disease/pests, the plant might be carrying too much fruit already. ***  These leaves are just slightly yellowish and slightly curled. It looks like it could be a nutrient deficiency, or the early stages of a disease. I should probably test the soil. ***    These leaves are a little further along in being hecked up. I am going to guess these are either Verticillium wilt or Bacterial spot, but I am leaning towards the wilt. I will need to investigate varieties that are resistant, as crop rotation is somewhat challenging for us.

Gardening Arcanepotato • 2 weeks ago • 100%

I started typing this all out in a post I am writing about tomato problems, but I thought I would make a separate post to share some observations about my local weather for the past 4 years. I'm sharing this as an exercise in looking at weather data, not really as a diagnostic or making conclusions based on it. The 2024 growing season isn't complete and chose to not look at max temp which is another important indicator, because I am too sleepy and lazy. I got my data from [government of canada weather stations](https://climate.weather.gc.ca/historical_data/search_historic_data_e.html). I live not to far from one. Your government might publish such data, or you could try sites like Weather Underground which collects data from personal weather stations. I downloaded CSV files and used conditional formatting and pivot tables to get the data I wanted. *** 2021 - Last frost: May 1st - Last day with a low of 5 degrees: May 31 - First frost: October 22 - Growing days (between 5C and first frost): 144 2022 - Last frost: April 30 - Last day with a low of 5 degrees: May 25 - First frost: October 2 - Growing days (between 5C and first frost): 130 2023 - Last frost: May 18 - Last day with a low of 5 degrees: May 26 - First frost: October 23 - Growing days (between 5C and first frost): 150 2024 - Last frost: April 26 - Last day with a low of 5 degrees: May 11 - First frost: N/A - Growing days (between 5C and first frost): N/A Some charts:    If I am going to draw one conclusion, it's that I feel justified in waiting until June 1 to transplant sensitive plants (tomatoes and peppers) but need to be on the ball to direct sow cold weather crops by mid April (peas, leafy greens, beets, radishes). 2024 might have been an outlier in terms of how soon the season started, and I don't want to risk the sensitive plants because they take so much work starting indoors. It's hard to come back if they fail to thrive.

Gardening Arcanepotato • 3 weeks ago • 100%

This is one of my favorite plants in the garden and is such a miracle to me. I told FrostyTrichs that I didn't think it was native, but I was wrong! I'm kind of glad, we really do try to buy native perennials (or at least cultivars of plants that are native in the area-ish), but sometimes get swayed by profound beauties Obviously, the photo above is a cultivar and not a true native but the the Rose Mallow is native in my province: [https://www.ontario.ca/page/swamp-rose-mallow](https://www.ontario.ca/page/swamp-rose-mallow) PDF alert - [https://www.sararegistry.gc.ca/virtual_sara/files/plans/mp_swamp_rose-mallow_e_final.pdf](https://www.sararegistry.gc.ca/virtual_sara/files/plans/mp_swamp_rose-mallow_e_final.pdf) I should note that we are outside if it's native range and 1-2 hardiness zones colder... I can't believe this tropical looking beauty survives our harsh winters. This is what it looks like in April: ) It springs back to life well after everything else has, and all hope is lost. We noticed the first growth at the very end of May:  The first blooms were noticed yesterday, at the very end of August. They are in the back corner of our yard, about 150 ft from the house, but the beautiful colour stands out from the green. This plant is a very good reminder of how useful garden logs can be. We were ready to give up on her, but looked back at least year's photos and remembered that she likes to sleep in.

Gardening Arcanepotato • 3 weeks ago • 100%

Okay, so I had a pile of potatoes on my shelf in the living room, as one does, and got super lazy about them so they stayed there all winter and sprouted. Instead of just hucking them in the compost, I decided to plant them. #### May 11, 2024 Here are the potatoes I gathered from the shelf:  And here they are that same day, planted. I did not plant all of the potatoes that were in the bowl.  It looks like maybe three purple and nine yellow? Here they are all ready for a nice nap:  Over time I hilled the plants with straw. *** #### August 24, 2024 This is the bed as of yesterday:  I started by moving the straw gently, and feeling around for potato plant stalks, like this one:  As I dug deeper, I found groups of them:  You can see how thick the straw layer was in the photo above. When I planted them, I did not place them very deep into the ground. I like to harvest potatoes with my hands and not tools, to minimize the harm I might do to insects. This photo shows the hay all cleared away from these plants. You start to see the potatoes creeping out of the soil. Potatoes grow upwards along the stalk as the stalk growns. That's why they are hilled with either dirt or straw.  This photo shows it a bit better, you can see the potatoes growing in both the soil and the straw layers.  The yellow potatoes grew bigger than the purple ones, and I got a pretty big yellow one:  I threw them in a bowl and sprayed them directly with the hose. I probably shouldn't have done that because I damaged the skin of a few of them, meaning they may not cure very well. The soil is so sticky, and I got lazy. Here is my harvest:  I ended up with more than I planted for sure, and maybe more than I started with. I think I can say I at least renewed the potatoes, lol. A few of them have insect damage. *** As you can see, my soil is awful. It's really heavy clay and lacks organics. This is one reason for all the wood chips. I decided to plant the potatoes in the ground to help break up the soil a bit (someone told me they do that?) and also because I had nothing to lose. I did observe evidence of a mycorrhizal network in parts of the soil, which is lovely and showing me that there is hope. I ended up burying the straw in the bed, covering it with soil, and covering the soil with a plastic tarp I had. Mmmmm, microplastics! I hope to keep the soil free of weeds so it's easier to deal with in the spring or later in the fall. I'm not sure if I will grow potatoes in here again (in the spring) or I'll try garlic in this bed (in October).

Gardening Arcanepotato • 1 month ago • 100%

Not having a good year for yield but still enjoying it!

DIY Arcanepotato • 1 month ago • 100%

*I will start by saying I’m not that kind of engineer and you shouldn’t take anything here as advice. It’s a comical re-telling of my mishaps and probably not even to building code.* *** - Part 1: [Foundation drain sump pits/Iron ochre](https://vegantheoryclub.org/post/192199) - Part 2: [A. Potato does Plumbing Part 2: Cleaning and Re-hosing a Sump Pump Blessed with Iron Ochre](https://vegantheoryclub.org/post/377090) *** Okay, so the new pump/hose situation was not working. The drinking water system backwash would flood the basement (slightly) mostly because the pump we fixed simply wasn't getting output anymore. It was working when we initially installed it and we did test it outside just pumping from a bucket at it was outputting a good rate! I went away for work for about a week and my partner had been dealing with this so I decided to just follow his lead and see what he wanted to try, but also get what I thought we needed (which was to go back to using some hard pipe and not have such a long, slack hose). His suggestion was to rent drain cleaner. We went to the local big box store and it turns out that you can't really rent tools > 25' for 1.25" pipes. They had a hand-held tool to rent but it cost the same to rent for 24 hours as it would to buy one, so we just did that. We ended up buying a 25' drain auger that could be operated by hand or drill for about $35. When we got home, we tried disconnected the piping and tried to get the tool into the 90 at the wall, which you will remember didn't look so bad...  Turns out the other side was a lot worse and really did explain why the pump just wasn't pumping:  A centrifugal pump can pump against a closed valve without blowing up the piping because the flow is dependent on the discharge pressure, or head. The pump will just keep moving less and less fluid as the discharge head increases. When you have a restriction in the pipe like this, you will notice the pump is running but the level is not dropping. There are other potential causes (the impeller is gone, for example) that will show the same symptoms, so it was good to see that restriction right away. I took the elbow outside to wash off and use a screw driver to chip away at the build up. That stuff is solid! While I did that, my partner augured the line out of the house. Some gunk came back, but not really that much. It looks like the line isn't as bad as just that fitting. I have a theory that the rapid change in direction is slowing down the flow so it's not scouring as well, but we decided to not try and mess with any of the piping today. When I install the new piping, I will get rid of the 90 degree elbow. When re-instating the pumps we did find that we were air locked and the pump would not pump at all. We were able to fix that by opening the flex coupling a bit to let the pressure escape. We were going to prime it, but decided to just give it a go once the pressure released and it ended up working just fine then. With the check valve, we shouldn't have to do that again as the line will always be full. There is a little hole on the threading for the check valve, but I suspect that's plugged. Right now, the pump is working much better so we'll take that as a win and a reminder of what we should check if the rate drops off again.

DIY Arcanepotato • 1 month ago • 100%

*I will start by saying I'm not that kind of engineer and you shouldn't take anything here as advice. It's a comical re-telling of my mishaps and probably not even to building code.* *** We did this weeks ago but I'm so lazy so I'm only posting about it how. We wanted a way to disconnect the pump from the discharge pipe in order to remove the pump from the pit. We decided to try figuring this out one pump at a time, and start with the pump that sucks worse. I wasn't able to disconnect the existing hose/fittings when I tried earlier, but it turns out it wasn't actually that impossible to do if you were not worried about breaking anything, lol. *** ## General piping arrangement This is the before:  This is the after:  This shows what not to do in terms of arranging your fittings:  In that image, you will notice there is no check valve. I didn't think I needed it because I thought this discharge point had an air gap before it joined to where my downspout drains. I was wrong about the discharge point, and ended up making a run to the hardware store late in the afternoon and didn't take photos because I was angry at myself. Without the check valve it was running 90 seconds on, 90 seconds off. With the check valve it ran 90 seconds on, 4 mins off. A massive improvement. It would also prevent the ditch in front of my house from backfilling the basement. I still don't know where this pump discharges to, but in the fall when things die back I will go exploring. I'll describe the correct(er?) arrangement below, from pump to wall: 1. Male NPT threaded check valve threads into pump, with a smooth fitting on the other side. 2. 1.5" to 1.5" flex coupling 3. 1.5" to 1.5" barbed coupling, with one end in the flex coupling and the other connected to the corrugated hose with the adjustable strap 4. 1.5" Flexible hose 5. 1.5" to 1.5" barbed coupling, with one end the hose (attached with strap) and the other end in the next flex coupling 6. 1.5" to 1.25" flex coupling to connect to the 90 degree 1.25" barbed fitting in the wall. This is what the fitting at the wall looked like:  Not so bad right? THIS IS CALLED FORESHADOWING. *** ## Now for the cleaning Here is what the pump and pit looked like before:  It looks so much cleaner than last time to me, thanks to all the cleaning we did. You can kind of see how the float might be rubbing against the discharge pipe, which is what I was hoping the flexible hose would help prevent. The next two photos show it better, when removed from the pit and in the bucket:   These photos show the material that built up on the check valve.   Here is the suction side of the pump:  We didn't crack her open because I didn't care that much. We placed the pump in the bucket with cleating agent and let her sit there. I later went in with a brush and cleaned the casing up a bit. I did not take after photos because I was filthy. We also cleaned the risers, which were not bolted down in any way:  It ended up working well enough for a week or so, but then we started having problems again and it wasn't keeping up with the backwash. I'm going to make a separate post with what we tried/learned today and I have some future plans as well, which are to return to the hard piped discharge from the pump. The pump ended up flopping around in the pit too much when starting and stopping and that's messing with the float. I am going to create the assembly (mix of abs and more flex hose) and then install it all at once, rather than re-using pieces from this set up, so that we have a "spare" ready to go if needed.

Vegan Home Cooks Arcanepotato • 1 month ago • 100%

10/10 would eat again

Book Club Arcanepotato • 1 month ago • 100%

Some people (lol me) benefit from more structured discussions! Let's use this post to share questions as top level comments. I'm going to re-post some of the questions I had from [this post](https://vegantheoryclub.org/post/301233) and also from the lists of more generic book club questions found in [this post](https://vegantheoryclub.org/post/247204). Anyone who has read/listened to the chapter should feel welcome to respond to any question. You don't need to be an expert or to "know" the answer. Use this space to work out your own thoughts. This is valuable to your comrades! Please feel free to post your own, and don't be shy! We are here to learn and discuss. It's okay to not get it all and you can't learn if you don't ask 💖

Gardening Arcanepotato • 1 month ago • 100%

Some might call it cottage core, but I'm just a swamp witch 🧙‍♀️

Gardening Arcanepotato • 1 month ago • 89%

Hey hey hey smoke weed every day

Gardening Arcanepotato • 2 months ago • 100%

I'm smoking weed

Gardening Arcanepotato • 2 months ago • 100%

The first year here I planted the peas and beans separately, but noticed the peas were winding down as the beans were starting to wind up. Since then I have decided to plant them in succession so that I could get a lot more peas! The imgr gallery has captions on the photos explaining the process.

DIY Arcanepotato • 2 months ago • 100%

I'm mid-DIY on this one but putting it out there in case it's helpful for anyone. I'm not specifically looking for advice, but if you have *personal experience* with iron ochre and are willing to share, I would welcome it. I live in a swamp. I have basement foundation drains that we got replaced when we moved in a few years ago. We mostly wanted battery backups on the pumps, but we ended up getting a new drainage system too. This got us super acquainted with our drains. There is a type of microbe living in the soil that consumes iron and leaves behind something called [iron ochre](https://www.egr.msu.edu/bae/water/drainage/iron-ochre-clogging). We use chemical treatment to help keep the drains running (cleating agent, keeps the iron soluble) but are at the point where the pumps need to be cleaned. We have a water treatment system (iron/sulphur filter) that backwashes every few days. It is overwhelming the pumps and causes the sump pit alarm to go off (at 4:45 am). Our pumps are not easy to disconnect from the discharge hose, so I took a first go at cleaning out the pit and making sure the material isn't building up at the pump inlet. There was also a lot of ground water that day, so I wouldn't want to have pulled the pumps in the first place. I am sharing the photos of what it looks like inside a sump pit to help demystify the system. [link to video of the rate of water into the pit 😬](https://i.imgur.com/98qfQnH.mp4) This is a photo of the sump pit:  There are three pumps. On the left you see the first pump (above the green hose), to the right of that you see the second pump, and then the red thing is the ~~emergency pump~~ (edit: float for the emergency pump which you can't see from this angle) which is on a battery back up. On the far right you see the drain and build up of iron ochre, as well as the white hose which is the backwash drain. The first pump get stuck running dry and I think it has to do with how it is positioned in the pit. The pumps turn on and off via a [hardwired float](https://www.kdpumps.co.uk/sump-pump-float-switch/). When the water level rises, the float well...floats and pump turns on. When the water level drops, the float will also move down and eventually reach the off position. When there are more than one pump in a pit, the floats are set at different positions so that a second pump can kick in when the first is unable to keep up. The float must be getting stuck in the up position. It doesn't do that when the cover is open, but when it is closed it shifts a little bit. It is also not properly sealed, and shoots water out of the sleeve connection to the discharge hose you can see on the left. The strap is facing away ands can't be tightened without taking the pump out. How I attempted to clean the pit and hopefully flush some of the buildup off the pump internals: 1. I forced the pumps to run as long as they could by holding up a float (with a plastic coat hanger, lol - don't put your hands in the pit!) 2. After unplugging the pumps, I used a shop vac to clean up the iron ochre buildup on the side of the pit (at the drain) and anything I could get on the bottom, below the pump stands. You can see the contents of the shop vac [here](https://i.imgur.com/yyLYq5p.jpg) 3. I put some cleating agent (Iron out) into the pit and left the pumps unplugged to allow the pit to fill with water, keeping as much retention time as possible with the chemical rich water. Once the pit got very full I then plugged in the pumps and let pumps discharge the water. I repeated a few times. 4. I flushed the pit using the green hose in the above image. It is connected to my water heater and is only accessible tap in the basement (I have taps for the washing machine but no other plumbing). I opened it to the put and let the pumps keep up. 5. After I was satisfied that the pit had been sufficiently flushed, I poured a little bit of bleach into the pit and repeated the process of soaking the pumps. **Please never mix bleach with other household chemicals. Bleach is not compatible with the active ingredients in Iron out.** The use of bleach in the first place was somewhat questionable. I was trying to kill any iron bacteria in the pit, but I likely didn't use enough to manage that. It's not something I will be doing again. I think the clean out helped a bit - the pumps seemed to be running quite well, but I have no way to quantify it. Unfortunately, it didn't help enough, and we are still be awoken by the alarms. The next step is to get brave and pull the pumps. One thing I want to add to this system is something to measure and record the amps draw on the pumps. This would let me know how often they are running and help track issues with their performance. Once I figure out how to disconnect the pumps and am able to take them out of the pit to clean, I will be sure to take photos of the process to share.

Gardening Arcanepotato • 2 months ago • 100%

I look forward to drowning in beans soon.

Vegan Home Cooks Arcanepotato • 2 months ago • 90%

Home grown peas, beans, zucchini with homemade Novick burgers and store bought hummus, cheese, and rice crackers.

Vegan Home Cooks Arcanepotato • 2 months ago • 80%

I've been bringing food with me in a cooler lately and honestly it's the best??? I went on a super cute day trip today and we didn't spend any money on questionable food at carnist places. I think bringing fancy beverages is the major key alert for me. I don't buy soda for home unless we are having guests/it's a holiday. I'm always so tempted to pick up a soda/slushy when out on a trip as a treat. Having the mocktails along with our water bottles felt special.

Vegan Home Cooks Arcanepotato • 2 months ago • 100%

With bonus garden pics

DIY Arcanepotato • 3 months ago • 81%

This list is ongoing. Please feel free to suggest links or disagree with links that are included in the comments. Chemical Safety: - [Health Canada: Use household chemicals safely](https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/home-safety/household-chemical-safety.html) - [Sodium hypochlorite (bleach) compatibility chart [PDF]](https://www.forceflowscales.com/downloads/chemical-safety/hypochlorite/SodiumHypoIncompatibilityChart.pdf) Electrical Safety: - [BC Hydro: At-home electrical safety tips](https://www.bchydro.com/safety-outages/electrical-safety/safety-at-home/electrical-safety-tips.html) - [Electrical Safety Authority: Indoor Safety](https://esasafe.com/safety/home-electrical-safety/indoor-safety/) - [NFPA: Electrical Safety in the Home](https://www.nfpa.org/education-and-research/home-fire-safety/electrical) - [Canadian Center for Occupational Health and Safety: Electrical Safety - Basic Information](https://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/safety_haz/electrical.html) General: - [A reminder to ensure you check the limitations of your tools. Otherwise you could end up with misleading results.](https://vegantheoryclub.org/comment/323123)

Gardening Arcanepotato • 3 months ago • 100%

There are captions on the photos in the link, but I'll give more info here. When we moved to this house we noticed a ... _uniquely_ constructed french drain extending > 100 ft from the house that connected to the downspout at the house and to the roadside ditch at the front. The previous residents left us a letter with info about the house and we learned this was to direct spring thaw away from the septic field. It was graded poorly, and for a lot of the backyard it's actually higher up than the main grade. It was accurate to say there is pooling water in the back. I'm not too concerned about the septic field, but it does create a boggy environment. Almost on a whim, I decided to dig a storm water pond. I am a water engineer, but not that kind of water engineer. I have a laypersons knowledge of hydrology and ponds. I watched a lot of YT videos on permaculture water systems. I picked a low point and started digging. I added a swale because I noticed the water pools in shallow but broad area. My partner has largely taken over the heavy lifting but we continue to work together on it. We noticed an improvement in the first spring after we dug it. It did spill over, but overall the water was more contained. We continued to dig, and a lot of the work was dredging out soil that dissolved into it. We thought about clear fill and PVC tubing, like the french drain, but opted for a more natural look. I want the bottom to be permeable. This pond is for redirecting water, not for storage. We rely on well water and even though the water table is very high in the area (and feels like it won't ever run out), I feel like it's important to give the water a path to recharge it. This year we had very little snow melt but lots and lots of June rain. The pond kept up for the most part. We see where we want to expand it and will likely use portions of the existing french drain as an overflow. There are other areas of the yard that pool, largely on the fence with our other neighbor. Initially I wanted the swale to continue across the whole yard, but it doesn't seem feasible, as we want to bring wheelbarrows and other tools over and I don't want to construct a bridge (although it sounds very cute!) And yes, we use Bacillus thuringiensis pucks for mosquito control. It's safe for other aquatic life, as evidenced by our new frog friends! I can't wait to see how this continues to grow and change.

Gardening Arcanepotato • 3 months ago • 89%

Roasted and kimchi radishes on some rice and lentils cooked in a rice cooker.