If you want good lights for seed starting and vegetative growth, just get some white LED shop lights.  We use these:

https://www.amazon.com/Kihung-Integrated-Fixture-Linkable-Electric/dp/B086X2TX9M

They work great for starting seeds and growing leafy greens indoors.  They produce a reasonable amount of heat, which helps with the seed germination.  A whole room full of them gets pretty warm, though.


If you've never been around citrus trees in bloom, put it on your to-do list.  The fragrance is amazing, a mix of fruit and floral, like a memory of what grape soda tasted like when you were a kid.  I love that it smells so wonderful, and that it's only around for a few weeks each year, so you have to savor it while you can.

It's a gray day here, but inside this greenhouse it's warm and smells like heaven and the bees and butterflies are hard at work.

Bumper crop of lemons this year, too!  If anybody in the Austin or Lockhart (#texas) area wants to trade sats for some organically grown, fresh-picked Meyer lemons, hit me up.

https://image.nostr.build/94a96298d97ba113a0116384e5f55d7e0d115c6b949416374a593efe9399f226.jpg

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#garden #homestead #fruit #grownostr


Butterfly on lemon flower


Any time you need to smile, just do an image search for "baby orangutan".  Works every time.


This dude's bed-head game is always on point.

https://image.nostr.build/d8344aca224b9c7ee8cd089fe61899635392327274812d36976b4f1d145bf9ab.jpg

#dog #dogstr #grownostr


If you're in need of a small generator to run a few small appliances, lights, etc, Tractor Supply has these little 800-watt ones on sale for $170.

Yes, it's a cheap Chinese generator, not a high-end Honda.  You probably won't find repair parts for it.  But if you don't have any way to make emergency power, it's a good starting place, especially at this price.  I've had one of these since early 2019, and it's always been reliable.  Much higher quality than I expected.  It's relatively quiet and very lightweight.  At 800 watts, it's not going to run major appliances, but for emergency lights, running a freezer or fridge, camping, etc, it's great.

#prepping #deal #camping #tools #bargain

https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/sportsman-1000w-inverter-portable-gasoline-generator-gen1000i-1694825

https://image.nostr.build/14da0d25d7240d0ca55062d8ffba704fc9c43605f8874e59a1105d9595e0da07.jpg


That looks nice!  Personally, I think I'd paint that side wall the lighter color, leaving that one panel of wood you've already done as an eye-catching accent.


Does anyone have any recommendations for good quality 18650 batteries?  I have a number of devices that use them, and a mix of batteries that are reaching the end of their life.  I'd like to find some quality batteries in the sea of cheap Chinese junk that's on the market.

#diy #grownostr #asknostr #electronics #tools


That Thanksgiving dinner hits hard, ya'll...

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#dog #Thanksgiving #grownostr #dogstr


One thing you're probably aware of, but I'll mention anyway, is the use of lavender in calming livestock.  We use lavender essential oil with our donkeys to ease their stress and calm them for visits from the farrier to trim hooves.  It doesn't work with every animal, but for the ones it does work on, it's incredible how well it can work.

As far as things I'd be interested in, any kind of herbal additions to our chickens' diet to help boost their immune systems would be great, especially things that we can grow ourselves.


You know how when you're eating grapes, there's a lot of variation in the flavor of each one?  Some are sweeter, or more sour, or just different tasting.  When you get a really good one, you notice.

Then why the hell do all raisins taste exactly the same?


For those who doubt that true, pure evil exists in the universe, allow me to present a 3" long, fine-thread, flathead screw.  The existence of this object is incontrovertible proof that there are vicious, sadistic demons among us.

#diy #evil #grownostr

https://image.nostr.build/cb5d0803ba362e817a4b4610ec9a7f46c7633efe79c1b9f51f4b5969286d91e6.jpg


On YouTube, the channel is called "ElectroBOOM".


We grow thousands of plants twice a year (spring and fall seasons), and start most of them from seed in these 128-cell starter trays.  Going through and individually poking a little divot in each cell for the seed to be centered and at the right depth is incredibly tedious across dozens of trays...

So I designed and made this "dibbler" tool on my 3D printer.  Eight stamps on each tray and you're ready to go.  It was the first thing I designed myself and printed that worked as intended.  Though the first attempt at printing it had a bed adhesion failure and I later found a mess of plastic spaghetti on the floor...

https://image.nostr.build/9108d2daf5d0d1c80b5d9d9d5768c7cfbc93ec8a03317fed33b691194dc41183.jpg

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#gardening #nursery #tools #grownostr


Jewels Of Opar (aka fameflower).  It's basically a weed here, and once you have it on your property, it pops up everywhere.  It's also a pretty ornamental, so it's nice to be able to throw some leaves in a salad, too.


If you place the green tomatoes on a windowsill or other bright place, most will ripen slowly, but won't have quite the same flavor as vine-ripened.

We usually make "chow-chow" out of our green tomatoes at the end of the season.  That's a kind of pickled relish that's usually made out of a variety of vegetables.  Ours is mostly green tomatoes, cabbage, carrots, and onions.  Goes great on sausages, burgers, etc.


You can't really go wrong with the Fisher Space Pen.  The "bullet" model is pretty compact when capped (just under 4" long), but with the cap flipped around on the other end, it's a standard length pen.  It'll write just about anywhere, and the refills seem to last a very long time.


Look at this guy.  Just ridiculous.

https://image.nostr.build/9b5e35adf247c83fb6a81a024497e20b7d05b83db1af302896ea9245d6dba17c.jpg

#dogstr #dogs


If you're in the central Texas area this weekend, we're having our fall plant sale at our farm in McMahan (near Lockhart) this Saturday (9/30) and Sunday (10/1) from 10 AM until 5 PM both days.

If you’re in the market for fall/winter garden plants like broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, herbs, and ornamentals, selected to perform well in our cool season, have a look at our catalog at:

   http://squeakyfrogfarm.com

We had some ridiculously hot weather during the sprouting and growing season at the end of this summer, which caused some germination and survival problems, so a few items are in shorter supply than we would like, but we still have a great selection to choose from.

If you can’t make it, but are in Austin, we can take an order and deliver the plants to you next week (or you can pick them up from our house in Austin).

20% discount if you pay with Bitcoin!

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That looks like a great harvest!

You should definitely plant them farther apart next time.  About 4 inches apart is the ideal spacing to get the most of your space, but still get larger onions.  Keep the bed as free of weeds as you can, too.  Onions are not very good at competing with other plants for nutrients.

Make sure the soil has plenty of nitrogen.  If you're doing organic, that means lots of compost and maybe a little blood meal or other nitrogen supplement.  The goal is to get as many leaves on the onion plant as possible before it starts to bulb out.  More leaves means bigger onions.

Onions begin to bulb when the day reaches a certain number of hours of daylight.  The actual number varies with each variety of onion, (some are 10 hours, some are 14, etc) but that's the life cycle.  So to get larger onions, it's best to plant them as early as possible in the year.  As soon as you're nearing the end of your frost season, get them planted.  That gives them more time to grow before the days get long enough to trigger them into bulbing.


Good morning, Nostriches!  Here's a photo of a teeny-tiny little green snake from my garden that you didn't know you needed today.  His head is about the size of a pencil eraser.

#grownostr #snake

https://image.nostr.build/e0fdf9a2908abca4749621305e5dee1703e0274972d7f9182d4d500e4f63523c.jpg


This relentless heat has caused our chickens to stop laying eggs, so we had to buy some at the store.  They were on sale, so we thought we'd supplement our dwindling supply.  Holy crap, these things are flavorless junk compared to the fresh homegrown ones!  When we first started raising chickens, I didn't notice that ours were that much better than the store-bought ones, but going the other direction really highlights the massive quality difference.  (We also use much higher quality feed now than we did in the beginning, so that is probably part of the difference, too.)

If you eat eggs, get your own chickens.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

#grownostr #chickens #homestead #foodstr