Ok, put away the worry beads – the eggplants appear to be doing just fine as are 10 of the 11 pepper plants put in the garden last week. One pepper was attacked by a critter which I don’t count against me as the transplanter. I did make one adjustment a few days after the eggplants went in – cut palm fronds to shade the plants from direct sunlight for a week or so. I did that after they were wimping badly at the end of a day of sun and it made an immediate difference. The only seedlings still awaiting transplant to the garden are 4 peppers that I deliberately started later to extend the harvest and/or act as spares for ones that fall to critters.
I use a garden accessory called “wall of water” to protect my tomatoes from the cold. They allowed me to plant tomatoes in Utah as early as March and often the plant would be growing inside the wall’s protection with a foot of snow on the ground. It looks like a 2’ tall teepee of plastic cylinders, maybe a dozen or so, each filled with water. It works on the principle that the daytime sunshine warms the water so that the plants are heated at night when the outside temperature can be below freezing. I have 9 of them and they still work flawlessly with no leaks although they must be 20 years old. I’ve used them this year to protect 9 plants. I planted a total of 14 tomatoes this year so the other 5 have been protected as needed with pillow cases. The plants that have the water wall protection are all popping out of the top of the teepee so the plants are over 2’ tall whereas the ones protected by conventional covering as needed are less than half that size. So I think next year I’ll add a few more to my collection and use them on peppers and eggplants as well to get an extra early start. And guess what, a few of the tomato plants have blossoms already so living inside the water tent has really been an accelerant.
I’m going to use a different algorithm on the zucchini this year. I always lose a lot of fruit due to blossom end rot and boring critters. I make up for that by putting in way more plants than I need – playing a pure numbers game. I hate to use insecticides no matter how safe the manufacturers say they are so this year I’m going to put in fewer plants but cover them with a floating insect barrier cover that I bought last season and never used. Supposedly the mesh is sized to keep insects out but no heat buildup.
I’m amazed at the outrage over the “news” that Facebook postings are “public” and mined by all sorts of users. I have never thought anything else and assumed from the get go that selling information or selling access to demographics was how Facebook was monetized. And the fact that it could be used by politicians world wide just can’t be a surprise to anybody who thinks about it. What do they think the “WWW” stands for with every URL? Companies have been selling customer lists for years. Anybody get junk mail?
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