What did you do in the garden today?

[lazy gardener]

Thanks. I like the idea of a hose end sprayer. That automatically sets the concentration? Any issue with decreased water flow causing too much concentration? I have a well, and my water flow does not match that of city water.

 

[GardenTillers44]

then some varmint chewed all the leaves off so it had to come back from that.

Is your friendly neighborhood groundhog still hanging around? Seems like we get one every spring that sets up shop under the barn within striking distance of the garden, then out comes the live trap. This year I kept finding a rabbit in the garden and wondered how it got through the electric mesh fence. Then I saw it one evening jump 3 ft up and through a 4x4 hole in the mesh without breaking stride. That got fixed straight away, but it amazes me how the critters can find and exploit every weakness in the system.

 

[GardenTillers44]

Thanks. I like the idea of a hose end sprayer. That automatically sets the concentration? Any issue with decreased water flow causing too much concentration? I have a well, and my water flow does not match that of city water.

Yes, the RTS bottle is preset at the right concentration. You can dial the opening to set the spray pattern which is nice and prevents waste. I am on a well also and the concentration does not waiver with the pressure. That RTS Orchard spray is in most garden centers and online from $22.50-$31.00.

 

[CapricornFarm]

Is your friendly neighborhood groundhog still hanging around? Seems like we get one every spring that sets up shop under the barn within striking distance of the garden, then out comes the live trap. This year I kept finding a rabbit in the garden and wondered how it got through the electric mesh fence. Then I saw it one evening jump 3 ft up and through a 4x4 hole in the mesh without breaking stride. That got fixed straight away, but it amazes me how the critters can find and exploit every weakness in the system.

I never did see what was eating my plants but it may be hibernating now. Once i had the hot wire up it pretty much took care of that.

 

[Arielle2]

re paper catalogs........





My porn is online.....and 1 hour is a SHORT visit, lol

Sandhill Preservation has gone paperless, with a LONG explanation on main page.

My one issue with paperless is that trees are viewed as the favorite neighbor hood tree, the big shade tree in the front yard, etc as the source of paper. In reality trees are grown over decades like a crop and harvested like a crop, then sent to a mill like a crop to be made into paper. I have never heard of anyone cryout over the harvesting of thousands of acres of corn or wheat......just trees. MY DH cruised for a lumber company in Maine for a summer job while studying for a BS in Forestry. The tree companies take very good care of their extensive acreage and supports the Univeristy of Maine's forestry program. Hint: Maine has historically been a BIG pulp producer.

Does anyone know how much electricity we use to substitute?

 

[Arielle2]

You can't take a computer to bed with you.

I DO!! I stole the chromebook from my boys; they get the laptop.

 

[ChocolateMouse]

"Does anyone know how much electricity we use to substitute?"

Oooh! I can actually give you an answer to this. :O I've done a lot of sustainability comparisons because a lot of folks who chat with me about it are like "Man! Modern tech draws sooooo much power!" etc.etc. But the reality is the actual power draw is VERY small.

So some facts I can pull real quick;
Production of 20 sheets of printing worthy paper uses about 1.4 KWH. So your average 20 page catalog (once you factor in the printing/binding) probably uses about 2KWH just to make, not to ship, not including manufacturing errors post paper production.
Using a laptop computer for 8 hours uses about .6 KWH and puts about .4lbs of CO2 in the air. A desktop would be about double that.

The CO2 balance of paper is trickier because it puts about .5lbs of CO2 into the air (minimally more than 8hrs computer usage) BEFORE printing and shipping (so the actual number is probably a bit higher) for 20 pages. But the older a tree is, the more CO2 it captures to build it's own bulk, sequestering it and it's exponential. So a 50 centimeter wide tree captures a third the carbon of a 100 cm wide tree. So the longer trees are allowed to grow, the better they work as carbon sinks. The average tree absorbs 48lbs of CO2 a year, but older trees may absorb many times more that. So the less area we are regularly harvesting, the more carbon sinks into trees. Trees also contribute to climate in other ways, such as weather patterns. Having forests literally creates rain, stores water in the air and soil around the tree, provides wildlife homes, etc. In places that have been heavily logged, like Haiti, they have really severe drought because they literally have no trees left.

I know around here (Ohio) a lot of our wood and pulp comes from people purchasing an old, cheap deer-hunting type property and having it timbered, sell the trees off, and then offload the cleared land to some farmer who has less work to turn it into a field now or to a deer hunter who will just plant a forage plot.

Also, over their lifetime, solar panels produce 1/3rd the emissions of current average CO2/per KWH from electricity production now. So as we move into renewable electric sources it will become wildly impractical for people to print paper catalogs every year.

TL;DR
Computers are better.
Computers release a slightly smaller amount of CO2 and uses half the electricity of a 20-page paper catalog. Each tree NOT cut this way also sequesters an additional 48+lbs of CO2 each year on average.
When you start crunching that across hundreds/thousands of people, it adds up a lot. The math gets even more dramatic if electricity is produced from renewable sources.
And that doesn't take into account water usage and other effects.

SOURCES! :O
https://www.energuide.be/en/questio...-use-and-how-much-co2-does-that-represent/54/
http://cua6.urban.csuohio.edu/~sanda/syl/envpol/materials/GREEN FACTS.pdf
https://environment-review.yale.edu/carbon-capture-tree-size-matters-0
https://cwsglobal.org/drought-and-climate-change-in-haiti/
https://www.mnn.com/green-tech/research-innovations/blogs/how-much-co2-does-one-solar-panel-create
https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gases-equivalencies-calculator-calculations-and-references

 

[pennyJo1960]

Thank you for the lesson I do appreciate you posting that

 

[henless]

I dumped around 19 loads of leaves/pine straw in my leaf mold cage. Hoping to get more put in over the weekend.

 

[ChocolateMouse]

@penny1960 , I'm glad it was helpful! I always hear people complain that our modern electricity use must be crazy high because of how much time we spend on computers, etc... And that was very true about 20 years ago. But modern appliances have made great strides in efficiency.
Incidentally, if you browse your seed company's website on a tablet, phone, etc. the electricity usage doesn't even come close. The average smart phone uses 1KWH per YEAR. Pretty exciting IMO.