Author: chogan@directresearch.com

Post G22-047: Heat and tomato ripening, just one more thing that I can’t test this year.

 

I’ve been harvesting ripe tomatoes more-or-less continuously over the past week.

Accordingly, it’s about time I admitted that my prediction of a period of no ripe tomatoes, due to excess heat, was wrong.  And it’s time to do the autopsy. Continue reading Post G22-047: Heat and tomato ripening, just one more thing that I can’t test this year.

Post #1563: Meanwhile, the price of gasoline continues to plummet

 

Just thought I’d say it, because nobody seems to be.  Below, the top graph is gas, bottom graph is crude oil.

People were stupid enough to blame the rise on the President.  But the President, praise the Lord, was not stupid enough to take credit for the fall.  Yet.  Though he did remark on it as being a good thing. Continue reading Post #1563: Meanwhile, the price of gasoline continues to plummet

Post #1562: COVID-19, still 39/100K.

 

The U.S. stands at 39 new COVID-19 cases per 100K population per day, unchanged over the past seven days.  Deaths are still running 350 a day or so. Hospitalizations appear to have peaked at just over 6000 a day.

Data source for this and other graphs of new case counts:  Calculated from The New York Times. (2021). Coronavirus (Covid-19) Data in the United States. Retrieved 7/27/2022, from https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data.”  The NY Times U.S. tracking page may be found at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html

If I smooth out the worst of the holiday-related data reporting artifacts, you can see that this is now the longest “flat” stretch in the U.S. pandemic.  The new case rate has been at more-or-less the same level for three months.

 

As importantly, there’s nothing new on the horizon.  Omicron BA.5 and BA.4 together account for 95% of all new COVID-19 cases in the U.S.

Source:  CDC COVID data tracker, accessed 7/27/2022

Recall that the World Health Organization applied the name Omicron to a specific strain of COVID around Thanksgiving 2021.  Three quarters of a year later, and nothing new has arisen that merits getting a new Greek letter applied to it.

Source:  Greek-alphabets.com

The absence of pi is finally attracting some press coverage.  If you skim over that Time article, you’ll see this quote, emphasis mine:

Trevor Bedford, a professor in the vaccine and infectious disease division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, says ... The evolutionary jump from Delta to Omicron was large, and the virus may not change that dramatically again for years—if ever, ..."

Post G22-046, Vinegar and other organic herbicides

 

I’ve just been taught a first-hand lesson in why hardware stores sell 30% acetic acid (vinegar) as weed killer.   That’s because regular household-strength (5%) may or may not work.

Here you see a section of my driveway, sprayed yesterday with vinegar (4%).  It’s now a mix of dead and clearly undead weeds.  

Perhaps this explains the mixed reviews that vinegar gets, as an herbicide.  Above, it clearly left most of the grasses untouched, but did seem to kill some of the crabgrass. Continue reading Post G22-046, Vinegar and other organic herbicides

Post G22-045: Today’s driveway forecast: Mostly weeds, with occasional stretches of partly pavement.

 

This post is about killing a whole lot of weeds growing up through a long stretch of poorly-maintained asphalt driveway.  Options considered include:

  • Commercial weed killers (Round-Up, Spectracide).
  • Vinegar
  • Salt
  • Mechanical (weed whacker)
  • Heat.
    • Propane weed flamer
    • Electric heat gun
    • Boiling water
    • Steam
    • Solar, up to and including solar oven

This post is just about gathering the facts, trying to make my mind up.  I haven’t really tested any of these yet.

Arguably the biggest revelation (to me) is that several of the alternatives (e.g., vinegar, heat) are really no different from using a weed whacker.  It took me a while to figure that out, but all they do is take the tops off the weeds, leaving the live roots intact.  That’s just a roundabout way of doing what a weed wacker does directly.  In which case, it’s hard to argue in favor of some D-I-Y approach, when there’s a tool actually designed for the job.

After a false start with vinegar, I’ve decided to go with heat.  Primarily a solar approach, which seems to fit my situation well.  It’s an approach that isn’t typically used so there isn’t a lot of information out there on how well it works.  It’s plausible that I can amp it up enough to kill the roots.  Plus, I already have the materials on hand to try it.

The idea is not just to get the driveway surface hot enough to kill the top of the weed (and have it re-sprout), but to bake the driveway so hard that it kills the entire weed, root and all.  We’ll see if I can achieve that, or whether that’s just so much wishful thinking. Continue reading Post G22-045: Today’s driveway forecast: Mostly weeds, with occasional stretches of partly pavement.

Post G22-043: Rephrasing “tomatoes don’t ripen in the heat”.

 

This post is my best explanation of “tomatoes don’t ripen if it’s too hot out”.

Why does that need an explanation?  Because I’m still getting a few ripening tomatoes, despite the heat.

After some close observation, I think the correct statement is “tomatoes won’t start the ripening process if it’s too hot out”.   Once they’ve started the ripening process — passed beyond the “mature green” stage to “breakers” (see chart below) –I think they continue to ripen, heat or no heat.

The upshot is that you don’t get a nice, sharp cutoff of tomato production, contemporaneous with a string of hot days and nights.  You get a dip in tomato production some days later, as the ones that have already started ripening continue.  But the ones that haven’t made it to the “breakers” stage get stuck at “mature green”.

At least, that’s my best guess for what I’ve been observing in my garden this year.

(Completely separately, tomatoes won’t set fruit under excessive daytime heat.  See Post G24-021, on tomato blossom drop and heat.  Both of these effects — blossom drop and non-ripening — depend somewhat on the variety of tomato being grown, with some tomatoes (e.g., Floradade) having been bred to perform somewhat better in high heat.)

Continue reading Post G22-043: Rephrasing “tomatoes don’t ripen in the heat”.