Once upon a time on usenet Terry Coombs wrote:
George Shirley wrote:
Miserable morning, light mist falling, low forties temp, warmed up
some by 1500, 47f, no rain, some sunshine. There is hope that spring
may be just around the corner.
George

You call that miserable ? We got up to snow on the ground and low
20's , snowed all night and all morning and the roads are covered and
more of the same coming our way later this evening , I told the wife
to call in to work ... I grew up driving on snowy roads , but the
roads in this area get icy at a glance and a slide off the road up
here could end up slidin' off a mountain .
My seedlings are doing great , 'maters over 6" tall now . As soon as
we get a break in the weather I'll be bustin' butt to get my hot
box/mini-greenhouse built . I have a growing problem grin .

You call that miserable? Here just south of Auckland New Zealand it's over
30ºC both outside and inside my house and very humid. It's too hot to do any
gardening other than the 'must do' things in this weather like water the
newly-grafted, newly sprouted citrus grafts (on Flying Dragon rootstock to
dwarf the trees).

I'll water the tomatoes etc. after midnight when it's cool enough to move a
bit without sweating so much I have to shower every other hour.

I'd really like to be gardening, instead I'm sat here in front of a fan.
It's too hot to even finishing up my LED growlight that I'm making. I've
soldered the emitters onto 'star' bases, marked, drilled and tapped the
hestsink they'll be screwed to - I just need to solder all the wires to each
emitter and back to a connector and do final assembly with heat transfer
paste. However I don't want to be weilding a 400ºC soldering iron in this
weather.

I've finally decided I have to have a decent energy efficient grow light.
Not so much for starting seedlings but for rooting cuttings. With these
hotter summers of late it's very difficult to regulate the right amount of
light for cuttings in a 'humidity chamber' using the sun as a source without
them getting far too hot.

I've wasted a lot of time this season taking (mainly tree) cuttings and
trying to get them to root only to have them wilt and/or rot. It never used
to be like this! Next season I'm going to use the growlight for some and
air-layer others. Air-layering works really well but it's far more work than
cut, snip, dip and pot. :-/
--
Shaun.

"Humans will have advanced a long, long, way when religious belief has a
cozy little classification in the DSM."
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1)