On 3/3/2015 6:40 PM, ~misfit~ wrote:
Once upon a time on usenet George Shirley wrote:
On 3/2/2015 5:02 PM, ~misfit~ wrote:
Once upon a time on usenet George Shirley wrote:
On 2/28/2015 9:04 PM, ~misfit~ wrote:
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. :-/

You poor soul, I've been walking around all day in long sweat
pants, a long-sleeved shirt, and a sweater on. While working on the
blueberry blossoms I was also wearing a nice coat and my Peruvian
beret, knitted from llama wool, and was still cold. I miss the
Arabian Peninsula and the 125F days and 90F nights.

I'll take too cold over too hot (for comfort) any day of the week.
It's easier (and legal!) to keep putting clothes on than keep taking
them off. It's can sometimes afford a bit of heat in my home -
there's no AC.
I was grafting rose bushes in the growing field when I was twelve,
that was enough for me, haven't done a lot of grafting since except
for a couple of pear trees a few years ago. I generally air layer
for various rosemary plants.

A few pleasant years of my youth were spent working in vineyards and
wineries and I spent many a day at the grafting benches,
bench-grafting wine grape varieties onto phyloxera resistant
rootstocks. That was over 30 years ago and I haven't grafted since.
Bud grafting is a whole other ball-game to bench grafting.
That's exactly why the family friend who owned the rose farm hired
young boys, eleven to thirteen years old. Older boys in their late
teens carried a two by twelve board down the rows, bent the bushes
over, young guys did the bud graft and wrapped a powdered rubber band
above and below the graft. I got 25 cents an hour US plus room and
board. Big meal of the day was noon, called "dinner." Came back to
the farm house around noon, all kinds of home grown, home cooked with
care, food. Hams, chickens, turkey's, all sorts of vegetables and
desserts. After dinner we laid under the shade trees and rested for
two hours then back to the field. Big breakfast in the morning, small
supper when work stopped for the day. I grew two inches taller and
twenty lbs heavier that summer. Put some muscle on too. Folks that
owned the rose farm had been friends with my parents since they were
very young. Good people, long gone.


Sounds like one of those summers that that go a long way to defining a
developing young person.
Particularly since we had Sunday off, went to church with the family,
came home, ate a big lunch, about 2 pm we began the baseball game, went
on until oh dark thirty. The boss's son made it to the minor leagues as
a pitcher but came home after two years, said he knew he would never
make the majors and he would just as soon raise roses. He did raise
roses until in his early sixties he fell over dead with a heart attack.
I guess it went to his kids after that. That area of Texas used to be
well known for growing rose bushes.

Your LED grow light sounds handy for what you need. I am slowly
moving to LED everywhere on the property for better efficiency,
longer life, and lower electric bills.

Every source of light in my home is LED and has been for a couple of
years now. The council even replaced the old sodium-vapour street
light outside my place with an LED street light a few weeks back.
It's amazing, instead of there being a circular pool of orange light
that shone as much onto my bedroom curtains as anywhere there's
directed white light onto the road and footpaths. I asked to see the
light as they were replacing it because I'm nosy. g

It has a very clever system of TIR optics that directs the light
evenly below the light and up and down the street, there's almost no
spill-over off-road on either side. Also, as there's no light
shining upwards (or even horizontally, the LEDs are recessed) I get
to see the stars again! The lamp they removed was an 80w unit, dull
and ugly. The replacement LED lamp is 32w (16 x 2w emmiters powered
by a Philips potted 32w driver) and it lights the areas that need to
be lit so much better. There isn't the large pools of darkness
between lamps any more. Brilliant!
We still have mercury vapor lights along our streets.

I live on a cul-de-sac in the 'bad' part of town (read; cheapest rents). I
needed somewhere to rent after my injury when I lost my business and the
house I'd been paying a mortgage on for a couple of years. The Invalid's
Benefit is quite low and really I should have moved into a flat but I wanted
a garden and space between me and neighbours so moved here.

When I moved into this house there was a mercury vapour street light
outside. The Streetlight is right outside my gate, about 15 - 20m from my
bedroom window. That wasn't so bad, it was a 50w unit and threw out a white
light. It illuminated my curtains a little but wasn't enough to upset my
sleep.

When it went out about seven years ago I rang the local council and told
them the lamp need replacing. However they replaced the whole 'head' and it
was an 80w High Pressure Sodium lamp. Yuk! Orange light that lit up my
bedroom and forced me to buy thicker curtains.

Now, with the LED lamp there is almost no light hitting my curtains but the
street and footpath are lit with bright white light, it's a massive
improvement. The light is directed so that it shines up the roiad ~50m
either side. The gateway at the end of my drive is also illuminated so I can
see it but, progressing across my front lawn it goes from bright to dark in
~5m. Such a difference compared with the previous lamps that had a bright
bulb hanging below them surrounded by a clear pastic 'bubble' and which
shone light randomly everywhere and left big dark areas between lamps.

I was given the install spec sheet from the council guy and this lamp is
made by a New Zealand company. They are very good indeed. I couldn't find a
website for them however.

Hmmm, I just Googled again only this time using the lamp model number as
well as their name and found this page;
http://www.betacom.co.nz/assets/GL520_0314.pdf this lamp outside my place
has optic 7032. I was wrong about the number of LEDs too, I thought it was
16 but the pdf says 24. (It was early morning when I saw it, I was only
half-awake and the workmen didn't exactly hold the lamp still for me to
examine for long.)

They use high-quality components (Cree and Philips) so the lamps should have
a working life of decades, using about half the power of previous lights but
providing twice the brightness and spreading it sideways towards the next
light so there is less of a light / dark effect that the old lamps gave.

The only
progress they made with them was to put detectors at street level so
if you walked or drove by the street light goes on and then turns off
three minutes later. Since our subdivision has to pay the light bill
we like it that way.

We don't pay for the lighting directly but it comes out of rates, and
ultimately in my case rent. I wouldn't like it if the lights were going on
and off all night. As someone who's struggled with insomnia all my life that
would drive me to distraction rather than sleep. Also, as I live in a....
'low socio-economic area' there is a lot of crime it's great to be able to
look out the window (or at the CCTV monitor) if you hear a noise. From what
you say above it sounds like you live in a 'better' area, maybe a gated
community?

Most of this town has had its streetlights replaced with LED lamps now and
it's a startling improvement whether you live in a street or drive around at
night. Of all of the things I like about these lamps the fact that they
don't spill light sideways / upwards so that I can stand on my front deck
and see the stars now.

(I remember hearing a while back that the New Zealand government had decided
they were going to combat light pollution. Being an island nation we mostly
have very clear skies and the night sky is really a sight to behold. Most
visitors to NZ mention it.)

Gosh, I wrote more than I inteded. Time to go to the pharmacy and get my
pain meds. They are so tightly controlled so as to try to avoid misuse /
diversion that the maximum anyone can pick up at one time is 10 days supply.
That got old five years ago!

Our son-in-law was injured in a fork truck accident over ten years ago,
the only thing that helps with the pain is oxycodone, think he has a
permanent prescription for that. Plus he has had multiple operations on
both feet and lower legs. I try to steer away from anything stronger
than aspirin, was addicted to nicotine for 42 years and finally got off
the cigarettes and want to stay that way. I think I'm getting addicted
to diet cola though. Naw, not really, about half a liter a day.

Late afternoon temperature was 81F, startled me as the house temp was
still about 72F, reckon this house is better insulated than I thought.