Feels good to be a composter. Just turned the 11th pile of the year for it's last hot phase. The 12th pile is starting to heat up too. #compost #permies #permaculture

Looking straight down into the feed tube of the rocket bench.

@rev.hodl inspired me to post more rocket content. Here's a quick time-lapse of my rocket bench heating up and burning for about 2 hours. Butt-warming temperature takes about 15-20 minutes. #permies #permaculture #rocketmassheater

Gm frens. The compost is cooking.

the color out of space

Found some nice shaggy manes today. These turn into black liquid after being picked or getting too old. The process is called deliquescence and helps the mushroom distribute spores. Both the fresh mushroom and liquid are edible. The liquid can also be used as ink.

Not sure what these are but I'm happy to have them growing out of a finished compost pile.

It's a shame I have to turn this compost pile. Maybe they'll survive and produce some peas...

When everything is configured correctly and connected correctly and it still doesn't work: try turning it off and on again. :facepalm:

My work in the fiat mines has never given me the same satisfaction that I get from turning a compost pile. #compost #permies #permaculture

Had a new visitor to the garden yesterday. He came over to get attention every few minutes and otherwise just sat and chilled nearby while I touched plants. #catstr

Started a new compost pile a few days ago... Rather than mixing everything on a tarp first, the ingredients went into the bin in single-bucket layers. Every few buckets I added a handful of cottonseed meal and cheap cat food for high nitrogen. It seems to be heating up nicely. The first turn showed the inside was a little dry, which I think was indicated by the temperature dropping rapidly right before turning. Getting the moisture level right is harder when it's not mixed on a tarp first. #compost #soilfoodweb #permies #permaculture

I had about 50 buckets that needed a thorough cleaning with the pressure washer. So I repurposed my saw buck to hold them. Slight downward angle lets it drain while washing. The saw buck is made from an old salvaged wood ladder. The rung on the back holds the bucket so it doesn't fly away from the pressure washer. #permies #permaculture

I made a Grafana dashboard to monitor soil moisture throughout my garden: The measurements are not consistent across sensors, so I've been watching what happens after watering (the spikes) and estimating field capacity for each sensor (the green dashed line). #grafana #homeassistant #permaculture #grownostr

#aiart #stablediffusion #animatediff

It's a bright sunny day, so I took a look at the illuminance numbers on the sensors again. Lots of variance in the raw numbers. Giving each one a scale factor based on its largest reading seems to calibrate them fairly well. Sensor 2 is less accurate now at lower levels, but these will be outside so it's not too important to get accurate numbers for lower light levels. #grafana #homeassistant #grownostr

With only a few hours of data, I can see that sensor 2 is definitely giving invalid luminance numbers. The variance in the other sensors is high, but they follow the same pattern and might be fine with a manual offset. Since it was cloudy today, none of them hit the upper limit of measurement. In previous testing with sensor 1, the limit was 100,000 lux. Next, I made it rain. The large spike shows the senors are correctly detecting a change in moisture. Despite being right next to each other, they show very different percentages, as much as 20%. Seeing the moisture level drop off quickly seems like a sign of good drainage, at least down to 3 inches. It may be worth trying to calibrate the sensors in water. At the very least these give an idea of the relative moisture changing over time. #homeassistant #grownostr

#zapathon

#zapathon

Dropping some science on the garden today. I've been testing a pair of these plant sensors for the last few weeks and decided they were useful enough to get more. During testing I found that sensor 2 showed odd readings for light level. Placed right next to each other, when the light level was below 10k both sensors showed approximately the same value, but above 10k sensor 2 was off by a factor of about 2.75. It still followed the same pattern, so it seems like a calibration error. I got 6 more sensors and placed them all next to each other. Now I'm giving the sensors a chance to stabilize and accumulate data. We'll see how consistent the readings are before putting them in their final locations. #permies #permaculture #gardenstr #grownostr