Depending on the location, they can add 3-4 more months of a growing window. So double cropping or staggered plantings for a longer harvest window becomes viable.

Heat is what everyone thinks of, however that’s only part of the equation.

More importantly they maintain higher air moisture level around the leaves close to the saturation point.

This allows the plants to keep their stomatas open longer. This keeps the photosynthetic pathways operating for more time during the day. More time = more carbohydrate = more production.

They are also usually watered by drip irrigation as well. Providing he right amount of water, not too much or too little, greatly increases a plants yield.

A high tunnel is a unheated/cooled greenhouse/nethouse that is popular in every country not stuck in the dark ages with their agriculture. They come in many sizes. For example 100m x 20m ones popular in the middle east and Australia. In southern Spain they built ones that cover 20ha or more. A few in Poland were my favorite. They used split pine rails to build them.

That looks like a 1940’s WII landscaping plan. If you really want to invest in homesteading, get out of the 1940’s design.

Invest in a high tunnel instead. The larger the better.

It will out-produce the little raised beds by a factor of 3x to 10x depending on the crop.

Farming is always environmentally destructive. There is no such thing as “environmentally friendly” farming. The solution is massive investment into the farming infrastructure and rewilding of vast tracts of land.

https://ourworldindata.org/land-use

We use around half of the arable land for agriculture. The sad fact is we only need to use 10% of it. The rest we farm because we can make a profit. Not because it makes sense.

It would take a complete upheaval of our agricultural system. Massive investment into water storage, irrigation systems and protected culture. It would also mean the forced migration of a millions people from rural areas to be rewilded to areas under intensive agriculture.

Aka it’s not an easy fix. t’s a systematic change to the way we interact with the environment.

So, it’s not going to happen.

Look up the “TAS2R bitter taste receptor gene family”. It’s a fun little group of genes that control how well bitterness is detected.

I am a moderate bitter taster. So I do not like celery (mildly unpleasant flavor) and prefer cucumbers that contain the recessive bi gene that stops the production of cucubitacin in the plant. The ones that contain the bt gene, the skin gets too bitter for me. This gene mostly stops the cucubitacin production in the fruit but not the plant.

Life is much more complicated than the middle school definition. Some of the more interesting species are “sterile” crosses that have overcome the sterility. For example the ancestry of wheat.

Wheat is mostly a hexaploid aka 6 copies of each chromosome. It arose from a triploid interspecific cross (triploids are always sterile) that spontaneously doubled (hexaploids are fertile).

As a hexaploid it can be crossed to diploid rye to produce fertile offspring called triticale (tetraploid). Crossing triticale to either wheat or rye creates sterile offspring (pentaploid & triploid)

So are they all one species because they can sometimes produce fertile offspring?

It’s ironic that what most people think of as a highly intelligent person is a polymath aka somebody who is an expert in multiple topics.

Academia today is designed for extreme specialization of knowledge. So it actively selects against anyone that would be classified as a polymath.

It’s a pretty big disconnect between expectations and reality.

Get the tape measure out and start keeping track.

Mine is a cutting from a plant my grandmother started in the 1950’s. I have had it most of my life. I still measure every new leaf.

I was an advanced learner and started college at 16. The only reason I didn’t start at 14 was because I had to get a highschool diploma or GED to qualify for financial assistance. It took me 18 months after acceptance into university to get the adult education diploma.

Up until then I had moved along with my class, always placed in the advanced courses.

Basically school sucked for me.

In my experience being in the 99+% sucks socially growing up and even into adulthood. There is no easy path for these kids. They do not fit in anywhere. There is no “right” path for all of them. Each has to figure it out on their own and suffer through it.

It makes more sense if you use it as intended. It’s designed to be a simple way for farmers/gardeners to classify the basic soil composition by particle size.

Take a cup of dirt, put it in a mason jar, fill it full of water, put a lid on tight and shake the hell out of it. Come back in 3-4 days and measure the layers.

This comes in helpful in applying pesticides and basic water management. It’s pretty much pointless for anything else.

I have priced out Airbnb vs. hotels quite a few times over the past few years at my spouses request. I have never stayed at any of them as they have always been much more expensive for shittier accomodations. It simply doesn’t make any sense to me.

This past christmas, renting 2 hotel rooms at a nice hotel was cheaper than the worst dive of an Airbnb near my in-laws.

That would be a logical reason for it but remember this is Utah… so no.

Bees have weird place in Mormon lore. The creepy founder created a new name for them in the Book of Mormon “Deseret”.

His successor, Brigham Young, used it as the name of country Mormons tried to establish in the west.

“It represents a theocracy ruled by the church.”

The bee symbolism used in sermons from the 1850s described the godly society the Saints strove to build.

https://byustudies.byu.edu/article/the-symbolism-of-the-beehive-in-latter-day-saint-tradition/

My library has booth Libby and Hoopla.

Hoopla is by far the better service. 10 books per month with a huge library to choose from. No waiting for somebody to return it in a line.

I use both mine and my wife’s library card so I am going through 20 books per month. Plus aother 5-6 on Libby.

ELI5.

In plant/pathogen interactions there are two main groups of resistance.

Qualitative- A few genes that inhibit the pathogen almost completely. The pathogen is classified by these resistant genes into races. This is the type of genetics most of you learned with Punnet Squares in school.

Quantitative- what this paper is about. Many genes act in an complex interlinked fashion to control a disease. These genes can be located in groups or scattered around the genome. This has made creating usable molecular markers extremely difficult for breedings efforts. Traditionally you figure out molecular markers by running a few thousand of them and then using statistical models to correlate where the observed phenotype is linked to in the genome. It works really well for 1-2 gene traits. Not very well for 10+ gene traits.

This is basically the researchers saying “fuck it” we’ll just sequence the entire genomes to figure this one out.

I am waiting for the same thing. The amount of shit you have to disable, block, or unistall on android is getting ridiculous. It’s getting really old.

Most of the new “features” that either apple or google add anymore are absolute trash. I am constantly having to go through the settings and disable shit.

The stock android is so full of non-romovable crap that a launcher is required anymore.

It’s the same for windows, win11 is only usable with a launcher like startallback.

I have yet to listen to all the music on my SD card in my phone. I will get around to it eventually.

After that I will test out Spotify.

I have a hard time finding books to read anymore as well. So many predictable series books without any character depth or significant plot.

Few older ones if you haven’t read them yet.

“This Alien Shore” by C.S. Friedman. Make sure you are well caffeinated before reading it. It has a complex plot were details matter. Her “The Madness Season” stands out as well.

“Parafaith War” L.E. Modesitt Jr. If you have any experience with Mormons it will make more sense.

“The Crystal Singer” series by Anne McAffrey. It’s a bit dark at times but at least it’s a decent story.

Strange that dynamic system that has to adapt to a wide selection of rapidly changing pathogens under various environmental conditions would be extremely complicated.

Go figure…

Media companies, “We are losing money because people don’t want to pay.”

Or just maybe, your product sucks and people are finding alternatives to avoid dealing with you.

Currently pirating or streaming from a secondary site is faster, better quality, and easier to use. It’s really not that hard to figure out.

“Special”= Inbred and stupid. When your family tree has no branches, shit happens.

Don’t pay for inbred “purebreds” people. Mutts are healthier, smarter, behave better and live longer.