Deluxestogie Grow Log 2023

[deluxestogie]

Saint Bob, patron of skunks

I stepped off my front porch to walk out to the mailbox. Half-way down the driveway, a spotted skunk slowly trundled its way toward the road. It seemed to vaguely notice me, and accelerate its pace. I heard the tire noise of a vehicle about to round the curve and pass by my house. I immediately froze. The skunk also seemed to notice that I was no longer advancing toward it, and likewise slowed its pace toward certain doom. A pickup truck sped past the house two seconds before the genetically oblivious skunk reached the road. The skunk appeared to not regard the noisy, speeding pickup truck as a potential hazard, and lazily crossed the road without any awareness of how close it had come to becoming a roadkill smudge.

Bob, protector of fresh air

 

[skychaser]

Dead Skunk in the middle of the road - Loudon Wainwright III

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uu5hzc2Mei4


Warning: This video contains some images of some not so smart, and very dead skunks!

Our skunks will be emerging from hibernation any day now. And they seem to be very trigger happy when they first come out. One night soon I will step out onto the porch and smell that sweet aroma in the air, and know spring has come again. And that it is time to start bringing in the cat's food bowl at night, or I may meet one up close and get a big surprise. I don't want that! peeeeewww.....

 

[deluxestogie]

I determined in the past, that a skunk killed on the road as much as a mile from my house can be smelled on my front porch, depending on wind direction. Vultures will show up to decrease the mass of squished flesh, but the eventually desiccated remnant of skin and pelt continue to stink for a week or more.

I have nothing against a skunk or skunk family wandering past the house. When a skunk waddles into the light of my front porch, late in the evening, I speak to it softly, so it is not startled to discover that I'm sitting there. On the plus side, they don't seem to notice the aroma of my cigars.

Bob

 

[HillDweller]

Dead Skunk in the middle of the road - Loudon Wainwright III

Hadn't thought of that song in a very long time.

 

[skychaser]

Hadn't thought of that song in a very long time.

It's a classic. When I was young and we would pass a dead skunk in the car we all would sing a chorus or two of Dead Skunk. Some times I still do it. It's like rolling down the window and mooing at cows when you pass by them on a country road. Ya just gotta do it.

I think skunks are pretty cool little animals. Very cat like in many ways. Even without their secret weapon, they would make a formidable opponent with the teeth and claws they have. I've known a couple people who had them as pets. One was de-scented and the other wasn't. The people who had the fully armed one had it for several years and said he only went off once. That was when a young dog they had went tearing around the house at a full run and surprised the skunk who was headed the other way. It slept in a cardboard box with the lid on it that a circular hole cut in the side, out on their back porch. Kind of his own little skunk den. In winter it would sleep nearly all the time and occasionally come out for a snack during warm spells.

I think that smelling one for a mile might even be on the conservative side. That spray they shoot out is powerful stuff. We have the double striped ones here. I think in the east you have spotted ones, or both. They all carry the same weapons. They are only found in the Americas so our members in Europe probably have no idea how wonderful they smell. Some of the weed growers (it's legal here) often refer to their bud as being very skunky. And I think.... who the hell would want that!

 

[Homegrowngoodnes]

One of the most comical things I ever saw involved a skunk. I spent the night at my grandmother's house and apparently this skunk was rummaging through the neighbor's trashcan. What do I see wandering down the middle of the street? Yep, a skunk with its head stuck in a mayonnaise jar! Hahaha, I still laugh thinking about it! I called animal control cuz I wasn't gonna approach it!

 

[skychaser]

A friends girlfriend came over to see him one warm summer night. He was working late and wasn't home yet so she sat in the dark on his front porch waiting. The cat came along and started munching on the bowl of cat food he left there. She leaned over to pet it and gave it a stroke down its back. It wasn't his cat. Skunk shot her at point blank range. He got home a few minutes later and she was sitting in her car crying. Getting back into her car wasn't such a good idea either. The smell kept coming back for months no matter how much they scrubbed the seat and interior. She scrubbed until her skin was raw and ended up getting most of her hair cut off. She only smelled for a couple weeks.

 

[skychaser]

I have a lot of skunk stories. Luckily I don't star in any of them. Another friend had one come in the cat door. It went through the kitchen and met the dog in the middle of her living room. That was bad! Most of what she owned ended up going to the dump. The smell will never come out of some things. Her church group came and helped haul things away, and scrubbed and scrubbed on the walls and everything else. Her insurance company covered most of it. They ran ozone generators to kill the smell for a couple weeks. Then had to repaint the entire house and replace all the carpets. She smelled like skunk for a week just from touching things. Even all her clothes that were in closets with the door closed smelled like skunk.

 

[deluxestogie]

I removed the Agribon AG-15 shading from all the seedling trays yesterday. Now, each tray gets roughly ½ day of direct sunlight through the windows.

It will be another week before anything noticeable happens. Note how the wooden stick displays the moisture level of the soil.

Bob

 

[Homegrowngoodnes]

My uncle's dog was victim too but I dont think she let the skunk survive. He bathed her in tomato juice for a few days and the odor was almost nonexistent in a week!

 

[deluxestogie]

Sometimes, I am simply careless when extracting a single seedling from its germination cup, and transferring it to a cell in the 1020 tray insert. But other times, despite taking great care, an ungerminated seed or two (or five) travel along in the tiny bit of starting mix clinging to the "single" seedling. So each year, while the seedlings are still tiny, I have to thin them to one per cell, using forceps.

Un-thinned:

Thinned:

With 4 trays of seedlings (48 cells per tray), I typically do one tray per day, since I find it tiring to be bending over, squinting to see exactly where the forceps tips are making contact.

Tiny seedlings like these are competing with one another, with their roots slapped up against one another. So thinning them at this stage makes a noticeable difference in their subsequent growth.

Bob

 

[deluxestogie]

Since summer has finally arrived today (70°F and rising, on my porch at 2 pm), I decided to drive to the local Dairy Queen, and pick up a vanilla milkshake. "Medium-size. Thin, please."

Apparently Dairy Queen does not require its teenage employees to understand physics. The flimsy, plastic cup was filled to the brim with milkshake, then a golf-ball-size dollop of whipped cream was plopped on top. When I accepted the shake at the drive-thru window (no napkin offered), and placed it into my car's cup holder, it immediately overflowed the sticky white, thin shake. A quick estimate was that the cup should have been filled to 1 inch below the rim, prior to adding the unrequested and unwanted whipped cream.

I pulled into a parking space, opened my trunk, and retrieved several paper towels from a roll I keep there. After cleaning the mess, I wiped my fingers as best I could, and drove back home. The consequence of my hubris at regarding March 23 as summer had been meted out in milkshake.

Bob the Chastised

 

[deluxestogie]

NB-11 burley

Notice that the first pair of true leaves show abundant trichomes (leaf hairs), while the cotyledons do not.

Bob

 

[skychaser]

Are you using the NB 11 in cigars or pipe blends?

 

[deluxestogie]

Yes.

It's a burley, so it works well in pipe blends. It's a burley, so nice leaf can serve as wrapper or binder for a cigar, and any of it works as a minor component in cigar filler blending. I should add that burley in a cigar will not taste like a Caribbean-style cigar, but rather an American-style cigar.

Bob

 

[skychaser]

It's definitely an impressive plant with its large and very thick heavy weight leaf. And its a low growing plant with excellent resistance to wind and weather. I grew it last year for the first time. I saved a few leaves but haven't smoked any yet. Might be a good one for making chewing tobacco too.

 

[deluxestogie]

A bit windy today

This outage map is from 4:21 pm EDT today. The numbers are number of cases. There are presently over 50,000 customers without power. Zooming in, I see that most of Blacksburg and the Virginia Tech campus are currently without power. I still have a few hours to go, before the wind dies down substantially. Otherwise, it's bright and sunny, with temp around 70°F.

Bob

EDIT: I suspect that "1 customer" means 1 billable entity. If Virginia Tech is a single billing entity, then that 1 customer might encompass 35,000 people.

 

[deluxestogie]

It's been about 1 month since I started germination. Different varieties grow at different rates. They are just now reaching the point where I notice growth from one day to the next. They still have at least a month prior to transplant to the field.

Bob

 

[Henrybowman47]

I need to get my plan together too. At my home I have about a 1/4 acre area that gets great sun and we grew corn in that area last year and then about another 1/4 acre that is not as sunny due to trees that really need to come down. Then about an hour away we have access to about 3 acres of sweet land to grown on with plenty of water use... but its an hour away. options options options. got to get plenty of veg in and grow tobacco (thinking kinda smallish on tobacco to see how it goes)

Bob where are you located?

My grow for 2023 is looking like this—at the moment:

Not a huge tobacco grow, but not nothing. I will start germination the first week of March, so I have two months to change my mind. After such a challenging bout of horrid weather, it's easy to look forward to working in the garden again.

Bob

 

[deluxestogie]

As my profile states, near Blacksburg, Virginia.