Be very careful.

“Soap” today isn’t what it used to be. It’s made of synthetic high performance surfactants that can severely damage the plant.

Only use potassium soap or very mild baby shampoo that doesn’t contain much sodium.
And only use it in ultra diluted amounts.

You only want so much that the water can suffocate the aphids, and not leave any residues that harms the plant!

Pests like stressed out plants. Cold water, especially one that has chlorine in it, which I assume it is because OP lives in the US, this would shock the plant.

You could craft a insect catching net and go bug hunting with that. An old window sheet and some sticks could make a good one. Swoosh it through some flower fields, and collect the beetles and whatnot. Some of them will eat aphids, and maybe lay their eggs.

It’s important tho that you get some flowers and cover crops as fast as possible.
For example, you could throw some fenugreek, pea, or whatever whole spice in there.
They won’t stay there for long if otherwise.

Greetings from my german balcony! 🌱

![](https://slrpnk.net/pict

I really love these update posts, thank you a lot!

The PR/ communication from the KDE team is absolutely great, and I can’t wait til the new stuff will arrive on Fedora!

KDE is getting even better and better each update, it’s amazing! Thank you for your hard work! 💚

Stuff about the environment, leftism, whatever fits the solarpunk theme

Does this count too?

I already posted this on !balconygardening@slrpnk.net. .

I’m purposefully growing duckweed on my balcony.
I’m doing !hydroponics@slrpnk.net, and by doing that, I have lots of waste water with still good fertilizer in it.

Duckweed is one of the fastest growing, nutrient densest and least demanding plant out there, and you can just scoop it out with a strainer.

It’s exponentially growing and if you don’t wanna eat it, it makes great organic fertiliser or animal feed with lots of protein and micronutients!

I see that I have mixed up a lot of things, between things relevant for soil and hydro. So your recommendation seems to be not to try to mix because it is counter productive, and if I use some compost-based approach I should stick with organic fertilization?

While organic vs. “hydro” is more of a spectrum and in some cases hard to define, I’d say it’s better to clearly separate them to get the most benefits out of each concept.

Soil feels like a “black box” and more of a vibe thing

That sums it up very well.
When growing organically, you can let the microbes (and small critters) do the work for you. You don’t know what they do, but they just do stuff, and you don’t or can’t worry about it.

It’s more of a layed back thing.
Weeds now don’t exist anymore, they’re now just called “cover crops”, and pests don’t demolish your crops, they’re just waiting to get eaten by other beneficial insects 😁

Indoors I’m pretty interested in doing “hydro” in coco coir, because I can store a lot of it dry and compact in the basement for years and not worry about insects or mold.

Maybe read my guide on passive hydro with LECA. It has similar benefits, but is completely inorganic and my substrate of choice.

become too dependent on some “fertilization system” supplier and if I only learn to paint-by-numbers I don’t learn any transferable knowledge

Fertilizers are mostly the same. They all use the same ingredients in one form or another.

You can easily switch from T.A. to Plagron to Masterblend for example, that shouldn’t be much of a problem.

You still need to get a bit of experience, but I find it way easier to diagnose problems and trends.

And I can read info about hydroponics and apply it to growing in coco or something else which is non soil or are there some caveats? Because I’m not planning to have a hydro tank system, just interested in non-soil substrates.

While the two disciplines seem to be separated from each other, you can still greatly benefit from mastering both.
For me, hydro mostly just means soil-less.

I thought it was mineral which is intended for soil, and now I’m confused as you said not to do such things. Thought organic fertilizer must be some worm humus or plant material or other stuff they add into soil, like indirect complex compounds of something decaying which is broken down by micro organisms, and that liquids are always mineral NPK mixes with immediate availability, or is that assumption completely wrong?

You are correct. The effects of synthetic fertiliser on soil is sometimes a bit exaggerated. Microbes are kind of tolerant to minerals, it’s just that you steal their jobs and weaken the connection between them and the plant. Read more about mycorrhizal networks if you’re interested in that topic :)

Feel free to also join !gruenerdaumen@feddit.org if you want to see German content or !hydroponics@slrpnk.net for hydro stuff :)

I can answer you pretty much any question you asked in detail, but I have to keep it more brief, because answering everything extrensively would take hours. Just ask if you are interested in something and want to know more.

pure coco is a bit like dry hydroponics

There is no dry hydroponics. Hydro doesn’t mean something has to sit in water, just that it doesn’t eat decaying matter (soil).

Is this kind of substrate to be treated as organic or as mineral approach? The compost probably adds the typical soil properties including the buffering of pH and EC and taking care of fertilization.

The other ingredients in there besides compost mostly add structure and prevent waterlogging.

Mentioning EC in soil doesn’t make much sense, and dissolved salts don’t get buffered much afaik, how should they?

Once the compost is depleted, can I consider it to be like a non-soil grow?

Nope, just organic, but now with depleted soil :D
You can add organic fertilizer, which is basically “ultra compact compost” if you see it like that.

I wouldn’t add mineral fertiliser into organic soil, because it will heavily disrupt the soil life.

I got a pH/EC sensor to check my water and the drain coming out

Soil ≠ Hydro. Measuring something in soil doesn’t work that easily than in hydro, and you can’t change that stuff anyway, at least not that fast and easily.

I’ve had pH values of 8 in soil and still the plants looked fine. I believe the mycorrhizal networks can change nutrient uptake.
The pH in soil is often controlled by the microorganisms living there.

diluted a pH- down based on diluted citric acid to normalize my water to 6,5pH, which seems like a good starting point for any situation.

Citric acid will break down by bacteria, and then the pH will be way higher than what you’ve started with, at least in my experience.

I recommend you to buy proper pH down, usually based on Phosphoric acid.

Also, definitely use pure water, e.g. rain, distilled or reverse osmosis.
Tap water has a lot of minerals in it, which add a lot of “crap” to your nutrient solution, which will cause the nutrient lockout you mentioned you had with your tomatoes.

I tried anything (boiling, diluting, whatever) and always came back to pure water, because I always had problems with tap water (Germany, like you).

pH swings and deficiencies, even at proper pH, are pretty much guaranteed, at least from what I’ve heard and experienced. If you have a crap load of calcium, acids in there, they will complete with the nutrients.

Does it make sense to follow some generic approach (like keeping pH/EC in certain ranges in certain growth stages)?

Half the recommended strength (or just pure RO water) for seedlings, normal strength for everything else that’s leafy (houseplants, growth phase of veggies, etc.) and 1,5-2x strength for flowering or fruiting plants.

I personally run ~ 1,0 mS for most stuff, and 1,5 mS for flowering.
Measure the EC regularly, and if it lowers, add more fertilizer next time.

Depends on your humidity/ evaporation and light intensity.

I do not want to use commercial fertilization formula schemes. I want to work with standard off the shelf mineral fertilizers. Is it possible to get decent results with that?

I use Masterblend for everything and like it a lot. Weed, houseplants (orchids, calathea, etc.), you name it. They all thrive.

It’s cheap and works well. Maybe I’ll change my mind someday, but at least for now, I can recommend it.

I made a life hack post on how I dose it if you’re interested.

My advice for you in general is to invest in proper hydro stuff and not to find workarounds for everything. I tried that and failed miserably.

I wouldn’t bother with seeds tbh. Starting seeds is playing genetic lottery, and you might end up having weak plants.

I’d use wild occuring ones if I were you. The whole selection game has already been played there for you.

You can also create a “bandage” and keep it wet. That will cause roots to form there

I can’t speak for huckleberries, but what I’d do maybe is to take a locally growing strong huckleberry and take a cutting off it. The plant doesn’t have to be pretty, heavy fruit bearing, or whatever, just the most vigorous one.

Grow it to a small trunk, and then graft a heavy fruit bearing cultivar on it. By doing that, you’ll get the best out of two worlds: a locally native and strong root stock, and highest quality fruit.

Regarding seed starting, I already made a post about it. Here it is

Did you let the cutting dry before? If not, you may risk rotting

CasaOS isn’t an OS, it’s just the web interface you install afterwards you have Debian or whatever running

I can recommend you Debian, since it’s the “default” for many servers and has a lot of documentation and an extremely big userbase.

For web interfaces, I can recommend you, as you already mentioned, CasaOS and Cockpit.

I used CasaOS in the beginning and liked it, but nowadays, I mostly use Cockpit, where I have the feeling that it integrates the host system more, and allows me to do most of my maintenance (updating, etc.) quite easily.

CasaOS is more aesthetic imo, and allows you to install docker containers graphically, which is better for beginners.
I personally do my docker stuff mostly via CLI (docker compose file) nowadays, because I find it more straightforward, but the configuration CasaOS offers is easier to understand and has nice defaults

I replied to @muntedcrocodile@lemm.ee and understood the question like “Is distrobox as secure as QubesOS?”, which I replied with “No”.

I’d say Fedora Atomic is definitely a bit more secure than other distros (e.g. Ubuntu, regular Fedora, etc.) for reasons you mentioned, but if you are a user that thinks that only Qubes offers the security you need, than there’s no alternative.

I can recommend you Secureblue tho as a good middle ground.
It’s Fedora Atomic, but hardened, a bit like GrapheneOS. Still viable for comfortable everyday use, but much more secure.

What’s your problem with the image based OS?

If there’s really anything you need, you can layer it or build your own image quite easily.

You don’t run a VM for everything with Bazzite, Distrobox is more like Flatpak or WSL in that regard.

It also isn’t much more secure, it’s just that everything is a bit more contained and comes with their own dependencies.

Usually yes, but not in my case.

I only fertilize my hydroponic stuff, where everything is in pots and in a very very resource efficient closed loop system.

I personally would never use mineral fertilizer for soil, not even my potted plants.

Wouldn’t the heat and radiation destroy all flavor compounds and colour?

Testing alcohol by scent or by flame are neither guaranteed nor safe methods, however, to test for the presence of methanol more effectively, you can apply sodium dichromate to a sample of the beverage. To do so, mix 8 mL of a sodium dichromate solution with 4 mL of sulfuric acid. Swirl gently to mix, then add 10 drops of the mixed solution to a test tube or other small container containing the alcohol. Swirl this container gently a few times, then waft the air from the mouth of the container towards your nose by fanning the air toward you with a hand, with the container placed roughly 8-12 inches from your face. Take note of the scent: If it is pungent and irritating, methanol is present in the alcohol. If the scent is dominating and fruity, only ethanol is present, and the beverage is safe.

Source: https://www.sciencing.com/test-alcohol-methanol-8714279/

It worked fine for years tho?