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• Spotted a gnat in my cucumber sprouts this morning - next steps?

  Background: I’ve started a second round of seeds indoors, this time a mix of cucumbers (spacemaster and muncher) and tomatoes (tiny tim and marglobe). For my first round in April I used those Jiffy peat pellets, which I don’t think I’ll use again b/c I’m reading online that the mesh netting may not break down as quickly as I had initially thought. For my second round I used a mix of Jiffy seed starting mix and coco coir as recommended by Gary Pilarchik of Rusted Garden, which I also used to pot...

• Tomato plant w/ yellow leaves - nutrient deficiency?

  This tomato plant I sowed from seed on April 4th in a Jiffy peat pellet, then potted up on May 5th into this 3-inch clear plastic pot w/ a mix of Jiffy seed starting mix and coco coir hydrated w/ boiling water as recommended by Gary Pilarchik of Rusted Garden. I do believe I’m very late to begin fertilizing as it has had virtually zero nutrients so far and I’m now over a month in. I plan to provide the first dose of diluted fertilizer today. I had been holding off b/c the initial potting mix w...

• Is separating cucumber seedlings while potting up a fool's errand?

  I saw some tips around sowing multiple seeds per cell so at least one seed germinates in each cell, and then one either thins the weaker seedlings or carefully separates them while potting them up. I’m still very early in my gardening education, so I thought that’s cool, I’ll take this approach for my cucumber starts b/c hey why not, and since the thought of thinning seedlings kinda kills my soul, I’ll just carefully separate them when I pot them up; however, everything I’m now reading about cuc...

• Outdoor veggie and fruit gardeners, how do you protect your crops against disease and from becoming a buffet for pests and wildlife?

  I’m growing tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers for my first time not on a balcony, and I’m a tad concerned about caterpillars, squirrels, and other wildlife finding their way to my crops; that said, I would like to keep my space as earth friendly as possible, so chemical pesticides are out. I’ve read blog articles about trimming the lowest branches to prevent disease and planting trap crops such as nasturtiums and marigolds to lure pests away from the tomatoes. Do these techniques actually work? H...

• Gardeners who start from seeds, do you use seed starting mix or go straight to potting mix?

  By seed starting mix I mean any seed starting medium, e.g. rock wool, peat moss, coco coir, etc. In January, YouTube creator Soil and Margaritas / Garden Life published a video of her latest experiment around potting mixes (that’s right, potting mixes) for starting seeds indoors. Her rationale for starting her seeds in potting mix is when she uses seed starting mix, she eventually transplants them to potting mix anyway. She acknowledges that not all potting mix is suitable for starting seeds...

• Post #1027340

  Regarding the specific btrfs subvolume setup and grub/systemd-boot integration, are you talking about how some distros show the btrfs snapshots on the boot menu? Or something else?

• Can btrfs snapshots help me recover from botched attempts to follow online guides?

  Background: Typically when I’m trying something new on Linux, I search for an online guide that doesn’t assume I’m already an expert and looks like it should be easy enough for a pleb like myself to follow. Whatever it is I’m trying to do, it usually takes me multiple tries to get it right. Sometimes, when I’m venturing into new territory, I’ll derp around in a VM so I can take snapshots and then revert to the last good snapshot when something inevitably goes wrong. This approach works well fo...

• How do people log battery performance data for those scientific looking charts in reviews and YouTube videos?

  For example, I came across this YouTube video in which the author tests a whole bunch of batteries and displays a series of bar charts showing each battery’s performance in various categories. How do content creators capture and log battery output like that? Is there a specific tool that plugs into a PC or records to a MicroSD card or something?

• Post #432932

  I enjoy derping around w/ virtual machines b/c not only can I revert to a clean snapshot, I can grab screenshots of pretty much any screen in the VM, including on the initial boot screen. Is there some way for me to get a similar experience to using VMs except instead of a virtual machine, I’d be derping with a spare laptop next to my main daily driver PC? I don’t care about snapshots, I’m mostly concerned about being able to record a video or grab screenshots of the boot screen and BIOS setti...

• Post #394973

  I currently have a hardware KVM switch so that I can switch between controlling my personal laptop and my work laptop with one mouse and keyboard. Instead of only controlling one or the other at a time, is there a tool that would enable me to “switch” between my personal and work laptops without having to hit a physical switch? Ideally I’d like to be able to just move my mouse pointer from one screen to the other, click to bring a window into focus on either machine, and start typing in that win...

• Post #361688

  It’s been about three-and-a-half weeks now since I filled up a couple 5-gallon containers in anticipation of power outages during a winter storm. Since I’m a dumb dumb, I did not add stabilizer at the time, but I do have some Seafoam stabilizer on hand. I understand fuel degrades over time and running degraded fuel can damage engine parts. Should I pour the fuel into my vehicle or will that gum up my car’s engine? Is it still worth adding stabilizer today so that I can continue to store it in...