The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

Tag: Gardening

Growing and sometimes fixing

Laser Test Paper: Weathering

Three months of outdoor exposure suggest that laser test paper can survive use as a plant tag for one growing season, at least when it remains flat:

Laser test paper – small plant labels – 3 month exposure

The two upper tags demonstrated the paper has no flexibility worth mentioning, so it cannot become a tag wrapped around a stem.

The two lower labels spent their time tucked into a window frame where they got plenty of sun & rain without the benefit of a backing plate. Looks good to me!

Contrary to my expectation, the craft adhesive sheet behind this label survived intact, although the label itself took some damage, perhaps from the more direct sunlight out on the deck:

Laser test paper – plant marker – 3 month exposure

In any event, they look Good Enough™ for our simple needs and next year’s plants will be properly labeled.

2024-11-04
Improvised Garden Gate Latch Staple

For reasons not relevant here, I ended up making a field-expedient repair to a garden gate latch:

Improvised gate latch staple – installed

The hole in the post just to the left of the obviously improvised staple shows where the Original Staple had vanished, never to be seen again. It looks like the gate has shifted an inch or so to the right (or the post to the left), which would explain why the staple gradually worked loose.

The improvised staple is a length of coat hanger wire bent into a square U, with the ends snipped off at an acute angle:

Improvised gate latch staple – cut wire

Those points do look scary, don’t they?

Then I gently tapped it into place, driving maybe ¾ inch of wire in the wood, flattening the loop a little more than I wanted, but not enough to make me try again.

Not our gate, not Mary’s garden, but deer pose a threat to all veggies within, without regard to ownership.

I have *a lot* of coat hanger wire for repairs like this …

2024-09-25
Sting-Kill: Everyday Carry Tube

One of Mary’s gardening cronies suggested Sting-Kill might reduce her dramatic swelling [^1] after a bee / wasp / insect sting. Because it must be applied immediately after the sting, the swab must be on hand in the garden or on a bike ride, but the glass vial inside seem entirely too fragile to survive amid the usual clutter of a purse / pocketbook / belt pack / bike pack.

Well, I can fix that:

Pill tube – PETG default

It’s a KeyChain Pill Tube from Printables, enlarged 20% in the XY plane to fit the Sting-Kill swab, with the white applicator end fitting neatly into the domed screw-on lid for a bit of cushioning.

The solid model looks about like you’d expect:

Pill Tube – slicer preview

Despite that preview, I printed it with a brim. PETG sticks tenaciously to the Textured PEI steel sheet and a brim wasn’t really needed; just pop the parts off the platform when cool.

Somewhat to my astonishment, the threads screwed together easily, smoothed out after a few on-and-off cycles, and it’s ready for a moment we both hope will never occur.

[^1] Mary did tote an EpiPen back in the day, but a few near misses indicated she’s no longer quite as sensitized. She does swell up something powerful and we’re hoping immediately applying a Sting-Kill will help knock it down.

2024-09-02
Vole Traps: Rebaited

Although the drilled sunflower seeds worked reasonably well, various critters gnawed through the threads and escaped unharmed with the seeds. We tried gluing seeds to the trigger with good old Elmer’s Non-Toxic School Glue, only to find garden ants absolutely love the stuff.

Well, if voles like seeds, they’ll surely like nuts:

Rat traps – walnut halves

Those are rat traps (much bigger than mouse traps) with walnut halves secured to the top and bottom of the trigger with hot melt glue.

Yes, the plywood plates under the traps hold them together. There’s no reason to put fancy new traps outdoors where they succumb to weather in short order; these are veterans from previous episodes.

Having taken out two voles with sunflower seeds over the course of a week, the walnuts accounted for two more voles in three days. Mary thinks a neighbor vole needs a day to notice its buddy has gone missing, so the average pace may be a vole every other day.

Bonus: Gnawing on the nuts or trying to pull them away triggers the trap, so those walnuts are still out there.

The community gardens have enough voles to attract Red Tailed Hawks, which have started perching on fence posts and stooping on voles foolish enough to run along the paths or into grassy areas. Some gardeners seem disconcerted by the presence of such large birds in close proximity, but Mary assures them they’re helpers.

2024-08-30
Please Close The Gate Signs: One Year

They still look pretty good after a year:

Please Close The Gate – weathered acrylic – 2024-07-20

Which is to say: the orange acrylic hasn’t faded, the black paint’s still in place, and the gates seem to stay closed.

One might quibble about the missing wire snippet on the lower left corner, but on the whole it doesn’t get much better than that …

2024-08-02
Laser Test Paper: Plant Label Testing

After a month outdoors, the (failed) flexible strip labels show signs of wear:

Laser test paper – 1 month weathering

The upper one has a coating of clear rattlecan paint and looks much the better for it. The lower one is bare, but also suffered greatly from being folded and tucked through itself, so it started in worse condition.

Perhaps the paper will work better when stuck to metal plant label stakes, although I suspect the adhesive sheet will fail first:

Laser test paper – small plant labels

Those are random names; Mary tells me the proper label format has the Latin nomenclature on the first line.

They’re now out on the patio for observation.

For whatever it’s worth, my fascination with this paper boils down to “it’s cheaper than Trolase” for applications not requiring archival quality and duration. If it lasts Long Enough, that’ll be Good Enough.

2024-07-26
Drilled Sunflower Seeds

It seems the best bait for voles is to tie sunflower seeds to the trap trigger, but poking a needle through the seeds tends to split them.

Well, I can fix that:

Sunflower seeds – drilled

This is “shell drilling” of a kind I had not previously encountered:

Sunflower seeds in shell – drilled

Those are #52 drill holes, 63-ish mils in diameter, and pass a standard sewing needle with ease.

The traps have been baited and deployed amid a plague of voles and I await customer feedback …

2024-07-01