PlanterTomato Vegetable Gardening

Farming with Dynamite

So many uses of dynamite in farming that Dupont put out a brochure. Credit where credit is due... I saw this pamphlet posted on Rootsimple gardening blog and couldn't resist sharing a laugh with you.

This is a real brochure created by Dupont in 1910 describing the many uses of dynamite in farming. While the title and some of the suggested uses are funny enough, my biggest laughs came from reading comments made by others regarding this post.  My favorite was from "Practical Parsimony":

My friend ... told me tales of his childhood. He was born in 1933 and was old enough to remember the Great Depression and WWII. John told me he and the other boys in this town were too poor to afford firecrackers, so they used dynamite instead. Only wealthy children ever got firecrackers. 

I was laughing so hard and telling him it was absurd. And, how did he get dynamite? He said it was sold in various stores, just not grocery stores. Now, I have tears I am laughing so hard, assuring him no one would sell dynamite to a little boy. He assured me that anyone could buy it. Firecrackers were just too expensive! He said no one ever got hurt. But, his mother would not have approved. His father knew. He was only about 7-yrs-old, and he was using dynamite. 

I have to say, I've never really thought about using dynamite for farming, but it's practical applications around home and garden are really endless.  Oh, the wasted years! If I had only thought about dynamite sooner....

• Aphid Control - No messing with insecticidal soap or diatomaceous earth. With dynamite, one application lasts all season.  
• Vegetable Shredder -shred mounds of cabbage for delicious fresh cole slaw.  The only tears you'll cry will be ones of joy.
• Windshield De-Icer - Scrappers just doesn't get to the root of the problem like dynamite does.

If you have any other ideas for using dynamite around the house, please post them so we can all benefit :)

 Better living through chemistry.

 

Humorous Gardening Haiku Contest

Five winners will receive a packet of seeds.  This is for fun, so talent is not a requirement to participate in the contest!

Haiku is a very terse form of Japanese poetry consisting of 17 syllables arranged in three lines: 5 syllables on the first line, 7 on the second, and 5 on the third.

Basho is the Japanese master this style of poetry, but the 5-7-5 structure of his poems are not retained when they are are translated into English.  So to give you some examples haiku in English, the following two poems are by American poet Richard Wright.  If you count the syllables, you'll see they are 5-7-5

                      Sleety rain at night
                   Seasoning swelling turnips
                   With a tangy taste.

                      Heaps of black cherries
                   Glittering with drops of rain
                   In the evening sun.

And here's a haiku with a more humorous gardening theme written by me:

                      Tiny green aphids
                   You suck the life from my plants
                   Ortho brings you rest.

You can write a very good haiku in just a few minutes.  (Or if you're like me, you can write a very bad one in the same amount of time.)  Good or bad, I encourage you to give haiku a try.

And to close out the Summer gardening season, I'm going to give away a free packet of seeds to five lucky winners who submit a haiku with a gardening theme.

Humorous Gardening Haiku Contest Rules:

• You must submit your own work.
  
• Winning haiku must relate to gardening in some way, conform to 5-7-5 structure, and be in English.
  
• No "R" rated language or themes. 
  
• You can submit as many haiku as you like.
• Only one winning entry will be awarded per person.
• Entries will be judged on cleverness and humor (But don't let quality stop you from submitting an entry, as you may still win.)
  
• Winners will receive one packet of seeds selected at random: Paul Robeson Tomato (Seeds of Change), Beefsteak Tomato (Baker Creek Seeds), Silver Queen Corn (Lake Valley Seed), Slenderette Bush Beans (Renee's Garden Seeds), Mignonette Alpine Strawberry (Renee's Garden Seeds).
• Winning entries will be published to this web site but authors retain all other rights if you care about that sort of thing.
• Contest ends on the first day of Fall (September 23, 2010)

To submit a haiku, just add a comment containing your poem to this blog posting, or e-mail me at HMDelman@yahoo.com.

Odds of Being Pooped On By Bees: 1 To 352 Million

What are the odds of being pooped repeatedly by a swarm of bees?  Another great piece of party trivia from PlanterTomato.com.

Last week I parked myself in our hammock for the first time this year with the intention of getting some deserved rest from gardening and other chores on the to-do list.

While I sat looking at a magazine, I felt small raindrops hitting me.  This was strange because there wasn't a cloud in the sky.  I went back to reading, but the rain persisted and soon I noticed little yellow droplets appearing on the open page of the magazine.

I looked up and observed a huge tornado of bees circling in the air about 10-15 feet above above my head.  There were thousands and thousands of bees racing about.

The bees were swarming -- the method by which these little critters create new colonies; the old queen leaves with half of the worker bees; they circle in the air for a period of time before settling down on a tree, bush or other convenient location where they will build a new nest.  The bees in this story appear to have been from a wild colony located in a neighbors tree.  They did their flight over my backyard before taking off for parts unknown.

It was an amazing but scary sight. (see below photo of a swarm in flight care of the city of Chesapeake, Virginia). And as I watched them it dawned on me that the yellow rain falling from above sky above was bee poop.  They nailed me pretty good and left lots of little yellow drops on the barbecue grill, my car etc.

I'm no stranger to being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but this was really ridiculous.  I'm sure as individuals we've all gotten hit by an individual bee without knowing it (probably a bird or two as well) but I have never heard anyone complain that they got rained upon by thousands of bees.

I checked the internet and could not find a similar incident reported... plenty of cases of bees swarming, lots of information about colony collapse, even reports of car dealerships complaining about having to wash off the little yellow dots caused by individual bees from nearby hives, but no reports by individuals suffering a Pearl Harbor style bombing.

What are the odds of this happening?  My inner geek was so intrigued that I just had to estimate the odds of being pooped on by a swarm of honey bees.  I'm sure if you are a hobbyist or professional bee keeper, your odds will be much higher; this calculation is the odds of the average Joe taking the hit.

How I did the Calculation:

Broadly speaking, I calculated the probability of a hive swarming in a given location of 100 square yards during a particular 10 minute interval.  I then calculated the probability of a person being outside in a given location of 100 square yards during a 10 minute interval.  The probability of the bees and a person being in the same spot, at the same time, is calculated by multiplying the two simple probabilities.

Here are some of the particulars and assumptions for those interested...

• Locations - I used a space of 100 square yards as the basic unit of measure for figuring out where people and swarms might collide.  I choose 100 square yards because this is the  approximate space that the swarm in my backyard occupied during their flight.  Rather than divide the entire US land mass into 100 square yard blocks, I used only those areas where people tend to be in reasonably dense communities.  This space includes cities, suburbs and rural areas where people live and excludes forests, mountains, desserts and stretches of really unpopulated land.  I used a US Census density map to determine these areas.  As it turns out, this is about 30% of the total landmass of the US.  Breaking this areas into 100 square yard "Locations" results in 36.1 million places where bees and people might intersect. [By the way, I got this estimate by using Photoshop to determine the populated areas (white pixels) and non-populated areas (black pixels)].

• Bee Data - The number of beehives in the US, swarming rates, etc come from various websites which are listed in the attached spreadsheet.
• Time Intervals Used In the Calculation - I did all calculations based on a day-length of 5 hours .  I did this because bees tend to swarm during the hours of 10 am to 3 pm.  Swarms occur during 3 months of the year in spring and early summer, so a 90 day time frame was used.  Finally, bees swarm in the air for only a brief time before settling down.  Based on my observation this is about 10 minutes.  So that apples are compared to apples, I estimated how many people would be out of doors during the same time period of 10 am to 5 pm each day.  I could find no hard data on this, so I assumed 5% of all people have jobs that have them outside all day long (all time intervals), 20% would venture out of work or the home for two 10-minute intervals during the 5 hour period, and 50% would go out one time (I reasoned this was OK since many people venture out of the office to buy lunch or run errands etc.)  While people go outside more during the weekend, they will probably be out less during the winter so I did not make any particular adjustments, assuming that weekends and winters would balance out.
  

The Results:

There are 36 million potential 100 square foot locations where a man-swarm encounter might happen.  But this can happen in any of 2,700 ten minute time intervals during the 3-month swarm season.  So the total number of Location-Time Intervals under consideration is huge -- over 97 trillion (36 million x 2,700).

Bees will swarm in only 1.2 million of these location time-intervals because there are relatively few bee hives in the US (2.3 million) and they only swarm for 10 minutes. The probability of a swarm happening in any given location time-interval is just .0000012%.

Likewise, people are indoors most of the time, venturing outdoors for just an estimated 225 million of the potential 97 trillion location time intervals.  The probability that a person will be outside in any given location time-interval is .0002%.

As you can imagine, the occasions when bees swarm and a non-bee keeper is in the same spot is very, very rare.  I estimate it at .0000000000028%.

Converting this probability to odds, shows that the odds are 1 to 352 million that you will be pooped on by a swarm.

For perspective, here are the odds for a variety of other events, care of Funny2.com:

Audited by the IRS                         1 to 175 (ouch!)

Dating a supermodel                      1 to 88,000

Struck by lighting                            1 to 576,000

Killed by lightning                            1 to 2.3 million

Killed by mountain lion in CA         1 to 32 million

Meteor hitting your house              1 to 182 quadrillion (quadrillion = 1,000 trillion)

So this means that your more likely to be pooped on by bees than hit by a meteorite, but your more likely to be eaten by a mountain lion than being pooped on by bees.  Amazing.  

For those interested, the calculations are attached in an Excel spreadsheet:

Download BeeCalculation

Which are Better Pets? Dogs vs. Chickens

Find out which make better pets in this posting that compares chickens and dogs.

Dogs are the most popular pet in America and Europe.  But do they deserve that status?  Let's do a side-by-side comparison of dogs and chickens to find out which make better pets:

Daily Feeding

• Chickens:  Fill the feeder as needed; generally, just a few times per week.
• Dogs: Feed every day, two times each day.  Supplement with table scraps when begging occurs.
  
• Winner -- Chickens.
  

Daily Upkeep

• Chickens:  Let them out of the coop in the morning.  Close the coop at night.
• Dogs:  Put on your coat and go out in the pouring rain or snow to walk your dog.  Do this two or three times each day for a minimum of 20 minutes each time.  When you get home, use a towel to wipe off your dogs feet or suffer with muddy paw prints on your floors.  In urban and suburban locations, you need to clean up after your pooch, so talk along your pooper scooper and dog bags.  Having fun yet?
• Winner -- Chickens

Household Inconveniences

• Chickens: None.  They live in a coop outside, so you have your home to yourself.  Clean the coop once per week -- takes about 20 minutes.
• Dogs:  Dogs generally live with you, so dog hair gathers on your floors and your furniture as well, because dogs sleep on the couch whenever they can get away with it.  And of course, there are those little accidents on the floor now and again which you'll need to clean up.  Get out those paper towels.
• Winner -- Chickens
  

Cute & Cuddly

• Chickens:  Tame enough to hold, but not exactly what I'd call cuddly.
• Dogs:  Definitely cute and cuddly.  And then there are those sad brown eyes looking at you.
• Winner -- Dogs

Eggs

• Chickens:  Each girl gives you a wonderfully fresh egg that you couldn't buy at the grocery store for love or money.  You get one egg per day from each bird.
• Dogs:  If you've collected any eggs from your dog, post a comment because we'd all like to know about it.
• Winner -- Chickens

Play Fetch

• Chickens:  Generally, not very capable retrievers.  Practice not likely to improve performance.
• Dogs:  Dogs love to fetch sticks, balls, Frisbees, you name it, a dog will retrieve it.
  
• Winner -- Dogs

Eat Backyard Pests

• Chickens:  Love to eat slugs, bugs, and other creepy crawley critters.
• Dogs:  Don't kid yourself, dogs eat anything.  I once saw my dog eat a spider.
• Winner -- Tie between Dogs and Chickens
  

Provide A Source of Meat

• Chickens:  You can eat 'em if you want to.
• Dogs:  Not unless you live in a very poor country or you have a sick mind.
• Winner -- Chickens

Welcome You

• Chickens:  Come running to the door of the pen when they see you because they are hoping for treats (chicken scratch)
• Dogs:  Come running to the door of the house when they see you because they are hoping for treats (Milk Bones, Liva Snaps etc.)
• Winner -- Tie between Dogs and Chickens
  

And the Winner Is....

Well with all the categories tallied chickens prove to be far superior pets. 

Ok, it's a tongue in cheek comparison, but here's the real point.... Chickens are actually much easier to take care of than you might think.

The hardest thing you need to do is to build a coop and you really don't even need to do that.  You can buy a coop locally or through the internet.  There are even manufacturers making coops with high style modern designs to fit into urban environments. Check out the Eglu Cube and other coop models from this manufacturer in the UK.

If you currently own chickens, post a comment and let me know if you agree with me about how easy it is to keep chickens. 

If you are considering raising chickens, but have not taken the plunge, let me know if you have any questions I can help you with.

Newly Developed Tomato Reverses Hair Loss in Men

Scientists at the University of Manila report that they've successfully genetically engineered a tomato plant to produce fruits that contain Follicid™, a popular prescription drug used to treat hair loss.

The new tomato is hailed as a breakthrough in genetically modified foods and opens the way for other pharmaceutical manufacturers to use common fruits and vegetables as a delivery mechanism for drugs.

According to Dr. Hector Q. Abaya, who led the research team that developed the tomato, "People who consume 3 tomatoes a week, show a 20% increase in follicle growth and a commensurate increase in hair."

Clinical trial were conducted earlier this year and Dr. Abaya expects the FDA to clear the tomato for sale in the United States by the end of 2010.

Dr. Abaya also released photos showing the amazing results that are possible using the new tomato.  The men shown in the photo below ate the new tomato for 6 months grew thick heads of hair and impressive beards.

Note: If you hadn't guessed by now, the above research report is totally fake.  Happy April Fools Day from PlanterTomato.  The gardening web site where, occasionally, boys will be boys.

 

Chicken Oscar Winners

This is a follow up to yesterday's humorous post on Hollywood celebs with chicken names.

And the envelope please....

Buck-Buck-Buck Rodgers wins with 33% of the vote.  Congratulations to the "winner" and all the nominees.

Special thanks to all who participated in the voting.

Chicken Oscars

Cast your vote for the best chicken-related celebrity names in Hollywood.

Regular readers of this blog know that I keep a small flock of chickens in my urban garden. 

With news media buzzing over tomorrows Oscars, I thought I do some nominating of my own. 

Below are my nominations for actors and actresses with the best chicken related names in Hollywood.

I would ask that you, as an official members of the Academy, cast a vote for your favorite poultry celebrity by using the voting widget that is to the right of this posting.  I'll tally up the scores and announce a winner on Monday, March 8, 2010.

Nominees for the Best Chicken Names

• Gregory Peck
• Francis Ford Coop-pala
• Feather Locklear
• Debra Winger
• Calista Flockhart
• Chick Corea
• Henney Youngman
• Buck-Buck-Buck Rodgers
• Yoko Ono
• Betty White
  

Honorable Mention

• Puffy Combs
• James Van Der Beek
• Shelly Winters
• Cameron McCracken
• Britt Egg-land
• Nestor Serrano
• Terry Fryer

Done in a spirit of fun, with no ill will to any of the nominees.