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Seedlings have been getting a lot of attention, on my end.

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One of the classic one-liners I'd heard, earlier on, in my adult youth, was something about "real estate" being "at a premium;" used metaphorically, as it was, in the original context, to describe, perhaps, space on a coffee table, for example, I draw some relevance to this Los Angeles-styled idiom, for the notion of that I'd only recently, once again, found housing, after having been homeless for around half of a year, which ended just around a month and a half, ago.  Towards the end of this (2023-2024) homeless stint, I'd managed to take on this greenhouse tent, as well as some silicon(-based) plant and seed starting cell packs, as well as some timed agricultural lighting, a seedling tray heating mat, as well as a tablet  device cooler, which I adapted, here, used as a(n) [alternate] cooling mat. I also procured some other accessories, such as a couple of thermometers, an automatic agricultural water nano-atomizer, fertilizer, and a mini cube-shaped fa

Starting heirloom Nicotiana tabacum seeds indoors.I,

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A simple topic, yet since it's a step on my way to establishing seedlings and a community garden here in South Los Angeles (which, by the way, I was cleared for staying here by the Los Angeles City Housing Authority for another year), where I plan to establish a small community farming initiative at what seems to be an abandoned gardening lot. The preparation and planting itself takes about half an hour. I started the small pots off with some earthworm castings from Armstrong Gardening Center. It's a high-end potting soil made completely from earthworm castings, kelp, and rock dust.  In addition, I added some previously-prepared ionic-trace-mineralized peat moss, which had been sitting out for about a week, and had, by now, started to become a much more humus-type rich soil in composition. Note the comparison between the bottom earthworm casting mixture and the top layer of peat moss that I added to the small pot. I had estimated, since peat moss is reputedly aci

The new mysterious new sparrow-finch-like bird at Maguire Gardens at the Los Angeles Public Library Central Branch (from Twitter)

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There's a new visitor to Maguire Gardens, one of my favorite places, lately, to feed the birds in downtown Los Angeles (some of the regular flock there has been getting scared away, by a pigeon-hawk [there's a family of pigeon-hawks that frequent the blocks adjacent to Grand and Hill, from the Library, down to Temple Street, or so]).  It's a yellow-crested, yellow-faced sparrow lookalike, practically, although I also hear that it could be part finch, which could make sense, on account of the species'' similar sizes and body types. Another theory is that the special nutritional supplementation that I'd been giving the birds of the area, here and there, of ionic, humic, and fulvic minerals, could have spurred a genetic ingenue nuclear watershed evolution from one of the young, of the breeding flocks of birds in the area. It's quite mysterious, in a sense, yet this bird was definitely destined to be a star, with it's bright yellow crest and facial features.

Reblog: 30,000 Macs infected with new Silver Sparrow malware

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 An interesting allegorically-contextually ( - sparrow) relevant bit of Mac malware news hit my feed this morning, or last night, or so. 

The Nicotiana seedlings are coming along nicely, in sprouting.

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I'm glad to see that patience has paid off in seeing my Nicotiana seeds from organicseeds.top finally sprout, during the cold season.  I potted the seeds in earthworm castings entirely (no dirt) from Armstrong's . The potting picture was kept fairly moist soggy, and not allowed to dry out at all, under the plastic cover. The long columns signify different varietals, one to a column, as you'll see that some of the cells have not sprouted, to a significant degree. Thankfully, I purchased 6-7 different varietals of heirloom Nicotiana cigar and cigarette tobacco seeds, (check out the website at the top - there's still time to plant Nicotiana in Southern California, and in cold climates, an even longer period of time to get them started and hardened, out in the cold. The days have been warm, mostly, (in the high 60's and 70's, and the night have been dire chill - jogging-comfortably weather, in the mid-to-lower 40's, with some days of rain). I can't w

e-Smart Seed Gardening with Google Play Store Android Apps

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  Android has a huge variety of apps for Smart Gardening on the Google Play Store. For my needs, currently, I was able to find some apps for free, one of which particularly suited my needs - charting seeds being planted in to cells of columns and rows - a 72-cell seed planting tray. I tried out My Seed Trays first, which is a good program in and of itself, although it uses date-time differentiation of planting, rather than allow me to name the individual cells, which is what I was attempting to achieve. Garden Organizer: Manager & Planner  ended up being the one I used for this planting project. Garden Organizer: Manager & Planner has a shape-and-grid-based planting and naming functionality about it, suitable, in my case, for plotting out the columns and rows of my planting tray, without having to write out with pen or marker - the names of the seeds, how many rows I was able to fill, etc. Garden Organizer: Manager & Planner: The app allows me to pick o

Today is lighting sale day at Target - 15% off.

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I'm super excited to hit Target on General Relief payment day of the 2nd of the month.  Target is running a sale on lighting for 15% off all lighting, excluding some items. Now that some of my seeds have sprouted, I'll want to get them under lightbulbs and lamp arms.