What have you Built Recently

[dmp]

I spent the last year building a 20'x20' heated and insulted garage. The upstairs 'loft' is a home office / lab space for projects
Will probably just go an convert it to a dwelling unit by adding a bathroom next year as we already have decided not to park a car in it.

 

[JohnRoberts]

I like the 3 sisters to cover all 7 amino acids.

I planted too many squash and have them coming out of my..... My tomatoes are now delivering copious amounts but my peppers are still lagging. I got a few small bell peppers two weeks ago but no more bells since, I have a couple Jalapeño and serranos coming. My multiple attempts to get habanera growing have failed. I grew a nice habanera two years ago but none since. This is my first year growing cantaloupe and I have already harvested two of them a little prematurely. One disconnected from the vine and was splitting open. Today I took one that was rotting from the bottom where it was sitting in damp soil. They both tasted like fresh cantaloupe but would be sweeter with more time on the vine. As usual getting plenty of cucumbers.

This year I am still working on a drip irrigation system to deliver water exactly where needed. The cheap chinese kit of 1/4" parts, was not very comprehensive but I am figuring it out.

My blueberry crop is already done, and raspberries almost finished. My figs are growing larger every day and I have bird netting around them to keep the birds at bay.

I already have major plans for next years improvements.

JR

 

[john12ax7]

I spent the last year building a 20'x20' heated and insulted garage. The upstairs 'loft' is a home office / lab space for projects
Will probably just go an convert it to a dwelling unit by adding a bathroom next year as we already have decided not to park a car in it.

Nice. Probably regional dependent, but is there a ballpark cost for something like this? Been considering something similar if buying a property, downstairs studio upstairs lab would be a nice combo.

 

[dmp]

So I hired out the slab ($4500) and the siding and roofing, which made it more if you were to do it yourself. But I'll never regret hiring that stuff.
Construction materials were about $15k, which includes all lumber, insulation, electrical, and Drywall. DIY 2 zone Minisplit for heat and A/C was $2800.
So around $30k.

Lumber is about 3x+ more now - I bought 60 sheets of OSB at $11 which is now selling at $60 (which is nuts)

 

[john12ax7]

Thanks.

Is OSB really $60 right now? Wow.

 

[zamproject]

Hi

I finish a VCA compessor

It use semi discrete Studer vca sub card (4 in a eurocard) and a lightly modified 4000 bus comp schemo for the sidechain on a eurocard proto board.
It's a 1u studer rack (3 eurocard) with custom frontpanel (blue powdercoated and uv print)
One slot is free, prewired for a balancing unit in case I need balanced I/O
for the moment I use it at console master insert so no need for balancing
I add filter sc, as a second release auto setting.



Also a 2U monitoring splitter, passive, 3 in, 3 out, which are indepandant.
Still need to wire LR inversion, R phase flip, as mono sum (all bottom row switches), as the phones pot which can be patched at any output at the back
this is only a frontpanel, I have a puched 1U 12XLR IO at the back of the 19" cab



Best
Zam

 

[crazydoc]

Some 3 sisters results - already some beans and one small zuch, but this is the first corn I've ever grown - it's boiling in the pot now.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Corn is really sweet if you pick it just before you throw it in the pot of boiling water, otherwise the sugars convert to starch.
===
Today I got 3 figs (sweet). My tomatoes are pretty much played out but some peppers still growing.

JR

 

[Tubetec]

I did about 15 grow bags of potatoes this year , So far Ive only harvested one bag , yeild was small but big on flavour. Add fresh chives , thyme,onion , salt/pepper, butter or mayo and bacon to make a great potatoe salad .
I grew basil also , I love pesto homemade , just as the plant starts to flower for maximum flavour and fragrance.
My apples are just starting to ripen now too so I must try celery ,apple and walnut with blue cheese dressing on a bed of mixed leaves .

At one of the local stores you can buy a live bag of mixed salad leaves grown hydroponically with the roots left on , the idea is you add a sprinkle of water everyday to keep it going , its a simple matter to plant these salad leaf clusters in a pot and just harvest as you need it , bonus is its always fresh to plate and keeps on growing .
I find glazed earthenware pots best as the slugs find it hard to get up the sides and do damage .

 

[PermO]

I funked up a cheap Chinese build guitar.
Did some fretwork, neck reset, shimmed, intonation setup... and funky paintjob.
It came with a solid brass bridge and nice pickups, all it needed was a proper setup and some funk.

I'm really happy with how it plays and sounds now.

 

[crazydoc]

Nice paint job. Here's a couple of basses I built t a few years ago out of Douglas fir 2x6's, leftover parts, and old cans of spray paint.

 

[crazydoc]

Corn is really sweet if you pick it just before you throw it in the pot of boiling water, otherwise the sugars convert to starch.
===
Today I got 3 figs (sweet). My tomatoes are pretty much played out but some peppers still growing.

JR

Wow, our tomatoes and peppers are just coming on - very different growing seasons I guess.

They say you should have the water already boiling when you pick the corn - we weren't that prepared. I ate it off the cob for the first time in about 35 years - mmmm. I had to start cutting it off before eating - when I kissed her good night, one of my daughters told me my beard smelled like vomit after I ate corn. I had my wife smell it today - she said it was fine.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Wow, our tomatoes and peppers are just coming on - very different growing seasons I guess.

My peppers were slower but I had two plantings of tomatoes. I just started seeds for a third planting of tomatoes but it is getting late.

I put a heated greenhouse in my laundry room with sunlight from a window so I got a head start on seedlings while it was still winter.

They say you should have the water already boiling when you pick the corn - we weren't that prepared. I ate it off the cob for the first time in about 35 years - mmmm. I had to start cutting it off before eating - when I kissed her good night, one of my daughters told me my beard smelled like vomit after I ate corn. I had my wife smell it today - she said it was fine.

Back in the 60s a childhood friend of mine had a 7 acre farm in north jersey, with a roadside vegetable fruit stand. He would wait until the pot of water was boiling then go out into the field and pick the fresh corn... It was so good.

Last time I saw him a couple decades ago (when I was working with Crest in NJ) I visited him and he still had the farm. His roadside stand is probably a million dollar business now and the 7 acres of land just outside of NYC is crazy valuable. I just checked and they are still open.

Now they offer roadside pickup for web orders of vegetable. That white house in the background is revolutionary war era.

JR

 

[JohnRoberts]

I have been trying to cultivate some hot peppers with little success, two years ago I grew some habanera that did not pack the expected punch. This year I have a few different varieties still coming. The Thai peppers I have been eating for a couple weeks now are not very hot.

Today with low expectations I harvested a small, probably immature jalapeño, less than 1" long, but to my surprise when I cut it up to put in the dinner I was cooking it packed some real heat (muy caliente).

JR

 

[scott2000]

My buddy who grows peppers said that using a calcium/magnesium supplement took his growing to another level. Some kind of liquid.

 

[JohnRoberts]

I put some powdered milk on my tomatoes to add calcium...

JR

 

[crazydoc]

My jalapenos are growing like crazy - not so great the bell peppers. Last year the jalapenos were prolific too - canned lots of jalapeno jelly. They're a milder type, as my wife doesn't like real hot. Put some Miracle Grow on them a couple weeks ago and they've taken off. Still using egg shells on the tomatoes - a lot are cracked - overwatering according to the www, so I've cut back. Temps over 100 for the last week and thick wildfire smoke, so don't want to cut back too much.

 

[fazer]

Smoked vegetables

 

[JohnRoberts]

I have pecan trees that I mostly ignored until recently, now I actively hunt squirrels trying to poach my nuts, and this morning I sprayed some horticultural/orchard treatment. I had to DIY an effective sprayer to reach up to top of my mature pecan trees. After multiple failed attempts this is my state-of-johnny-art bug juice sprayer.

It is basically a hose end sprayer, clamped to the end of a 15+ foot long extension pole. Even that simple approach is harder than it seems. I won't bore you with all the things that didn't work, but pointing the sprayer straight-up reduces the moment arm working against the 15' lever. The coiled 3/8" diameter hose scrubs off a bunch of dead weight that makes the pole hard to point and move around. A subtle observation from this morning is that stretching out the coiled up 3/8" hose, reduces the lift weight.

I decided to step up my spraying game so purchased a 12V powered sprayer and strapped it to my zero turn.

It is kind of disappointing how optimistic they all are about their specifications. They claimed it would spray 25' vertical. It was not even close. I just replaced the 60psi pump with 120psi pump and now it makes the 25-30' vertical, but still not high enough for my trees. You will notice the pump is mounted at an odd angle because the higher power pump had the goes-in and comes-out ports reversed. I was able to grab 2 of the original 4 mounting screws.

My next step is to mount the short sprayer wand to the top of my old extension pole ( in the picture above) with spray hard wired on. I just ordered 30' of hose tubing, and an in-line cut off valve, so I can control the flow from the bottom of the extension pole. This won't get me to the top of the trees but more than half way there..

JR

PS: A commercial sprayer to do the job from the ground would cost thousands of dollars and I'm still cheap.

 

[lassoharp]

I built a pair of tube limiters recently

https://groupdiy.com/threads/gates-sa-39b-clones-build-completed.80100/