Yet more strawberry musings

The rot:ripe ratio is definitely over 3, maybe approaching 4. The 'cull' container was literally overflowing by the time I came in. One of these years, we should really get a composting system set up; I'm throwing out pounds of organic matter every morning.

The weather recently has been, in some senses, perfect for strawberries. Rain at night to keep them fat, sun in the day to ripen them up. But it also means that I fall further and further behind. Those fat-with-rain strawberries drag their stalks down to meet the damp ground, and are often bad before I can get to them.

I've decided to write off the bottom row of the garden as a loss for the time being, and try to get better caught up on the upper regions. Sigh.

There were a few years when I was unemployed during June, and able to do the three harvests/day that the garden really merits. Oh well, a steady paycheck has much to be said for it. Maybe I can manage to get home early enough to do a second run, at least a few nights a week. Harvesting by street light (or even twilight) is not a terribly feasible proposition; it's too hard to judge colors.

If I spend so much effort on culling, why don't I just leave the bad ones on the vine? Several reasons. Firstly, they're yucky. Secondly (as already mentioned, I think), I want the plant to put energy into new, better strawberries. Thirdly, removing the weight of the rotten strawberry sometimes lets the stalk spring back, reducing the ground-exposure of the remaining berries.

There's one last factor, but it's not the least one. I already mentioned that the number one cause of strawberry wastage is rot due to contact with damp earth. Number two is probably animal depredations (the birds are getting bold!), but a *very* close third would be rot spreading from one strawberry to a neighbor. If I don't remove the going-bad ones early enough, the rot will spread to every nearby berry.

Yet more strawberry musings

The rot:ripe ratio is definitely over 3, maybe approaching 4. The 'cull' container was literally overflowing by the time I came in. One of these years, we should really get a composting system set up; I'm throwing out pounds of organic matter every morning.

The weather recently has been, in some senses, perfect for strawberries. Rain at night to keep them fat, sun in the day to ripen them up. But it also means that I fall further and further behind. Those fat-with-rain strawberries drag their stalks down to meet the damp ground, and are often bad before I can get to them.

I've decided to write off the bottom row of the garden as a loss for the time being, and try to get better caught up on the upper regions. Sigh.

There were a few years when I was unemployed during June, and able to do the three harvests/day that the garden really merits. Oh well, a steady paycheck has much to be said for it. Maybe I can manage to get home early enough to do a second run, at least a few nights a week. Harvesting by street light (or even twilight) is not a terribly feasible proposition; it's too hard to judge colors.

If I spend so much effort on culling, why don't I just leave the bad ones on the vine? Several reasons. Firstly, they're yucky. Secondly (as already mentioned, I think), I want the plant to put energy into new, better strawberries. Thirdly, removing the weight of the rotten strawberry sometimes lets the stalk spring back, reducing the ground-exposure of the remaining berries.

There's one last factor, but it's not the least one. I already mentioned that the number one cause of strawberry wastage is rot due to contact with damp earth. Number two is probably animal depredations (the birds are getting bold!), but a *very* close third would be rot spreading from one strawberry to a neighbor. If I don't remove the going-bad ones early enough, the rot will spread to every nearby berry.

Miscellaneous WoW Silliness

I haven't had much time for WoW lately, between strawberry harvesting taking a chunk out of my day, new videogames, and many nights being Too Hot. But there's a few anecdotes from the past couple of months that I never got around to posting.

I spend a fair amount of my WoW time 'playing the Auction House', buying low and selling high. Most items that sell for a lot do so because they are useful for gameplay. Others sell because they are status symbols of one sort or another. Some of those are status symbols that sell because of how *useless* they are. Many of the magic items in WoW are semi-randomly generated, granting boosts to player stats that vary within a small, pre-determined range. Shortly after the release of the first expansion pack, something went wrong with this system, and many high-level items were created that granted "+0" to various statistics. The bug was quickly fixed, and no more such items are now generated. But the ones which had been created remained in existence. Unexpected side effect: all these buggy items are now rare collectors items, and fetch high prices at auction!

If you get a character to a high proficiency at Engineering, they can learn how to build "Ultra-Safe Transporters" that will instantly teleport them to various cities in the world. When Engineers (either goblin or gnomish) label something "Ultra-Safe", you have to expect some glitches. It always gets you where you're going... more or less. Sometimes it gets the X and Y coordinates right, but you materialize about 1000 feet up -- better hope you have a Slow Fall spell! Or you can get the Evil Twin debuff, which lasts for a few hours, and gives you a black goatee for the duration. Recently, I was subject to a 'Synchronization Error' debuff, which turned me into a kobold for five seconds, then a murloc for another five seconds before wearing off and restoring me to normal.

Someone on the Burning Crusade team was a big Firefly fan. I think I've mentioned before that there is a pretty gnomish Engineering trainer named K. Lee Smallfry, who professes a great fondness for strawberries. A while back, I was fishing in the same zone she hangs out in. While fishing a 'pile of debris', I hooked a 'Mysterious piece of debris' that started a quest. K. Lee wanted to see it, since it looked like it 'just fell out of the sky'. Now we know where the pieces that fall off of Serenity wind up!

Miscellaneous WoW Silliness

I haven't had much time for WoW lately, between strawberry harvesting taking a chunk out of my day, new videogames, and many nights being Too Hot. But there's a few anecdotes from the past couple of months that I never got around to posting.

I spend a fair amount of my WoW time 'playing the Auction House', buying low and selling high. Most items that sell for a lot do so because they are useful for gameplay. Others sell because they are status symbols of one sort or another. Some of those are status symbols that sell because of how *useless* they are. Many of the magic items in WoW are semi-randomly generated, granting boosts to player stats that vary within a small, pre-determined range. Shortly after the release of the first expansion pack, something went wrong with this system, and many high-level items were created that granted "+0" to various statistics. The bug was quickly fixed, and no more such items are now generated. But the ones which had been created remained in existence. Unexpected side effect: all these buggy items are now rare collectors items, and fetch high prices at auction!

If you get a character to a high proficiency at Engineering, they can learn how to build "Ultra-Safe Transporters" that will instantly teleport them to various cities in the world. When Engineers (either goblin or gnomish) label something "Ultra-Safe", you have to expect some glitches. It always gets you where you're going... more or less. Sometimes it gets the X and Y coordinates right, but you materialize about 1000 feet up -- better hope you have a Slow Fall spell! Or you can get the Evil Twin debuff, which lasts for a few hours, and gives you a black goatee for the duration. Recently, I was subject to a 'Synchronization Error' debuff, which turned me into a kobold for five seconds, then a murloc for another five seconds before wearing off and restoring me to normal.

Someone on the Burning Crusade team was a big Firefly fan. I think I've mentioned before that there is a pretty gnomish Engineering trainer named K. Lee Smallfry, who professes a great fondness for strawberries. A while back, I was fishing in the same zone she hangs out in. While fishing a 'pile of debris', I hooked a 'Mysterious piece of debris' that started a quest. K. Lee wanted to see it, since it looked like it 'just fell out of the sky'. Now we know where the pieces that fall off of Serenity wind up!