tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-51362692049764333962024-03-05T02:07:43.209-08:00Wakeskater Studio Indie Game DevelopmentAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06587857573568882311noreply@blogger.comBlogger188125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5136269204976433396.post-7411481248901556452017-12-23T11:44:00.000-08:002017-12-23T11:45:29.937-08:00My Harvest Life - Episode 18: End of Year Report<h2>
Year 1 - Winter Day 3</h2>
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It's gotten cold here in Boston! Icy rain and snow have signaled the start of a North East winter and the end of the year of planting. It's a great time to reflect on my first year of living the Harvest Life. It's time to reflect on how well I did and grade my success so I can improve it for next year!</div>
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So lets review Year 1 of My Harvest Life and take a look at how I did with each thing planted!</div>
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To re-read all the posts feel free to start at <a href="http://blog.wakeskaterstudio.com/2017/06/a-harvest-life-episode-1-spring-planting.html">Episode 1: Spring Planting</a><br />
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<h3>
First Planting</h3>
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Garlic (F)</h4>
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None of my garlic grew! I think for most of the season it was overshadowed by the cucumbers, but I got no good garlic!</div>
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Improvements: I'll get it more room and more sun and plant it earlier so it can soak up all the heat.</div>
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Red Onions (F)</h4>
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Also did not get any good red onions. Similar to the garlic they were overshadowed for most of the season.</div>
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Improvements: Start the seeds really early indoors then transplant them, I started them a bit late and from seeds out doors and they just didn't get going fast enough.</div>
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<h4>
Green Onions (D+)</h4>
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I got a couple green onions, but they were skimpy. Still I was able to eat them in a meal, so that was cool. D+ for actually being able to use some.</div>
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Improvements: Same as Red Onions and Garlic.</div>
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<h4>
Lemon Cucumber (B-)</h4>
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Oh the behemoth of the season. The lemon cucumbers were quite a ride! My most fruitful plant but also the saddest, the cucumbers grew incredibly, and produced a bunch early on but then succumbed to mildew and struggled to survive. I got the most out of these plants, but have much to improve next year. I will definitely try again with these!</div>
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Improvements: First, I'm only going to grow 3 plants instead of 6. They were MASSIVE plants and took over the whole garden almost. In addition I need to be more careful with my watering, and also I'll build a trellis for them to climb up and not be so crowded. In addition they weren't tasty when they got too ripe, so I need to pick them earlier to keep the seeds small and the flesh mild. Overall I'm very excited to attempt these plants again and hopefully we'll have an A+ next year with a very bountiful harvest!</div>
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<h4>
Tomatoes (C-)</h4>
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The tomatoes were almost a great success! Instead they were throttled in a storm and I only got a few useful tomatoes. There were some, but it was not the great success it could have been. The plants grew vigorously early on, but since I planted them later, it started cooling down before I got a bunch of ripe tomatoes.<br />
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Improvements: First... I'm going to tie off the main stalks to the stakes. The biggest problem was the wind that thrashed them and bent them over. Hopefully tying them off this year will help them withstand any bad storms. Second I need to make sure they don't get too much water. Some of the later tomatoes started splitting because they grew too fast. I'm going to shoot for smaller tomatoes and try to clip the plants to help more grow.<br />
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Carrots (C+)</h4>
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The carrot plants did alright. The main problem was that the ground was too rocky and they couldnt get far enough down to grow large. However, I did get some nice (small) tasty carrots out of it and it was decent for what I had planted.</div>
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Improvements: Till the ground a bit more, and pull out rocks and loosen the dirt where the carrots will grow. Perhaps I might move carrots to a raised bin separately so they can grow in a small raised garden.</div>
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Basil (B-)</h4>
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The basil did alright, it grew quickly and I was able to harvest a lot of it. The basil in the basement is still growing and has been for a while now. The basement herb garden is nearing it's end of life, but has provided a bunch of herbs to dry so far.</div>
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Improvements: Give it more space probably, the plants did fairly well, but I could be better at watering and harvesting them to keep them growing longer. Also snip the flowers to keep them producing leaves.</div>
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Beans (A-)</h4>
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The beans were a great success! I got a bunch of green beans out of the bushes and ate them many times fresh and cooked. I will definitely do them again, but I think I will try Pole Beans and build a structure for them to get more out of the plants. The bush beans produced a lot at the start and then started to wane after a few weeks. But still, there were a lot of them and they were delicious.</div>
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Improvements: Next year I'll experiment with Pole Beans and with a structure to have them grow on. We'll see how that goes!</div>
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<h4>
Spinach (B-)</h4>
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I got quite a bit of spinach out of the Noble Giant Spinach plants that grew. They got progressively smaller leaves as I harvested them, but they produced multiple times per plant which was fun. I think I will stagger the plantings a bit next year and harvest them one at a time for meals.</div>
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Improvements: Water more, learn how to harvest them in a way that lets them continue to grow large leaves and not branch off too much. Also I need to sprout them indoors. Only a couple of the plants grew so if I start them off indoors they'll have a better chance of surviving and I should get more plants out of them.</div>
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Sweet Potatoes (F)</h4>
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Uh yeah... I tried to grow sweet potatoes like potatoes but that's not how it works so... if I try them again I will learn how to sprout them properly.</div>
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Improvements: Don't just chop them up and stick them in the ground... yeah that doesn't work.</div>
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Potatoes (B-)</h4>
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The potatoes, however, did fairly well! There are a few improvements but overall I got a bunch of decent potatoes out of it and made some tasty meals. I still have a few potatoes to use before they go bad.</div>
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Improvements: Use actual potato starters (not just store-bought potatoes), and get the ground tilled a bit more and remove rocks to give the potatoes room to grow. Some of the potatoes had black rot in the center so I should be able to keep them a bit healthier.</div>
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<h3>
Late Planting</h3>
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I also tried planting some Kale and Winter Spinach but neither of those did well. The Kale gets an F because none of it grew (was squashed by the tomato plants and eaten by something) and the Winter Spinach gets a D because it wasn't planted early enough and I only got some small amount from the harvest. I'll try to coordinate a late planting this next year but it'll take a bit more organization.</div>
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Overall, it's been a great learning experience and I've learned a ton and... *DING* I've leveled up from the experience! 😂 This next year I'll go into it as a level 2 gardener! I'll have to get to planning soon for all the wonderful things I want to grow in the spring and add some new additions.</div>
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I'd love to try: Lettuce, Watermelon, Strawberries, Broccoli and Jalapeno peppers this next year so I'll have to find room for everything! There might need to be a 2nd garden area for the fruits. We'll see it's a little ambitious, I'll admit.</div>
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Well that's all, it's a sad time that I can't work out in the yard and work on a garden, but the winter makes for a wonderful time of tasty food and drink, reading and relaxing.</div>
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- Level 2 Gardener: Jace -</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06587857573568882311noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5136269204976433396.post-44289926645957639642017-11-09T06:32:00.002-08:002017-11-09T06:32:41.417-08:00My Harvest Life - Episode 17: Putting the Tomato Plants out of their Misery<h2>
Year 1 - Fall Day 50</h2>
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This year was not a great year for tomatoes. A couple months ago we had a terrible windy storm that thrashed them pretty hard and I had not taken the proper precautions to protect them. So this past weekend, I finally tore them out of the ground and stuffed the poor, poor plants into bags, meeting the same fate as their cucumber brothers.</div>
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The Sad Plants</h3>
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What Remained</h3>
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I learned some lessons though, for starters, plant them earlier so they harvest earlier. I did not get very many tomatoes from the plants before it started getting chilly. Second, I need to tie the tomato stalks off to the poles to keep them upright and secure. I have a bunch of twine, I just didn't think to tie them off. But I got a new book on tomato plants that talked about making sure to tie them off to stakes to protect them from wind, so next year I will do that. It's all been learning. This year has been insightful so far.</div>
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I still have some onion, garlic and spinach growing (and Kale but the fallen tomato plants pretty much crushed them) so we'll see if I can get anything out of them before it gets too cold to grow anymore. I believe the spinach has survived one frost already so we'll see how far in it can go. This year has been pretty warm, first frost was supposed to be October 10, but it's already November 9 and I think we've only gotten one frost.</div>
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Things are winding down for the year, outside of the basement herb garden, which is a little sad, it's been fun working in the yard. It's going to be a long winter before we get back to planting and gardening again in the spring.</div>
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- Level 1 Gardener: Jace -</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06587857573568882311noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5136269204976433396.post-22802672937713479222017-10-21T13:22:00.001-07:002017-11-09T06:33:20.734-08:00My Harvest Life - Episode 16: The Potato Harvest!<h2>
Year 1 - Fall Day 31</h2>
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Today I harvested the rest of the potatoes! There was a nice small bags worth from the 3 to 4 potato plants that produced. I didn't get a ton of potatoes, and I also didn't let the skin harden enough for long term storage, so we'll have to eat them relatively soon. There were a bunch of medium and small potatoes as well as some really large ones. Above is one of the bigger ones that I got. It was neat since these were just red potatoes from the store that I used to start the plants, and next year I plan to get some fancier, rarer brands of potatoes to grow. In addition I will also dig up the ground before planting to give them some broken up earth beneath to easily grow down into. The ground is a bit hard and I think that contributed to the limited potato supply.<br />
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Other than harvesting potatoes today, I also planted 200+ flower bulbs in front of my house. For 25$ on <a href="https://www.bulbsdirect.com/index.php">Bulbs Direct</a> I got 2 large bundles of various bulb flowers and planted them around our feature plants in the front. Some of the flowers included:</div>
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Liatris Spicata Purple</h4>
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Anemone Coronaria Mr Fokker</h4>
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Muscari Armeniacum</h4>
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Gladiola Nanus Mix</h4>
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And there were a bunch more varieties of flowers as well from white and purple flowers to yellow flowers. So I am looking forward to seeing these all bloom next spring and seeing them fill in the front of the house.</div>
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Next year I will be sure to photograph the beautiful displays of color!</div>
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- Level 1 Gardener: Jace -</div>
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<a href="http://blog.wakeskaterstudio.com/2017/11/my-harvest-life-episode-17-putting.html">Next Episode 17: Putting The Tomato Plants out of their Misery</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06587857573568882311noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5136269204976433396.post-51419989627517188592017-10-14T10:48:00.001-07:002017-10-21T13:22:42.611-07:00My Harvest Life - Episode 15: First Potato & Lunch<h2>
Year 1 - Fall Day 24</h2>
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Today I got my first little red potato! The potato plants were dying and getting eaten up, so I cut down the tops and will let them sit for a week or so before harvesting the rest of the potatoes. I'm curious to see how many the plants produced in the rocky ground. There does appear to be a couple large ones near the surface, so hopefully there are a bunch more deeper in.</div>
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Some Early Potatoes on the Surface</h3>
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I've also harvested a bunch of tomatoes: a lot of little ones and a few big ones. They're full of tomato flavor and have been good cut up on sandwiches and in other dishes. I also finished picking all of the carrots, as they've stopped growing too much in the rocky soil. Their growth was stunted, as the rocks beneath the first few inches of soil stopped them from getting big, so next spring I'm going to till up those rocks and pull em out so that the carrots can grow deeper. I wonder if that will affect the potatoes as well.</div>
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Final Carrots and First Bunch of Tomatoes</h3>
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Tasty things have been made with the tomatoes and the first medium sized potato above. Today I made myself a scrambled-eggs-cheezy-hashbrown thing that looks horrendous but was pretty tasty! I sautéed some onions and made the hash browns from the first big red potato, and then added some sliced tomato and topped it all with whipped eggs and cheese. Was a bit of a goopy mess, but was actually pretty good.</div>
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Delicious, despite looking like mush</h3>
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The basement herb garden has been going okay, but all of the herbs seem rather stunted, so I decided to pick half of them to allow the other half to grow bigger. I also transplanted a few of the lemon mint plants outside in one of the flower pots so that they could get some room to breath and grow. This should give the rest of the herbs in the basement growing area a bit of breathing room and space to stretch out and thrive.</div>
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For the ones I picked I created a little place to hang them in the kitchen window. The fragrant aromas of the basil, oregano and thyme are a pleasant experience and in a few weeks they'll be dried and ready for storage.</div>
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Fresh Herbs and Tomatoes</h3>
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The spinach continues to slowly grow despite my dog, Max thinking the garden is an area to jump into and stomp around. He's knocked over the barrier a few times, and I've had to fix it and staple it back up. The kale however... we'll see what happens but this one seems to be a failure. Something, either rabbits or my dog, keeps getting in and eating all the leaves. (Maybe caterpillars?) And the tomato plants have fallen over where the kale was planted, so they're not getting much sunlight. However the onions and garlic are finally making a resurgence after removing the overbearing cucumber plants. They're finally starting to thicken up and grow a bit, hopefully they can finish growing before winter sets in.</div>
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- Level 1 Gardener: Jace -</div>
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<a href="http://blog.wakeskaterstudio.com/2017/10/my-harvest-life-episode-16-potato.html">Next Episode 16: Potato Harvest!</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06587857573568882311noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5136269204976433396.post-88943089078700794942017-09-30T08:52:00.002-07:002017-10-14T10:49:25.248-07:00My Harvest Life - Episode 14: Fall Tomatoes<h2>
Year 1 - Fall Day 9</h2>
It's officially fall! A delicious time of year, filled with apple cider, warm stews and tasty treats throughout. Things are slowing down in the gardening aspect, with the weather starting to get colder and wetter. Tomatoes are starting to ripen and the bean plants have been cleaned out of the garden with a final, small harvest. Soon the potatoes should be ready to start prepping for harvest and the kale and spinach continues to slowly grow in the cold, wet fall weather.<br />
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Tearing out the Bean Bushes</h4>
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As the bean plants waned in their production, I made the decision to finally clear them out of the garden and bag them up. We got some tasty beans out of the plants, but I think next year I'm going to go with the pole variety and see if I can harvest more out of each plant. In addition we've gotten a few small tomatoes, but many have stayed green, and are slowly starting to darken. I also brought a few green ones inside to ripen on the windowsill and after a few weeks they're just starting to turn red.<br />
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Ripening Tomatoes and Last Harvest of Beans</h4>
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There is a wide spread of tomato sizes, the small ones seem to turn red relatively quickly and I've gotten a few of those so far, but the big green ones are slowly turning red in the garden. One lesson learned is that the twisty poles I got for the tomato plants do not protect them very well from wind. We had some very windy rainy days for a while, and the tomato plants are all bent over and got damaged by the poles bending the main stems. So they're a bit of a mess. Next year I will build a sturdy wooden structure to let them grow in to give them a lot of support.</div>
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Struggling Tomato Plants</h4>
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But some reddening deep inside!</h4>
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I'm still learning how to prevent nature from destroying my garden, so next year I'm looking forward to better yields. However, I've picked a ton of basil from the basement garden so far. It's been growing incredibly quickly and I've been able to harvest quite a bit and take the extra basil to work.</div>
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Delicious Cinnamon Basil</h4>
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The basil is quite delicious with a earthy flavor (cinnamon-y to some I guess?) I've made some tasty drinks with it so far and blended some of it up into tomato soup, which was great. That said I can hardly use all the basil I have growing, so I've given a lot of it away to coworkers, who were glad to take free, fresh basil.<br />
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Things are coming along slowly, I look forward to harvesting the potatoes eventually and am looking forward to seeing if the spinach and kale plants take root and start to flourish, as they're still struggling.<br />
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- Level 1 Gardener: Jace -<br />
<a href="http://blog.wakeskaterstudio.com/2017/10/my-harvest-life-episode-15-first-potato.html">Next Episode 15: First Potato & Lunch</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06587857573568882311noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5136269204976433396.post-91458170590302915352017-09-16T15:12:00.002-07:002017-09-30T08:53:56.801-07:00My Harvest Life - Episode 13: Woodcutting Level 2<h2 style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Year 1 - Summer Day 87</h2>
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Well, it's getting close to the end of the summer, and with the cool fall weather I've begun to chip away at the wood pile, racking up that sweet, sweet exp. Today I leveled up, and gained access to a new tool that lets me break apart the giant logs much easier.</div>
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It's called a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000QTMT7W/">wood grenade</a> (or a splitting wedge as a less fun name) and I picked one up recently and it works great for massive logs. Not that it makes it totally easy, but it starts in the center of the giant log and you beat it with a sledge hammer until the log splits in half. It was recommended to me by a coworker of mine who, in addition to being an awesome engineer, is also <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Hand-Tool-Basics-Woodworking-Tools/dp/1440348901">releasing a book in January</a> on using hand tools, and is a phenomenal reference for useful tools powered only by aching muscles and sweat.</div>
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The Wood Grenade</h3>
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After 3 Hits</h3>
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Wood Rack #2</h3>
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In addition I've also split enough wood that I needed to get a second wood rack started. The rack is very basic, all you do is get four cinder blocks and lay them evenly spanning 10 ft. I then ripped a 2"x6"x10' piece of Pressure Treated wood in half and used that as the base. Then four 5ft 2x4s were placed inside the cinderblocks sticking up and voila, no nailing, screwing or any binding needed for a nice wood rack to keep the wood off the ground and let it cure.</div>
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Also the basement herb project is coming along nicely. I overwatered it a bit and some neat fungus started growing, so I toned back the amount of water I was dumping down there and it seems to be a bit better. The basil is absolutely thriving and the other herbs are all about evenly paced in growing slowly.</div>
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The Kale and Winter Spinach have also started sprouting, but the bugs have been at them a bit it seems as well. They seem to be doing well in the cool weather, only the tomatoes seem to be lagging a bit and not ripening. There are a bunch of giant green tomatoes, but none of them have turned red yet. I've done some reading and it seems likely that the windy, cool weather we've had is the cause.</div>
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Things are slowing down, but it's still fun to get out and see things grow and I still have a bunch of wood splitting to do. I'm looking forward to the quickly approaching fall and all of the delicious beverages and foods it brings.</div>
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- Level 1 Gardener, Level 2 Woodcutter: Jace -</div>
<a href="http://blog.wakeskaterstudio.com/2017/09/my-harvest-life-episode-14-fall.html">Next Episode 14: Fall Tomatoes</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06587857573568882311noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5136269204976433396.post-473477222912365302017-09-02T08:50:00.002-07:002017-09-16T15:13:35.349-07:00My Harvest Life - Episode 12: Death of the Vine<h2>
Year 1 - Summer Day 73</h2>
Today I murdered my Cucumber plants, brutally and quickly. Not maybe this time, but for sure - they are dead. It was intentional though, the plants had been suffering and dying slowly, but were still sprawling and choking out other plants. My own lack of experience is the cause - if they had more room to grow upward and thrive, they would have done much better. Next year I will give their descendants more room to grow upward and will plant fewer of the massive sprawling vines.<br />
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The Dying Cucumber Plants</h4>
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Slowly I chopped away all the vines and leaves and untangled them from my fence and tomato plants. They were starting to intertwine with the tomatoes and since the tomato plants are very healthy and doing well, I decided to end the cucumbers short time of being overlord of the garden. I cut away all the plant, and ripped out the roots. I also decided to work the ground a bit, adding some fresh, bottom of the pit compost and worked it into the stony ground. Unsurprisingly the technique is called digging, and you basically dig rows across the land you want to work, turning the dirt over and mixing it in. I worked a bunch of fresh compost in to help replenish the nutrients the cucumber plants pulled out of the ground. There are 2 packets of seeds, some hardy Kale and a cold weather variety of spinach that should be able to grow before winter sets in.</div>
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Ripping out the plants and stuffing them into bags</h4>
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Fresh Compost</h4>
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The freshly tilled ground</h4>
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Note the Onions that haven't seen the light of day in months</h4>
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There was also one final harvest of the cucumbers with a bunch of small ones that we'll see how they taste! The tomato plants also have a bunch of large, plump, green tomatoes, and I'm very excited to harvest them once they are ready!</div>
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The Final Harvest</h4>
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Plump Green Tomatoes</h4>
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In addition the basement herb project is going along nicely. It's amazing to me just how much faster growing and hardy basil is compared to the rest of the herbs. The basil plants are already well set in and are growing steadily while some of the other herbs are slowly starting to pop their way out. Notably I've only seen one tiny rosemary plant peek it's leaves out so far and two of the parsley have sprouted out of about ten.</div>
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The Herb Project</h4>
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Cinnamon Basil</h4>
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So today has been a little sad, it's tough to see the plants I spent so much time prepping for get ripped out, cut up, stuffed in a bag and stuck on the street corner. Hopefully next year once I'm a level 2 gardener I'll be able to keep my plants alive and producing longer through the season. The bean plants also look like they're starting to slow bean production, so they might be coming to an end as well. Next year I do want to try pole beans, as they're said to produce per plant more than bush beans. Those as well will require some poles to climb up, so I will adequately prepare for that as well.</div>
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Fare well first year cucumber plants, it was fun!</div>
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- Level 1 Gardener: Jace -<br />
<a href="http://blog.wakeskaterstudio.com/2017/09/my-harvest-life-episode-13-woodcutting.html">Next Episode 13: Woodcutting Level 2</a></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06587857573568882311noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5136269204976433396.post-33413311377448527592017-08-26T12:38:00.001-07:002017-09-02T08:51:41.384-07:00My Harvest Life - Episode 11: Cucumber Encumbered<h2>
Year 1 - Summer Day 66</h2>
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I have too many cucumbers! It doesn't come much as a surprise but the plants continue to produce bunches of interesting bright yellow lemon cucumbers. Twice I have brought a batch of twelve or so to work and they were nabbed up immediately. So far my coworkers have been intrigued and delighted by the interesting, non-traditional fruit. Just this morning, I ended up picking nine more cucumbers, and I wasn't even going out to find any! But not all is perfect in Cucumber land, my plants are suffering a bit.</div>
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The cucumber plants are plagued with a bad case of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powdery_mildew">Powdery Mildew</a>, which is slowing down photosynthesis and killing off the leaves. There are things I can do to help prevent it, such as next year I will build a bigger trellis for the plants to grow up on, giving them space to breathe and air out, as well as use a drip irrigation system so that I do not get the leaves wet as often. With how I was watering the plants, the leaves would often get wet and most likely contributed to a good environment for the mildew to spread. I have mixed up a treatment though, water with a bit of dish soap, vegetable oil and baking soda is said to help prevent the spread of the mildew so I've sprayed a bunch of that on my plants and we'll see if it helps.</div>
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Powdery Mildew</h3>
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The bean plants however continue to produce plenty of beans and the tomato plants are getting very close! Lots of little tomatoes are popping up all over the massive behemoths that are my tomato plants. The ones that rooted certainly thrived this season. I did not trim them back at all but perhaps next year I can trim them down a bit to stop them from getting so massive and perhaps spur a bit more fruit production.</div>
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Also the basement herb garden has had a bunch of the herbs sprout so it will be nice to see those thrive. They're doing even better with the timed grow light than the outdoor herbs. The light turns on at 6am and off at 9pm and gives them a nice long growing day in the basement. Having a timed outlet is extremely nice because the herbs do not require a ton of water at this point since the basement is fairly moist, so it's very easy to take care of them.</div>
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Vegetable and Fruit production is in full swing! I've gotten my first decently sized carrot and have had many delightful salads and dishes prepared with the beans and cucumbers we've harvested so far. </div>
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- Level 1 Gardener: Jace -</div>
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<a href="http://blog.wakeskaterstudio.com/2017/09/my-harvest-life-episode-12-death-of-vine.html">Next Episode 12: Death of the Vine</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06587857573568882311noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5136269204976433396.post-62923037840325631112017-08-19T09:08:00.002-07:002017-08-26T12:39:07.315-07:00My Harvest Life - Episode 10: Growing the Herb<h2 style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Year 1 - Summer Day 59</h2>
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Finally got my basement grow light set up to grow some...</div>
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Basil! and Thyme, Parsley, Rosemary, Spearmint and Oregano. Also I have some Lemon Mint getting shipped to plant as well. What did you THINK I was growing? I decided to start a basement setup so that I can prepare plants for transplanting outside before the last frost of spring next year as well as grow herbs throughout the winter. I've since bumped the planter up on some buckets to get closer to the grow light but the setup remains generally the same. The planter has some holes drilled in the bottom to allow drainage so having those over buckets works better anyway.<br />
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The garden has been progressing nicely, I've harvested another seven or so Cucumbers and continue to pick a handful or two of green beans every 3-4 days. I'll need to start giving cucumbers away by the baskets because I just cannot force myself to eat this many cucumbers and drink this much cucumber water. They are very delicious though. In fact my dog tried to grab them out of my hand! (Disclaimer: I may have baited him into the picture).<br />
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The garden continues to teem with life, from little frogs hopping around beneath the shady cucumber canopy to crimson dragonflies sun bathing on broad leaves, many insects, spiders and amphibians have made the garden their home, and the number of bees keeps increasing! There are now four to five bumblebees when I go check on the cucumbers in the morning as well as two to three honey bees. They generally leave me alone unless I dump water on their head in which case they buzz around in a frenzy. </div>
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Soon I should be able to pick some carrots and potatoes as the flowers have already bloomed. I've also picked up a few skill books to help level up and hit level 2: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/American-Horticultural-Encyclopedia-Gardening-Techniques/dp/1845337700/ref=pd_cp_14_1?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1845337700&pd_rd_r=PSQCE4XEKWJX0TCPWJ81&pd_rd_w=dC6Fd&pd_rd_wg=vf0H3&psc=1&refRID=PSQCE4XEKWJX0TCPWJ81">The Encyclopedia of Gardening Techniques</a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/New-Vegetables-Herbs-Fruit-Encyclopedia/dp/1770857982">The New Vegetables, Herbs & Fruits, An Illustrated Encyclopedia</a>.<br />
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I bought them from Barnes & Noble as impulse purchases as I was browsing, but they're a bit cheaper at the Amazon links above.</div>
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I'm very excited for my new basement herb garden and the potted herbs I have outside have started to sprout already (the cinnamon basil at least). It's very fun and exciting (and delicious).</div>
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- Level 1 Gardener: Jace -</div>
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<a href="http://blog.wakeskaterstudio.com/2017/08/my-harvest-life-episode-11-cucumber.html">Next Episode 11 - Cucumber Encumbered</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06587857573568882311noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5136269204976433396.post-18828969139409904392017-08-13T08:17:00.000-07:002017-08-19T09:09:43.858-07:00My Harvest Life - Episode 9: Cucumbers and Herb Planting<h2 style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Year 1 - Summer Day 53</h2>
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The first two Lemon Cucumbers have been harvested! I wasn't sure if they were ready since on the vine they look very green, but once I picked them and sliced them they were perfectly ready to eat! They're milder than your average cucumber with a very slight tang making them tastier than a store bought cuke. These are just the first two of hundreds to come, but it was fun to pick them and get some harvest out of the giant tangle of leaves that's taking over half my garden. Max, my cattle dog mutt, also found the cucumbers to be very enthralling.<br />
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In addition I also picked and stripped the leaves off of the last spinach plant. I had picked some of the lower leaves before and what happened was that new stems grew out of those leaves and instead of giant leaves like the plant had before, I had a bunch of stems with tons of tiny leaves. In addition the bean plants were pushing the spinach plant over and it wasn't faring well.</div>
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I did get a ton of leaves off of it though and once they dry from rinsing I'll be able to store them. I continue to get a couple handfuls of green beans every 3-4 days and the tomato plants have bloomed so there should be tomatoes as well in a couple weeks. Also the potato plants have flowered with pretty purple flowers that dangle from the stems.</div>
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I'm also working on a basement herb garden and have a grow light and a table ready to set up. This will help me get it started so next year I can sprout my plants in the basement before transferring them outside. The two pots that the tomato plants used to be in have now also gotten repurposed for a bunch of herbs to grow out in the backyard as well. I've planted Cinnamon Basil, Rosemary, Spearmint, Oregano and Parsley and I have some Thyme to plant in the basement once I get that set up as well. This should give us a nice little herb garden for seasonings and it should let us grow plants in the basement throughout the winter. Overall the harvests are starting and it's exciting to see some profit from the work put in.</div>
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- Level 1 Gardener: Jace -</div>
<a href="http://blog.wakeskaterstudio.com/2017/08/my-harvest-life-episode-10-growing-herb.html">Next Episode 10: Growing the Herb</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06587857573568882311noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5136269204976433396.post-91170015481606431632017-08-06T12:58:00.001-07:002017-08-13T08:18:36.076-07:00My Harvest Life - Episode 8: Beans, Bees and Baby Carrots<h2 style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Year 1 - Summer Day 46</h2>
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Beans! I was able to pick twenty or so green beans from the garden today as well as snap a few photos of the bumbling bumble bees scurrying from flower to flower amidst the cucumber jungle. The green beans are a bush type and are the first to start producing vegetables, and although the harvest is small, they should continue producing throughout the summer and I'll need to harvest the bushes twice a week. I also attempted to pick one of the carrots since the plants were getting very large, but that was a mistake and I lost one of the few carrots I actually am growing in the garden. Just goes to prove that I'm still truly a level 1 gardener.<br />
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I did eat the carrot though after cleaning it and gave a small bit of it to my dog who gladly chomped down on some fresh veggies. It was not a very filling meal being as small as it was, but nonetheless it was good to taste it to get an idea of what the future holds for the rest of the carrots.</div>
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While out and about there were many bugs, butterflies, bees and spiders roaming the garden and I was able to snap a few pictures of the bumblebees as they noshed on some nectar. The little fellows have been out there all day roaming from flower to flower and have brought more friends to feast on the plentiful flowers. It's pretty funny to watch them stuff their head down in the flower with their legs splayed out on the petals.</div>
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It's an exciting time in the garden as the plants start giving back for the work put in! I'm also getting ready to set up an herb garden in my basement to continue growing a variety of herbs for use in the kitchen throughout the year. I've ordered a bunch of Oregano, Basil, Thyme, Rosemary, and a few other herbs to put in a planter under a grow light. This will let me set up a system that I can use for sprouting my garden plants next spring as well.<br />
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It was a very relaxing day watching the wildlife and harvesting in the garden.<br />
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- Level 1 Gardener: Jace -<br />
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<a href="http://blog.wakeskaterstudio.com/2017/08/my-harvest-life-episode-9-cucumbers-and.html">Next Episode 9: Cucumbers and Herb Planting</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06587857573568882311noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5136269204976433396.post-83972123287846676882017-08-05T09:24:00.001-07:002017-08-06T13:00:02.143-07:00My Harvest Life - Episode 7: Overgrown and Flowering<h2>
Year 1 - Summer Day 45</h2>
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I'm going to have a LOT of cucumbers. The plants have grown incredibly over the past few weeks and are sprawling over everything nearby. I never expected they would grow so big! Hundreds of pretty yellow flowers are tucked away in the jungle of foliage as bumble bees dart from flower to flower, straddling the petals with their splayed out black legs munching on the nectar inside. If I knew from the beginning how large my cucumber plants were going to grow, I would have built a much better structure for them to grow up on and would have given them much more room. As it stands now the plants can barely fit in the raised garden and have sprawled out into the yard!</div>
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Above is just one small view of the myriad of flowers that will all turn into delicious fruits (of the vegetable-y kind). I'm going to have to give away a lot of these cucumbers, but it's very exciting to see them thrive and grow large. In addition to the cucumber plants, the bean plants have also begun flowering and growing beans. They're small so far, but there are lots of little white flowers dotting my bush beans.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXU_SGF0Rg2GEUcZe9JihmqTYOOo7qMUFXJ6XJ6Iv95rkmPk8TD6zuDhdHgq20w244vjuS0OIKF6v_5sAJ7W0nL-HmdzgvqLL75zkA0xVg4kSzIWBCGpGWzxFosrAhrIxTPM-6K8GHWPI/s1600/IMG_20170805_115308.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXU_SGF0Rg2GEUcZe9JihmqTYOOo7qMUFXJ6XJ6Iv95rkmPk8TD6zuDhdHgq20w244vjuS0OIKF6v_5sAJ7W0nL-HmdzgvqLL75zkA0xVg4kSzIWBCGpGWzxFosrAhrIxTPM-6K8GHWPI/s400/IMG_20170805_115308.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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And the tomato plants? Well I put them on those twisted poles and they've already topped them! Soon my tomato plants will be as tall as I am! I'm very excited for the multitude of tomatoes, beans and cucumbers that I will have, even if my other plants aren't doing quite as well.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8-ZUv9SBEElLREfGpy09speN4jod-h59uEXBQ6Wc-Fo_PhRN0dXPNwtjC6C7OJBF7r8p7nsTOzfS1YxnYH8wMPIvmbH_ozK-SHTnf0ED6g3AvCI6-t1BNYaxqe_rlrW08N1IeNAR06Jw/s1600/IMG_20170805_115302.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1201" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8-ZUv9SBEElLREfGpy09speN4jod-h59uEXBQ6Wc-Fo_PhRN0dXPNwtjC6C7OJBF7r8p7nsTOzfS1YxnYH8wMPIvmbH_ozK-SHTnf0ED6g3AvCI6-t1BNYaxqe_rlrW08N1IeNAR06Jw/s400/IMG_20170805_115302.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
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All in all, it's very exciting to see the garden come alive with bees and flowers and everything growing so big! I thought I was spreading plants out too much when I originally started the garden, but it turns out I didn't give them <i>enough</i> room! Next year I will definitely plan a little more space for my plants (especially the cucumbers). I've also harvested some of the basil as well and it smells amazing! I haven't used it yet, but I'm looking forward to drying it or crushing it in a beverage as it has a wonderfully fragrant smell and I'm sure it's delicious.</div>
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I've learned a lot so far and it's fun being a newb farmer! As my skills level up I'll be able to keep my entire garden flourishing and produce even more vegetables than I have currently growing and that's really exciting! Soon I should have a cucumber and tomato harvest to share so stay tuned!</div>
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- Level 1 Gardener: Jace -<br />
<a href="http://blog.wakeskaterstudio.com/2017/08/my-harvest-life-episode-8-beans-bees.html">Next: Episode 8: Beans, Bees and Baby Carrots</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06587857573568882311noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5136269204976433396.post-47650806400363677132017-07-24T16:11:00.000-07:002017-08-06T13:00:09.757-07:00My Harvest Life - Episode 6: Lush Rebounding Growth<h2>
Year 1 - Summer Day 33</h2>
It turns out that I did not in fact, murder my cucumber plants, as they are bigger and lusher than ever! It was a delightful rainy day out and the plants are just cheery about all the wetness. Thankfully the railing is containing them a bit and they are not sprawling across the entire garden anymore, but only barely. Even with the wire frame I looped them through they are still crawling over the side of the raised garden and into my yard. <br />
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The tomato plants are also getting very tall and some of them are nearing the top of the twisty poles. Flower have also started dotting the bean bushes and the potato stalks are springing up. Looks like everything but the garlic and onions are growing very well and I'm looking forward to the buckets of veggies I'll get to pick soon.<br />
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Cucumber Plants</h4>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIYdUhIFRMwMHANmNlCYwRWPIJgIm5yCxfdT536HBye-Xp-ZuO2jcuqmMx7Q4UrF4L32MkXklIa4NtEzaMOMAlwzotk9tdN1LCC_2eGWYz1zhVFn-dJfjZGVBtV8U7JF-WUcmNXZAHsQA/s1600/IMG_20170724_190157.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIYdUhIFRMwMHANmNlCYwRWPIJgIm5yCxfdT536HBye-Xp-ZuO2jcuqmMx7Q4UrF4L32MkXklIa4NtEzaMOMAlwzotk9tdN1LCC_2eGWYz1zhVFn-dJfjZGVBtV8U7JF-WUcmNXZAHsQA/s400/IMG_20170724_190157.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Tomatoes, Carrots and Basil</h4>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4zyd1HDjREZuj-med4KS89BhnCRkkxaYmW5PAgG0OlXqWtNPdbHspt6zrsTwFasL-PJMea1_FSh57WPkmJmPMewFjP9NrMk3XIfvGdhYurDwaPpqTvImmTJ9FtjK6UMGgpwfLsgM8YVg/s1600/IMG_20170724_190206.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4zyd1HDjREZuj-med4KS89BhnCRkkxaYmW5PAgG0OlXqWtNPdbHspt6zrsTwFasL-PJMea1_FSh57WPkmJmPMewFjP9NrMk3XIfvGdhYurDwaPpqTvImmTJ9FtjK6UMGgpwfLsgM8YVg/s400/IMG_20170724_190206.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Bean Bushes, Spinach and Potatoes</h4>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDJJwoQ_fjCBXUsy8AHSuBinXrSW4TOvj4zWBD_EP3eo6eCIcZoY8e2u36IhbkswDx6Rco4bjgfiUzUDP6ij4rp09bkNA0WNV4ZoS-yaEXO7Xa2F6w8k-O4cc-n_nkF532w2G8fFXbJHQ/s1600/IMG_20170724_190215.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDJJwoQ_fjCBXUsy8AHSuBinXrSW4TOvj4zWBD_EP3eo6eCIcZoY8e2u36IhbkswDx6Rco4bjgfiUzUDP6ij4rp09bkNA0WNV4ZoS-yaEXO7Xa2F6w8k-O4cc-n_nkF532w2G8fFXbJHQ/s400/IMG_20170724_190215.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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- Level 1 Gardener: Jace -</div>
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<a href="http://blog.wakeskaterstudio.com/2017/08/a-harvest-life-episode-7-overgrown-and.html">Next: Episode 7: Overgrown and Flowering</a></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06587857573568882311noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5136269204976433396.post-91619380743810497832017-07-16T12:51:00.003-07:002017-08-06T13:00:15.145-07:00My Harvest Life - Episode 5: First Harvest!<h2>
Year 1 - Summer Day 25</h2>
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The first fruits of the garden are picked! Well the first-leaves of the garden at least. The spinach plants were doing well and were large enough to pick some delicious spinach leaves! This breed is called <a href="https://www.seedsnow.com/products/spinach-nobel-giant">Noble Giant</a> and their leaves get quite large! I'm not sure how big they would get but I picked a few of the lower, larger leaves to make a salad for lunch! And boy was it good!</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1xEV2EUPTfy1i_IGPagN450_be8FaFXihHxiqusvGyDT5T5UNRzhpWq3l-dldc8jN_8IvKKqhJvvcw27wpGk8JPcwzUTsZSURMc1pO4YDq58zFq0JNAablOId7hEcL43TfwOGjfyUHZ0/s1600/IMG_20170716_144600.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1xEV2EUPTfy1i_IGPagN450_be8FaFXihHxiqusvGyDT5T5UNRzhpWq3l-dldc8jN_8IvKKqhJvvcw27wpGk8JPcwzUTsZSURMc1pO4YDq58zFq0JNAablOId7hEcL43TfwOGjfyUHZ0/s400/IMG_20170716_144600.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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I used some leftover salmon and whipped together a dijon vinaigrette (which I put way too much on, it was very strong flavored) and added some tomatoes and romaine from the store. It was fun to eat the first leaves from my garden and I'm excited to harvest more as we get later into the summer.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4PzQCF8YUWYWlENjymMt7l7f_RhHCb60pUR3x8Afr274B5Qg6w0WuLlyLdzFKG3xO01sBML-bqRvBzPZWdvzIi46AYX4XsrunRB1ZFg7GPzH-ZrfoIO4sLDuSijqU69KzEY8Kk9vYCUE/s1600/IMG_20170716_145316.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4PzQCF8YUWYWlENjymMt7l7f_RhHCb60pUR3x8Afr274B5Qg6w0WuLlyLdzFKG3xO01sBML-bqRvBzPZWdvzIi46AYX4XsrunRB1ZFg7GPzH-ZrfoIO4sLDuSijqU69KzEY8Kk9vYCUE/s400/IMG_20170716_145316.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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- Level 1 Gardener: Jace -</div>
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<a href="http://blog.wakeskaterstudio.com/2017/07/a-harvest-life-episode-6-lush.html">Next: Episode 6: Lush Rebounding Growth</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06587857573568882311noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5136269204976433396.post-56705921917144053422017-07-15T08:30:00.003-07:002017-08-06T13:00:20.323-07:00My Harvest Life - Episode 4: Angry Plants<h2>
Year 1 - Summer Day 24</h2>
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I think I pissed off my cucumber plants. They were getting massive and needed to be reigned in and grow upward instead of sprawling across all my other plants so I bought a plant rack to have them grow on, but I think all of the jostling really ticked them off. Hopefully they rebound, I killed a few of their giant leaves in the process. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCi7ma3Rv5CQUsOIpcq4z58jlQXctZhSJZhbi_QvGPCDqmrchMuF_en49W5gGTqAuk5ODNzwHwjTuj3XWhYsaxGJJAiMCg23PaHpbNs6PutciJ2QFfzQM_ynSNIrnZ-s_u29zwVnIMnJw/s1600/IMG_20170715_111931.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCi7ma3Rv5CQUsOIpcq4z58jlQXctZhSJZhbi_QvGPCDqmrchMuF_en49W5gGTqAuk5ODNzwHwjTuj3XWhYsaxGJJAiMCg23PaHpbNs6PutciJ2QFfzQM_ynSNIrnZ-s_u29zwVnIMnJw/s640/IMG_20170715_111931.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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Lesson learned: First, next time I am going to build something like this earlier, I didn't realize just HOW much they would sprawl, and second, I'm going to build my own wooden rack next time. The little metal one I bought barely stays together and might not even hold up the plant stems.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCcjihkTvNsV2rmFe4Hq-_HyasEZ1g_I0135sc-G-oqF43RhF8yUSlBz4IJTSLo8oFKKe6XYh7fw2VopVPSbfNVBXSRP87bzW54QCrFR2KvSNjQHalSjb0WRUp4wVBLHIW_XX2llF4p-o/s1600/IMG_20170715_111926.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCcjihkTvNsV2rmFe4Hq-_HyasEZ1g_I0135sc-G-oqF43RhF8yUSlBz4IJTSLo8oFKKe6XYh7fw2VopVPSbfNVBXSRP87bzW54QCrFR2KvSNjQHalSjb0WRUp4wVBLHIW_XX2llF4p-o/s640/IMG_20170715_111926.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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My tomato plants are doing well though, as are my Bean plants. And finally I have some Potato sprouts! I wasn't sure if the potatoes would grow because I had used store bought potatoes, but I finally see sprouts along the edge! Also my spinach plants are getting to where I could actually eat the leaves! They're getting very large so I may make a salad soon with them.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8DLGUiiTb-0aVJYMvS2bCXyan-86mrn9Ah9QNOT6ZIGCbhDLIlpNt9VhyhqSYPxnG7cU-wstO_BH_iFvhYkoU4iLhQV9P0iIzSovKFswFgCcu5OFokgCRFxFYNRfjKaZobs1rVfdbVnc/s1600/IMG_20170715_111938.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8DLGUiiTb-0aVJYMvS2bCXyan-86mrn9Ah9QNOT6ZIGCbhDLIlpNt9VhyhqSYPxnG7cU-wstO_BH_iFvhYkoU4iLhQV9P0iIzSovKFswFgCcu5OFokgCRFxFYNRfjKaZobs1rVfdbVnc/s640/IMG_20170715_111938.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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As you can see above, I also got these little twisty things for the tomato plants to grow on, you have to train them up it as they grow, but unlike the cucumber plants, I've been working on the tomato plants from a much earlier stage.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi6CfRX2bYawhhW8OYU300b8tjWiiFJoTUbaNr2UTLUXjxxDu_KidYYBrgPF1J0Gvjc_UfrhgwEjMC_T4N6XN5nhutSi8XySPjaeCSdrBFvAl0uWru5-olwBBxdYKiPUGEFu70zNvzPwo/s1600/IMG_20170715_111945.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi6CfRX2bYawhhW8OYU300b8tjWiiFJoTUbaNr2UTLUXjxxDu_KidYYBrgPF1J0Gvjc_UfrhgwEjMC_T4N6XN5nhutSi8XySPjaeCSdrBFvAl0uWru5-olwBBxdYKiPUGEFu70zNvzPwo/s640/IMG_20170715_111945.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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The Bean plants are also doing well. They're still trucking along, and they're bush beans so I don't need poles to train them up. All in all, the garden is coming along nicely. I put down a bag of cow manure we bought from a local garden shop and it seems to have spurred on some of the plant growth.<br />
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The onions and garlic don't seem to be doing amazing, but that might be due to pests. I did see some digging marks near my garlic plants. I might try putting down some cayenne near them to keep pests away. Still learning a ton, I have a feeling year 2 will go much better than this year.<br />
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- Level 1 Gardener: Jace -</div>
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<a href="http://blog.wakeskaterstudio.com/2017/07/a-harvest-life-episode-5-first-harvest.html">Next: Episode 5: First Harvest</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06587857573568882311noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5136269204976433396.post-36539709327764903652017-07-01T10:12:00.000-07:002017-08-06T13:00:26.664-07:00My Harvest Life - Episode 3: Half a garden of nutritious decay<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<h2>
Year 1 - Summer Day 10</h2>
Unsurprisingly, because I'm still a Novice Farmer, about only half of the plants I planted are growing well. Interestingly enough its all of the plants I planted in the first half of the garden. I'm not sure if this is due to rabbits getting in and just eating what was closest when they hopped in or if the plants in front are getting too much sun. Either way, I do have some plants which are growing well. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHlr_IDc-bYmFWTYbuDPUFUiyXOms94Lr232gKslFA1aFWmMbjop06QESRR1pPxalqaRn5pIHaQK1NCYo6oigv0V_HjCXezp4vpOqhvWfkRqC8A3GveTSZfx23f0FKC5wGW9rWQd3FaZk/s1600/IMG_20170701_094858.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHlr_IDc-bYmFWTYbuDPUFUiyXOms94Lr232gKslFA1aFWmMbjop06QESRR1pPxalqaRn5pIHaQK1NCYo6oigv0V_HjCXezp4vpOqhvWfkRqC8A3GveTSZfx23f0FKC5wGW9rWQd3FaZk/s320/IMG_20170701_094858.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv2nPqBfVBj-nRHS5Bj0nH6EkrTyU-CV7YlURiolUSz1qLXt2uu3nVDDFnn-tv8QJRcXgTFJjPjolqP_KUye3o3bnNtZWk5CTLbLMCPe9AhFKISjY3xAJgtWmLrNXkUgFghzGryTICgps/s1600/IMG_20170701_094850.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; display: inline !important; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv2nPqBfVBj-nRHS5Bj0nH6EkrTyU-CV7YlURiolUSz1qLXt2uu3nVDDFnn-tv8QJRcXgTFJjPjolqP_KUye3o3bnNtZWk5CTLbLMCPe9AhFKISjY3xAJgtWmLrNXkUgFghzGryTICgps/s320/IMG_20170701_094850.jpg" width="320" /></a>Five of the 16 tomato plants I planted are growing and about half of the carrots and a quarter of the onions are growing. Interestingly enough all of the bean plants sprouted and grew, and all of the Lemon Cucumber plants grew pretty hardily. Only two of my spinach plants are growing, out of around 8 or so, but they do appear to be doing well.<br />
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I ended up thinning a bunch of the plants a week or two ago, pulling out the tomato plants where 2 were growing in one spot, and thinning the cucumber hills to 3 plants each. Today I did more thinning, reducing the clusters of basil plants, since the ones with less clustering were looking healthier and the onions were bunched in some areas, so I thinned out the weaker plants to allow the healthier ones to thrive.<br />
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The garlic seems to be doing okay, it doesn't seem like it's grown much in the past week, but the cucumber plants are getting large, as well as the bean bushes. To increase the nutrition in the soil today I also did a pH Test to check the soil alkalinity of the garden as well as my compost, and once happy with the results added the compost to the garden.<br />
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pH Testing</h3>
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A website I came across had a very simple way to test if your soil is very alkaline or acidic, and while not highly accurate, can give a good idea of the pH. You can view the article here: <a href="http://preparednessmama.com/testing-your-soil-ph-without-a-kit/">PreparednessMama</a>, but the gist of the instructions are:</div>
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<li>Put soil in one cup, and soil mixed with water in another.</li>
<li>Add vinegar to the first cup and watch for a reaction, if there is fizzing and a reaction your soil is alkaline.</li>
<li>Add baking soda to the second cup and watch for a reaction, if there is fizzing and a reaction, your soil is acidic.</li>
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So I tested both the garden soil to see where it was at, and the compost I was going to be adding so that I could get an idea of where each was and if it needed to be adjusted or the compost needed certain things to adjust it one way or the other.</div>
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<h4 style="text-align: center;">
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<h4 style="text-align: center;">
Garden Soil Results</h4>
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The garden soil was almost entirely soil that was added from bags at Home Depot, so going in I expected the pH to be fairly neutral. As you can see before and after, the first image is the raw soil, and the second is the soil with vinegar poured over it and water and baking soda added. As you can see there is essentially no reaction to either so the soil's pH is neutral. This is good, since having a neutral base will allow the compost to be more of one or the other.</div>
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<h4 style="text-align: center;">
Compost Results</h4>
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The compost was a slightly different story. We have quite a few pine needles in our yard due to large pine trees overhead, which cause the grass we put into the compost to be slightly acidic when it breaks down. As you can see in the second picture there was a mild reaction to the baking soda, but not a large one, indicating the compost is slightly acidic. Since it's only slightly acidic, that will be fine since the plants in the garden should do well with a lower pH soil. At least from what I've read on that site, the garlic, onions and beans should do well with it.</div>
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<h3 style="text-align: center;">
Nutritious Decay</h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNEcF_kmS6owgHCQX6tJcIZ-zHNcFYw4d_rGJqzN7vwZs8HXdxMWwEw9G2jokzzNEXrRZgz5WEQb7PBW0g59RFypeUS9EONHGz4Da3vu1FiyBxWMEdyqpncVEs6vSsuAWVyi5KsADtjT0/s1600/IMG_20170701_114243.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1201" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNEcF_kmS6owgHCQX6tJcIZ-zHNcFYw4d_rGJqzN7vwZs8HXdxMWwEw9G2jokzzNEXrRZgz5WEQb7PBW0g59RFypeUS9EONHGz4Da3vu1FiyBxWMEdyqpncVEs6vSsuAWVyi5KsADtjT0/s320/IMG_20170701_114243.jpg" width="240" /></a>Finally today I added a bunch of the compost from our compost bin, which is really a giant brick square that I dump grass, dirt, sticks, and compostable food scraps into. We started the compost bin last fall, so this is the first time using some of the broken down grass and leaves in it. My back was dying from leaning over the bin and I had to shake out a lot of dirt and filter out the best dirt I could from the compost bin. It also took quite a bit of flipping to get to the really good soil at the bottom of the bin. I had made the mistake of putting a pallet at the bottom of the bin in order to hold it up to let water drain, but all that it ended up doing was making it extremely difficult to flip the compost. Once we empty out the majority of the bin this fall when we till the garden with it, I'll pull the palette out and let the compost rest on the ground where it can just drain into the ground and create a nice place for creepy crawlies to break things down.</div>
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Finally I added the compost to the garden, nestling it around plants and pouring it into the rows between them to allow the nutrients to get into the dirt below. Today I also did a deep watering with the hose instead of just the watering can. <a href="https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/garden-how-to/watering/watering-garden.htm">This Article</a> has some information about watering that has bene helpful, but I'm still learning. I might be over watering, as I do try to water with the can every morning, but it has also been rainy lately so it might be too much. </div>
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That said, the plants that are still alive seem to be doing well, so I'll continue my efforts. All in all its exciting seeing the plants get larger and grow, and though I'm still learning, next year I think I can get more of the plants to grow and stay alive. Certainly I will invest some time next year in a better fencing situation. Perhaps including a top to the garden so that birds do not pick away the seeds. That's another reason that perhaps some of the plants did not grow. Either way, next year I'll be more careful about how I plant them and hopefully more than half the garden will actually sprout and grow! Art imitates life, but it does feel like a game sometimes where my level just isn't high enough yet to achieve consistent results. This is a fun experiment though, and I do look forward to the harvest season as well as building neat contraptions to help automate the work. It's very enjoyable to see the little seeds I planted a month ago sprout and grow.<br />
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- Level 1 Gardener: Jace -<br />
<a href="http://blog.wakeskaterstudio.com/2017/07/a-harvest-life-episode-4-angry-plants.html">Next: Episode 4: Angry Plants</a></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06587857573568882311noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5136269204976433396.post-52159545430283147742017-06-12T16:53:00.003-07:002017-08-06T13:00:31.902-07:00My Harvest Life - Episode 2: Sprouts and Bunnies<h2>
Year 1 - Spring Day 84</h2>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5GOwmJa-AR4kFD-vKR4FHFkDWeVtuoCmlMsTuvWdwb_TV7HfaXG9A2UNzfIijs1fRLgriRr88pCqrKHz1smDvT4PBDkDn0R-UiDhXK-59J0LxbKhyphenhyphencPrTy_xfETNSF_4JzCRP3FIMjVI/s1600/Eastern-Cottontail-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="683" data-original-width="1024" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5GOwmJa-AR4kFD-vKR4FHFkDWeVtuoCmlMsTuvWdwb_TV7HfaXG9A2UNzfIijs1fRLgriRr88pCqrKHz1smDvT4PBDkDn0R-UiDhXK-59J0LxbKhyphenhyphencPrTy_xfETNSF_4JzCRP3FIMjVI/s200/Eastern-Cottontail-2.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
While adorable, these fuzzy little creatures are not your garden's friend. They are it's deep, dark nemesis. We have a ton of little cottontail rabbits in our back yard, and while we do have a cattle dog that loves to chase them out, they still come back often. So in order to keep them away, I built a fence around the garden. Problem is... the fence and garden walls are only 18 inches high... and cottontail bunnies can jump up to 24 inches high! These guys have ups! So, the fence may or may not work, but so far none of the sprouts appear to have been nibbled. I also made sure to get the garden fence as close to the yard fence as I possibly could and tried to eliminate any gaps between each that could be exploited.<br />
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But, the next exciting part is that despite the fence not QUITE being high enough, sprouts have emerged! The basil, garlic, cucumber and bean plants are all showing their first leaves. The garlic was the first to push through the ground followed by the cucumber plants and then the basil started pushing away the dirt around it.<br />
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When I first noticed the cucumber sprouts a few mornings ago, I walked outside and found three sprouts on one hill and one on the back one. When I went later that night, there were 5 sprouts on the first hill, (which was all of the ones I planted) and three on the second hill. Pretty soon I'll need to start thinning the garden and pick out the best plants to survive. I'll need to do that pretty aggressively for the carrots and the basil since I dropped a ton of seeds in each location I planted them. I could barely see the carrot seeds so I just poured them out in an indented line and then covered the up with a bit of dirt.<br />
<h4 style="text-align: center;">
Garlic</h4>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtbyywuq9s4ernvTaciDBRoUz07RlxyOXhuKnr91qEODP-sjGShXeAAAckJz8lgnE7F44fUY3fzXN6Tca_MwQvOSol7D5QJHM8qc7cU6646kugWqM3xvSZauACN8FcE_WtMviF9E2xe5w/s1600/IMG_20170612_065516.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtbyywuq9s4ernvTaciDBRoUz07RlxyOXhuKnr91qEODP-sjGShXeAAAckJz8lgnE7F44fUY3fzXN6Tca_MwQvOSol7D5QJHM8qc7cU6646kugWqM3xvSZauACN8FcE_WtMviF9E2xe5w/s400/IMG_20170612_065516.jpg" width="300" /></a></h4>
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Bean Bush</h4>
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Lemon Cucumber</h4>
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My next plans include devising a way to do drip irrigation. I recently got a <a href="https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-3-model-b/">Raspberry Pi 3</a> for my 30th birthday and I have been meaning to use one of the ones I already had to do a project, so a drip irrigation system with moisture sensors would be pretty awesome to try out and post the information to a web server where I can track the moisture in the soil throughout the day and after watering.<br />
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Also I might need to built something to scare the bunnies away, maybe a robot owl? We'll see about that. But for now the things are all growing and its very exciting!<br />
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- Level 1 Gardener: Jace -<br />
<a href="http://blog.wakeskaterstudio.com/2017/07/a-harvest-life-episode-3-half-garden-of.html">Next: Episode 3: Half a Garden of Nutritious Decay</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06587857573568882311noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5136269204976433396.post-30786558191714468842017-06-03T11:49:00.001-07:002017-08-06T13:00:44.657-07:00My Harvest Life - Episode 1: Spring Planting<h3>
Year 1 - Spring Day 75</h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihlr7X_H5lHsmLxyp8i29cDXtS18j-oILUkV4crFKdfSeZs4P6wfWpq-OYgBleJLVlPJnHCkQupmeSU3GfqNxW14nbmwAXUVW-BqcRauZJzeluXpQS1s9UYbm8_9qa78NCi_wGXlY_We8/s1600/IMG_20170603_140535.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihlr7X_H5lHsmLxyp8i29cDXtS18j-oILUkV4crFKdfSeZs4P6wfWpq-OYgBleJLVlPJnHCkQupmeSU3GfqNxW14nbmwAXUVW-BqcRauZJzeluXpQS1s9UYbm8_9qa78NCi_wGXlY_We8/s200/IMG_20170603_140535.jpg" width="150" /></a>Since I'm new to the life of farming, I'm a little late to the season during the first year of living the Harvest Life, but I have finally started out on the grand adventure of farming and gardening! Today I finished filling my garden with soil and planted my first batch of crops! The seeds shipped recently from a little local place I like to visit called the internet, from a shop called <a href="https://www.seedsnow.com/">SeedsNow</a>. They've got very reasonable prices and great varieties of all sorts of plants. I built my raised garden with a bunch of wood I had laying around in my garage from remodeling the house, and ripped up a bunch of the soil underneath so that the plants can grow down into the soil below as well. The plot is 4 ft deep x 24 ft long x 6 in tall and took about 25 bags of soil at 1.5 cu ft per bag to get a good covering over the existing dirt.</div>
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Today after filling the garden, I planted the following:</div>
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<ul><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAJOU3XKviCq7mq5NRBv-W7M_H-tlL0-8jhIjpreS09JMFkspejlnNLZgUeb8WqoYYiGU3dZ8nXnBjy660TBENEqpHJcwzqJW3ZGEJGmA-dUIIPEBZa1urAVMzkN9Um29Ja1kzPLFLleg/s1600/IMG_20170603_141457.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAJOU3XKviCq7mq5NRBv-W7M_H-tlL0-8jhIjpreS09JMFkspejlnNLZgUeb8WqoYYiGU3dZ8nXnBjy660TBENEqpHJcwzqJW3ZGEJGmA-dUIIPEBZa1urAVMzkN9Um29Ja1kzPLFLleg/s200/IMG_20170603_141457.jpg" width="150" /></a>
<li>2 rows of Large White Garlic Cloves (bought at a local grocery store)</li>
<li>2 rows of <a href="https://www.seedsnow.com/products/onion-southport-red-globe">Red Onion Seeds</a></li>
<li>2 rows of <a href="https://www.seedsnow.com/products/onion-bunching-evergreen">Green Onion Seeds</a></li>
<li>2 hills of <a href="https://www.seedsnow.com/products/cucumber-lemon">Lemon Cucumbers</a> (5 seeds per hill)</li>
<li>2 rows of <a href="https://www.seedsnow.com/products/tomato-bonny-best">Tomato Seeds</a></li>
<li>2 rows of <a href="https://www.seedsnow.com/products/carrot-tendersweet">Carrot Seeds</a></li>
<li>2 rows of <a href="https://www.seedsnow.com/products/basil-italian-large-leaf">Basil Seeds</a></li>
<li>2 rows of <a href="https://www.seedsnow.com/products/bean-bush-harvester">Bean Bush Seeds</a></li>
<li>A row of <a href="https://www.seedsnow.com/products/spinach-nobel-giant">Spinach Seeds</a> (Got for free with the order)</li>
</ul>
<div>
And I still have a plot of potatoes to plant, which I need to pick up at a local store. </div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi5CUdjPGIKlvNx7g4oWu64xI2ypj8RYKWdUW0ic5NcskRkfjui4e3URsn_7NLNFnncJ6BahaqXAhXqF0_TAHRIryozPmPzkU5m2iZBI_Kk5Flq_2LxmGaRxCCrRmcB7ugR9v3LshUsvE/s1600/IMG_20170603_140517.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi5CUdjPGIKlvNx7g4oWu64xI2ypj8RYKWdUW0ic5NcskRkfjui4e3URsn_7NLNFnncJ6BahaqXAhXqF0_TAHRIryozPmPzkU5m2iZBI_Kk5Flq_2LxmGaRxCCrRmcB7ugR9v3LshUsvE/s200/IMG_20170603_140517.jpg" width="200" /></a>But the garden is started! There will still be many things left to do, such as watering and weeding every morning, and making sure that pests don't eat away my crops. I picked up a Tier 1 Watering Can as well. A good old green plastic can works for now! I had started a couple tomato plants a while back and just transitioned them to outside. Once the plants sprout, I'll need to do something called thinning. I've planted a TON of seeds, and once they sprout if I don't pick the best ones to survive and thin out the weak ones, they'll all fight too hard to survive and I won't get the best crops.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I'm still new to all this, but reading up on each crop has been helpful. I'm trying to do my best to follow companion planting and pay attention to the state of my soil, so hopefully pests will stay away and the crops will help each other grow. I found a couple decent guides on companion planting: <a href="http://momsneedtoknow.com/companion-planting-plant-together/">What NOT to plant near each other</a>, and one about <a href="http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/companion-planting-guide-zmaz81mjzraw">What TO plant near each other</a> to get the maximum benefits.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There are many other things to do around the yard as well. I have a wood pile to chop, but I have a low level axe and my woodcutting skill is rather low, so its taking some time getting it all chopped. I've already got a massive stack of fire wood, but there is still so much left! Also the grass in the yard seems to keep growing week after week! So I keep having to cut it. We've lived in our new home for just over a year now, so we're finally getting to working on the yard since last year was all home remodeling and indoor work.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Feeling the cool black earth beneath your fingers is a phenomenal feeling. Although trying to research on the computer with hands covered in mud between each seed type that was planted probably was not a great idea.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
If you want to start a garden as well, there are a lot of resources out there and I hope to hear about your adventures as well! Stay tuned for more updates of my first adventure living the Harvest Life!</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
- Lv 1 Gardener: Jace -<br />
<a href="http://blog.wakeskaterstudio.com/2017/06/a-harvest-life-episode-2-sprouts-and.html">Next: Episode 2: Sprouts and Bunnies</a></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06587857573568882311noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5136269204976433396.post-9695235688561473322017-05-10T19:48:00.003-07:002017-05-10T19:49:01.540-07:00BitBit - A little compression libraryEver needed to compress a bunch of settings in a JavaScript object down to fit in a couple of bytes worth of data? No? Well that's okay I didn't either until recently. While working with some embedded systems I needed a way to take simple number and boolean settings in an object, where I could store them in a readable format, and pack those down into under 2 bytes to be sent to and stored on a memory limited device.<br />
<br />
Now, bit masks are useful if you're only dealing with multiple boolean values, but I needed to support integers as well, so I needed an easy way to say: "Ok, bit 0 will be setting A, bits 1-6 will be setting B and bits 7-16 will be setting C." So I created a little library called <a href="https://www.npmjs.com/package/bitbit">BitBit</a>. <br />
<br />
BitBit works by letting you create a new BitBit object with a schema that defines how a JavaScript object maps to certain bits. For example, if you had a thermostat object with settings about a thermostat that you wanted to pack down into under 2 bytes, you could set up a new BitBit object like so:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT69nVOPe2KtUPFy1-NOFkg7jx-YTgNa-eYw-lVbe2BxpF59N14ZPomdkq4UoQInqJa2pUEMrRLcmrleR5LtgBo_0wIpvCm0mOlM86AbG4ZNHddWEY8d15LTxiyQEF4leJZH6AkfCU1Cg/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-05-10+at+10.40.10+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="124" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT69nVOPe2KtUPFy1-NOFkg7jx-YTgNa-eYw-lVbe2BxpF59N14ZPomdkq4UoQInqJa2pUEMrRLcmrleR5LtgBo_0wIpvCm0mOlM86AbG4ZNHddWEY8d15LTxiyQEF4leJZH6AkfCU1Cg/s640/Screen+Shot+2017-05-10+at+10.40.10+PM.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
What this is doing is creating a new BitBit object with a valid schema. A schema must be an object with string keys that map to an array of 1 or 2 numbers. A single number means it's a boolean and uses a single field. 2 numbers mean that its mapped to a number that uses the bits spanning the numbers given in the array (inclusive). If you wanted to return a number that was just 0 or 1, you could use an array with 2 numbers that were the same.<br />
<br />
Once you have built the schema, you can pack the settings down into an integer for storage.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitjqZeCra1xrbo_oLrBwTUvWXP6Tb90TQWU1l-oMO1QzyPkzUlBEZy4iLIMdfOYNP_QtDTpPJ5cVUhf1hhQmLkeGDFpLdLJP_sC_-WjaZYmAiY0_bM4Svaesm3YRVh65I4lpdMK-pdIlE/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-05-10+at+10.40.21+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="188" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitjqZeCra1xrbo_oLrBwTUvWXP6Tb90TQWU1l-oMO1QzyPkzUlBEZy4iLIMdfOYNP_QtDTpPJ5cVUhf1hhQmLkeGDFpLdLJP_sC_-WjaZYmAiY0_bM4Svaesm3YRVh65I4lpdMK-pdIlE/s640/Screen+Shot+2017-05-10+at+10.40.21+PM.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
As you can see above, once you pack the object, it will ignore anything not specified in the schema, which means you lose that data once it's unpacked. A good way to use the unpacked data is to merge it back over your original object with lodash.merge. This works well if the device you're sending it to and from can modify it.<br />
<br />
In addition, you can use lodash accessor keys to get nested objects, array indices, etc. There is an example of that on the <a href="https://github.com/WakeskaterX/bitbit">Github</a> Readme.<br />
<br />
Well, that's about it, it's a small library I created since I needed something like that and didn't see anything out there that existed yet that satisfied those requirements.<br />
<br />
If you like it feel free to contribute! That's all for now, hopefully I'll have more time for these little side projects.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06587857573568882311noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5136269204976433396.post-62893933296977545422017-03-12T13:26:00.000-07:002017-05-10T19:54:02.403-07:00New Year, New Job!It has been a while since I have posted, and a lot has changed! Recently I got a new job at <a href="http://simplisafe.com/">SimpliSafe</a> as a Backend Software Engineer, continuing my work in NodeJS, which is really exciting. Also, I now work at a place where there is no taboo on talking about where I work, like there was at Layer3 TV! So lots of exciting things have been going on the past few months. <br />
<br />
Other than the new career, I took part in the Global Game Jam in January and completed a fairly polished game within the 48 hours with my good friends Ben Taylor and Dawn Rivers. The game is called <a href="http://globalgamejam.org/2017/games/bubbledub">BubbleDub</a> and its a couch coop/competitive rhythmic puzzle game, where you must rapidly select the colors of orbs and complete chains to out score the competition. It was a great time and it's always a good feeling getting to dive into game development for a bit and get a creative break from enterprise development.<br />
<br />
I'm also trying to figure out what side projects I want to continue to work on and take to being a fully fleshed out product. Lots of things I could work on from Stock Market analysis and learning about neural nets and machine learning to other games and the like. Still trying to figure out what I want to invest a bunch of time and energy into, but still have a lot of projects around the house to do as well.<br />
<br />
So... quick post after a few months of neglect, once I get into the groove of things at the new job I should have some mental energy to work on side projects and post about them.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06587857573568882311noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5136269204976433396.post-24954342145449835222016-12-14T11:14:00.001-08:002016-12-14T11:16:26.934-08:00Heart of Winter - PoemI wrote a poem for our work poetry contest for our holiday party, so here it is.<br />
<br />
<br /><br /><b>Heart of Winter</b><br /><br />Angel feathers fall from a cotton sky<br />As the arctic wind pinches my strawberry nose.<br />I pull the wool scarf my mother knit, up around my face,<br />Blinking with frost laden lashes.<br />Cinnamon steam swirls from my mug,<br />Lifting with it the scent of apple, orange and brandy.<br />One sip extinguishes the chill, a warm hug from the inside out.<br /><br />Inside children sit near a playful fire,<br />Bathed in its flickering warmth,<br />Reading stories of pirates and books of adventures in the clouds,<br />Hours slipping by without a care.<br /><br />The tree in the corner nestles down on kaleidoscope boxes,<br />Her bows protecting them like a mother hen,<br />Dressed in a sparkling cacophony of color.<br /><br />Night emerges and peaceful silence settles in,<br />Crackles and pops from a dying fire sparsely interrupting.<br />Back and forth the chair rocks, as eyelids droop and conscious wanes.<br /><br />Sleep encroaches quietly and a carefully placed blanket becomes a warm embrace<br />In the heart of winter.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06587857573568882311noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5136269204976433396.post-3087604840866150022016-08-30T18:37:00.002-07:002016-08-30T18:37:31.894-07:00Schema CheckIt has been a while since I've done a post about side projects, but lately I've been working on a little NPM Module called Schema Check, available on <a href="https://www.npmjs.com/package/schema-check">NPM</a> and <a href="https://github.com/WakeskaterX/schema-check">Github</a> and wanted to share it. Schema Check is a light JavaScript object type enforcer which uses private properties and <a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Object/defineProperty">Object.defineProperty</a><span id="goog_860502525"></span><span id="goog_860502526"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a> to create getters and setters for various fields on a JavaScript object.<br />
<br />
Schema Check uses schema objects to describe the fields on the object and the types they should accept. It then modifies the getters and setters of that object to only allow values of that type to be set. This came out of a desire to have something that could be used to enforce some types in JS without resorting to something like TypeScript entirely. It's also just a fun side project I can work on here and there in my spare time.<br />
<br />
<h3>
How it works</h3>
<div>
Schema Check at it's core is built on Object.defineProperty. By using defineProperty, schema check allows you to apply a schema to an existing object - which will force the fields of that object to conform to certain restraints.<br />
<br />
Take for example, the following object:</div>
<br />
<pre> var dude = {
name: "Chad",
is_single: true,
cash: 100
};
</pre>
<br />
Our dude, Chad, has three properties: name (a string), is_single (a boolean) and cash (a number). If we're manipulating data and working with the dude object in JavaScript, it'd be really nice to limit what we can set to those fields. There are many solutions for this, such as the rise of TypeScript, but Schema Check is a lightweight way to enforce these values with a simple schema.<br />
<br />
By importing schema check like so and setting a schema for the dude object, we can force the object to throw an error (or fail silently) when an invalid value is set to that property.<br />
<br />
<pre> var SchemaCheck = require('schema-check');
var schema = {
name: {
type: 'string',
regex: /^[a-z]+$/i //Used by Regex.test() to check validity
},
is_single: {
type: 'boolean',
is_editable: false //Poor chad - this status isn't changing any time soon
},
cash: {
type: 'number',
allow_nulls: false //This can be true too if you want to </pre>
<pre> //allow null to be a valid entry
}
};
var options = {
throw_error: false </pre>
<pre> //This will determine whether or not trying to set </pre>
<pre> //an invalid property type throws an error or fails silently
};
SchemaCheck(dude, schema, options);
dude.name = 5; //Fails - name is still Chad</pre>
<pre> dude.name = '123'; //Also Fails - because it doesn't match the regex.test
dude.is_single = false; //Fails - Chad is still single
dude.cash = 110; //Succeeds, Chad is a bit richer now!
</pre>
<br />
I have a lot more I want to do with the library. At the moment it doesn't really support Arrays and there are extra restrictions I want to add as well (like Min/Max for numbers)<br />
<br />
It's a work in progress, feel free to contribute to the <a href="https://github.com/WakeskaterX/schema-check">GitHub</a> repo and create PRs and Issues if you think of anything that should be added.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06587857573568882311noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5136269204976433396.post-52017914209933667422016-07-03T12:08:00.001-07:002016-07-05T11:20:33.800-07:00All The World's A GameAll the world's a game,<br />
And all the men and women merely players;<br />
They have their PKs and their respawns,<br />
And one man in his time plays many classes,<br />
His act being seven stages. At first the neophyte,<br />
Mewling and button smashing in wanton alarm,<br />
Then the whining acolyte, with his light inventory<br />
And shining face of wonder, crawling past monsters,<br />
Unwilling to fight. And then the expert,<br />
Intense like a furnace, a woe-filled blade<br />
Made to conquer fiends. Then a raider,<br />
Bags filled with strange trinkets and shrouded in epics,<br />
Jealous of other's gear, sudden and quick to gank noobs,<br />
Seeking to expand his reputation<br />
Ever running his mouth. And then the veteran,<br />
His house filled with grand loot and lined with treasure,<br />
With eyes wizened by dragons and warlocks,<br />
Full of strange tales of adventures past;<br />
And so he plays his part. The sixth stage shifts<br />
Into the quiet and skeptical sage,<br />
Watching the spectacles of new ages from side to side;<br />
His intense vigor, lost to a world too wide<br />
For his excitement, and his boisterous voice,<br />
Turning again to quiet wonder and solitude<br />
He crafts on his own. Last scene of all,<br />
That ends this strange and beautiful game,<br />
Is the second desire for youthful remembrance,<br />
Sans guild, sans friends, sans time, sans everything.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06587857573568882311noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5136269204976433396.post-68708141920451553792016-06-08T05:04:00.000-07:002016-06-08T05:07:06.133-07:00Card Creator V2 - A smoother workflowI had a couple goals in mind when I set out to rebuild the Card Creator. First, I wanted to be able to update a Google Spreadsheet document, and have the card creator read directly from there for building the cards, and second, I wanted to remove the Cairo dependency, because it wasn't working very well and I wanted to use Node4 which broke node-canvas.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://github.com/WakeskaterX/CardCreator/tree/version2">Version 2 of the Card Creator</a> does exactly that. I hooked up the Card Creator into Google Sheets using the npm module: <a href="https://www.npmjs.com/package/google-spreadsheet">google-spreadsheet</a>, and I swapped out node-canvas and Cairo for LibGD and <a href="https://www.npmjs.com/package/node-gd">node-gd</a>. What that entailed was a full rebuild of the card creation logic, but it was good to go back over it and update it and smooth out some of the minor issues.<br />
<br />
In addition I redrew much of the art for the icons so that I could use non-pixel art instead, which scales better. Granted, I am no artist, but I am doing all of the temporary art until I can find an artist to work with, if I decide to pursue this project seriously. <br />
<br />
If you haven't read my previous post. Card Creator is an application written in NodeJS that automates creating playing cards for a card game I'm working on. It allows me to rapidly prototype and handles design, combining art assets, etc into print sheets for ease of production.<br />
<br />
This new Card Creator program has improved my workflow significantly. With the old program, making card changes required me to update the JSON files individually and change the values for each key/value pair in order to generate the cards. Now I simply create a new row in my google document and run the program and it pulls in all the changes. It's really nice for rapid prototyping. I'm able to tweak values, update the descriptions, and then immediately run the program to generate the cards, and the sheetify script to create print sheets.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn_7CpaNi4aUOSKOv4mKGz31zGiX7JNzRQaVi4ngWSi0h5-JeUtX8nYKZqXLD2ysGCKf7dvIFDwvnat9vvjg5k4eCvumvEkmT6LpiyqwDwapJOr_xyCtMOiVWMksO4qbYfwVnLicjxZpg/s1600/Screen+Shot+2016-06-08+at+7.42.58+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="62" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn_7CpaNi4aUOSKOv4mKGz31zGiX7JNzRQaVi4ngWSi0h5-JeUtX8nYKZqXLD2ysGCKf7dvIFDwvnat9vvjg5k4eCvumvEkmT6LpiyqwDwapJOr_xyCtMOiVWMksO4qbYfwVnLicjxZpg/s640/Screen+Shot+2016-06-08+at+7.42.58+AM.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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The script has a few points of interest you'll want to consider when using it. First it's run by using the command: node creator-google-sheets.js which is the primary file. (Make sure you're on branch version2). The first thing you need to do to run it is include a google spreadsheet key to a google document. In order to use the sheet, you'll need to publish it to the web, and then you'll have a link that has a long string in it. That's your spreadsheet key.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjftkS7wYIWTGHP_xcjUNOF-S-9onkofsbqekuMGsbNRTdHWSUSchOscVZeYQ_ysw32OwIRXCxt16Y9tziaye_EYW39InNhuKvhO0ehykYbI5et3oAOxrT2C2BfrR5lZizauGKk_Xg6HIA/s1600/Screen+Shot+2016-06-08+at+7.54.58+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="110" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjftkS7wYIWTGHP_xcjUNOF-S-9onkofsbqekuMGsbNRTdHWSUSchOscVZeYQ_ysw32OwIRXCxt16Y9tziaye_EYW39InNhuKvhO0ehykYbI5et3oAOxrT2C2BfrR5lZizauGKk_Xg6HIA/s320/Screen+Shot+2016-06-08+at+7.54.58+AM.png" width="320" /></a>I put my key in a private.js file which isn't included in the repository, so you can do the same, or you can simply replace the require('./private.js').google_sheets_key; on line 15 of the script with the string. In addition if your spreadsheet has differently named headers for your spreadsheet, you'll need to update those in the mapping function (convertRow) on line 73. That basically maps the row data to fields that the icon creator, background creator, etc are expecting.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
The Card Creator works similar to before, it draws the background, the title, the description and the icons and then outputs it as a png file. One thing to note, is that if you're working with node-gd, the documentation isn't fantastic, so it might take some trial and error to figure out how the functions work exactly. For example, it took me a little bit to figure out which copy function worked for copying one image onto another. Use copyResampled. At least that's the only one that worked well for what I was doing.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
I'm also rebranding the Card game I'm working on a bit, tossing some names around trying to find one I like. I have a couple in mind, so we'll see if they stick in play testing.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Anyway feel free to check out the new Card Creator on my <a href="https://github.com/WakeskaterX/CardCreator/tree/version2">Github Page</a>, if you're working with NodeJS linking up to google sheets documents is really quite simple and fantastic for automating work. You can make the document read only (like I did) or allow programs to write to cells as well. Nifty!</div>
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Cheers and thanks for reading!</div>
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Jason C / WakeskaterX</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06587857573568882311noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5136269204976433396.post-43634868564694398862016-04-29T11:50:00.001-07:002016-04-29T11:55:47.910-07:00Introduction to Caching in JavaScript and NodeJS<i><b>Disclaimer</b>: This article is intended for new web developers who don't know much about caching and would like to have a basic idea. It is not a comprehensive post, nor is it supposed to accurately reflect advanced caching systems. All of the scripts referenced in this post can be downloaded from my <a href="https://github.com/WakeskaterX/Blog/tree/master/2016_04_Caching">GitHub Repository</a>.</i><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoBSrSlDZo0RuWMr8H0EChLzCb-GEodK7QNmHjXWWeq6FfOJou7AMIkQAmLrOozavU8gkNUpTZo70K96G-6_Ex3G74MbhnRx-iAKVO9cEVjHarMR7Bm4g-3nc5QQ_gfZtbtUiDi4x-rs8/s1600/cacherules.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoBSrSlDZo0RuWMr8H0EChLzCb-GEodK7QNmHjXWWeq6FfOJou7AMIkQAmLrOozavU8gkNUpTZo70K96G-6_Ex3G74MbhnRx-iAKVO9cEVjHarMR7Bm4g-3nc5QQ_gfZtbtUiDi4x-rs8/s200/cacherules.png" width="200" /></a>When I was first starting out in web development, I heard people talk a lot about this "cash" system that you could use in websites and your code, but I honestly didn't know too much about it. I eventually figured out it was a way to store data so you could access it faster, but I still thought it was some complicated architecture or a special system, but I was really just over thinking it.<br />
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A Cache is simply a place in memory where you can store data that is accessed often. In the context of JavaScript, this can simply be a global variable that you put the results of an AJAX call into. Then you create your function to look in that first, and if something is there, return that, otherwise make the original call you wanted to. There are a lot of libraries out there that will do that for you but we're going to build a very basic caching system, and walk through each of the parts.<br />
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I'm going to use NodeJS for this blog post, but this works just as well in the browser with an AJAX request or something similar.<br />
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First, I'll create a function that calls out to the github API and returns a value. I'll walk through the function and then add some caching to show how it's done. Below we have the basic script, which you can run with:<br />
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<pre>node nocache.js</pre>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq20Iy5E-7R4UpFUslia3V_heo2DQ0H7e_KVSCqiPxRHy6fopwjnysxKQqYNfHWkqNF9NFzeViMSM8P4c4nyeO9pbLg12RVRLhS59v-CLAks8gcR1gpIWuvBz19zar-4-mf9ZwqrcCKIw/s1600/Screen+Shot+2016-04-29+at+8.56.08+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="596" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq20Iy5E-7R4UpFUslia3V_heo2DQ0H7e_KVSCqiPxRHy6fopwjnysxKQqYNfHWkqNF9NFzeViMSM8P4c4nyeO9pbLg12RVRLhS59v-CLAks8gcR1gpIWuvBz19zar-4-mf9ZwqrcCKIw/s640/Screen+Shot+2016-04-29+at+8.56.08+AM.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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For this tutorial, I am using the npm library <a href="https://www.npmjs.com/package/request">request</a> for ease of use and am making a request to the <a href="https://developer.github.com/v3/">GitHub API</a> to query my repositories for the data about them. This is very similar to a request you would use in Express or another web framework and I have done things very similar for other projects. One thing to note is that the request library lets you specify the options easily for the HTTP request and the GitHub API requires a User-Agent in the header, so that's why that's there. If you don't GitHub will return an error and reject your request.<br />
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Next on line 15 I created the function to make the request. For this tutorial I have a bunch of logs and start and end times to track the time in milliseconds the entire request takes. So I set the start to +Date.now() which just converts Date.now to a number (in ms), and then logged the start time. The data in the body comes as a JSON string, so I parsed that and logged the name first item since it's an array of information. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2oYFil74q9NeOoXH0bnDvpFvFIPIEAjYmnlzDxjf2N3JHdynXyxk_fVVKGtyVEKZ09TcNH4jwBJ62cSz0bN-mTYsg-NnGv5orE9cg_04yiFzPaz9MFGvF0BKhHlq0e7HR4-F8Guy28AA/s1600/Screen+Shot+2016-04-29+at+11.14.47+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2oYFil74q9NeOoXH0bnDvpFvFIPIEAjYmnlzDxjf2N3JHdynXyxk_fVVKGtyVEKZ09TcNH4jwBJ62cSz0bN-mTYsg-NnGv5orE9cg_04yiFzPaz9MFGvF0BKhHlq0e7HR4-F8Guy28AA/s320/Screen+Shot+2016-04-29+at+11.14.47+AM.png" width="320" /></a>Finally, there are some logs to output the ending time, and the total time elapsed for the request. On average I get roughly 400 ms on a good connection. And if this is inside a web request, you don't want to be adding half a second to a second to every request, on top of everything else the server is doing. To simulate this, the script nocache_multi.js has a few setTimeouts to repeatedly call the same function. As you can see to the right when you run it, each time you get a similar response time.<br />
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This script is the perfect location to add caching because it's not changing the request parameters and we can pretty much expect that the response will be the same every time at least most of the time. So instead of making the request every time the function is run, I'm going to add a storage object so that I can store the response and use that when the function is called again.<br />
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In the script below, you can see I've added a very basic cache named repo_cache on line 14, and added a result field to the object to store the data. In a bit you'll see why I split it into a separate field but for now, but you can see how it's being used below. On line 25 I added a check to see if we had any result data, if so, we simply log the results from that data and return, otherwise we continue with the original process. In addition I split out the logging into a separate function so we can call it from each path. The last change I made was that when I successfully get data, to store the parsed result in the repo_cache.result object.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvtFeQjOrvoS2gc0VjkPYV44ewuMiVUfMwmNJhAn9S57L426pA6QJlHV1YONT1FmDv3rjl9kCK4VljbDGSEJ93NjvIYxybLKEMX_8_Q6TKnA0ItxF0fp1_8kkx3GbIWKbc6CYJJPomBEQ/s1600/Screen+Shot+2016-04-29+at+11.20.46+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvtFeQjOrvoS2gc0VjkPYV44ewuMiVUfMwmNJhAn9S57L426pA6QJlHV1YONT1FmDv3rjl9kCK4VljbDGSEJ93NjvIYxybLKEMX_8_Q6TKnA0ItxF0fp1_8kkx3GbIWKbc6CYJJPomBEQ/s1600/Screen+Shot+2016-04-29+at+11.20.46+AM.png" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLoUtSgQdWPc0ALWitYijM_d-0HrQFzJ3XxJuJRXVejLsQzshh20UbBa-S2AFjYlcAULs9BOLCvwfavs050VFWBKsQJutGFA1xaIqLg7ZJExuShdtRgfjbsJ6m62kLWIvaGb8fftnM7oo/s1600/Screen+Shot+2016-04-29+at+11.15.01+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLoUtSgQdWPc0ALWitYijM_d-0HrQFzJ3XxJuJRXVejLsQzshh20UbBa-S2AFjYlcAULs9BOLCvwfavs050VFWBKsQJutGFA1xaIqLg7ZJExuShdtRgfjbsJ6m62kLWIvaGb8fftnM7oo/s320/Screen+Shot+2016-04-29+at+11.15.01+AM.png" width="320" /></a>When you run this function, you'll see that the first request takes some time, and then the next three are almost instantaneous. Here's what my output looked like to the right.<br />
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As you can see the first request duration was 440 ms, and the rest were zero because we had the data in memory.<br />
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So I successfully "cached" the response and had a much better response time thereafter. But we have a problem with this. This kind of cache isn't very useful for a couple reasons. First is that the data is going to get stale after a while and if the web server stays running for a while the data will be inaccurate, so there needs to be some kind of way to invalidate the cache, or turn it back off. Well that's pretty easy to do, we just need to store a timestamp of when we generated the data for the cache as well as a timeout and then if the timestamp + the timeout is less than the current time, we make a new request and refresh the cache.<br />
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Here is a snippet of the script cache_advanced.js from the GitHub repo below:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNnFPg25E3bKZQ_8I0sxp38JtvAFlwtfnYofguw8nrU7f_kGSKI_GHbe2i0Ku2RwqvbUoE8rMWAJNlbVe3XLS8Q-7HQiisE4FCHZnc0Q4R9fihdPhUXriMD8g6WOExtddoxEpwZ765yiM/s1600/Screen+Shot+2016-04-29+at+2.40.03+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="504" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNnFPg25E3bKZQ_8I0sxp38JtvAFlwtfnYofguw8nrU7f_kGSKI_GHbe2i0Ku2RwqvbUoE8rMWAJNlbVe3XLS8Q-7HQiisE4FCHZnc0Q4R9fihdPhUXriMD8g6WOExtddoxEpwZ765yiM/s640/Screen+Shot+2016-04-29+at+2.40.03+PM.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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The changes I made were adding a last_updated and timeout field to the cache object, as well as checking those 2 during the cache check, and updating the last_updated field after the request.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRpw3OEj_WklMKnCB2Z2xp_3c8A6ZrHiHGgFWuI4TVO3SbOh3OpAAnijwGUoO5suTn_eTPby_etEA3NSS_q5NSYgjXxn28tHdnlqx6twFbiAQpbZzVgYoYcRQUl42OVSDLr-_yecR_PcU/s1600/Screen+Shot+2016-04-29+at+2.41.57+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRpw3OEj_WklMKnCB2Z2xp_3c8A6ZrHiHGgFWuI4TVO3SbOh3OpAAnijwGUoO5suTn_eTPby_etEA3NSS_q5NSYgjXxn28tHdnlqx6twFbiAQpbZzVgYoYcRQUl42OVSDLr-_yecR_PcU/s320/Screen+Shot+2016-04-29+at+2.41.57+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
I got the following results to the right when I ran the script. Since the timeout was set to 1 second and the time between requests was 1 second, I was able to cache the result for a single request, and then it was invalidated and refreshed and then accessed for the final function call.<br />
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So that's at a VERY basic level what caching is. There are a lot of things you can do to improve it and learn more about caching like: Using Function names and parameters to create a hash to store the results in and what not. This function was just a quick and dirty way to create a cache for a script. So hopefully if you're new to web development, that cleared up caching a bit and makes it a little easier to understand.<br />
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Feel free to download the Github Repository and grab all the scripts here:<br />
https://github.com/WakeskaterX/Blog/tree/master/2016_04_Caching<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06587857573568882311noreply@blogger.com0