Sunflower Report 2.0

Autumn winds are blowing, and we can see how grownups still like to engage in make believe, just looking at the way stock markets are behaving. Money is . . . funny. You pretend that a piece of paper is worth something, and other people pretend and play make believe with funny money. Then you end up having an earth-encompassing circulatory system that gets out of control sometimes, because people forget it’s make believe. As for me, I prefer the community standard, over the gold standard, or the silver standard. And when things get blustery and it looks like we’re not in Kansas anymore, I return to appreciate seasons — the cycles of growth, seedtime and harvest. There can be overabundance — like last year, when Grond towered over 13 feet tall, and underabundance — with so many vampire varmints teaching us lessons this year.

I remember growing up and enjoying the Sound of Music, and finding comfort in the song My Favorite Things. So I thought to wrap up this season, I’d share a few of my favorite things:

1st favorite thing: realizing that in spite of varmints, lack of sun or any other factor, that at least in my imagination, that the sunflower club’s gardens were all connected, that my seeds are your seeds if you need any, and so on:

2nd favorite thing: when our fellow grower Walter mentioned how some students at MIT created a “zero-input energy solution which allows solar panel arrays to track the sun’s movement, thereby increasing solar panel efficiency by 38% over stationary panels.” Translation: a biomimetic breakthrough, where biomimetic means technology imitating nature, and in this case, a solar panel imitating heliotropism.

I remember being in Detroit, looking at the surprising 10-year old re-vamp of the Ford Rouge factory, with some pretty impressive environmentally features, including a green roof made of sedum with such a large surface area that it actually reduced the temperature in Detroit.

And then there were also solar panels, but the guide explained they followed the sun but didn’t work anymore because there weren’t technicians to fix them. And it stuck in my mind that following the sun is great for solar, but tricky.

And since last year, I was dreaming about a “meshflower”, based on discussions at the time of a solar powered device that would help charge the laptops from one laptop per child, and also extend the “mesh network” that the laptops use — which would be a “solar powered mesh repeater“.

The laptops can use the Internet, but they can speak to each other without it — up to 2 kilometers away — this is called “mesh networking” — and is also called “infrastructureless networking” –  and this means that you don’t necessarily need someone like Comcast or Verizon. (but don’t tell them anything, because they might get a heart attack). So at any rate, a mesh repeater would help connect communities that didn’t have traditional cables and whatnot that people in developed countries take for granted. It would be something like the prevalence of cell towers in cambodian jungles, and everywhere else in the developing world, which are put in where there aren’t any phone cables. But a “mesh repeater” would be a lot less expensive.

And I of course was dreaming that it could somehow look, or act, like a sunflower.

And I wondered if there might be a way to have a solar panel follow the sun, without too much fuss, but I’m not an engineer, so mainly just dreamed about it. And it seemed like even if you only needed a simple solar panel in your backyard that would charge a battery, it would still be cool if it looked and acted like a sunflower. So when Walter mentioned these students from MIT who had basically found a way to make solar heliotropic — I thought, how wonderful — and I got in touch, and the newest member of the sunflower club is Forrest Liau, one of the inventors of the heliotropic solar device. (hi Forrest). And it gave me hope that the dream of the “solar sunflower” could at least be technically possible — a consumer solar device.

So I’m basically figuring on sharing the idea of the “solarflower” with Google, for their upcoming 10tothe100th program, where they are looking for ideas to make the world better, and hoping that Forrest and his pals might consent to tinker. I just think it would be great fun to have a solar device sitting smack dab in the middle of a bunch of mammoth greystripe sunflowers.

3rd favorite thing: More recently I’ve been a bit of a slacker with posting pictures to the blog, but there were two doozy pictures that friend Chuck Isdale took that were quite cool, and this set of pictures is my third favorite thing of the growing season:

The first is a shot of some bees doing their thing:

And the second makes me very happy; I got Shagrat out, one of the praying mantises I’ve been raising as part of the Mantis Report, and we caught a nice picture of the overlap of the Mantis and Sunflower kingdoms:

Thank you for reading through a few of my favorite things, and I hope you have a wonderful week, or weekend, as the case may be.

It was a doozy of a storm yesterday, but the hardy souls survived; nary a tornado actually dared touch down in the sunflower zone, but they were known to be about. The sky was truly green, and I was somewhat ridiculously standing outside with a big grin on my face and an umbrella — but I was at least near the house, and watching carefully for escalating winds.

This brute is as yet un-named, but might end up being called Grondag, descendant of Grond.

Grondag interestingly appears to have additional flower heads growing at each stem, like an apocalyptic harbinger of doom, sure to inspire fear and dread in the neighbor’s yappy dog, which frolics unaware just feet away, under the mistaken impression that the fence will protect it.

This is what things look like at the very tippy top of the sunflowers, when they are starting to consider developing flower heads.

The baker’s half dozen in the back corner seem to be growing prodigously now, no longer cowering before the onslaught of vampire rabbits.

Itchy and Scratchy survived the storm too — I actually had the most concern for them, foolishly trying to tether them to the electric pole, I mean the sequoia sunflower, behind them, in the seconds leading up to the maelstrom.

There are a dozen monsters lurking in the back yard — but first, the corner monsterarium.

Here are how things stand as of today, after the varmint wars, the slug wars, the vampire rabbit invasion, and squirrel antics. Some seedlings re-planted, various methods employed to re-plant, a couple different sprays. Haven’t even taken any measurements yet. But after starting to water more regularly, and after the sun made itself know more, things are ok — the plants seem to have reached their “growth stride”. So in the corner garden we have about six of them.

And this is one of the experimental “pot” sunflowers - pretty decent sized pot — this originally was a last ditch effort for the rabbit wars, planting it in a pot so as to mitigate rabbit predations. It seems to be doing okie dokie.

Then we have a few experimental sunflowers growing in even smaller pots — this is actually the sunflower hospital — the one on the left (remember you can click on the pictures to get larger verswions) has a kind of crook in it — I thought it was a goner — it had been bendy/spindly when it was younger, and i sort of tried to bend it back into shape - and broke the stalk — not completely, but mostly. But I tried actually taping the stalk, and it seems to have repaired itself.

The one to the right of the rabbit is also doing surprisingly well - relocating them to places with sun seemed to work well.

The stone rabbit does not seem to have done a very good job of serving as a warning to the vampire rabbits in the Rabbit Wars.

And here we come to the dozen monsters - an experiment to see if sunflowers could make a screen for the neighbor’s fence, and maybe muffle some of the yappy dognatiousness.

The dozen monster experiment also fell prey to vampire rabbit invasions, slug horror, other unmentionable traumatics — but the backup seeds were planted, and when I discovered how easy it was to put some cheap rabbit fence in, friend Scott helped to put in some fence, and it feels great knowing the whiskery vampires can no longer destroy the sunflower monsters in their vulnerable stage.

The varmint chaos got pretty brutal in the front circular experiment — first planting way back in may got munched up something fierce — then a second planting got munched as well. As of the second munching I started growing backup seedlings, and then a kind and helpful visiting parent (see http://sunflowereport.blogspot.com for pictures of the parents helping with seed harvest) suggested rabbit fence — smaller at the bottom, more open at the top. It turned out pretty easy to put in — pretty cheap — and no munchings since then.

Here I am, to show a sense of scale.

You would understandably think I am standing next to a telephone pole, or electricity pole, or something — but in fact, the tall stalk next to me is a sequoia sunflower, that grew 200 feet in the first week, thanks to some magic fertilizer I found out in the garage.

But at any rate, the idea is to maybe put some kind of modest yet silly measurement stick on the pole, I mean sequoia sunflower — so you can look at the junior sunflowers growing and see how tall they get.

Recently made some progress. Since the time the seeds were planted, there have been varmints going after the sunflowers, so I started planting more seedlings, then more varmints, then more seedlings.

So it’s been a battle against vampire rabbits, the black squirrel of death from the front yard, and maybe even racoons, and more.

But I decided not to give up, and instead just planted some seedlings later, tried spraying a few different things, and in the case of a new experiment in the front yard, had some help from parental units in constructing a fence to protect things (after a pernicious varmint had the cheek to completely destroy the wonderfully large, well relatively tall sunflower growing there.)

Here is the little round stone enclosure where I had a nice 18 inch sunflower growing that got snagged, then father parental unit employed his upstate ny varmint protection ability to construct a circular wire “fence” with “bunny fence” from home depot — smaller at the bottom, bigger holes at the top, not too entirely bad looking. So hopefully this will prevent the varmints from attacking, and eventually passers by will be able to enjoy a nice sunflower, and maybe the sunflowers will reach down and smack the naughty yappy dogs in the hindquarters and get some discipline going in this neighborhood.

Here we see the main area of last years’ garden. More modest this year, with some 18″ inch or so seedlings, then some newer ones to replace those taken out by vampire rabbits.

Wait a second — who is that peeking out of the crawlspace?

And here is the view of the eldest sunflowers, maybe 2 feet tall, doing fairly well — these might have a chance of reaching six feet by the end of the growing season.

Here are some of the experimental sunflowers, growing in pots — on the left, doing pretty well — the others not so well, but may put them in the ground anyway.

Here we see a pot-based sunflower doing fairly well, and the back-up vampire rabbit scarecrow.

Here’s a nice hosta near the back of the yard, vying for attention. Kind of amazing to see how fast hosta grows.

This year I branched out a bit. Last year I got lucky, the season had more sun, less varmints. But this year, I decided to dig a trench, work the soil, and try planting some sunflowers here — they’ve been attacked by all manner of beasties — but there are some shorter ones that are replacements, just planted today. Am tempted to try some fencing, may do so at the first sign of predatory behavior on the part of bugs and beasties.

Ok, so I wanted to try raising praying mantises before I made the connection that the mantis is the friend of the sunflower — but that’s really cool — and it is true that praying mantises are voracious insect eaters.

I happened to be at a store called American Science and Surplus, a wonderful, dangerous place, with parts and odds and ends and some scientific and biological doodads from time to time — and I couldn’t help but notice a praying mantis “kit” from Worlds Alive. Then about a year later I got it out and actually ordered the mantis egg case — hmmm, about 2 months ago — and the first egg case was a dud — but they sent me another.

The package below is what you get in the mail — just an egg case — and then there’s the brochure from the original kit.

But if/when this second egg case actually results in praying mantises, then it will make for some interesting shenanigans — and there is a separate blog ready to go, just in case.

Since you were kind enough to read this blog post, you might also enjoy taking a peek at http://www.cftw.com/clubmantis — a game that a student from a class I taught last year created.

Over the course of the summer I suppose I’ll dig into the digital archives and dust off some of the ideas that were floating around my head last fall and winter for sunflower, mantis and other “characters”. And then it will become a little clearer. And I’ll categorize this entry as a “Pronkle” entry; and gradually things will start to make sense.

But just so you don’t think I’m kidding, here is a preview of one of the characters, “Grond” — basically a 3d drawing by Alexandra Constantin (who is a wonderful 3d artist, and who is available for freelance). And Grond, or Grondlet, was inspired by the sunflower of the same name from last summer. (see http://sunflowerreport.blogspot.com)

This entry is partly to put my money where my mouth is, to take my own medicine; I’ve been busy sending seeds out, getting the seeds in the ground, but now that summer is officially here in five days, we’re coming around to where I need to get people blogging — so of course, I need to be doing it myself.

So — here is my second attempt — or shall we say, third attempt. The first attempt at seedlings were attacked by varmints of various kinds, and some have survived, so I grew some seedlings in a tray (but didn’t take pictures - doh!), and this was the second attempt — coming along, have some nice ones by the fence (see how pictures would be nice here?). Then for fun, since various folks in various parts are trying different techniques, I decided to have a backup to the backup — and am trying to see how things go using peat moss plugs — this may end up becoming the official recommendation for starting sunflowers.

At any rate, the peat moss plug tray comes with little discs of peat moss, you add water, and then the plastic tops helps to keep moisture in, and is an idea environment for sprouting things. In this case, I also soaked the sunflower seeds for 12 something hours in water the night prior — so the idea will be to see how soon the seeds will sprout.

And here is a close-up of the peat moss plugs:

I will probably end up pushing the seeds further down in the peat moss plug. Ah! with the other end of a pencil I guess.

The next season has arrived, and we are trying out this new blogging system at the Sunflower Club, which seems to be working well.

My sproutlings, on the other hand, do not seem to be working so well — it appears there is a bunny or some other pernicious varmint who has been munching on many of the sprouts.

Sunflower farmers be forewarned!

What first appeared to be some little bug, then made itself known as a voracious monstrosity, ever like the Visigoths descending on fairest Rome!

Alas there are a few sproutlings that have survived, but I will replant some seeds, and go for seedlings, and let the sunflower seedlings grow to several inches before planting them.