HN

Comments (23)

• johnthedebs
  Gardening is near and dear to me, so I love to see it show up on HN. Thanks for sharing :).A couple points of feedback that I noticed so far:1. I wrote a comment here in response to what you said about the tradeoff between growth rate and growth quality: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=504159822. In your section on photoperiodism (https://jrcpl.us/contrib/2020/gardening-for-engineers/#photo...), it seems the examples are backwards. Ie, lettuce is a long-day plant that flowers when days are long, mung bean is a short-day plant that flowers when days are short.
• Menu

  schiffern
  https://jrcpl.us/contrib/2020/gardening-for-engineers/img/te... >Crucially, there is a tradeoff between growth rate and growth quality. Higher temperatures can result in faster growth but also thinner stems, weaker roots, and less flavor. Doing the calculus graphically, we should expect this "quality optimum" lies just uphill of the inflection point of the curve (between T_base and T_opt), yes?
• Menu

  naejin
  Growing food is very complex, probably too complex for our brains. And I believe we will have to learn again how to grow food without our current support systems one day. I'm building projectcanopi.com toward that goal.
• jatorre
  I went down exactly that path with an outdoor bed: 8 soil probes, a weather station, a camera, and a drip valve. The fun part turned out to be not the automation but letting an agent decide the watering every morning and write down what it expects, then check the probes the next day to see if it was right. Fixed schedules kept being wrong in ways that needed context (forecast, last week's response, leaf wetness).It's still humbling: it missed caterpillars on the broccoli until I made it look at full-resolution photos. Wrote it up here: https://jatorre.github.io/garden/
• Menu

  emidoots
  The brain asks:> I am currently exhibiting overwhelming stress from deeply technical work being part of my every day life, and feel I am missing the 'nature' element of life. What should I do?The brain responds:> Gardening! A wonderfully complex system that will just 'live' without me! A delightful escape!The brain asks:> Yes, gardening! But how? There are so many variables! What are the parameters? Where is the specification outlining the success criteria? What defines a living organic system?
• Menu

  mirpetri
  Gardening is expensive. Good I stopped at plants and didn't go for chickens. Every year is different. First you fight the snails on the strawberries. Then the aphids on peppers and roses (this is each year). Next the mold attacks the tomatoes. And if you don't have enough, the starling will eat your blueberries.
• Menu

  gardnr
  When people discover that I work in tech they ask me what they should buy. I tell them that they should buy seeds.
• aaron695
  [dead]
• docotronic0711
  [dead]