We can go back and forth on this all day, but I’m gonna just sum my point into a nice tight thesis: broadcast application of phosphorus is by far the biggest issue in terms of runoff (as you allude to re: lawn fertilizer). Home gardening use of phosphorus mixed into soil is entirely harmless by comparison.

I agree excess potassium is bad. Doesn’t happen overnight.

Plenty of reputable books and horticulturalists recommend even-ratio’d ferts for all these crops. My local ag office explicitly recommends 10-10-10 in particular for tomatoes year-round in a home garden context. It’s simplified, suboptimal advice; we’re on the same page there - but not malpractice.

Phosphate - Excess phosphate is water soluable and runs off like nitrate. This causes all sorts of issues in waterways.

Not at all true for the purposes of home gardening: https://extension.missouri.edu/publications/g9181. Granular fertilizer worked into the soil and covered by mulch isn’t going anywhere.

There is little potential for phosphorus to leach through soil into groundwater. Soil particles have a large capacity to fix phosphorus in forms that are immobile in soil.

Only 1/3 of it is immediately available. The other 2/3rd are insoluable and stays in the soil for months. It then releases over the winter and early spring and runs off into the waterways.

Entirely depends on the form of phosphate. See “Table 1: Percentages of water-soluble and available phosphate in several common fertilizer source”. The runoff bit is still nonsense.

https://extension.umn.edu/phosphorus-and-potassium/understanding-phosphorus-fertilizers#materials-619210

Potassium - elevated levels of potassium in some species is an issue in others it’s not a problem. For example corn and other grasses will suck up extra K+ and store it. Howeve in tomatoes, peppers, potatoes etc it can inhibit the uptake of Ca+ and Mg+.

Sure - that buildup takes a while though.

The idea that hitting plants with 3-1-2 fertilizer causes top heavy growth is myth that is passed around gardening forums and many books To put it bluntly it flat out doesn’t happen. The root/shoot ratio is quite a bit more complex than that.

I agree that it’s more complex than that, and early 3-1-2 is in no way a catastrophic death knell, but there’s a grain of truth to it. As I think we also agree, pretty much every reputable source will tell you to prep the bed with a higher P+K feed in the early season.

There is a massive functional difference to anyone with two braincells to rub together.

The core devs can (and should) step in front of a bus (or tank) tomorrow; the core project will just fork, and LW and the other non-triad instances will do fine without them. I’ve had no issue on Lemmy blocking .ml client-side.

The only reminder of the triad’s existence is infiltrator trolls who make alts on other instances to post bad-faith arguments glazing the core devs.

Throwing out clarification since I think I was the one who threw out the even-ratio’d fert suggestion to you: your read is spot on.

The_v has a totally valid point here, but is substantially overstating the issue. Most plants do prefer an overall ratio closer to 3-1-2 over their lifetime, so if you feed them 10-10-10 endlessly, you’ll eventually get toxic build-up of phosphorus and potassium. Unless your starting soil is abnormally high in those already, that will take at least a few years to manifest, and can be easily addressed by switching to nitrogen-heavy feed until your plants take up the excess P+K.

Additionally, you don’t want to hit the plants with a higher-N 3-1-2 feed right out the gate - especially in hotter climates - since that can cause top-heavy growth with too much foliage but not a big enough root system to feed those leaves. That’s why many people add bone meal when planting or prep the bed with a higher P+K feed in the early season.

You won’t have any downside sticking with the 10-10-10 for a while; just don’t do it for years on end without getting your soil tested.

You misunderstood the pinned post; it’s soliciting donations for core Lemmy development, not for the .world instance.

The core devs use donations to the project to fund their tankie .ml instance, which is why they’re getting pushback. There is zero comparable pushback among the community towards funding .world or other instances.

If you’d like to give away any free toasters with hackable embedded microcontrollers to prove your point here, I’m a willing recipient and will attempt setup of a searx instance.

Good step spacing, aesthetic mulch, healthy plants, just the right dose of unkempt wildness.

10/10 path, OP - nice work.

Yup - definitely not lemon balm, and sure looks like lemon basil.

If runners are a worry, you can always put them in a container!

I put mine in these “plantainers” that you can find at most big box stores, and they seem to like it: https://www.homedepot.com/p/MacCourt-20-Gal-Large-Plantainer-Preformed-Pond-Liner-PP2615/308771723. Drill holes, optionally paint white (if you live somewhere hot), add soil/fert/plant, and you’re off to the races.

Make sure you know about the University of Arkansas cultivars before pulling the trigger though! They’ve got some pretty impressive varieties, including ones that produce fruit on first-year branches.

You didn’t start by asking a question. You needlessly trashed a helpful suggestion from a place of ignorance, then asked a naive question defensively to mask a lack of knowledge.

That is rude and trollish behavior.

Since it seems like you don’t know much about bash at all, I promise the book will help you.

You can be someone who actually knows what they’re talking about instead of making embarrassing, snarky comments that expose your lack of education on the topic at hand.

Bash has had some nice minor features and syntax sugar added, but the fundamentals are entirely the same. All the examples in the book work just the same today as they did when it was written.

What was added in 4.X or 5.x that you can’t live without? What do you think has changed that merits inclusion?

It’s a 36 y/o language, mate. I still reference my copy all the time, and found it to be a great definitive resource when I was learning.

How many bash 4/5 features are you seriously using on a regular basis? What do you think is out-of-date?

I highly recommend O’Reilly’s Learning the Bash Shell in paperback form: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/learning-the-bash/0596009658/.

The other responses you’ve received so far don’t offer much insight into the historical background and underlying mechanics of the shell, which are crucial to understanding the "Why?"s of command-line quirkiness.

• I don’t want to spoil your fun with the mint, but the runners above ground aren’t the ones to worry about. Mint likes to spread through its roots… a lot. Best kept in a container ;).
• Most pests are visible to the eye, but there are a few exceptions like spider mites. You’ll typically know you have them by other obvious signs though. A loupe can be helpful for insect ID, but isn’t crucial.
• You can mostly ignore the nutrition from that compost. You’d have to do some math to know the impact of that fertilized garden soil, but it’s likely quite modest. Feel free to use 1/2 - 3/4 the recommended amount of granular for the first month or two if you want to be conservative.
• High NPK numbers aren’t necessarily good or bad, but they are more concentrated and can be more liable to burn things, depending on their form factor and nutrient release pattern.
• As for lettuce/onion seedlings, ideally you till some fertilizer into the bed while you’re prepping it. You could give them some liquid fertilizer at half-strength to make up the difference - but yeah, they’ll still do fine if you just sidedress in a couple of weeks. Both those plants really like higher-nitrogen feeds, so you might want to think about getting a different fertilizer for them down the road.

All that being said, don’t feel obliged to follow any of this if you don’t want to. You’ve definitely set yourself up to get something edible and tasty, so don’t sweat the details if it starts getting in the way of your fun. Hope it helps and happy gardening!

Thanks! I’m in central Texas - zone 8.

My wife and I are talking about moving up north towards the end of the summer, so I’ve been trying to make the most of this last season. I’ll definitely miss the early start of spring, but I’m excited to try out new local plants wherever we end up. Having to hunt for plants that can deal with weeks of >100F days and no rain gets old after a while.

Great start OP! Some blunt honesty: it’s overcrowded to the point that you will not be getting optimal results - but you’ve set yourself up for some good learning experience nonetheless. Further guidance:

• Get some balanced granular fertilizer (e.g. 5-5-5) and apply according to package instructions, mixing into the top 1-2 inches of soil beneath the mulch without injuring roots. Do not be afraid to use basic-ass Miracle-Gro or the like; organic ferts do not have magical properties that make them more effective than inorganic.
• Don’t overtreat for pests: get a spraybottle of insecticidal soap for spot treatment of aphids and the like. Hand-pick larger bugs like hornworms. If you have a problem that the two above steps can’t solve, reach out to your ag extension office for ID help and further guidance. Eschew neem oil; it’s noob bait.
• Figure out how you want to support those tomatoes. Premade storebought cages will suffice for this year, but you’ll want to make your own cages from wire panel (100x easier than it sounds) or set up a staking system eventually.
• “Full sun” is a bit of a misnomer: in practice, it’s a shorthand term of art for 8+ hours of direct light. Fortunately, everything you planted will be happy with that 6-8 range. You’ll be sacrificing about a third of your max yield, but you’re spot on that it’ll make life much easier in the summer.
• Planting mint in-ground is a home gardening rite of passage. You will learn from that. Welcome to the club ;).

“Liquid fertilizer bad” is already an unhelpful reductionist take, but commenting that on a hydroponics post suggests you aren’t interested in engaging with the posted content, and are instead looking for a reason to be combative. A quick peek at your post history here suggests that this is a common pattern of behavior for you.

Please reconsider the way you are engaging with this forum.

For anyone who missed it, the Windows Terminal team is infamous for claiming that it would require PhD level expertise to implement some basic optimizations suggested in a Github thread. Within a few hours, another developer countered that claim by submitting a functioning PR with said improvements implemented.

Windows Terminal team lead Dustin Howett then went on to double down on the original claim that said optimizations were unfeasable, and publicly attacked the author of the original suggestion thread on Hacker News. He issued an extremely half-assed apology and is still a Micro$haft employee to this day.

https://blog.royalsloth.eu/posts/it-takes-a-phd-to-develop-that/

Synology runs a proprietary OS OOTB that’s had multiple sloppy vulns exposing full remote access to users’ files. Putting your data in the hands of fuckups who have and will continue to leak it is the opposite of total control.

It’s completely trivial to store any data you want to in a cloud provider 100% securely just by piping it through openssl before uploading.