The front yard small as it may be is looking great due to the roses. Each year certain bushes always produce well. Other years some rose bushes produce more than other years. This year the yellow rose bush is more prolific early than it has ever been. The blooms are even larger on the yellow roses.
The white roses by the fence and the long stem red roses by the door continue to produce beautiful flowers every year. My pink roses on the other side of the garden haven’t been as plentiful the past 2 years but the hybrid purple roses behind them are growing and popping out more flowers this year.
I gave them a nice feeding of slow release fertilizer and a mix to fight off insects like aphids so they will continue nice and healthy this year. I put down some more black bark down earlier this week to keep weeds out and sets the flowers off nicely with that background.
Night time shot of roses earlier this week in the evening after putting the black bark down.Full shot of the roses in the front. The way the homes are configured the grass or white rocks in the front aren’t mine or they would be looking different.
I removed the “gourmet collard greens” that seemed to have gone to seed that I had replanted from last year and brought up from seed . The gourmet greens had a huge amount or aphid like bugs the other collard greens didn’t have. I think I could have nursed some production out of them but figured the other collard greens would take up the slack without all the bugs that weren’t on them. I placed some celebrity and large cherry red, tomato plants from the discount pack that I had in the place of gourmet greens and stevia from last year.
The stevia from last year I had in a planter and had given up on. The stevia had went dormant suddenly back in February after seeming to flourish then in a week was gone ! Very unusual to see a plant go from flourishing to dormant that quickly, then I noticed growth in the planter box and it wasn’t even getting water but the stevia came right on up!
I also made some adjustments on the drip system and tested that along with some snipping of rose bushes in the front of the house. A lot of tiny buds ready to bloom into roses in the front very soon on each of the rose bushes, with some having blooms already.
Gourmet collard greens pulled up.Garden spot where the gourmet collard greens were pulled from with more tomato plants and stevia in their place.This side of the garden blooming but will need weeds pulled aggressively this week.
Finished my custom pvc pipe tomato trellises for now. I even added some more vegetables to my already over crowded vegetable garden when I couldn’t find poblano\ancho chilli pepper plants sprouting in my garden. I picked up some poblano\ancho peppers, Fresno peppers and another habanero pepper plant as well putting them in various spots.
I went to the old traditional pool store I had used for most of the time the past 25 years until they consolidated to one store in 2009. This store was quite a bit further out than the second store they had they closed and picked up some pool filters, I left my automatic pool vacuum to be repaired as well. I normally do repairs myself on my pool vacuum but with supply chain slow downs and no time I let them do it. They also had the filters no one else had in stock locally. After finishing vacuuming all the dirt from my garden excursions that collected on the pool bottom and some shock treatments, getting my pool salt content up to what it should be making sure the chlorinator was working the pool water is looking inviting! Once the pool gets a bit more warm I will start up my pool workouts doubling my cardio from treadmill sessions and eventually back to my road courses.
This week I picked up whole chicken as my protein of the week. I fire cooked with pellet apple wood on one of my Traeger grills after a nice 24 hour plus brine. The cook went well and the chicken was tender after letting it rest for awhile with the juices pouring out when cut. Even the breast meat was as juicy as a thigh. I ate with some store bought lobster ravioli and shrimp in garlic sauce along with some collard greens from my garden.
On my pvc pipe trellises I used tie wraps and heavy duty rubber bands made to resist heat and outside weather. On one row I will use traditional wired tomato baskets to test against my custom trellises This also satisfies my mission not to have useful things around the yard not being utilized and in my way.
I already have lots of tomato blooms and one beefsteak tomato on one plant. I should start seeing produce from recent plants as soon as two weeks. My transplants from the previous season are already producing as they recover, especially the herbs.
Picked up a small brisket from Costco a couple of weeks ago, injected it with a custom beef enhancing mix and rubbed it down with my custom beef rub. I smoked this baby on my Traeger pellet smoker starting Friday into Saturday evening using hickory pellets.
Over the week I made sandwiches, various breakfast treats but the best leftover meal I made was beef stroganoff with the tacos being almost as good. The spaghetti brisket with marinara sauce wasn’t a hit, not bad just not the right sauce with a smoked brisket.
Below I have some DIY trellis pictures I am trying out to grow my vegetables vertical this year with several varieties. I want some sturdy trellises that will fit the dimensions of my garden so DIY is the key. Most trellises from the stores have cheap connections and aren’t the correct dimensions nor are they adjustable like I intend my trellises to be. plus cost a lot more than they are worth.
I think I will go with four 5 foot 3/4/ inch PVC braced at the top with 1/2″ PVC and plastic stakes with flexible metal core at 9″intervals for my tomatoes. I played with drilling in the PVC pipes and threading the flexible plastic stakes with the metal core through the PVC pipes and then tying them off with Velcro. I will not be drilling through the PVC using that technique it took too long and the PVC chipped off or broke a time or two.
Will go with this for my tomato plants at 9″ steps.. 3/4″ PVC, plastic stakes with flexible metal core tied with tie wraps.Will use this style for tomatoes this year 3/4″ 5′ high, connected at the top but using 1/2″ PVC at the top so I can breakdown easily.Was going to go simple with 3 /3/4″ 5′ long. Without braces the tops come in on each other. The 4 post 5′ braced trellises I will go with are in the back ground.3/4″ PVC with the flexible plastic stakes and flexible metal core drilled through the pvc pipe and tied with garden Velcro 9″ apart. Thinking o using this style for squash, cucumbers or maybe peas would me the best choice.
On the larger west part of my garden, I got the whole garden foundation set finally. After nearly emulsifying the soil, roots, and remaining plants that I didn’t transplant I made rows and redid the drip system Sunday.
I ended up making 12 inch rows with 10 inches between the rows to get my cultivator through later when I want to get weeds easily and also so I can service the crops and remove weeds from on top of the rows with ease.
This year I wanted to try some ¼” soaker hoses instead of my typical drip fittings with sprayers and bubblers. I ended up running them both in parallel with a water faucet splitter to go back and forth and test with. Should this work, I will use on the other side of the garden as well. The goal is to use less water and let the water soak in the soil and hope the roots go deeper to get the water. So far it seems the soaker puts a lot of pressure on the system and comes out way too slowly. I switched over to my old system for the night and foreseeable future until I can test some more.
I ended planting dill, yellow bell peppers, poblano peppers, jalapeno peppers, Ichiban eggplants, summer squash, black beauty squash, 2x yellow pear tomato plants, 2x red cherry tomato plants, celebrity tomato plant, minefield tomatoes, Bok hoi, more Swiss chard, mixed salad greens, more sage, and bush beans
I also started from seed, mustard greens, spinach mustard greens, beets, turnips, burgundy gush beans, bush beans, peas, potatoes, and red onions. I think I missed some plants and seeds that I planted but will list them later.
I still have some areas to fill in and have some more tomato plants from a discount six pack. That’s way too many tomatoes but will find a way to utilize them.
For now, I will turn my attention to cleanup and building some DIY trellises to grow my squash and cucumbers vertically this year to save space in the garden. I will use pvc pipe and fittings that I already have plus another 10 feet I got from the store to cut up. I did some vertical gardening last year. It’s going to get interesting
I even used my GoPro camera to show some footage of making my rows. Boring I know but I must use that equipment sometime since I haven’t been fishing. I have been waiting to finish this post until it finished joining the various video chapters into one video but it’s taking too long and I’m going to bed.
The rows are made 12 inches wide and 10 inches in between for my cultivator to remove weeds in the future.Laying out plants and seeds prior to planting for planning purposes.Faucet splitter I’m using to test out 1/4″ soaker hoses and my normal drip layout.Everything laid out for now.The other side of the garden currently with my replants not recovered yet.
This is the weekend to get this vegetable garden in full gear. Check out the changes as I get the garden set. I chopped up the roots pulled some weeds and the pesky mint plants and roots. I then threw some mulch into the mix with the rototiller. I also got a chance to use my new electric cordless 80v Kobalt cultivator that I just picked up.
I took the 5HP Intek Crafstman rototiller down 2 feet to turnover the soil and chop things up going over the garden twice, then a 3rd and 4th time to get the mulch mixed in.
Next to get the rows in and this year I will try out some 1/4″ soaker hoses on my drip system to see if they can lay between the rows and still effectively water the plants. I’m thinking this will get the roots to go deeper and help me use less water as well.Many plants will do well without getting the leaves wet constantly I believe. I tried this years ago at this house and about 15 – 25 years ago at my other house I used a 3/4″ soaker hose connected to my hose pipe controlled by a mechanical timer.
I updated my dhoytt.com Linux web server, my W2019 Data Center music streaming server, my Linux IceCast and ShoutCast streaming servers with the latest security patches. I also updated several other backgrounds servers.
I also updated the CMS WordPress to the latest version along with the plugins and themes.
Contending with rototiller issues not off to a smooth start with the vegetable garden so went with a different approach this year. The rototiller stalled on the east part of the garden last week so after the small engine came by again I finished turning over the dirt in that part of the garden.
I then made some rough rows moved some transplants from the west part of the vegetable garden to the east. I set my drip system back up and we will see how my transplants do! I have had good results with transplants in the past as long as there’s green in the stem and roots.
The transplants were jalapeno, poblano, chili relleno, habanero, bell peppers. I also transplanted collard greens and Swiss chard.
Earlier I also trimmed up the front flower gardens so they will bloom big very soon.
I have a bunch of seedlings yet to plant so stay tuned.
Bizarre looking start to this years vegetable garden. Trimmed up front yard.Trimmed flowers to prep for major blooming.
Finally on the last day of the year I migrated my Zoneminder CCTV/Plex physical server to Rocky Linux from CentOS 8 using the script from Rocky Linux https://docs.rockylinux.org/guides/migrate2rocky/ . Came back from a trip to Costco saw a reference to Linux and ding hey I still need to migrate away from Centos 8 since it will no longer be supported after today. I checked from my Rocky Linux VM that Zoneminder was in the Rocky Linux repos, then did my last update at Centos 8 rebooted and started my Rocky Linux migration after downloading the files from the Rocky Linux GIT repositories.
I have been using Rocky Linux for a few months on one of my VM’s and it seems to be keeping pace with the updates and kernel versions out there. I don’t have a VM testing out Almalinux https://almalinux.org/ yet but it seems solid from everything I have seen and I may start using that as another long term stable CentOS 8 alternative as well.
I currently am running Fedora 35 the latest version on my physical Linux workstation and will switch to Ubuntu on my older physical Linux workstation eventually to test out a few things. I have Windows 10 Workstation version on my other main physical workstation. I’ll switch my prior physical Windows 10 server over to gaming uses with a couple of other physical workstations I have but will make one a Linux gaming station as well.
My servers are running various flavors of Red Hat from CentOS 7 to Rocky Linux 8.5, except one running Windows Datacenter 2019 on. I have CentOS Stream 8, different versions of Fedora and Rocky Linux in my XCP-ng virtual environment. I will reintroduce a VMWare ESXi server on one of my C7000 blade servers eventually once I have the time. I like the XCP-ng for most of my virtual systems as I can do my hardware migrations and server migrations without added costs of licenses or scripts unless I feel like paying. Then of course I’m running FreeNAS on my NAS of FreeBSD origins and will eventually move to TrueNAS Core still consisting of FreeBSD. May test out TrueNAS Scale at a later time which has Debian as the base OS.
That is an overall of OS’ in my environment with Rocky Linux forecast as my main stable OS from this point into the future. My Plex and Zoneminder came up just fine so now it’s on to the next project!
Script checks your current repos, then packages plus runs updates all going quite smoothly (skipped to the end to miss all packages being updated and reinstalled) so you can see how painless the process is from a pure OS perspective absent of proprietary applications and other down time considerations of course.:
migrate2rocky - Begin logging at Fri 31 Dec 2021 02:16:31 PM PST.
Removing dnf cache
Preparing to migrate CentOS Linux 8 to Rocky Linux 8.
Determining repository names for CentOS Linux 8.....
Found the following repositories which map from CentOS Linux 8 to Rocky Linux 8:
CentOS Linux 8 Rocky Linux 8
appstream appstream
baseos baseos
extras extras
Getting system package names for CentOS Linux 8..........
Found the following system packages which map from CentOS Linux 8 to Rocky Linux 8:
CentOS Linux 8 Rocky Linux 8
centos-logos-ipa rocky-logos-ipa
centos-backgrounds rocky-backgrounds
centos-gpg-keys rocky-gpg-keys
centos-logos rocky-logos
centos-indexhtml rocky-indexhtml
centos-linux-release rocky-release
centos-logos-httpd rocky-logos-httpd
centos-linux-repos rocky-repos
Getting list of installed system packages.
We will replace the following CentOS Linux 8 packages with their Rocky Linux 8 equivalents
Packages to be Removed Packages to be Installed
centos-backgrounds rocky-backgrounds
centos-gpg-keys rocky-gpg-keys
centos-logos rocky-logos
centos-indexhtml rocky-indexhtml
centos-linux-release rocky-release
centos-logos-httpd rocky-logos-httpd
centos-linux-repos rocky-repos
In addition to the above the following system packages will be removed:
centos-linux-release
centos-linux-release
Getting a list of enabled modules for the system repositories.
Excluding modules:
libselinux-python:2.8
Found the following modules to re-enable at completion:
container-tools:rhel8
httpd:2.4
javapackages-runtime:201801
llvm-toolset:rhel8
mariadb:10.3
nginx:1.14
perl-DBD-MySQL:4.046
perl-DBD-SQLite:1.58
perl-DBI:1.641
perl-IO-Socket-SSL:2.066
perl-libwww-perl:6.34
perl:5.26
php:7.2
python36:3.6
satellite-5-client:1.0
virt:rhel
Running dnf update before we attempt the migration.
Last metadata expiration check: 0:00:49 ago on Fri Dec 31 14:16:53 2021.
Dependencies resolved.
Nothing to do.
Complete!
Added rockyappstream repo from https://dl.rockylinux.org/pub/rocky/8/AppStream/x86_64/os/
Added rockybaseos repo from https://dl.rockylinux.org/pub/rocky/8/BaseOS/x86_64/os/
rockyappstream 19 MB/s | 8.7 MB 00:00
:
Complete!
Subscription Manager found on system.
If you're converting from a subscription-managed distribution such as RHEL then
you may no longer need subscription-manager or dnf-plugin-subscription-manager.
While it won't hurt anything to have it on your system you may be able to safely
remove it with:
"dnf remove subscription-manager dnf-plugin-subscription-manager".
Take care that it doesn't remove something that you want to keep.
The subscription-manager dnf plugin may be enabled for the benefit of
Subscription Management. If no longer desired, you can use
"subscription-manager config --rhsm.auto_enable_yum_plugins=0" to block this
behavior.
Some Subscription Manager certificates were restored to /etc/rhsm/ca after
migration so that the subscription-manager command will continue to work:
redhat-entitlement-authority.pem
redhat-uep.pem
If you no longer need to use the subscription-manager command then you may
safely remove these files.
Done, please reboot your system.
A log of this installation can be found at /var/log/migrate2rocky.log
