Solarpunk Farming

Anyone has experience with this? There seem to be some contradicting opinions on it.

cross-posted from: https://dubvee.org/post/43649

Removing weeds is a chore few gardeners enjoy, as it typically involves long sessions of kneeling in the dirt and digging around for anything you don’t remember planting. Herbicides also work, but spraying poison all over your garden comes with its own problems. Luckily, there’s now a third option: [NathanBuildsDIY] designed and built a robot to help him get rid of unwanted plants without getting his hands dirty.

Constructed mostly from scrap pieces of wood and riding on a pair of old bicycle wheels, the robot has a pretty low-tech look to it. But it is in fact a very advanced piece of engineering that uses multiple sensors and actuators while running on a sophisticated software platform. The heart of the system is a Raspberry Pi, which drives a pair of DC motors to move the whole system along [Nathan]’s garden while scanning the ground below through a camera.

The Pi runs the camera’s pictures through a TensorFlow Lite model that can identify weeds. [Nathan] built this model himself by taking hundreds of pictures of his garden and manually sorting them into categories like “soil”, “plant” and “weed”. Once a weed has been detected, the robot proceeds to destroy it by concentrating sunlight onto it through a large Fresnel lens. The lens is mounted in a frame that can be moved in three dimensions through a set of servos. A movable lens cover turns the incinerator beam on or off.

Sunlight is focused onto the weed through a simple but clever two-step procedure. First, the rough position of the lens relative to the sun is adjusted with the help of a sun tracker made from four light sensors arranged around a cross-shaped cardboard structure. Then, the shadow cast by the lens cover onto the ground is observed by the Pi’s camera and the lens is focused by adjusting its position in such a way that the image formed by four holes in the lens cover ends up right on top of the target.

Once the focus is correct, the lens cover is removed and the weed is burned to a crisp by the concentrated sunlight.

Love my birbs. I have 10 birds. 4 muscovies, 2 cayugas, a jumbo Pekin, a regular Pekin, and 2 golden layers.

preferrably sustainable business ventures.

I am in the position to acquire some land with a forest on it in Germany. What could I do with it so it pays for itself in the long run and pays a decent and sustainable profit

The crown jewel of the FOODMET is the BIGH urban farm, located on the building's rooftop. Using the building's waste heat, the farm grows vegetables and breeds fish.

Audrey Boucher, Site Manager of the BIGH Brussels aquaponic farm, explains, "We're on the roof of FOODMET, a food market with many cold rooms. These cold rooms emit heat, and we can harness this energy to heat our greenhouses and cool the water for the fish."

Additional video on the subject: https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2023/06/19/the-revolution-of-urban-farming

The pitch for vertical farming had all the promise of a modern venture capital dream: a new way to grow crops that would use robots and artificial intelligence to conserve water, combat food insecurity and save the environment.

But after firms poured billions of dollars into these startups, pushing valuations into the stratosphere, the industry is now facing a harsh new reality: funding is drying up, profits remain elusive, and creditors are circling.

My flock of 11 ducks. Six are mature and usually give me six eggs a day. The other five are a few months old and not laying yet. Their eggs are sold at a farmers market. Ducks are fun to keep and IMHO better than chickens due to the ease of keeping and consistant laying.

Rearing nematodes in wax worms may be a cheaper source to provide fungus gnat and shore fly control in the greenhouse.

what is a hover fly?

Hover flies are a family of predatory flies that also feed on nectar. They are great in the garden because they are both a natural pest control and pollinator. They are a diverse family found on all continents except Antarctica so the specific native species in your area will differ. They often mimic bees and wasps even though they aren't related.

How do I get hover flies in my garden?

Hover flies begin as maggots that feed on decaying matter in stagnant water. To attract them simply take a small container, no larger than a bucket is needed and fill with leaves and water. Add a few sticks so when the larvae are ready to pupate they can escape otherwise they will drown. Occasionally top up the leaves when necessary. Keeping the water covered with a layer will prevent mosquitoes.

How will I know if it's working?

The larvae are commonly known as rat tailed maggots and you can identify them by the trademark "tail" (actually a breathing tube). They look freaky but don't worry! They are as harmless as the adults and will stick to their puddle until ready to pupate.

Where do I put it?

The mixture will begin to stink as it decays (this is what attracts the flies in the first place) so leave your diy lagoon in an area that is calm, cool and wont bother anyone with it's smell. They will also be attracted by flowers.

Have fun!

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/532435

There's a new Lemmy instance for all things gardening! Since the obvious shuttering of /r/gardening, I figured folks interested in gardening would appreciate an instance tailored to that interest. Perhaps communities on there could be created for specific types of gardening (food, flowers, etc.), or location.

The popular instances like lemmy.ml and beehaw.org have also, understandably, been getting hammered in the last couple of days, so any new instance that can share the load for Reddit expats would be good, right?

(I looked around and wasn't sure where the best place to post this was, so I hope this is alright here. Not trying to be spammy at all, but community/instance discovery isn't exactly Lemmy's strong suit at the moment. I'm not the admin of the instance, but I am subscribed and would love to see this instance...grow, heh)

Hello! I took up gardening this year, and decided to let my dill flower to see what it would look like. I was delighted to see that dill is very pretty, with cute flowers; I was even more delighted to see a little butterfly enjoying it as well. I was surprised to clearly capture even her proboscis on cam.

I guess this is technically not-very-farming related? If so, I can remove and re-upload this post elsewhere - just wasn't sure where else to share this. I hope you enjoy these couple seconds at least half as much as I did. Oh! And if you are good with insects, and think this is not a summer azure, please let me know what you suspect it to be.

I’m getting the ball rolling on a cannabis growing community.

[email protected]

I hope any current or aspiring growers will join me there!

Hi, I escaped from r/solarpunk. Content Warning, this post is about raising animals for their meat, so may be upsetting to some. I'm putting this under farming because I couldn't identify a better community (maybe food?) but I'd be happy to move this topic into a new, specific community if that can be done.

Something that's been going in my mind for a bit is the role of backyard farming and homesteading in solarpunk. First caveat, I think vegetarianism/veganism for 99-100% of the diet of 99% of the population is a fantastic goal, but I think we need to have solutions for the interim where society is still coming around to the idea. Even people who want the best for the planet and animals might be intimidated by the prospect of veganism or even vegetarianism, whether or not they have sound reason for this.

While we're still reliant on animal meat, I think that moving our animal raising from big factory farms into local smallholdings or even our backyards would help immensely. On one hand, the welfare of a factory-farmed chicken pales in comparison to that of a chicken who grew up knowing love and foraging. Also, each meat-based meal that is grown at home or on a well-run smallholding diverts business from the factory farms that are killing our planet.

Quite frankly, I'm hoping to own chickens soon, mostly so I can have fresh/ethical eggs and share the same eggs with my community. But I'm not averse to raising chickens for meat either. In fact, my goal would be to stop eating meat entirely unless it came from my flock or a flock that I knew first hand was cared for to the same standards.

In my eyes, meat should be something you eat as a treat, and only if you can psychologically grapple with how it got to your plate and give due respect to the animal who provided it.

There's a lot I'd like to discuss about this, and I think it's important to discuss. I know the subject of veganism or lack thereof can get heated, but I think we need to have these hard conversations if we want to come together as a community with proper solutions for the future.

So tl:dr; does discussion of home-reared meat belong here? If so, does this align with anyone else's goals?