Monthly Archives: March 2009

Rescue Your Crops From Caterpillars

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If you find caterpillars on your vegetables that look like these you’re most likely dealing with the Large White butterfly:


Photo by Lazarus Churchyard.

It’s a quite common butterfly in Europe but pay attention if you see any of these hovering around your precious rows of radish or cole crops:


Photo by jpockele.

Colourful flowers with nectar attract the adult butterflies. They emerge in April and May and one butterfly lays between 20 to 100 small yellow eggs, that hatches into caterpillars in about 2 weeks. The first generation pupates in June and the second in July.

Fortunately there are a couple of natural enemies who will help save your vegetables. The parasitic wasp called Apanteles glomeratus lays its eggs inside the caterpillars which will eventually be eaten from the inside and die. Birds like Starlings will also try to keep a natural balance, so it’s a good thing to put up nesting boxes for insectivorous birds.

You can also do some manual regulation by crushing the caterpillars with your fingers. Do this in July to keep their numbers down. If you find infected old dead caterpillars just leave them where they are. They will act as a breeding ground for more caterpillar parasites.

How To Grow Parsnip

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Photo by Robert Couse-Baker.

Soil

Parsnips like to grow in full sun, but a bit shade is also okay. The soil needs to be around pH 6.5. Avoid adding nitrogen and use only well composted material, or else the parsnips will easily fork. They will also fork if there are stones in the soil, and they should be removed. The soil needs to be dug down to 30 cm (12 inch) since the roots go far down. I’ve had some trouble with wireworms, so remember to pick them up when digging if you convert your lawn into vegetable beds. It’s beneficial to grow garlic, onions, peas, potatoes and radish in the same bed as companion plants for parsnip.

Seeds

Parsnip seeds don’t store well, so you need to use fresh seeds not older than a year. Sow in early spring in calm weather or else the seeds will easily blow away in the wind because they are light.

Growing

When the soil temperature is around 10 deg. C (50 deg. F) the seeds will germinate after 3 to 4 weeks in the ground. After the small plants have reached a height of 5 cm (2 inch) thin the rows so that the plants are 20 cm (8 inch) apart. Parsnips need 3 cm (1 inch) of water each week during the summer. Hand pick any caterpillars who decide to eat your crop.

Harvest

Parsnip is often called a winter vegetable due to the fact that they are able to survive winter in the ground. If they are left outside when the frost arrives the starch inside them will turn into sugar and the taste improves. You can start harvesting parsnip in the middle of autumn or as late as January. Harvest before any new leaves start growing or the texture of the roots starts to degrade.

Storage

Cut off the leaves and throw them on the compost heap. Parsnips are best stored in dry sand in wooden boxes in a cool and dry place.

How To Install Debian On NSLU2

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There are a couple of good reason to install Debian on your small NSLU2 computer. Although it’s not exactly the Debian version you would use on your desktop PC it smells a lot like it. The file system structure is there, and if you’re used to Linux you’ll know your way around right after installation is complete. Also, ‘apt-get’ is available to you making it easy to install new programs on your small computer.

I’ve used a 4 GB USB flash memory stick as disk for the installation. This is not as reliable in the long run compared to a harddrive. Flash memory allows only a limited number of write operations to the disk, but it’ll be sufficient for now. The worst thing that could happen is that I’ll over-water my garden if my water hose valve is stuck open, but the system will be slow so I’ll probably catch the error in time. Wait until the NSLU2 has been upgraded with the Debian installer before plugging in the USB stick.

The NSLU2 comes with an IP address set to 192.168.1.77. Connect it to a local area network in this range or change the IP address of your desktop PC so you’ll be able to communicate with it. Make sure there are no other devices on your network with this IP address.

The NSLU2 is running a webserver on 192.168.1.77 when you first power it up. I logged in with username ‘admin’ and password ‘admin’ and changed the IP address to 192.168.1.76 because I already had a unit with the address 192.168.1.77. And then I immediately lost the connection when I pressed ‘Save’ ;-) You must log in again using the new IP address 192.168.1.76. I typed in the Internet gateway address, and the address of DNS servers. These addresses will be used by the upcoming Debian installation.

We need a hacked version of the Debian installer from the Internet to put on the NSLU2. Search Google for ‘Debian NSLU2 install’. What you need is a file called di-nslu2.bin around 8 MB in size. It came in a .zip-file called ‘debian-armel-5.0.zip’ last time I did an install. Using the web server interface of the NSLU2 you need to upgrade it with this 8 MB .bin-file.

After an automatic reboot plug in the USB memory stick. The NSLU2 is now running a Debian install program and will need access to the Internet to download and install software automatically. And this is were things usually gets chaotic for me, but after several attempts I usually get Debian installed. Here are some ideas to try if it’s not working in the first attempt:

  • Try different USB memory sticks
  • Remove any data or partitions from memory stick using desktop PC
  • Manual partitioning vs. guided partitioning
  • Try different Debian software mirrors

There are many parameters that will different from system to system, but with persistence and a little luck it should be possible to get it up and running. It’s definitely worth the sweat, having your own 5 watts always ON logging server to give you every detail about your garden.

Any problems with this? Is there something I should try to explain in more detail? Please leave a comment.