Monthly Archives: April 2009

Make Your Own Sea Buckthorn Juice

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The picture above shows a field of Sea Buckthorn shrubs (Hippophae L.) growing near the west coast of Denmark. If you look closely you’ll be able to see patches of yellow berries. Sea buckthorn is special because it tolerates the salty and dry climate around here. The shrubs need full sun and can be up to 6 m (20 feet) high. Most of the sea buckthorn in the world grows in China (90%) but it has also spread across Europe.

The berries are interesting because you can make sea buckthorn juice from them. What you get then is juice that is full of antioxidants, caroteniods, vitamin E, amino acids and most importantly, vitamin C. In fact the vitamin C content is 12 times higher than in oranges! All of this puts sea buckthorn in the category of superfoods.

Here’s a tool specially made for making sea buckthorn juice while you walk around in the field and collect the berries. It was used by one of my relatives during a trip to the coast:

Sea buckthorn juice is collected in the small container while working in the field and later poured into glass pitchers in the kitchen back home:

But you need to stir the pitcher now and then or the juice will seperate into three layers, which look really gross; orange cream on top, saturated and polyunsaturated fats in the middle and sediment and juice in the bottom.

Mix the raw sea buckthorn juice with water, 1 part raw juice and 6 parts water.

Here’s a recipe including sea buckthorn made by Pille from Estonia: Sea-Buckthorn Jelly with Kama & Mascarpone Mousse

Rain From A Clear Blue Sky

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I was walking past the garage the other day when I noticed this drop of water on the concrete tiles:

And here was another one:

It was weird since the weather was beautiful and had been so for days. So I looked up thinking the gutter must be full of water and leaking. But no, they sky was blue and the gutter is brand new:

I starred at the gutter for a couple of minutes, scratching my head, before I figured out what was going on. Don’t mind the expensive new powder coated metal gutter – the vine is freaking bleeding!:

Oh dear… Just wanted to prevent the vine from ripping down the gutter a couple of days earlier, so I just cut off the ends of the vine, which had been growing in under the gutter and the roof. Bad timing:

Other cuts on the vine had been done in time before the vine started sucking up water and distributing it:

And another correctly timed cut:

So remember to cut or prune your vine when the leaves fall off before winter, or you’ll end up with blood on your hands. Or water. (And where the hell does all that water come from, it’s so dry now?… anyway)

Soil Moisture Sensor Update

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Update 2011-09-05: I have created a new blog about electronics only – check it out here: Electronic measurements, NSLU2 and soil moisture sensor

My Watermark soil moisture sensor and additional circuit has been running 24/7 for about 4 months now, and it really is a stable system. Here are the data collected so far:

On the week graph you will notice an oscillation peaking high at 6 PM and low at 10 AM every day:

Compare the above graph to the weekly temperature graph and you will see the connection to the soil temperature:

When the soil temperature goes up, so does the soil moisture reading. It could be that the accuracy of the soil moisture measurement is highly temperature dependent. Another explanation could be, that air is able to contain more moisture at higher temperatures and this more humid air somehow spreads to the soil and raises the soil moisture level.

What do you think is the explanation? Please leave a comment.