So your decision for an activity over the next decade or so depends on whether some strangers would label it as a hobby or part of cooking?

It is my (admittedly terrible) attempt at due diligence and kicking the tires on a new hobby before investing time & money. I bought a violin last year and only practiced twice last year and twice this year. But I bought my niece the same violin last month and have offered to teach her. She loves violin and this gambit seems successful so far at forcing me to learn enough to show her easy songs on violin (Twinkle Twinkle litter star, etc…) which I can barely play myself but she doesn’t know any better, lol.

Amazing response, thank you!!! I’m watching the video now and will follow all these suggestions.

So I’m not in Florida, but I am in the tropics. But we do have similar challenges, and I’ll use Florida growers if I’m looking for something.

This video would be a good review, but I’m sure you’ve already done this level of research.

https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=vpMtjNVGfJQ

A few things I can start you with, some are going to be specific to tomatoes, some are going to be just general growing tips.

First, we want to separate out few things.

Starting plants and getting healthy starts is a skill all unto itself. Its why I don’t recommend people starting with seeds if they are just getting started. There is no shame in just going to a garden center and buying a few starts, or even some established tomatoes. If you’ve struggled with a plant type before, this is a good starting point. Simplify the problem by making it smaller, and cutting out a very challenging step like starting and establishing the plants perfectly acceptable.

The best prevention of disease among any plants is health. A healthy plant can usually shrug off most things if its a strong and healthy plant to start with, which is another reason to buy a good quality start from a reputable grower. Not starting with healthy plants is not setting yourself up for success. It sounds like you’ve even keyed in on a few varieties. That’s great. The video I put up top also mentioned some other good varieties that do well in high heat and humidity.

We’re still really talking about health, but tomatoes are heavy, heavy feeders. And fertilization is key. Lots of nitrogen, tomatoes just eat it right up. To the point you can struggle to get fruit if you feed to heavily (at least too much N) but N is critical to getting them established and health.

Tomatoes need AIR and lots of it. Aggressive pruning of suckers and leaves to provide more airspace so that the area around the plants local leaf environment is less humid. This helps especially with fungal diseases. Also, avoid getting any soil on, or have any leaves touch the soil if soil borne diseases are an issue. The key to any commercial operation is sanitation. Commercial nurseries will scold you if you dont disinfect your tools between any interaction with plant tissue to the point that wiping them down becomes second nature. Fusarium wilt and vertiulum wilt are both soil borne diseases. Now maybe its in your soil, but if you live in an area with lots of ag, it could be soil getting blown onto where your tomatoes are planted. Here in Hawaii, its not fusarium, but a type of tropical fruit fly thats our biggest issue, and it attacks young growing fruits by laying its egg in them. Because of this we use mesh on our tomatoes and often bag the whole plant in a fine mesh. But this mesh can also prevent diseases that come from blow soil landing on their leaves.

After reading your case and responses, my suspicion, and I might be wrong, is that you are trying to do a lot, and would benefit from breaking the process down into smaller parts, and then just trying to do one part well (growing the tomatoes part). Don’t worry about starting the plants or hydroponics until you get some small successes overcoming these disease and health issues. Hydroponics won’t help if the actual issue is that your neighbor has some plant harboring the disease nearby, and just spores or dust is being blown in. I don’t want to be patronizing because I see and acknowledge you’ve already put a lot of effort into seeking success here.

What I would recommend is simplifying the problem down to the most basic possible case, and when that is working, then build up from that. 4 five gallon pots, and pick 4 varieties that are known to work in your environment. Buy fresh, bagged garden soil, not yard soil for this. Get established plants from a reputable grower. Cut out all the possible places it could go wrong.

I’ve only had success with cherry tomatoes. I can never grow full-sized tomatoes due to fusarium wilt and vertiulum wilt, even after spending dozens of hours watching youtube videos and reading forum posts and extension office newsletters on how to fix it. But I live in a rural area and there’s at least 5 massive tomato fields within 30 miles of where I live in Florida (by commercial growers) so it’s absolutely possible but I just don’t know their secret. 😣

I met another local gardener through an online board game but he was unable to offer advice on wilt disease prevention. Do you have any actionable advice on how to prevent fusarium wilt and/or verticulum wilt? I’m inexperienced with Lemmy so if you can’t view this screenshot easily, I’ve transcribed it below:

I had a gardening question if you grow tomatoes

I have tried about 12 different tomato cultivars (medium to large sized, for sandwich slicing) and they all die halfway into their life cycle due to the 2 common wilt diseases in Florida’s hot humid weather

My best attempt was with better boy hybrid but I only got about 8-10 tomatoes and they were not big & healthy but undersized due to the struggling plant

I can do fine with cherry tomatoes (supersweet 100s and Everglades tomatoes) but I’ve never been a successful tomato gardener and have tried all the tips such as well draining soil, mixing in compost, watering at the base so the leaves don’t get wet, etc…

I have not bothered with hydroponic soil-free substrate but I bought 2 giant boxes of it a few years ago and still have it (coco coir and perlite) but it seems too much ongoing effort even if I got 50 tomatoes or more per plant

I also bought 200 rockwool cubes and might consider starting them in soil-free substrate and then transplant them when they are a foot tall, so they have a head-start at dealing with wilt funguses

Those are rock wool cubes (for hydroponic gardening hobby) mentioned in the last paragraph with a nascent tomato plant growing in the lower left corner of the image. Whenever I feel motivated enough to start hydroponic gardening, I just shrug my shoulders and plant my tomato seeds or rosemary seeds conventionally in a flower pot. (I always manage to find an excuse at the last minute on the day I finally roll up my sleeves to start hydroponic gardening 🤦‍♂️)

If you or anyone has questions about first-time gardening, ask away!

I’m just trying to force myself to either start the beef jerky hobby this weekend or the hydroponic gardening. My excuse for not starting the beef jerky all year is not knowing whether it “counts” as a valid hobby, so this post will help me force myself to “shit or get off the pot” and pick one since inaction is the same as choosing “neither”.

I also own a virtually unused violin that I’ve only played 3-4 times this year which was my hobby I intended to begin last year. 🤦‍♂️

On the topic, whats important to you about a hobby versus a skill or technique?

I spent the first 30 years of my life in front of my computer. All my hobbies were computer or video game related. I also was immobile about 5 years ago (bedridden, over 400 pounds). It feels wasteful to not utilize my newfound mobility and do stuff outdoors. I can go back to all my old childhood hobbies when I’m old & senile.

Ngl, and I don’t think you are a bot, but this feels like one of those astroturfed askreddit questions that come from bots.

I have terrible social skills in real life, I guess that bled into my online persona too. 🤦‍♂️

That’s largely due to lack of mobility training. I would highly suggest making that one of your hobbies.

Already on it 💪

Why do you need other people to decide that for you? It is both culinary skill and hobby. Life does not fit in categories described by single words.

Mainly FOMO (fear of missing out on a more “valid” hobby) but also to get others perspectives, including those I might disagree with because I’m often wrong in my initial judgment about stuff. I don’t want to look back 20 years from now and realize I deluded myself into counting something as a hobby that isn’t one, when the opportunity cost might be a better hobby that I’ve also been putting off getting started for the past 5-10 years (hydroponic gardening, wall/rock climbing, telescope star-watching, learning violin, etc.)

yes it is, I just grabbed a thumbnail from google images since it helps people know what my question is about faster.

You can use bands looped under your feet, to a bar overhead to also help get started. This can also help stabilise and make the movement easier.

Is this still worth looking into if my gym already has an assisted dip/pullup machine? I have to use about 85 pounds of assistance currently for my working sets on the pullups and required even more weight assistance on the dips, which have caused elbow pain in the past (before I discovered elbow-circles warmup exercise).

One of my goals for the next 18 months is to do 1 unassisted pullup and so I’ve been training with negatives lately, which have skyrocketed my strength. So fast in fact, that I plan to quit doing the assisted pullups and purely do negatives after I focus on a couple other tweaks first.

but if you can’t challenge your target muscle you might look into more like a 12-20 reps range until you can round out those weaknesses.

Thanks for the reply. It’s entirely possible that since I’ve been avoiding triceps all year, that maybe I forgot what it’s like to start training a new muscle group. My premise may have possibly been flawed (that I should feel the muscle being targeted on day-1 of a new exercise). I did 2 working sets of tricep cable kickbacks yesterday (10+ reps) and 2 working sets of rope pulls today (10+ reps).

Tomorrow I will try the single & dual arm dumbbell extensions, as well as the skullcrushers but wanted to ask first if you use the “suicide grip” (with your thumb on the same side of the barbell as your fingers) or the “safe” barbell grip when doing barbell skull crushers? I forget the advantage of the suicide grip, which I won’t try right away but might transition to after a few weeks.

Cable Tricep Kickbacks

Thank you! I will try them tomorrow 💪

https://strengthlevel.com/strength-standards/dumbbell-shoulder-press/lb

On the strength standards website, does this shoulder press exercise mean with no leg drive? I watched a Jeff Nippard video (or similar creator) a while back that said it’s almost impossible to not let your legs boost your strength, which is why you should always do seated version unless you are in a country or sport where standing shoulder press is the norm or customary variation (such as in military or firefighters).

I’ve never tried the standing version for that reason but I’m curious as to why the strength-level website doesn’t have the seated version, and I’m unsure if my seated numbers can compare directly to the standing version or if most lifters add their data with 10% boosted weight via leg drive?

Definitely! I did 4 sets (of 3 reps each) of seated dumbbell shoulder press this morning and was extra mindful/perceptive today of the process – in light of yesterday’s weird phenomenon. I noticed the exact moment my brain goes into autopilot when doing sets of 3. It’s when I complete about 60% of the concentric phase of the 1st rep (when my humerus bone is slightly past being parallel with the ground) which is also slightly past the point where I consider the most difficult part of the rep. The “autopilot” ends after I rack the dumbbells. It was really fun to notice it today!

They don’t address the ClearlyAI drama

Is this in reference to the ClearView AI scandal? Or something totally different?

The results raise a daring question– have we been fighting the wrong enemy all along?

I’d say it’s definitely possible! There was an extremely weird positive feedback loop (i.e. scientific circle jerk) where alzheimer’s funding perpetuated the myth of focusing on the wrong thing for over a decade and after tens of millions of dollars wasted on a senseless pet theory obsessing over a risk marker, not a risk factor:

https://www.statnews.com/2019/06/25/alzheimers-cabal-thwarted-progress-toward-cure/

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/alzheimers-inc-when-a-hypothesis-becomes-too-big-to-fail/

Hyper-awareness is a great way of describing it, thank you! This should help me search for it better if it’s a common phenomenon.

Just to sidestep a bit, why do you want to prioritize this lift over losing weight which can be argued to be more important for health?

Now that a few days have passed since my failed 60lb lift, I’m not as bothered by it anymore. I can still do triples (3 reps) of 50lb and I find that enjoyable and immensely satisfying, even on a hard deficit. 💪

Weight loss is now top priority with respect to physical fitness. Also, if I can hit 60 pounds at a much lower weight (at 220lb bodyweight), that will be more impressive than hitting it at 265 (my current weight). Plus it gives me a new challenge to pursue once I reach my target weight of around 220ish.