“The future ain’t what it used to be.”

-Yogi Berra

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 29th, 2023

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  • I grew them in green houses for years. If you can keep the humidity high (60%+), they’ll grow, but you’ll won’t get flowers.The leaves will be very diminished, and the plant less robust. Two things very different about vanilla compared to other orchids: they aren’t an epiphyte; and they grow as a vine.

    Typically, in the wild (and many of my cuttings are from ‘adventures’ to abandoned plantations) Vanilla has a “grow and fall over” vegetative habit. It grows tendrils down to the soil (which turn to accessory roots) following a support plant or structure. Its also extremely apically dominant. It barely branches, and it really, really wants to grow ‘straight up’. It takes a substantial amount of training to get them to grow sideways. That was many words to say they do best in high humidity, regular potting soil, and need lots of space (especially vertically).

    If you are still interested let me know or DM me. I’d be happy to send some cuttings.


  • it just comes across as patronizing to say the only reason my hobbies don’t have traction here must be because I didn’t try hard enough.

    It is absolutely patronizing for people to say that. And you are right to feel that way.

    Maybe think about it like this. I collect and propagate one species of orchid as a hobby. Its an obscure species among orchids, which are relatively obscure plants among plant collectors, and plant collecting is a relatively obscure thing among people growing with and interacting with plants, which is a relatively obscure thing in the grand scheme of all things.

    So lets assume a 5% conversion rate at every step: There are maybe 40k active users on lemmy?

    So of 40k users about 2k are into plants.

    Of the 2k users into plants in some manner, about 100 are into plant collecting.

    Of the 100 users into plant collecting, maybe 5 are into collecting orchids.

    And of the five users collecting orchids, I’m the quarter of one user who collects Vanilla planifolia and Vanilla planifolia var. tahitensis.

    So if I acknowledge this, I’ve got a couple options. First, I could just start a vanilla community. But I really shouldn’t expect other people to participate, because I recognize that I’m probably the only vanilla grower on all of lemmy. If I do that, I should probably think about it as a place more like a personal blog or place for me to record my story. And maybe over time, it can grow in popularity and get a following.

    Alternatively, I can share my exploits on larger subs, like c/plants, where I’ll probably do well because there are more users, and the content I’m sharing is interesting and unique because so few people are into/ do what I do.

    So if you can adjust your exceptions, there absolutely is a place for you here. But we’re the flea market to Reddit’s mall of America approach. But remember, Reddit too started as a flea market. It was a place for internet weirdos with weird hobbies and senses of humor. But appreciate you’ll be a lone diamond here, but that gives you a chance to stand out.


  • I can’t blame them, because they’ve been conditioned to be consumers of content. While they idealize creators, they also put up barriers in their minds as the the level of quality a given comment, piece of content, whatever, needs to achieve before getting involved.

    I try and think of Lemmy as the equivalent of the Linux. We’re just going to have lower adoption because there isn’t a corporate juggernaut behind us promoting this thing.

    But if people really want to know why reddit was able to become reddit, it happened here yesterday with cats. It’s bean memes. Its Stör. Its us developing culture of our own as a community.

    So its fine. I’m not too worried. We’re doing great.


  • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.worldtoFediverse@lemmy.worldI really want to like Lemmy
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    14 days ago

    you gotta realize reddit didn’t just “appear” one day with those obscure niche topics built out. There is a network effect large communities have. We need hundreds of thousands more members before that is possible.

    I think you probably weren’t there for early reddit, but most of the active posters here on Lemmy were. It was tiny. Like Lemmy.

    You can’t force those niche communities to exist here. It doesn’t work. But what you can do is post and create valuable content. and eventually we may get there.



  • Going through and checking your plants every day is important. Hand watering is a convenient way to inconvenience yourself, but to accomplish the goals of keeping eyes out for disease, management decisions, plans. It’s also relaxing and good for ones mental health.

    I’m by some where between an amateur and a professional gardener. I’ve got about 20 fruit trees and a small orchard, as well as around 20 sq meters of kitchen garden. It takes me about an hour to water the whole thing.

    I’m planning automation for at least my vanilla vines, which are much more sensitive to drying out.