u/SpartanSoldier00a

I dont know what this is, but it has been living in my shower, and just unfurled this lovely new leaf.

To my recollection, the name of the plant begins with "A" but i am drawing a blank as to what it actually is. I could also be misremembering that entirely

I bought these lactase enzyme drops with the goal of breaking down the lactose in the milk before using it. It specifies that each drop contains 250FCC NLU of lactase enzyme, and that 4-12 drops should be used per litre of dairy. But I have questions:

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1. I know they give a range since milk and other dairy products are variable in lactose content, but for a specific milk or dairy product, how do I know how much lactase is necessary to breakdown milk sugars, and how can I determine whether the lactose is fully broken down or not, preferably without experimenting on myself? I understand that it will taste sweeter when the lactose is broken down, but is there a way to determine whether _all_ (or say, 95%+) the lactose is broken down or just partially?

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2. I also understand that a single molecule of lactase enzyme can breakdown many molecules of lactose sugar, so that the quantity of lactase more controls how quickly lactose can be broken down, rather than a simple quantity of how much lactose it can break down. Keeping that in mind, if I assume the amount of milk sugars per serving from the nutritional info, is there some general guideline of how much lactase should be added to a given amount of milk (say 1L, which would contain about 48g of lactose) to break down that quantity of lactose in say, 12 hours or 24 hours?

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3. I would also expect that the enzyme might work faster or slower depending on temperature, but also that as a protein, there would be a maximum temperature it could tolerate before becoming inactive. If the ultimate use of this milk involved gentle heating before consumption, if say 80-90% of the lactose was broken down in the fridge, could this heating speed up the rate of reaction enough to get rid of most of the rest of the lactose before the enzyme itself decomposed?

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Appreciate any insight, and hopefully this is the correct flair/sub for this kind of question.

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If it helps, what I would use most of the milk for is to reduce it over heat to make evaporated / condensed milk. i am expecting that it may behave a little differently since the milk would end up with 2x the quantity of sugar molecules, and have a higher baseline sweetness and am willing to experiment w that. Just less willing to rely on assessing whether the lactose is broken down by taste test and the presence or absence of the bubbleguts after sampling, since it a small amount of residual lactose left in it would get concentrated by reducing it afterwards.

I am located in Southern Ontario. I use this container to grow (non-brassica) green vegetables, and generally just refresh/top it up with compost/castings, fertiliser, and some fresh potting mix (mostly, pro-mix organic herb & veg). I let some things go to seed last year to self-seed, so I do expect some amount of sprouts and dont weed them out until I can rule out what they are. This is not something ive grown (either in this box or otherwise), nor do I recognise it, but it does look like something so im just curious before I pull them out.

Potential sources of this seed:

- compost / castings - I have used both, i buy them.

- I do also throw random potting mix from other plants, seed starts that didnt germinate, which could include some new to me seeds for things I havent previously grown.

- I am in an apartment balcony, with pigeon netting up so I dont get squirrels. However, the birds have demonstrated the ability to projectile #2 into my balcony, so that is in theory, a possible source.

Bagged soil and amendments are the main sources of new soil to my container garden - I recieved a couple plants from local gardeners last year (but didnt plant them in this container), but everything ive planted out this year has been from seeds I started, I havent bought nursery starts in a couple years.

I am attempting to grow cocoyam (*Xanthosoma sagittifolium*, which is also called malanga i think, and a similar kind of plant to taro/eddo, but different species). Photo for interest, I am going to plant them out (in large containers) in the next few days now that the nights are consistently warm.

I am posting as i cant find specific nutrient needs for this type of plant, grown as a crop. In absence of specific info, i am planning on using a general purpose vegetable fertiliser and compost for now. The best information i can find is for taro, that it requires Nitrogen and Potassium particularly, but I am not sure if there are any other considerations nutrient wise.

Searching about xanthasoma i am finding a lot of stuff about it being grown as an ornamental, which is the generic "balanced fertiliser, well draining soil" advice. If thats all there is to it, I am comfortable with that, as i have grown its non-food relatives as ornamentals for a few years, but I would expect that there could be other nutritional demands when grown as a crop.

Tis the time of year where I tally up all my seedlings and figure out how to arrange them all. This year, I have seedlings of about 7 different varieties of scotch bonnet or other chinenses (MoA red, orange, and yellow, allan boatman, a "chocolate" scotch bonnet, a scotch bonnet scorpion cross, and a mild seasoning pepper), but im thinking i will likely grow maybe 5 (I have other people who would want the scotch bonnet seedlings, they are the most in demand).

Last year I had only two plants, and grew one each in the planters in the photo (I use them standalone, not stacked like the photo). I got more than enough peppers from 2 plants grown that way (at least 150?), so I am happy to have fewer peppers per plant if I can fit them all in. I'm wondering if it would be feasible to fit 2 plants per planter of that size and sacrifice only some yield quantity, not quality or anything. Based on inside dimensions, theyre about 15gal I think.

Would it be better to use the above planters with 2 plants each, or to give each one its own smaller container? I have also all standard nursery pot sizes up to #7 Nursery pots (not enough of this size for all though - i intended to use some of these for Bells). I know that peppers like to hold hands when planted in the ground, but in containers its more ensuring each plant has enough room for its root system. On the other hand, the volume of one of the large planters is greater than the combined volume of two #7 pots, which are my next largest solo option for (some) of them.