More Spotted Wilt

It would seem that I am not the only victim of the spotted wilt. I was asked how my tomatoes were doing by someone at work and wouldn't you know it, he too had the same problem. And his mother. And their neighbor. And the two gardens I was working on with friends, they were also victims of the spotted wilt. What we all thought was blight, turned out to be a virus and their complaints were the same as mine. No pest management when it rains every evening at the same time.

*sigh*

It's just so disheartening. The good that came from all of this is that it really has given food for thought. That aeroponic system looks really good now, so I went down to the lone hydroponic shop in town and started really getting serious about pricing. I talked with the owner for a good long while and we shared some gardening tidbits. He liked my tums for blossom end rot (as we know most blossom end rot is caused by cal or mag deficiency, pick one, tums is nothing but cal and mag) and actually seemed thoughtful about it for a moment and even more surprised when I told him that I have not had problems with it. But I was in the presence of a giant. Hydroponic gardener for 20+ years. I sooo bow down to the master. His vast knowledge will definitely see me through.

So, between helping other customers that came in, he was coaching me on what a starting hydroponic gardener really needs and he kept it very simple. I asked lots of questions about nutrients and lighting and supplements and he was more than happy to really dish out the goodies on all of that. And strangely, the nutes he uses are actually not the stuff that I thought he'd use. I mean, there is Advanced Nutrients (loved that million dollar challenge Big Mike put out), General Hydroponics, Foxfarm and all the other giants, but he actually uses a more obscure brand of nutrient and sticks to it. Fairly amazing to me.

On top of that, he loaded me down with freebies. I have literature coming out of the yin yang. Lots of magazines and pamphlets and just a ton of really awesome advice.

I got home and went through his product catalog and my husband and I started taking inventory of hardware we don't have to build our own system (like that 3 and 4 inch hole attachment for the drill, who has that lying around anyway?) and went on a price check. Everything was reasonable that we'd need to purchase. I looked at flo tubes for a grow room, too. So, we've come to the conclusion that we're looking forward to having a hydro system set up outside for seasonal growing, but we really want to have an indoor one growing stuff all year round as well. Like the tomatoes that we've failed to actually get to eat for the past couple of years due to disaster after disaster.

This winter we'll be rather busy with raised beds, chicken tractors, greenhouse and hydroponic/aeroponic systems to be built. I'm looking forward to keeping busy. I'm thinking of trying to get first indoor system built here shortly. Nothing huge, just a 4 or 6 plant system that will be capable of handing a couple of tomatoes and peppers and maybe some basil. With the start of the school year next week for us, that might have to go on hold until things calm down.

Wish me luck!

Easy Hydroponic Seed Starting Factory

Patti Moreno's newest video. A hydroponic set up for seedlings.

Another Year..

2008 is almost over. I look back over the year and see wonderful things. My children are growing up and most of all they have an active interest in growing their own food and that leads to them being more healthy eaters. I've learned a lot about my family through gardening, successes and failures have contributed to a closeness that we would not otherwise have. It is interesting to think that this small thing endears us so to one another and it is becoming more important to me.

Our seed stock is becoming rather respectable, a plethora of new things to grow and try. This has sparked off the need for new ways of cooking and offers a wonderful addition to the palate that would otherwise be stuck statistcally in 10 alternating meals. We are a family that spends 80% of our time together in the kitchen and at the table. Another amazing everyday activity that keeps us close.

This coming year will see the upheaval of a major relocation. And then another after we've found a place to buy. It is going to be a hard road to walk for a while, with most of our lives in storage until we can break free from rental properties and into our own house with our own land. It has kept us from buying all those trees I keep pointing at and jumping up and down over, and that is going to take a toll, too. The prices are rising and it is frightening to think of what the cost will be initially be. That is our only fear in all of this. It just seems that nothing can outrun the rising costs, including our want to return to a simplier lifestyle. Especially our absolute longing for the land we've dreamed of having.

I'm a tad put off because I won't be able to garden this year like I'd planned. I will only be able to do the bare minimum which puts my teeth on edge. Our grand plans for a year of growing, harvesting and preserving are on the backburner until this entire mess is back to flowing easily. I'm looking forward to getting this over with as soon as humanly possible.

On a lighter note, my seed swaps have, indeed, put me in a much better position to be a good gardener next year. I'll definately have a choice in what to grow and will be able to expand gradually over the course of the growing season. I'm looking forward to getting to know each of the plants we intend to grow and taking endless notes and pictures to share here. I'm also looking forward to finding a garden mentor to help unlock some of what I already know but have not recalled so far. Growing up on a farm, I spent a good time in the garden, I remember from seed to harvest. Endless hours of shelling, shucking, dicing, canning. But those memories are through a childs eyes and some of it doesn't fit into what I "know". So I'll be hunting for garden buddies and mentors in the Portland, OR/ Vancouver, WA area.

Very exciting!

I started with Jack-o-lantern pumpkin seeds and some carrots and through seed swaping I've come up with:

Carrot, Danvers #126
Broccoli, De Cicco, Organic
Chives, Garlic
Corn, Sweet, Early Golden Bantam
Cucumber, Miniature White
Honeydew, Earlidew
Leek, Summer
Lettuce, Organic, Mix
Mesculin
Mix, Carrot, Lunar, Solar, Cosmic, Atomic
Mix, Salad Greens
Oregano, Greek
Paprika, Capsicum Annum, Szentesi Pincos
Parsley, Italian Flat Leaf
Pepper, Sweet, California Wonder 300 TMR
Pepper, Sweet, Orange
Pepper, Sweet, Orange Sun
Pumpkin, Jack-o-Lantern
Radish, Altaglobe
Sunflower
Tomato, Black Cherry
Tomato, Black Moor
Tomato, Black Plum
Tomato, Cherry Red
Tomato, Gold Nugget
Tomato, Green Grape
Tomato, Health Kick
Tomato, Heinz 1439
Tomato, Hong Yuen
Tomato, Red Pear
Tomato, Roma Giant Paste
Tomato, White Currant
Tomato, Yellow Lemon
Tomato, Yellow Pear
Watermelon, Sugar Baby
Watermelon, Yellow Doll

With more on the way. I also have a lot of flower seeds that I'm looking forward to getting out there. That list is about as large as this one and I started only with cypress vine and ended up with a lot more from swaps and newbie freebies.

My seed box needs to be replaced soon, I'm running out of room.

I have been very blessed with generous amounts of home grown seeds from good people who want to help us get started.

I want to experiment with growth lights and aeroponics since I won't have a lot of land for a few months, it seems the easiest way to do things for now. I'm looking forward to having a nice salad before meals and later growing most or all the vegetables that we cook with on a regular basis.

I just have to get over that potato hump. My husband thinks I'm crazy for wanting to grow two or three different varieties at the same time, but he is thinking on too large of a scale. He'll just have to wait and see.

2008 was a year for planning, 2009 will be the year that we get through one project at a time.

Winter Gardening

This is not something that is limited to the boxes in the backyard with cold frames and hoop houses. I've rambled about this before. Hydroponic, aeroponic and bubbleponic systems in a warm room will keep producing those tomatoes and depending on the space that can be given to such a project a host of other foods that you just don't want to be without. But it isn't even a system of water it can just be a flower pot growing root crops with a grow light.

Considering I have a family of four, an inside winter garden is a good idea not only because it will cut down on the food bill, but because it will also keep down on cabin fever. We have something to keep us busy during a period of rest for the earth outside.

We have our fresh herbs in the kitchen window. If it is one thing my children know better than anything is the difference between all the herbs in the window. They do most of the picking for me when I'm cooking and they make sure to give them a good rinse before we start cooking them, too. We're actually not doing it this year because we're moving in 6 months and my son was horrified when I told him we weren't going to plant more basil.

Another one on our list of food to grow indoors would be potatoes because we love our potatoes and a good tall slender bin or flower pot for potatoes can be easily grown in a window seal or with grow lights in soil not even necessarily getting into the water systems. It's easy because potatoes don't have to have temps above 75 to grow. Most prefer 60 to 65 which is easily attained in the home. Flo tubes could help with lighting if a window isn't getting enough sun and those are cheap, cheap, cheap.

Drop some soil and then a seed potato or two in the bin and cover with soil to the top. The potato plant will seek out the light (if you remember your science experiments from the 8th grade you'll remember the potato in a maze finding its way to the light). I've seen some seriously complicated potato bins, mostly for outside growth, but I've not seen anyone do just a tall slender planter of them in the house before but for once and I swear I thought that the woman who did it must have been in my head. She keeps hers on her deck and hers worked just fine and so have mine inside. You get a mess of potatoes that last about a week or so and then you can start again. Get two or three of those alternating and you've got yourself potatoes all year round with better flavor and without chemicals.

Little pots of lettuce or an entire hydroponic system. Patti Moreno definitely has the right idea, she has a fish tank fertilizing and watering her lettuce which is growing in bins of perlite under flo tubes. An easy and inexpensive set up.

Strawberries are a favorite, especially since the little hydroponic systems came out and a variety of strawberries fit for the little system. Grow some on the counter in the kitchen with one of those like this guy, who has set up his hallways to grow lettuce and strawberries.

There are plenty of dwarf varieties out there that can withstand a good cold snap, but for those that don't, they can become the plants that get brought in for the winter. Banana is getting hugely popular for growing indoors and others as well. A lot of these can be bought mail order depending on where you live.

There are just a ton of things you can grow indoors. Late winter and spring aren't the only times of the year that food can be sprouted and grown. With enough time, space, and patience our old favorites can be grown indoors within reason.

A couple of places and products of interest:

Universal Garden - this is a really cool system consisting of large covered buckets for the reservoirs and adjustable amount of pots to use for the system starting with 4.

Specials for all sorts of great equipment.

LED Grow lights.

Ya know...

Now that the holidays are over we're back to planning for our up coming move to the PNW.  I'm very excited that we've going to be moving back up there and look forward to beginning to live a more simple life.  We've been looking into work from home projects, including work from home tech support so that we have more time for our children and more time for the work on the property.  I'm very excited about this prospect, it will mean a pay cut, but there will be less money going out with this: no parking, no huge gas bill and certainly no monthly business wardrobe updates, among other things.

I never realized it before, but moving is a huge hassle when you have a house full of stuff.  And we definitely a house full of stuff, specifically the kitchen.  We're a family that spends 80% of the time together in the kitchen cooking, baking, canning, eating.  And everyone contributes, my five year old made the stuffing for our Thanksgiving and did a pretty good job at it.  Because I don't like stuffing in anything larger than a quail for obvious health hazard reasons, it was easy for him.  But because we are a family that spends a ton of time in the kitchen, we have accumulated sooo many giggits and gizmos and gadgets that we scarcely have enough room for most of them.  And I am proud to say that not one of them is a uni-tasker.  But all of that stuff has to be packed!  Thankfully, we've slowed down on the freezer foods and one of two of our freezers is already lined with cardboard waiting for the contribution of kitchen supplies we'll be packing into it.  We've got one more freezer to empty before the kids are out of school in May so we're trying to keep it at a minimum so that we're not going to end up with a ruined mess when we pull into Portland for our short stay there and then on to Vancouver.

This move has renewed my want for easier things such as the tankless water heater, an aeroponic's system, and of course my obsession with dwarf varieties of fruit trees.  But while it has renewed that want, it has also kicked into gear the other things that we want to do.  Solar panels and wind energy to help get the green incentives that the government has offered and will continue to offer to help ween us off petroleum products and big energy consumption.

I'm taken back to a time when I was a kid when the most we picked up from the grocery store was a gallon of milk, a couple of loaves of "light bread", some cans of spaghetti and some top ramen (we loved ramen when I was growing up, it meant we didn't have to cook a huge meal).  Instead of tins with printed labels, it was jars with hand written ones in the cupboard.  Two large freezers were out in the shed, one for wild game we hunted, and the other was for slaughtered farm critters.  

We were a community of people trading and sharing and helping each other with the trials of failed crops, diseased farm animals, and older folks that couldn't do what they once did.  I was talking with my father last night and he was going hunting today with a couple of friends specifically to surprise someone with a deer kill because the man couldn't go hunting himself, even though my father has already killed two bucks this year and traded a side of one of them for a hog from a local farmer.  And when my father got out of his last surgery a couple of years ago and couldn't go hunting, this man brought him fresh deer and hog kills that were already wrapped and frozen.  He also said that he'd gotten a visit from a couple of others that came by only to grab a jar of jelly and he said he probably wouldn't see them again until they ran out or they brought by some fresh something-or-nother from their own garden.

There is a huge difference in that life from the one I lead now.  I'm still a hunter and a farmer but I'm very used to my city conveniences.  I like my 24 hour grocery stores and pharmacies.  And I also like the short amount of time to get from place to place.  Living where my father is it is a 40 minute drive to Wal-Mart that closes at 10PM.  Newp, I don't want to go back to that, I'm too spoiled.

But what I do want is a place that is out of the way with an couple of acres that we can develop for our chickens, quails and rabbits with our greenhouse and our raised beds and our mini orchard.  We're looking forward to being off grid and being one more person that causes less stress on the system that we currently have and maybe we can help to convience a few people along the way to join us.  And we're looking forward to going to the farmers market with our fresh foods and giving away the stuff we don't sell to a local emergency service for folks that can't afford to feed their families.  We're not trying to change the world here, but we certainly trying to get the movement started with the helps of thousands of others like us.

Thanksgiving has brought a lot of this out.  Our children want to know what the game plan is and we've got one.  They are just as excited about this move as I am and they want to get out there and get their hands dirty.  They want to experience these things and we want them to have these experiences so that they have a better understanding of dependance and independance.

Right now, I don't have pictures of my garden to post and I know that makes a huge difference for a blog (considering no one reads this regularly).  But once we're working on our little farm and the trials that we face and the failures and successes we have, everyone that we're going to miss on the east coast will be able to watch us grow.

Tomatos, Pumpkins and Carrots

Disaster. Complete and utter disaster. The upsidedown tomato that I did produced like three tomatoes. That's it and it has withered and died with no hope of spawning anymore. The tomatoes were the most delicious ever, but we got only three from our pathetic little plant. My father laughed at me when I told him of the disaster. But its better than nothing!

The carrots were coming right along and were getting *huge*. Last week something ate every single one of them. *sigh*

And the pumpkins. Don't get me started on the pumpkins. The plants were healthy. They were producing beautiful blooms.

Something ate them, too. I have little stubs where my pumpkin vines used to be.

How utterly depressing. All week it has been just depressing.

But I learned something important. I can grow stuff and grow it well enough for critters to take a chance that my dogs will eat them alive if caught sneaking into my fenced area. That thought lifted my spirits.

And there is always indoor gardening. I've been thinking more and more about hydro, aero and aquaponics. I suppose we'll have to see about a aeroponic system. I've been browsing around town and finding very little support for such things in Knoxville. Something that irritates me more than I care to mention. I'm going to figure out something to get on track with an aeroponic system.

More on that later!

Aeroponics and Hydroponics

In an earlier post I found some info on how to build an Aeroponic system. I do plan on building one but I won't be able to build it for some time as space is an issue. While that is unfortunate, it has given me plenty of time to work on plans for what type of system I want.

I found this system which is nicely done and feasible. It recycles two liter bottles as the plant container which I really like. We go through enough sprite making cherry limeade's that we definitely can use the help recycling. This system is probably the most practical due to the fact that it is a fairly simple design and there isn't an a whole lot of construction involving power tools. Giving this one a 8 on the greener meter. I found another site with similar plans.

I've seen the bucket system quite a bit while researching. While most systems utilize spray emitters, this one simply uses a garden hose which has been punctured to allow spraying. Probably saves a little bit of cash doing it this way, too. The problem I have with this system is that it is bulky. It will take up a lot of room. Five gallon buckets aren't small. In the system above, we can control how far apart the plants are from each other by simply making the pipe shorter or longer to fit out needs. In the bucket system that isn't the case. But a pro for this system is if you're only looking to grow two or three plants then you don't have to do half the work setting it up that you would still have to do for the one above. Liking this one enough to give it a 5 on the greener meter.

The Greenman's system is a rather nice project for the home hobbyist. It isn't a huge elaborate system, but it isn't exactly tiny either. It's done with things that are easily located and purchased locally. It is made in such a way that anyone can do it. The instructions are to the point and there are photo's for each step which helps a lot if you're not construction inclined. 40 holes for small plants or make fewer larger ones for bigger plants. The only drawback to this system is that it isn't easily expanded. So if there are a lot of plants one wants to grow, more than one system would need to be built. Not a bad thing if you like to have a project that will keep you busy for a few hours. Definitely giving this one an 8 on the greener meter.

I came across this set up and it is cool! The stacker method is a space saver, instead of utilizing floor space, it goes vertical to make growing a lot of plants in a small space possible. There is a shot of a large hoop house with these things in it and it will definitely out produce anything that was growing just one layer of plants! More growing without having to buy another room to put it in. Giving this one a 9 on the greener meter.

I also found a potential profit calculator if you are interested in seeing how you might be able to make some extra cash for surplus plants and vegetables/fruits.

Growing plants in this type of environment requires something more than just air and water. There are several different growing mediums for this. Rockwool, perlite, vermiculite, coconut fiber, oasis cubes, ect. The list goes on and on and on. As the plant will get all of the nutrients it needs from the water, the need for soil is eliminated but it still needs something to help it stand up. Read up on the different mediums and make the choice yourself.

And while you're reading up on the different types of mediums, make sure to visit the FAQ at Hydro University. The entire site is just a gem! I learned a good bit there, more than everywhere else.

There are varying degrees of gadgets one could get. CO2 emitters are used to feed the plants just as much as the nutrients in the water. With the CO2, you definitely need a fan to clear the room after each session. Folier sprays help plants with deficiencies recover quickly. pH testers help keep things in balance by letting the grower know if the water is too acidic or alkaline. Temperature and humidity testers, system cleaners, water conditioners, propagation products to help with cloning, pest control, beneficial insects, soil amendments, ect. The list just keeps on going. All of these things are important, but not as important than lighting.

There is a staggering array of lighting units. Fluorescent, metal halide, and high pressure sodium can be found on numerous sites. Reflectors are used to optimize the light plants receive and Mylar is used to line walls to also increase the light plants get. The lights range from 40 watts to 1000 watts.

There are timers to control the lights, fans and pumps. Meters to test lighting, pH balance, temperature, humidity. Equalizers to reduce hot spots that could potentially give the plants sun burn. Motorized systems that send lights moving across large systems. Friendly insects to aid in pest control. Liquid vitamins, bloom enhancers, pH controllers, catalyst additives, flavor and aroma enhancers, disease preventatives, energy boosters, and the list keeps going on and on.

Most of the liquid additives are obvious and for the ones that aren't it is easy to find out what its for exactly by a little research. Some places I've read say that liquid kelp is all that is needed, and others swear by the lot of chemicals listed above and then some. It choice is really up to you and how your plants do.

As I come across more information, I'll get it posted!

Aeroponics

I started reading on this and wanted to find a good set of instructions on how to do it. After a couple of days of digging, I found one.

Greenman has complete instructions on how to build a system complete with pictures. I'm seriously going to have to invest in one of these just to see.