Of Gardens, Hikes in the Woods, and Furrys
So at the start of the month, I built a little grow system for my soon to be extensive garden. Since then I wish I had taken more pictures, or at least taken better notes. I have thus far pretty much perfected the conditions ideal for the first three weeks of plant life. As follows:
1) Germination: Ok, I'll be honest. I get a lot of my ideas from sites for people growing... less than legal substances. But this trick for germination was absolutely 100% right on and I don't know how I never thought of it.
Using the basic idea, I bought a heating pad (one that doesn't have a "saftey" turn off), a towel (as floofy as I could find), some miracle grow liquid (I couldn't find staring nutrients, and didn't want to mess with rooting powder), and gorilla tape. I strip the pad down to the plastic pad inside, cut up the towel so it fits on the pad, then fold up the side son the pad so it's at 0.5cm deep "bowl" and wrap it in the towel, taping the edges on the back side, so the pad keeps it's bowl shape. I take the other piece of the towel and cut it so that it covers almost the entire face when folded in half. Make a enriched mixture of water and nutrient (they say 20 drops, I went with about 5mL (5 droppers full) to a quart) and soaked this towel in the bucket. Remove, refold, squeeze so it's not drippy, and place in the center. Viola, now the germinator is complete. (I also raised it off the surface of the table just to keep things from overheating, as initially, it got wicked hot UNDER the pad.)
HOLD ON THERE BUCKO. I see you with the seeds ready to just toss em in there. Well, suuure you could toss em in the now heating little bed of nutrients and heat... but, depending on the seeds you're putting in, maybe you should soak the seeds in hot tap water for about 30 minutes. This will also give your germinator time to warm all that water/nutrient up.
After that, lift the folded towel, and place the seeds, spacing them out about a cm between each other. Replace the folded cloth, add water to taste (not too much tho) and use a spare cover from a small box (which will not need it, since it's used in steps 2 or 3) to keep it from evaporating all the water out. Check the germinator regularly, and add just regular water. I swear, I had green beans sprout in like, 24 hours with this, and hot peppers, tomatoes and squash seeds did it in 24-48 hours. It's insane.
2) Sprouting: Easily enough, after a seed sprouted in the germinator, I put it in a peat moss disc base, so it could sprout. I use little 6 qt buckets (you can get em at target for like $3) filled with these pods with seeds. I usually make a hold for the seed and plant it with the "sprout" going down into the soil and the seed as on the surface of the soil as I can get it. Then I set the soil around it so it's stable and put it in the light bay. It goes on an 18 hour day schedule, and the bottom of the bucket is filled to about a cm deep with the enriched solution, to keep the little peat pods moist. In a week, you should have some sign of sprouting, and maybe in 2 weeks, you should have 2 inch tall leaved sprouts. The time really varys on seed, species and if you've harmed the seed.
3) Growing: After you have a 2 inch sprout, start using the 20 drops to a quart nutrient mix. I have separate buckets I move the pods around in. After about another week or two, you'll see roots forming around the pod. I really wish they made smaller peat pods, and they probably do, but all I can find are the 3cm ones. Because as soon as the sprout shows roots, you can move onto the next step. Height of the plant, based on species, could be anywhere from flopped over on the ground (squashes) or 6-7 inches tall (tomatoes and pepper plants)
4) Transplanting: Now, if you have some real garden you can grow in, and it's not the wrong time of year... you can just plop these suckers into the ground any old way and start treatign them like normal boring plants. BUT, if you're tricky, like me, you build a few larger light tables, get a fish tank, a pump, and some tubing, and start tinkering. Which is where I am right now, debugging, sketching and experimenting with stuff.
5) Aeroponics Bay: Here's how I think it'll go. The fish tank and pump will act as a water reservoir/source. This allows for water level management in a single tank, as well as an easy clean up option, and easier nutrient/pH balancing. The fish tank sits under the light tables, easily serving at least 2 per pump, maybe three (I haven't tested this yet). Depending on the species and size of the plants, you place them in reasonably sized containers. Modify these containers so that there is a return port (see also: 10mm PVC 90 degree angle tube with caulking) as a height that won't leave the containers totally drained, so that after regular watering, the bottom most roots still have liquid around them. The plants are held in the system via the peat pod. A small hanging system (acryllic "strap" heat molded into a curve, set in a hold in the top of the boxes cover.) allows the pods to stay upright, and holds a watering line to them, so water can run down the roots back into the reservoir.
All good things must come to an end, and eventually plants die, and that sucks, but... if this is to be some kind of year round system, I was thinking, maybe I could save the compost in some kind of bin, and use it the next summer in the outside garden, or if I could figure out a way to not use peat pods. Which would be neat, but a bit disturbing. Imagine growing up in a house made of the decomposed remains of your ancestors. Yikes.
So, anyway. If anyone comes over and wonders why my apartment looks like the borg tried to assimilate a jungle, or if any of my online friends wonder where the hell I have been for the last month, it's because I've been playing a cross between Jumanji and Mousetrap in my living room every night.
Anyway, about the Hike!
This past weekend was a doozy. Besides working on the above mentioned garden, I also went yard saleing with Chrissy and Roland on Saturday morning and got a Furby, a breadmaker, a small table saw, a bunch of plants from the farmers market and local high school greenhouse. It was awesome. We had lunch at armadillos (awesome burritos) and went to the candy store and got some Japanese candy (awesome candy). About this time other people started showing up for the cookout we had planned. We sat around, watched Doctor Who, played Civ4 and I grilled up some awesome burgers and people brought... beer, more beer, chips, more chips, some chips and salsa and well... that was it. I guess for a first time potluck, this wasn't terrible. Heh. Nice time I should post recipes. Everyone went to bed a bit early, like 9-10-11ish, and we got up bright and early the next day, had breakfast at Lindys (omfg awesome diner) and zipped off to the mountain.
The day was perfect, beautiful weather, clear sky as far as your could see. I was glad everyone made it up the mountain. At the top, we could see Boston, which... is a feat. We also saw an observatory and nearby water tower over towards Boston, and ate lunch on a perfect little sitting area. It was windy, but nobody complained :3 and we all had lunch and it was awesome. We got down the mountain much quicker, and we drove back to my place in Keene and just crashed. Movies, beers and an awesome kinda afterglow feeling. People started shuffling out as the night progressed, and Chrissy got all excited, and wants to do Mt Monadnock sometime here. Which sound awesome.
So it was an awesome hike. I plan on doing stuff like cookouts and yard sales more... but I'd really love to get a bunch of suiters together to walk around downtown Keene at night during the summer. It's safe, clean, the college kids are gone, and I don't think anyone would have a huge issue with it, so long as people weren't morons... well, HUGE morons.
I'd like to plan more bowling meets, some Chunky's movie meets, a day trip to Boston on the day the Bosfurs do their monthly lunch, and atleast another hike or two this summer.
1) Germination: Ok, I'll be honest. I get a lot of my ideas from sites for people growing... less than legal substances. But this trick for germination was absolutely 100% right on and I don't know how I never thought of it.
Using the basic idea, I bought a heating pad (one that doesn't have a "saftey" turn off), a towel (as floofy as I could find), some miracle grow liquid (I couldn't find staring nutrients, and didn't want to mess with rooting powder), and gorilla tape. I strip the pad down to the plastic pad inside, cut up the towel so it fits on the pad, then fold up the side son the pad so it's at 0.5cm deep "bowl" and wrap it in the towel, taping the edges on the back side, so the pad keeps it's bowl shape. I take the other piece of the towel and cut it so that it covers almost the entire face when folded in half. Make a enriched mixture of water and nutrient (they say 20 drops, I went with about 5mL (5 droppers full) to a quart) and soaked this towel in the bucket. Remove, refold, squeeze so it's not drippy, and place in the center. Viola, now the germinator is complete. (I also raised it off the surface of the table just to keep things from overheating, as initially, it got wicked hot UNDER the pad.)
HOLD ON THERE BUCKO. I see you with the seeds ready to just toss em in there. Well, suuure you could toss em in the now heating little bed of nutrients and heat... but, depending on the seeds you're putting in, maybe you should soak the seeds in hot tap water for about 30 minutes. This will also give your germinator time to warm all that water/nutrient up.
After that, lift the folded towel, and place the seeds, spacing them out about a cm between each other. Replace the folded cloth, add water to taste (not too much tho) and use a spare cover from a small box (which will not need it, since it's used in steps 2 or 3) to keep it from evaporating all the water out. Check the germinator regularly, and add just regular water. I swear, I had green beans sprout in like, 24 hours with this, and hot peppers, tomatoes and squash seeds did it in 24-48 hours. It's insane.
2) Sprouting: Easily enough, after a seed sprouted in the germinator, I put it in a peat moss disc base, so it could sprout. I use little 6 qt buckets (you can get em at target for like $3) filled with these pods with seeds. I usually make a hold for the seed and plant it with the "sprout" going down into the soil and the seed as on the surface of the soil as I can get it. Then I set the soil around it so it's stable and put it in the light bay. It goes on an 18 hour day schedule, and the bottom of the bucket is filled to about a cm deep with the enriched solution, to keep the little peat pods moist. In a week, you should have some sign of sprouting, and maybe in 2 weeks, you should have 2 inch tall leaved sprouts. The time really varys on seed, species and if you've harmed the seed.
3) Growing: After you have a 2 inch sprout, start using the 20 drops to a quart nutrient mix. I have separate buckets I move the pods around in. After about another week or two, you'll see roots forming around the pod. I really wish they made smaller peat pods, and they probably do, but all I can find are the 3cm ones. Because as soon as the sprout shows roots, you can move onto the next step. Height of the plant, based on species, could be anywhere from flopped over on the ground (squashes) or 6-7 inches tall (tomatoes and pepper plants)
4) Transplanting: Now, if you have some real garden you can grow in, and it's not the wrong time of year... you can just plop these suckers into the ground any old way and start treatign them like normal boring plants. BUT, if you're tricky, like me, you build a few larger light tables, get a fish tank, a pump, and some tubing, and start tinkering. Which is where I am right now, debugging, sketching and experimenting with stuff.
5) Aeroponics Bay: Here's how I think it'll go. The fish tank and pump will act as a water reservoir/source. This allows for water level management in a single tank, as well as an easy clean up option, and easier nutrient/pH balancing. The fish tank sits under the light tables, easily serving at least 2 per pump, maybe three (I haven't tested this yet). Depending on the species and size of the plants, you place them in reasonably sized containers. Modify these containers so that there is a return port (see also: 10mm PVC 90 degree angle tube with caulking) as a height that won't leave the containers totally drained, so that after regular watering, the bottom most roots still have liquid around them. The plants are held in the system via the peat pod. A small hanging system (acryllic "strap" heat molded into a curve, set in a hold in the top of the boxes cover.) allows the pods to stay upright, and holds a watering line to them, so water can run down the roots back into the reservoir.
All good things must come to an end, and eventually plants die, and that sucks, but... if this is to be some kind of year round system, I was thinking, maybe I could save the compost in some kind of bin, and use it the next summer in the outside garden, or if I could figure out a way to not use peat pods. Which would be neat, but a bit disturbing. Imagine growing up in a house made of the decomposed remains of your ancestors. Yikes.
So, anyway. If anyone comes over and wonders why my apartment looks like the borg tried to assimilate a jungle, or if any of my online friends wonder where the hell I have been for the last month, it's because I've been playing a cross between Jumanji and Mousetrap in my living room every night.
Anyway, about the Hike!
This past weekend was a doozy. Besides working on the above mentioned garden, I also went yard saleing with Chrissy and Roland on Saturday morning and got a Furby, a breadmaker, a small table saw, a bunch of plants from the farmers market and local high school greenhouse. It was awesome. We had lunch at armadillos (awesome burritos) and went to the candy store and got some Japanese candy (awesome candy). About this time other people started showing up for the cookout we had planned. We sat around, watched Doctor Who, played Civ4 and I grilled up some awesome burgers and people brought... beer, more beer, chips, more chips, some chips and salsa and well... that was it. I guess for a first time potluck, this wasn't terrible. Heh. Nice time I should post recipes. Everyone went to bed a bit early, like 9-10-11ish, and we got up bright and early the next day, had breakfast at Lindys (omfg awesome diner) and zipped off to the mountain.
The day was perfect, beautiful weather, clear sky as far as your could see. I was glad everyone made it up the mountain. At the top, we could see Boston, which... is a feat. We also saw an observatory and nearby water tower over towards Boston, and ate lunch on a perfect little sitting area. It was windy, but nobody complained :3 and we all had lunch and it was awesome. We got down the mountain much quicker, and we drove back to my place in Keene and just crashed. Movies, beers and an awesome kinda afterglow feeling. People started shuffling out as the night progressed, and Chrissy got all excited, and wants to do Mt Monadnock sometime here. Which sound awesome.
So it was an awesome hike. I plan on doing stuff like cookouts and yard sales more... but I'd really love to get a bunch of suiters together to walk around downtown Keene at night during the summer. It's safe, clean, the college kids are gone, and I don't think anyone would have a huge issue with it, so long as people weren't morons... well, HUGE morons.
I'd like to plan more bowling meets, some Chunky's movie meets, a day trip to Boston on the day the Bosfurs do their monthly lunch, and atleast another hike or two this summer.