Bird on a Spaghetti Wire

This bird keeps coming to the strawberry tower to drink.  Amazing how that little devil can see the water coming out of the drip hose.  

PVC Sprinkler System - Online, Finally!!!

This project has been in the works for some time.  My roommate loves to hunt for bargains in other people trash. He found a butt-load of PVC pipe heading for the landfill.  We confiscated it and I decided to use it for the garden.  I mapped it out on paper and then set out to detail the ingredients necessary to complete the project.  I spent about $2o total on parts.  There are a few 90º elbows, some 1" couplers, etc.  I bought a pipe thread to hose thread converter and added a section to connect the yard hose from the water pump.  I sealed everything with pvc cement and also primed it with the purple toxic liquid.  Brenda helped me apply the primer and cement.  I drilled holes and went to progressive gardens and fetched 6 total mini sprinkers at 75¢ each.  They are installed here.  Turned on the pump, and by golly it works!  This provides a low level watering near the roots.  It was fun creating this.  One thing though, my initial design ran straight into the potatoes that are growing in old tires, so I had to reroute around the tires, which worked out even better. 

Aerogarden Classic - The Rebirth

Ok, our classic garden came with an herb kit.  That did ok, and you can see the results in a past post on the root growth.  We replanted using a master gardeners kit.  This kit comes with 12 sponges, 12 holders, labels, domes, nutrient to last for one year. The catch is that the kit is not designed to work with the classic.  I had to modify it.  I saved the plastic holders that came with the original herb kit. The new holders that came with the master gardeners kit are really designed for the 3 and 6 piece unit as they are long and narrow.  If you try to use these with the classic model, the holder sits in water and will wick it in addition to the pump irrigating from the top.  In addition, the classic model used 2 plastic rails on either side of the center to help disperse water from the top.  You can remove these rails and put in the master gardener kit holders, which will still wick the nutrient, however.  If you don't remove them, the new holders will not fit in the classic unit, as they are right in the way.   So, to rectify this, I used scissors to cut the lower 1/3 of the grow sponges off.   I then inserted these modified sponges into the original plastic sponge holders that came with the classic herb kit.  I put the domes on and here we are.  These are baby yellow bellpeppers.  We planted the seed in the kit on March 21.  Here we are 1 month later!  

Aerogarden 3 update

This is the remainder of a yellow cherry tomato that came as a seed kit with our aerogarden 3.  We did not follow the instructions that well on pruning.  This plant got too tall too quickly and only produced about 10 fruit.  We euthanized it and planted a spring flower kit instead.   The root growth on this thing is impressive.

Patio Tomato Update

This guy has 4 blooms on it.  We transplanted this from the grobal about 2 weeks ago.  Amazing growth rate.

Soft Rush

Don't have a clue what its purpose is in life, except to attract attention.  It's a cool, cool plant.  Blooms in the summer.  Stay tuned for photos of those.

Mystery, Plant

Have no idea what this is in the middle.   The outside stringy ones are frosted explosion, ornamental grass that we got from Johnnys.  This lettuce type plant growing in the middle must be an immaculate conception. 

medusa peppers

Medusa ornamental peppers.  The small photo at the left is what this little guy will look like soon.  $$$.  only 10 seed for $2.45. Only got one to actually take.  This thing better be pretty. 

Topsy Turvey - or Upsey Downsey

It depends on where you buy this thing as to its actual name.  I think the upsey dowseys come from a big box store, if you know what I mean.This one has an heirloom yellow pear tomato growing.  We used foxfarm ocean forest soil from progressive gardens.  I added a bit of fish meal and some compost tea.  Getting ready to bloom.

Hydroponic jalepenos.  This plant came back to life thanks to the folks at progressive gardens for getting my nutrient back on track.

This is one of our broccoli plants.  The lower shot is pre-harvest.  We had this little head for dinner the other night.  Quiet good!

air plant

Maggie picked up this little guy at Swarts Garden.

Tomato Varieties Currently Growing by Us

• patio
• tumbling tom
• beefmaster
• delicious
• jetsonic
• rainbow cherry
• georgia streak (heirloom)
• green zebra (heirloom)
• cherokee purple (heirloom)
• yellow pear (heirloom)

they all look the same as seedlings so i guess we'll have to wait until they fruit to see what is what. no need for an ultrasound, lets just wait until the birth. haha.

Flowers Growing in Brenda's Yard

Rain Barrel

Soil Garden at Brenda's

Here are some shots of some of our tomatoes growing in the ground and also the whole garden with the basic layout of Chris' future watering system.

Snap Dragons

Part of the aforementioned lower post on removing the lettuce, these snap dragons are replacing said plants for something of color as the warm weather bolts the lettuce to seed.

i am such a nerd. i bet no one will understand my verbage.

Chopped (or should I say axed) the broccoli - in with a tomato in the waterfarm

Killed the broccoli in the waterfarm here. Used perlite. Think it was overwatering. Put the original hydroton back in and planted a tomato this time. Wish me luck on this one. Not sure broccoli was meant to be grown hydroponically. But it was worth a try.

Homemade Autopot

Maggie ordered a smart valve so that we could make our own autopot system.
To sum it up, this valve lets in about 1 inch of nutrient for the plants to absorb and then gives it a bit of dry time before allowing the next inch to flow in which mimics the natural rain fall cycles. So far, so good. One green zebra and 2 poblano peppers. All in 3x3 grodan cubes surrounded by hydroton for support. The pickle bucket holds 4 gallons of nutrient and it flows in by gravity via a 1/4 inch black tube.

Georgia Streak Update

These 2 plants get bigger everyday. Amazing. Expect to see 2 pound fruit hanging on the vines when I awake in the morning.

Lil' Watermelon

These guys have been growing under the HPS for a couple of months. Started flowering and made the time today to plant them in the garden. Upon closer inspection, there are little watermelons all over these things! Moon and Stars. Planted 4 seedlings if you can still call a flowering, pre-fruiting plant a seedling.

Lotsa Lettuce

Realizing we needed more space for our growing tomato population, we harvest all of the lettuce growing in containers and the 6 heads in the earthbox. Yum!

Near Death Experience

Read the labels on all nutrient bottles. I grabbed the wrong bloom nutrient today and failed to realize that it said to mix with water and wait 24 hours before using. 1 hour later, my hydroponic tomatoes had nearly kicked the proverbial pickle bucket. I flushed it and restarted the solution. They have returned from the dead. So watch out!

Grow Ball update

This is a patio tomato planted in the grow ball. If you scroll down a little ways you can see how much its grown since the last posting. It was inside but it got too tall for the light so me moved it outside. It is droopy a lot and we havent really figured out why yet. But it has grown really fast and looks healthy otherwise.

Chris invention

This is something chris kind of made up. He made it using pickle buckets and other various tubings. It uses one pump to continuosly circulate nutrient through the ring at the top. There are two spaghetti lines going to each plant from the black ring to transfer nutrient, which drips back down through the hydroton and recirculates. A single black hose conjoins the two buckets at the bottom keeping the nutrient at the same level in both containers at all times. This system seems to be working very well so far. The plants are either tumbling tom tomatoes or patio tomatoes, we cant remember which, but they are growing the best of anything we have planted so far.

Watermelon

This is a moon and stars watermelon plant. The fruit will be dark blue/purple on the outside with yellow spots like stars. The leaves are spotted like the fruit will be. This is an heirloom variety.

Strawberry

Strawberry growing on a plant we got at farmers supply a month or so ago. Planted in a self watering container.

Broccoli

Broccoli we are growing in self-watering containers made from pickle buckets. We got these as plants from farmers supply.

swiss chard seedlings