Welcome to my first post!
I would love to thank all who read this and I would love to know if any of the information that I will post has had some use to anyone so if anyone has any comments or questions please feel free to drop me an e mail anytime.
Right now I will be posting about my two current hobbies, Bread-making and gardening. Right now mostly gardening because it is the season! i am starting to get the gardening itch and i have been making leaps and bounds in my projects i have taken on. I have been trying some experiments on indoor growing and i have been getting some positive results that i would love to share.
I have started my year out very early when it came to seedling starting because i have had some poor luck in the past but that luck gave way to many ideas. I started (i think) in early march or late the month prior (a lot has gone on and i did not quite write down the date) I planted some green peppers, hot peppers and tomatoes. I know they say not to start the plantings until 6 weeks before the last frost date but i had an idea. i grew a few tomato plants and lots of green peppers because my garden was going to be mainly a freezer and salsa garden this year.
VEGGIE Garden will be a 18'x26' plot
it will have (approx.)
25 corn plants
40 pepper plants (hot and green peppers)
22 tomato plants (roma and beefsteak)
14 or more cucumber plants
8 or less zucchini plants
8 or less pumpkin plants
A patch of purple green beans which i just adore!
I am growing cabbage, black seeded simpson lettuce, spinach, and green onion but that will be in a different location in pots and in temporary gardens.
Then i will be growing fruits.
i would love to plant some apple trees, hardy almond, american butternut, and some other things but i will get to those when we get that order in.
I had issue with starting seed using a very rich soil from the yard but it proved to be a bad germinator. I then did what i refused to do. I bought peat pellets to germinate. I hate spending money on this stuff! but it did prove to hasten the germination considerably and proved to be a great asset in the plant starting process.
I then just left the pepper plants to grow. they are doing ok.. Had a little leaf loss from the very dry conditions of the house and the soil kept on drying out. I did an experiment in soil moisture. I added some of the hydrated gel from one of my son's diapers (hydrated with water of course!) to the soil and that made the soil stay moist a lot longer and i read on many different websites that this stuff is NOT toxic so through my opinion it should be fine, but if you have doubts in the back of your mind then contact the company that makes the diapers for the chemical info on that substance. I used loves diapers, it is a heck of a lot cheaper than buying the crystals that was meant solely for soil moisture.
when doing plants indoors make sure to visit them everyday to just give them a glance. Also try to handle them a little. Movement of these plants will toughen them up some so they do not become too weak. I move them around, touch their leaves some and in the meantime i keep a fan on them so that they are in a simulated windy environment. In the past when i did not do this the plants seemed to wilt faster with any exposure to the outdoors in the hardening process.
i have two places for plants. Basement under artificial light. (full spectral fluorescent 4" above the plants on a shelf) it is cold down there sometimes getting as low as 50 F. Not so good for the peppers because lower temps like that could have been stunting growth but we will see over this whole experimental time how they turn out.
The tomatoes have been showing adverse effects from the basement. The leaves have turned purple from the cold and the growth is spindly from the cold and the artificial light. but they are still ok and will do good when the hardening process starts.. hopefully
The second place i have them is in a full sun window on the sill and on shelf. The house stays 65-70F mostly ad this room gets 6+ hours of sun and is sometimes considerably warmer than the rest of the house. I love this location but i will not have it the next season because The room will be occupied.
In this room the germination has been fast. My bottom shelf is right over the register and has proven to be a great place for germination. and my plants get ample sun. they do not lean towards the window at all. the tomatoes are strong.
Now i will explain my experimentation.
I feel an evil laugh coming on.
I have had problems many years with the tomato plants becoming spindly. no matter what. i have tried fertilizing appropriately, i have tried different light, i have tried different temp, humidity ad so on. Nothing seemed to be a worry free strategy. I was annoyed. But then i discovered the hydroponics systems that you can do at home and it interested me, but it did not appeal to me as a solution because i am cheap!. I defiantly try many things until something suits me. I have been working on this since i was in high school. I started with herbs under fluorescent light in a tin foil covered reflector box and fluorescent light. Now i am onto what i call a semi-hydroponics system. I do not know if this is something people have used before and i would love to know if there is anyone out there proficient in this. Or possibly i need someone to tell me there is a name for this system on the net. I have searched for this and i cannot find it anywhere.
EXPLANATION OF THIS SYSTEM
I do this with tomatoes, lettuce, cabbage, spinach since they have shown the best results.
(pictures will be posted later of the system)
I have tried to reuse containers i would normally throw away. but i use mostly the tops to 2 liter bottles. I cut the 2 liter about 5 inches from top and use the top part, upside down, without the cap. I place a coffee filter in the bottle top and puncture a hole approx. pencil size in the bottom of the filter leading the way through the bottle's screw opening.
i fill with soil (the best is a 9 month's feeding soil for potting) I place this pot in an opaque container filled with water like a plastic dixie cup, a tin can from canned veggies or fruit, and so on. I prefer planting seedlings in this pot rather than seeds. but the bottom of the bottle must be submerged in this water. Eventually the roots of the plant will follow the water down into the cup. you will get the most beautiful root system you have ever seen! Do not change the water unless you are getting rot, a very bad smell or rust in the water container. remember if you use the 9 months feeding stuff when you water the fertilizer will run off into the bottom container and the roots need to feed on this. if you change the water you are throwing out the good stuff.
I have learned that alge is a problem if you use a bottom container that light can penetrate. It does not hurt the plant too much, but i do not know long term effects yet.
but now i have hardy tomato plants indoors that have root systems like i have never seen. Some roots are in water and some are in soil. This is beneficial because the total hydroponics system need special fertilizers, so to bypass this you use the dirt to help the aid of nutrient absorption. This system also helps with water. you do not have to water that much, just make sure the bottom roots are always in water.
so now i have had these systems since march and the tomatoes have been growing like weeds. now is time for step two of my experiment. CUTTING THE TOMATOES!
Now i have found that cutting the tomatoes back have been interesting. The first time i had cut a tomato plant was when i had a dying tomato plant from lack of water but it had one good branch on it. I cut the branch and dusted then end with root hormone, planted it like any other plant and watched it grow to produce fruit. I loved the results. so the cheap person in me decided to try this again. I got just one pack of tomato seeds that had 10 seeds in it on sale for 25 cents. i started 5 seeds saving the rest in case i failed. germinated them, grew them into seedlings, planted them in the semi hydroponics, and grew them until they were ready to take cuttings from. once they had enough to take one cutting from i did that and planted the cuttings. then when the parent plant had grown some more i took another cutting, and did it again and again and again. pretty soon i had taken cuttings from the first and second original cuttings. and now i am stopping because i wanted these plants to be sturdy enough for the hardening process.
But the cool part is, when i kept on cutting the parent plant the roots and leaves became stronger! it would grow much faster every time i took a cutting and not the original tomato plant is incredibly strong and i think it will out survive anything! and lot only that but i think it will be the first to produce fruit in record time. we will see how the results will be soon.
OK so off of the tomatoes. They are doing great so far. They are starting to harden in the small greenhouse i have on the front porch. the min temp is 60f outside and in the greenhouse it is higher. This is a great time for these plants to start spending some of the day in the greenhouse.
I am leaving pepper plants inside because they need warmer temps. I am not taking chances.
i have some semi hydroponic lettuce, cabbage, and spinach going and it is beautiful, it seems to like the cold(duh)
A few weeks ago i had started some corn inside. I bought enough corn to find out if starting sooner will be beneficial .. I have had poor luck with corn but i will pay extra attention to it because i want a crop darn-it!
i have some indoor cukes. I have my favorites! ARMENIAN. or also called serpent. It has the same yield as the regular cukes but they produce fruit up to a yard long. the skin is thin and very nice. they are light green in color and i love just snacking on them. Great for slicing for a salad of tomato, onion, cuke marinated in vinegar or my favorite italian dressing.
pumpkins are for the kids. just want to have enough for carving and roasting seeds.
have some zucchini for stews and bakes . I will need to hand pollinate the zucchini and the pumpkins to avoid cross breeding.
now for the fruits i have an apple tree that was wild growing in my mother's yard as a seedling. i have no idea if it will produce fruit, but in time we will see.
I do have 2 hansens cherry bushes. I have had these for a year or two and they have produced a decent amount of cherries last summer. I am excited to try some cuttings of this. Or i will try the seeds this year or possibly doing cuttings in the fall .. i will just order more if those do not work. they are rather cheap and a wonderful way to get lots of fruit. Now these are bushes to my excitement. very nice. right now they are covered in blossoms. i am glad these two survived the move from the old house.
Now to the green beans, well they are purple bush. I hate climbing beans. i am too cheap to buy and maintain the supports.
so i like the bush variety and i love the purple ones because you can see then while picking. One year i had started them indoors and they were great at producing me an early crop.
Right now I will be posting about my two current hobbies, Bread-making and gardening. Right now mostly gardening because it is the season! i am starting to get the gardening itch and i have been making leaps and bounds in my projects i have taken on. I have been trying some experiments on indoor growing and i have been getting some positive results that i would love to share.
I have started my year out very early when it came to seedling starting because i have had some poor luck in the past but that luck gave way to many ideas. I started (i think) in early march or late the month prior (a lot has gone on and i did not quite write down the date) I planted some green peppers, hot peppers and tomatoes. I know they say not to start the plantings until 6 weeks before the last frost date but i had an idea. i grew a few tomato plants and lots of green peppers because my garden was going to be mainly a freezer and salsa garden this year.
VEGGIE Garden will be a 18'x26' plot
it will have (approx.)
25 corn plants
40 pepper plants (hot and green peppers)
22 tomato plants (roma and beefsteak)
14 or more cucumber plants
8 or less zucchini plants
8 or less pumpkin plants
A patch of purple green beans which i just adore!
I am growing cabbage, black seeded simpson lettuce, spinach, and green onion but that will be in a different location in pots and in temporary gardens.
Then i will be growing fruits.
i would love to plant some apple trees, hardy almond, american butternut, and some other things but i will get to those when we get that order in.
I had issue with starting seed using a very rich soil from the yard but it proved to be a bad germinator. I then did what i refused to do. I bought peat pellets to germinate. I hate spending money on this stuff! but it did prove to hasten the germination considerably and proved to be a great asset in the plant starting process.
I then just left the pepper plants to grow. they are doing ok.. Had a little leaf loss from the very dry conditions of the house and the soil kept on drying out. I did an experiment in soil moisture. I added some of the hydrated gel from one of my son's diapers (hydrated with water of course!) to the soil and that made the soil stay moist a lot longer and i read on many different websites that this stuff is NOT toxic so through my opinion it should be fine, but if you have doubts in the back of your mind then contact the company that makes the diapers for the chemical info on that substance. I used loves diapers, it is a heck of a lot cheaper than buying the crystals that was meant solely for soil moisture.
when doing plants indoors make sure to visit them everyday to just give them a glance. Also try to handle them a little. Movement of these plants will toughen them up some so they do not become too weak. I move them around, touch their leaves some and in the meantime i keep a fan on them so that they are in a simulated windy environment. In the past when i did not do this the plants seemed to wilt faster with any exposure to the outdoors in the hardening process.
i have two places for plants. Basement under artificial light. (full spectral fluorescent 4" above the plants on a shelf) it is cold down there sometimes getting as low as 50 F. Not so good for the peppers because lower temps like that could have been stunting growth but we will see over this whole experimental time how they turn out.
The tomatoes have been showing adverse effects from the basement. The leaves have turned purple from the cold and the growth is spindly from the cold and the artificial light. but they are still ok and will do good when the hardening process starts.. hopefully
The second place i have them is in a full sun window on the sill and on shelf. The house stays 65-70F mostly ad this room gets 6+ hours of sun and is sometimes considerably warmer than the rest of the house. I love this location but i will not have it the next season because The room will be occupied.
In this room the germination has been fast. My bottom shelf is right over the register and has proven to be a great place for germination. and my plants get ample sun. they do not lean towards the window at all. the tomatoes are strong.
Now i will explain my experimentation.
I feel an evil laugh coming on.
I have had problems many years with the tomato plants becoming spindly. no matter what. i have tried fertilizing appropriately, i have tried different light, i have tried different temp, humidity ad so on. Nothing seemed to be a worry free strategy. I was annoyed. But then i discovered the hydroponics systems that you can do at home and it interested me, but it did not appeal to me as a solution because i am cheap!. I defiantly try many things until something suits me. I have been working on this since i was in high school. I started with herbs under fluorescent light in a tin foil covered reflector box and fluorescent light. Now i am onto what i call a semi-hydroponics system. I do not know if this is something people have used before and i would love to know if there is anyone out there proficient in this. Or possibly i need someone to tell me there is a name for this system on the net. I have searched for this and i cannot find it anywhere.
EXPLANATION OF THIS SYSTEM
I do this with tomatoes, lettuce, cabbage, spinach since they have shown the best results.
(pictures will be posted later of the system)
I have tried to reuse containers i would normally throw away. but i use mostly the tops to 2 liter bottles. I cut the 2 liter about 5 inches from top and use the top part, upside down, without the cap. I place a coffee filter in the bottle top and puncture a hole approx. pencil size in the bottom of the filter leading the way through the bottle's screw opening.
i fill with soil (the best is a 9 month's feeding soil for potting) I place this pot in an opaque container filled with water like a plastic dixie cup, a tin can from canned veggies or fruit, and so on. I prefer planting seedlings in this pot rather than seeds. but the bottom of the bottle must be submerged in this water. Eventually the roots of the plant will follow the water down into the cup. you will get the most beautiful root system you have ever seen! Do not change the water unless you are getting rot, a very bad smell or rust in the water container. remember if you use the 9 months feeding stuff when you water the fertilizer will run off into the bottom container and the roots need to feed on this. if you change the water you are throwing out the good stuff.
I have learned that alge is a problem if you use a bottom container that light can penetrate. It does not hurt the plant too much, but i do not know long term effects yet.
but now i have hardy tomato plants indoors that have root systems like i have never seen. Some roots are in water and some are in soil. This is beneficial because the total hydroponics system need special fertilizers, so to bypass this you use the dirt to help the aid of nutrient absorption. This system also helps with water. you do not have to water that much, just make sure the bottom roots are always in water.
so now i have had these systems since march and the tomatoes have been growing like weeds. now is time for step two of my experiment. CUTTING THE TOMATOES!
Now i have found that cutting the tomatoes back have been interesting. The first time i had cut a tomato plant was when i had a dying tomato plant from lack of water but it had one good branch on it. I cut the branch and dusted then end with root hormone, planted it like any other plant and watched it grow to produce fruit. I loved the results. so the cheap person in me decided to try this again. I got just one pack of tomato seeds that had 10 seeds in it on sale for 25 cents. i started 5 seeds saving the rest in case i failed. germinated them, grew them into seedlings, planted them in the semi hydroponics, and grew them until they were ready to take cuttings from. once they had enough to take one cutting from i did that and planted the cuttings. then when the parent plant had grown some more i took another cutting, and did it again and again and again. pretty soon i had taken cuttings from the first and second original cuttings. and now i am stopping because i wanted these plants to be sturdy enough for the hardening process.
But the cool part is, when i kept on cutting the parent plant the roots and leaves became stronger! it would grow much faster every time i took a cutting and not the original tomato plant is incredibly strong and i think it will out survive anything! and lot only that but i think it will be the first to produce fruit in record time. we will see how the results will be soon.
OK so off of the tomatoes. They are doing great so far. They are starting to harden in the small greenhouse i have on the front porch. the min temp is 60f outside and in the greenhouse it is higher. This is a great time for these plants to start spending some of the day in the greenhouse.
I am leaving pepper plants inside because they need warmer temps. I am not taking chances.
i have some semi hydroponic lettuce, cabbage, and spinach going and it is beautiful, it seems to like the cold(duh)
A few weeks ago i had started some corn inside. I bought enough corn to find out if starting sooner will be beneficial .. I have had poor luck with corn but i will pay extra attention to it because i want a crop darn-it!
i have some indoor cukes. I have my favorites! ARMENIAN. or also called serpent. It has the same yield as the regular cukes but they produce fruit up to a yard long. the skin is thin and very nice. they are light green in color and i love just snacking on them. Great for slicing for a salad of tomato, onion, cuke marinated in vinegar or my favorite italian dressing.
pumpkins are for the kids. just want to have enough for carving and roasting seeds.
have some zucchini for stews and bakes . I will need to hand pollinate the zucchini and the pumpkins to avoid cross breeding.
now for the fruits i have an apple tree that was wild growing in my mother's yard as a seedling. i have no idea if it will produce fruit, but in time we will see.
I do have 2 hansens cherry bushes. I have had these for a year or two and they have produced a decent amount of cherries last summer. I am excited to try some cuttings of this. Or i will try the seeds this year or possibly doing cuttings in the fall .. i will just order more if those do not work. they are rather cheap and a wonderful way to get lots of fruit. Now these are bushes to my excitement. very nice. right now they are covered in blossoms. i am glad these two survived the move from the old house.
Now to the green beans, well they are purple bush. I hate climbing beans. i am too cheap to buy and maintain the supports.
so i like the bush variety and i love the purple ones because you can see then while picking. One year i had started them indoors and they were great at producing me an early crop.
posted by Krista | Friday, April 28, 2006
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