The Cheap Vegetable Gardener

2-liter bottle upside down tomato planter

14.4 years ago cheap, peppers, tomato, upside down planter 70 Comments

Though my first attempt at an upside down tomato planter worked out great, I have a habit of forgetting to water the plants everyday.  More commonly when we have decent rains when only the hanging tomato planters need to be watered.  So this year I have modified my design a little to make this a little easier.  As a bonus you can create this new version much quicker and minimal tools.

Materials required

• Empty 2-liter bottle
• Spray paint
• Drill or hot nail
• Chopstick or 1/4 in stick

Step 1 — Cut off bottom

There is a natural ridge at the bottom of the two liter bottle, simply cut at this ridge and remove the bottom.

Step 2 — Attach water reservoir

Take the removed bottom, flip it over, and insert it into the bottom of the bottle until flush with the top.

Step 3 — Drills Holes

First you need to drill a small hole in the bottom of the reservoir (the bottom you cut of)  Use the smallest drill bit you have, this will reduce the water flow coming into the planter during rainfall and/or manual watering.  With this reduced flow there should be much less soil loss during watering.

Second you need to drill two holes about 1/4 inch from the edge with a 1/4 inch drill bit.  It is a little difficult to get enough pressure against the plastic to make this hole without causing the plastic to collapse.  To take care of this place a small piece of wood on the floor and drill the holes from the inside.

Step 4 — Paint planter

You want to protect the roots from being exposed to direct sunlight so you need to cover the outside.  This can be done with contact paper, duct tape (as I have done in the past) or for a fast cleaner look just quickly add a quick coat of spray paint to the outside.  It is probably best to use paint that is made to adheres well to plastic, though in my case I had some nice multipurpose light green paint leftover from another project that with a few hard rains appears to be holding up well.
Step 5 — Secure with stick (chopstick) and fill with soil

Now add your plant (tomatoes and peppers are my favorites) to the bottom (previously the top) of the planter by carefully pushing the roots through the hole or alternatively you can the plant out from the inside.  If your plant is too large to do this safely you may also cut a larger opening in the bottom, but I would recommend wrapping a sponge or coffee filter around the plant to assist in keeping the dirt in the planter.

Fill your planter with a mixture of 1 part perlite to 2 parts (potting mix, peat moss, coconut coir) with the top 1/2 inch being only (potting mix, peat moss, coconut coir)  After a couple of waterings, this 1/2 inch layer will compact and restrict the water flow for a slower and more distributed watering.

Use the thinner end of your chopsticks to thread it through both holes and both sets of plastic, attach a piece of twine attached to bother ends, and hang wherever the plants can get some good full sunshine and you should have plenty of early tomatoes this summer.

How to clone your own herbs in your garden

14.2 years ago clone, herbs 27 Comments

Cloning herbs is an inexpensive and fast way to expand your herb garden.  This is also a great method to possible give or receive (with permission of course) from friends/neighbors.

Unlike cloning other organisms, plants have a much simpler procedure you can do in your kitchen.

1. Take cutting from mother plant.  Cut a stem of total length of about 4-5 inches, cutting 1/2 inch above a leaf node.  The leaf node is where the leaves attach to the stem.  You want to make this cut at 45 degrees with a sharp knife/razor blade/shears.

2. Remove 2-3 sets of leaves.  You want the plant to concentrate of growing roots rather than leaves so you need to trim off the sets of leaves that will be in water/rooting medium.

3. Start rooting process.  You can apply a rooting hormone if you wish but I have had great results without needing to do this.  Depending on the type of herbs you need to place your cutting in simply a container filled with water or some sort of rooting medium (Coir/Perlite/Coarse Sand/Rooter Plugs)

Herbs to start in water:
Basil, Thyme, Mint, Oregano

Herbs to start in Rooting Medium:
Lavender, Lemon Verbena, Lemon Balm, Rosemary, Sage, Santolina, Savory, Scented Geraniums, Stevia

Water Only Care.  With the water only option you should change the water every couple days and ensure that the roots are always under water.  You should see roots in a week to a week and a half.  After the roots are well established you can then plant outdoors or to a 4 inch pot.

Rooting Medium Care.  You will need to water the plants daily to ensure there is adequate moisture.  After a couple weeks you should see that the cutting has a well established root system and can be transplanted to pot or outdoors.

Other ideas

I use this technique to save some money by purchasing a single plant at the my local garden center and then cloning to fill the space to get the harvest I am looking for.  One other idea is to plant fresh herbs purchased from the grocery store, success may vary but should be fun to try…

This is also a great technique to extend your fresh basil throughout the winter.  At the end of your outdoor season take a couple cuttings and place in water indoors.  Use the fresh basil and when the plant appears to weaken take another cutting and repeat the process.  Fresh basil all winter and a good basil plant ready for next spring.

Seed types: Heirloom, open pollinated, hybrids, GMO

13.8 years ago seed saving, seed types, seeds, Uncategorized 5 Comments

When you pick up a packet of seeds knowing what type of seeds you are growing is very important especially if you are planning on saving seeds from the fruits of your labor.

Much like man’s best friend seeds come in many varieties, sometimes these occur with careful consideration of pedigree. others are brought together to complement both parents good (or bad) physical traits, and finally there are the nature chooses their own way.

Heirloom: These would be the purebreds (English Bulldog) of the seed world.  These seeds are carefully pollinated and saved for decades or even hundreds of years to preserve the quality product that has been stabilized over many generations.

Hybrids: These would be those carefully planned mixes (cockerdoodle) with both parents being specially selected to produce offspring that carries traits of both parents.  The tricky thing about hybrids is the seeds these plants create more than likely will not be that of their parents since it normally requires at least a few generations to stabilized their genetic makeup.  So your “tasty slow bolting cilantro” might end up being “tasty fast bolting cilantro” or “not so tasty slow bolting cilantro”  Even if you decide to collect your seeds if the seed company has patented that variety you could be sued for patent infringement…though I have yet to hear of a case of this occurring to a home gardener.

Open Pollinated:  These can be thought of as the “muts” of the seed varieties.  Just like in the canine world these can produce some very fortunate accidents and produce some seeds no one could have even considered trying to create on their own.  There are many benefits to growing with open pollinated seeds.  First there are very little worries in collecting seeds from these varieties.  There are no patents to worry about and these varieties have a few more generations to stabilize their genetic traits.  By collecting your seeds and growing these along with other varieties to add some diversity to your garden and avoid establishing a monoculture which can be susceptible to pests and disease after a few short seasons.

I should also state that Heirlooms are also open pollinated thought for most strains extra care is taken to prevent cross pollination to keep the end products as true as possible.  These

GMO:  Now GMO or Genetically Modified Organism, would be the the creation of a dog which is crossed with a cat which has the loyalty of a dog but the bathroom habits of a cat.  In the seed world this would be seeds that are grown with “good intents” such as the creation of a potato that is resistant to the potato beetle, reducing the need for pesticides.  On the more scary side are seeds with “terminator” genes whose offspring that does not create viable seeds.  From first thought, this seems like a justifiable way for seed makers to protect their patents being infringed on, until you think about cross pollination.  For example lets say your neighbor is growing some GMO tomatoes where your friendly bees cross pollinate your open pollinated heirloom varieties.…now to your dismay now your seeds are now crossed with the “terminator” gene and you no longer can produce your own viable heirloom seeds.

Though I have never actually found GMO seeds being sold to home gardeners, though for commercial seeds these are much more common.  Basic rule is to avoid these seeds at all costs.

Plan your garden with Sprout Robot

12.6 years ago gardening software, indoor seed starting, robot, seeds, sprouting 4 Comments

I came across Sprout Robot in the past week, you simply create an account and provide your zip code and it will give you a complete calendar of planting dates as well as follow ups when to expect sprouts to form, when to bring out, harvest etc.

When a new event is coming up you will get an email similar to the one below letting you know what is new to plant that week. 

When you connect to the site you then can “Check-In” and check off the tasks you have completed which get updated with next event for that plant.

They also have an option where they will even send out organic seeds just in time for planting in your area starting at $19.99 a year, though personally I have plenty of seeds saved for at a couple of years in my refrigerator.

Computer controlled grow box – Part 2

15 years ago indoor growbox, water 5 Comments

Though I have made some significant changes to the grow box controller, the actual grow box has undergone some minor but important changes over the past few months.

Automated watering

Now I must say this one is pretty darn simple.  Though I will be planning on a slightly more complicated hydroponic setup later I decided to start with a very easy bottom watering technique.  Just take a regular old fountain pump (I went with the cheapest I could find) drop it in a 5 gallon bucket of water and attach a hose long enough to reach your planting tray and plug in the power to the pump to your grow box controller and that’s about it.

To prevent evaporation and algae and little bugs making a home in my nice bucket of water, I added a lid with two holes for the water output and power input.  The power input required me to make a straight cut with a utility knife to ensure a snug fit while not requiring me to cur the AC line to feed the wire through.

I also cut a hole of the same size as the water output on the bucket lid to the grow box to allow the line to enter while still keeping the box closed.

Exhaust fan control

Air circulation is important for plants to be healthy but when the box gets warmer than expected I installed two controlled CPU fans to help regulate temperate as well as one static fan that constantly pushes air from the top to bottom.

I added a 12 volt exhaust fan to the top of the box (pictured above) to help push hot air out of the grow box with another (pictured below) at the lower part of the grow box to push in cold air as needed.  Both of these fans are powered by a 12 volt power wall adapter plugged into the grow box controller.

Heating

Though the computer and lights allow the box to create a comfortable internal temperature, sometimes it needs a little help.  For this I installed a regular old seedling heater to hopefully take a little sting out of the cold floor the seed tray is sitting one.  Like other components this was simply plugged into the grow box controller.

Putting it all together

My previous version was a little sloppily put together with duct/packing tape (lets just call it prototyping).  Though this added some hackiness appear it wasn’t too functional so I added a little strip of wood to support a couple hinges which I created a top which holds the LCD panel.

Upon opening the top you can see the grow box controller and the state of the art 600 MHz PC in all their glory.

As you can see I have still have some cleaning up to do with compress air and maybe a few more zip ties but all in all everything seems to have come together nicely.

Homemade waterproof digital thermometer

14.7 years ago arduino, electronics, thermometer, Uncategorized, waterproof 3 Comments

Now I am playing with hydroponics in my grow box I want to monitor the temperature of my nutrient tank.  This is important too hot it can bread disease too cold it can shock your plants.  I also want to use the data to identify how ebb/flow cycles affect ambient and solution temperature (for my own nerd curiosity)

I have been thoroughly impressed with the Dallas DS18S20 temperature sensor so decided this would be a great component to use for this project and this is how you can make your own.

Materials:

• DS18S20 temperature sensor
• 1/2 inch plastic tubing (could go smaller but had some lying around)
• Aquarium/food grade silicone
• 18 gauge solid core wire (long enough to get from arduino to what you want to measure)
• Glue gun with glue
• Soldering iron with solder

Construction

Step 1: Solder the two wires to pins 1 and 2 of the DS18S20 and apply a little dab of hot glue to all of the exposed metal.  This is not entirely necessary but a small safety precaution so you don’t discover you shorted the connection during assembly.

Step 2: Cut approximately 1 inch length of plastic tubing using a utility knife

Step 3: Apply liberal amount of silicone to one end of the tubing cut in step 2.

Step 4: Allow silicone to set for 15 minutes and do a visual inspection for leaks. You may also try blowing very gently into the tube to check for leaks, though not too hard to create a hole in the process.

Step 5: Attach the DS18S20 to the tube using a drop of hot glue.  This is not entirely necessary but when trying to get a perfect watertight seal the less moving parts the better.

Step 6: Again apply a liberal amount of silicone to seal the top paying special attention to the area around the wires

Step 7: Give the silicone at least 24 hours to completely set.

Step 8: Testing.  First off the sensor may be buoyant, if this is the case carefully attach a 1/2 hose clamp or something else to help tether it down.  Next suspend in a glass of water (preferably clear) and watch for a few minutes for leaks and or bubbles. If you see bubbles try to get an much water as you can out and apply a more silicone and let set for another 24 hours

Hooking it up

This part is pretty straightforward.  Pin 1 is your ground and pin 2 is your DQ which for most people doesn’t make much sense but it is a combination power source and bus output.  To get this to work you hook up your ground (black wire) to your ground on your arduino and the red wire to digital in and 5v with 4.7K resistor between.  Sure that is very confusing so hopefully the breadboard visual below is much more helpful.

Writing the Code

Since I am planning on using this with my grow box controller, I will show how to use this with arduino to get some numbers.  You could look at my arduino code in the grow box controller post to get the values but in my case I need to get values from two DS18S20 temperature sensors so I found a great OneWire library which helps make your arduino code very simply.  Simple extract the two folders in the zip archive to [ArduinoPath]\hardware\libraries and enter the following code into the arduino UI:

#include <OneWire.h> #include <DallasTemperature.h> 
OneWire oneWire(8); // on pin 8 DallasTemperature sensors(&oneWire);

void setup()
{  
  Serial.begin(9600);
  // Initialize sensors
  sensors.begin();
}

void loop()
{
    sensors.requestTemperatures();
    Serial.print(“Sensor #0: “);    
    Serial.println(sensors.getTempCByIndex(0));

    Serial.print(“Sensor #1: “);
    Serial.println(sensors.getTempCByIndex(1))

    delay(100);  // wait a little time
}

If all goes well you should see output similar to the following (values in Celsius):

 Sensor #0: 20.3
 Sensor #1: 30.4
 Sensor #0: 20.3
 Sensor #1: 30.4
 Sensor #0: 20.3
 Sensor #1: 30.4