The Cheap Vegetable Gardener

Using GrowVeg to discover new vegetables to grow

12.6 years ago gardening software, growveg, indoor seed starting 3 Comments

It seems like every year there is something I decide I want to grow in my garden only to discover I am a couple months late to get started.  In the past season this was brussel sprouts, I had grand visions of growing them this winter only to discover I should have started the seeds back in March…

I got a great idea when I was planning this years garden in GrowVeg where I simply created a plot and just dropped in each vegetable that I typically eat and enjoy regardless is I have grown them in the past or plan to in the future.

This way when the time comes when I should be planting these I will see this on the chart I printed out and get a reminder email in my mailbox from GrowVeg I can make this impulse decision to get seeds and start these plants at a time where I can still be successful.

Just by doing this exercise I have decided to consider fennel, Jerusalem artichoke, parsnips, and sweet potatoes.  Sure many of these may result in utter failures in my cold damp area but at least I can make sure I can start at the right time to give them a fighting chance.

My new blog “ Going Homemade

14.8 years ago Uncategorized 3 Comments

Along with gardening, I also have a passion for cooking/baking.  I have had many adventures I wanted to share but didn’t exactly fit under “The Cheap Vegetable Gardener” so I have started Going Homemade. 

Though I have been spending much of my life eating most of my meals from bags and boxes, I am making a commitment to bravely try homemade versions of my personal favorites as well as teach my daughters that not all meals come from Costco/Trader Joe’s.  So far, everything tastes much better, healthier, and I am even saving a little money according to my calculations.

How to deal with slugs in the garden

16.4 years ago slugs 12 Comments

Living in the Pacific Northwest there is no way to get away from these slimy creatures. Last year I only saw a few of these creatures but apparently my veggie plot must have been identified and they told all their friends since I am currently planting my second set of cilantro and lettuce seeds since they ate up my little seedlings.

Now how do I deal with these creatures? The first thing you should do is take care of your plants remove any dead/dying/diseased leaves to not give those slugs a tempting meal and a place to hide. In late spring make sure you turn/rake your soil this will disturb hibernating slugs and expose eggs which should be picked up by birds and/or killed by the first fall frost, which should start your garden to a better start the following season. Until then, here are a few methods to help free your garden from slugs this season:

Copper: Not going into the science but when a slug touches a path covered by copper they will get a tiny electrostatic shock which will deter them to go elsewhere. Now given my garden is surrounded by cinder blocks so attaching copper tape around my garden would be very difficult. The copper strips also can have sharp edges with is bad for slugs but also for me and my little one’s fingers. I have seen copper rings that attach to the underside of pots to prevent them from climbing up, which seems like a viable option if slugs find the contents particular appealing. It may very well be cheaper to throw a few handfuls of shiny pennies around but probably not the most attractive mulch.

Abrasive surfaces: Slugs have very sensitive undersides so laying and abrasive material blocking their path can kill or annoy them enough to head off to another direction. Some choices are broken egg shells, Epsom salts, ashes, coarse sand, and diatomaceous earth marketed for this specific purpose.

Slug traps: There are many methods to bait and kill slugs. Probably the most well known is the beer trap where you poor some beer in a shallow container at ground level where the slugs come in for a drink and drown. Couple others to try is corn meal and grapefruit, apparently they love them but after ingesting it will kill them.

Poison (Snail/Slug bait): Now in many cases this is the most effective method but definitely not the best option for the environment. Most “Snail/Slug bait” contains an ingredient called metaldehyde which a small dosage (around 200 mg per kg) can kill neighborhood cats or dogs as well as birds which are a very effective means of controlling slugs.

Slug deterrents: There are many baits that contain iron phosphate instead of metaldehyde which can also be very effective and actually sweeten your soil at the same time, so be sure to check your labels. One product that has worked for me is “Worry Free Slug and Snail Bait” (similar product to “Sluggo” or “Escar-Go”) the stuff does not kill the slugs directly and is safe for your vegetables and your neighborhood animals. You simply spread the granules around areas your slugs are visiting and after the slugs have a taste they lose their appetite and leave your garden or dies of starvation.

Become a slug exterminator:Though pretty gruesome you can simply hand pick and destroy the slugs yourself. Now this is very effective method but definitely not advisable for the squeamish. Some methods are impaling, bisecting, throwing in boiling water, stomping, salting, spraying with ammonia, or use your imagination. If you have problems finding them try going for a late walk in your garden with a flashlight or lay some carpet in a portion of your garden and check under it every few days.

Improving Plant Health With Companion Plants And Polycultures

12.4 years ago companion planting, guest post, Polyculture 2 Comments

Ecological garden designers often look to the native plant communities in their region to see which plants grow together naturally, in order to help determine suitable plant combinations for their designs.

This is because many plants that grow together actually benefit each other. It’s an excellent strategy, and yet plants need not have evolved together in order to get these benefits…

What Is Companion Planting?

Companion planting involves pairing plants that work well together. Unlike the plant communities outlined above, however, these plants may come from different regions. Popular examples in the vegetable garden are green beans and strawberries, carrots and tomatoes, and lettuce and spinach.

Sometimes the plants simply work well together because they take up different areas above or below the soil. Sometimes one plant deters a predator of the other plant. In the above examples, the plants tend to just grow better when planted near each other.

Often, the benefits realized are not nearly as grand as some gardening books indicate, but usually, no harm is done.

And yet companion planting is only the first step…

What Is A Polyculture?

A polyculture goes even further. While a monoculture is large swaths of just one plant, and companion planting often refers to planting 2 species together, a polyculture involves planting many species together to take advantage of various niches in the garden, much the way nature fosters this diversity:

-Some will grow tall and provide shade, while others hug the ground.

-Some are ready for harvest early, while others take longer, even within the same food group, such as lettuces or tomatoes.

-Some attract beneficial insects, while others repel plant predators.

-Some provide nitrogen for the soil, while others happily gobble it up.

Permaculture has embraced the polyculture philosophy by using integrated, multi-level plantings of dozens of species to take advantage of all the various opportunities in the garden. And sometimes it’s useful to create a “guild”, where a central “important” plant such as a fruit tree is surrounded by a group of plants that benefit the tree.

Summary

So not only can plants get along with each other, but they can provide for each other. While cover cropping during the low season is a great way to protect and improve the soil, ornamental and food gardens can also be interplanted throughout the entire year with plants that provide more benefits than just being beautiful or just producing food.

I don’t do straight, monoculture rows in my garden anymore. Each bed may have 20 plants all mingling together, perhaps 15 food plants and 5 beneficials such as yarrow, echinacea, chamomile, bee balm, clover or any number of others.

I may not get as big of a harvest from each food plant, but my overall yields are definitely bigger and it’s been obvious that the health of my plants has improved after a few seasons of finding out what works.

If you’re used to straight rows, you may want to take one bed this year and experiment with more interplanting. It’s often best to just experiment with many plants and then see what works in your soil and climate.

Phil Nauta is a SOUL Certified Organic Land Care Professional and author of the book ‘Building Soils Naturally’, to be released by Acres U.S.A. this spring. He taught for Gaia College and operated successful organic landscaping and organic fertilizer businesses prior to launching SmilingGardener.com to teach innovative organic gardening and vegetable gardening methods.

WetCircuits water resistant power strip giveaway

13.5 years ago free, giveaway, indoor growbox, wet circuits 31 Comments

I previously reviewed the WetCircuits water resistant power strip and risked death by electrocution to prove the products worth.  In acknowledgement of my valiant bravery they have agreed to provide another power strip for me to giveaway to the great readers of CheapVegetableGardener.com

If you haven’t heard of the WetCircuits power strip it built to be shock resistant so pouring water on it, pushing tweezers into the outlets will not shock you.  This may seem like a pointless feature but if you have ever spilled coffee (or dumped a watering can of water) on an outlet you will appreciate these features greatly.  Now I must say it is much more entertaining to see this in action so check out the video from WetCircuits.

If you think their video was done with camera angles and expensive video editing, here is my own independent recreation of one of their experiments.

So if you are in the continental United States, just enter a comment below and I will pick a winner at random on 04/23/2011 Midnight PST.

There are multiple ways to enter:

• 1. Add a comment to this post
• 2. Like CheapVegetableGardener on Facebook (add an additional comment to the post)
• 3. Like this contest in facebook (add an additional comment to the post)
• 4. Mention this giveaway on your site/Twitter (add an additional comment to the post)

Twittering computer grow box

14.9 years ago indoor growbox, twitter 2 Comments

Well this is pretty much clichéd nerdiness but given it only required a couple of lines of C# I couldn’t resist.  I have updated my grow box software to “tweet” some sort of semi-humorous and not really witty comment appropriate to its current state and share its current temperature and moisture content every 2.5 hours.

For those who want to do something similar, this is how I did it.  I one of the many twitter C# libraries and for no specific reason I chose tweetsharp and after adding a reference to their DLL and just the few lines of code (below) you can be programmatically making updates via twitter.

private void UpdateStatus(string message)

{

    IFluentTwitter twitter = FluentTwitter.CreateRequest();

    twitter.AuthenticateAs("user_name", "password");

    twitter.Statuses().Update(message);

    twitter.AsUrl();

    string response = twitter.Request();

}

If you want to see it in action go to http://twitter.com/computergrowbox.

Right now I only have a handful of not so witty comments, so if you have some good zingers add them to the comments and if I like them I will add them to the list.

UPDATE: Grow box shares its own pictures

I get busy these days and sometimes can’t make it out to keep a close eye on my plants in the grow box.  Given I have everything automated the box basically takes care of them, though I thought it would be nice if I could see how they are doing so added photo sharing to the grow box’s twittering software.

I already have the software taking pictures every so often so all I really needed to do what send out the most recent file to twitter.  After a little looking I found that tweetsharp already supported this so yet again this was just a few lines of code to implement.

First I needed the logic to determine the last photo I have taken, fortunately I was carefully about my naming using a timestamp based name similar to “Photo_2008_10_01_090130.jpg”, so alphabetical sorting would work just fine.  I removed the error handling to keep things brief but here is the code to complete this logic:

string[] files = Directory.GetFiles(photoDirectory, "*.jpg");
Array.Sort<string>(files);
string fileToUpload = files[files.Length - 1];

Now you have your photo to upload just signup for one of the photo TwitPic using your twitter account and run the following code using your credentials.

IFluentTwitter twitter = FluentTwitter.CreateRequest();
twitter.AuthenticateAs("user_name", "password");
twitter.Photos().PostPhoto(fileToUpload,
                      SendPhotoServiceProvider.TwitPic);
twitter.Statuses().Update("My Picture").AsJson().Request();

Hopefully this, you too can make you own grow box (or other inanimate object) share its feelings on twitter.