The Cheap Vegetable Gardener

Picking strawberries and raspberries

12.3 years ago raspberries, strawberries 1 Comment

I like this time of year when I can quit my second job to support my kids strawberry and raspberry habits.  At $5-6 for a half pint at some times throughout the year can be a great cost savings to pick these for practically free year after year.

My oldest was previously the biggest consumer but now out youngest (now 16 months) is taking in her share of the berries and has been enjoying the fresh local berries.  We actually can not go anywhere without providing her with her strawberry fix.  Not sure what we will do in a couple months when we stop producing.

For my area still is a little early for raspberries but the conditions have been working out and have been enjoying these for the past couple weeks as well.  I did not actually plant these raspberries they snuck in under my neighbors fence which a little precautionary raspberry control I have let them thrive on my side of the fence as well.  I am actually considering to let them spread farther down my fence for even larger yields.

How to construct a raised vegetable garden

11.6 years ago guest post, outdoor seed starting, planter, vegetable bad 3 Comments

If you have a messy child who loves to plant and play around the garden, but who you are fed up of cleaning up after a day of joyful dirty exploration, a raised garden bed may be the ideal solution you are so deeply looking for. This type of bed is easy enough to build, takes around 2 hours to build from start to finish, and will set you back by around $200 – $300.

Recommended materials

Although you could use pretty much any type of wood you wish to make the bed, it is recommended that you use some form of rot-resistant wood, which isn’t coated in anything which may be harmful if eaten; after all, you are about to plant vegetables in it, and we all know how much children love to put anything and everything into their mouths. Next, you need to select your plot of ground. Ideally it will be somewhere with plenty light, and a maximum of 4ft wide, so that the children can reach into the middle without climbing or falling into it, however it can be as long as your elected choice of timber allows. For the best drainage, you should remove the grass on your elected plot, and tile it under the soil. The following set of instructions will allow you to make a bed 4ft wide by 10ft long, but you can change the values to suit your needs.

The frame

Firstly, you should cut an 8ft length of your elected timber in half, to create your 2 4ft ends. Hold one of your 10ft lengths on its end, and line up one of your 4ft cuts so that the face of your 10ft length covers the cut end of your 4ft length. Using a drill or screwdriver, attach the two pieces together through the back of the 10ft board, and into the cut end of the 4ft length. It is advisable to use 3 x 3” screws, but you can essentially use as many as you wish to ensure it is sturdy. Do the same thing for all sides, so you should now have the outline of your bed in a basic rectangle shape. Once all the sides are attached, use a framing square to ensure all the corners sit at a 90 degree angle, and adjust where necessary.

Corner support

Now that you have your bed in a perfect rectangle, you want to keep it that way. So attach a piece of wood to each corner, which should give you a triangle shape at each of your corners. Again, attach these pieces with as many screws as you feel necessary.

Select your spot

Now you can move your frame to your elected sunny spot, and mark out where it will lie by drawing a line around the outside of your frame with a shovel or spade.

Preparing the ground

Now you know where your bed is going to sit, take the frame out of the way again, and remove the grass layer where your bed is going to sit. After you have removed the grass, try to turn the soil a bit so that you will have good drainage.

Making sure all is level

Lift your frame back into its final sunny resting place, and remove soil from around the edges of the frame so that all sides are level with one another.

Secure your frame

The next step involved settling your frame into place, to ensure it doesn’t move. You should cut 10 2ft lengths of wood, and create a spike at one end by cutting diagonally from around 5” up the long side, into the middle of the short side on both sides. Once you have make all of your stakes, hammer them at least 18” into the ground, and 2.5ft intervals along the outside of the long edges of your frame. Once they are in the ground, secure your stakes by drilling through them and the frame of the bed so that they are 100% in place. Then put a stake into each corner, and secure the same way. Finally, you need to put one stake into the middle of each short edge, but only secure with screws on one side.

Adding your soil

You can now remove the unscrewed edge of your bed, and use your wheelbarrow to empty a combination of soil and compost to fill the bed until the soil sits around 2-3” from the top edge of the frame.

Complete your frame

You can now put the short edge of your frame back into place, and secure with screws like you did with all of the other sides. As a finishing touch to your masterpiece, you can use a saw to cut the top of all of the stakes so that they sit level with the rest of the frame.

Let the fun begin!

Now that your bed is completed, you can begin to plant your vegetables and plants. Just remember to keep them well watered, and you’ll be eating home-grown vegetable soup in no time at all!

Author Bio: Peter Smith loves gardening at his free time. He also gives online gardening tips to people, click here to go to his site. Apart he is an experienced freelance writer.

Soil Logic Moisture X-Tend testing and review

14.1 years ago moisture sensor, product review, Uncategorized, water 2 Comments

I was contacted by SoilLogic and offered a free sample of their product Moisture X-Tend.  Though I could attempt to describe their product, I will let them do it in their own words…

Moisture X- Tend helps water penetrate the surface of the potted soil easier and remain within the soil root zone up to 4X’s longer than untreated water.

This innovative soil moisture management product helps prevent water from evaporating too quickly or draining past the roots of the plant. Moisture X-Tend is so easy to use — just add and mix the recommended amount directly to our watering can and water as usual.

The specific claim on the bottle that got my attention was that by using the product you can actually water plants 4 times less often.  I must say I was a little skeptical about this claim, though I decided to give it a try. 

My first attempt was shortly after I brought out a couple of my pepper plants from my grow box.  They both were bearing fruit of similar size and overall plants were of very similar size.  I started by watering one plant with water and the second with Moisture X-Tend and I observed their physical appearance over a period of time.  There was one problem on day two it rained ruining my results.

Having an empty client controlled grow box in my garage equipped with a moisture Vegetronix sensor, I decided this would be a great place to conduct my testing.  I watered two identical pots filled with Miracle Grow Potting Mix (without moisture control) with 250ml of liquid.  One being purified water, the second with Moisture X-Tend as described in the directions and monitored the moisture saturation over time.

As you can see the Moisture X-Tend started out with a much greater water saturation immediately after the watering and continued to hold the moisture 1.5 times longer than water alone.

Now this 1.5 times is quite a difference between the 4 times claim on the bottle, though in their defense this was from a single application and the FAQ on their website mentions that watering frequency is reduced after about a month of use.  I also was using a 4 inch pot and I would suspect that a larger pot would show better results.  If there is interest I am considering extending this experiment over a longer period of time to attempt to prove/disprove the 4 times claim that they mention on the bottle.

Though for me this is not practical to use all summer Moisture X-Tend is a great option when you are going away for a few days on vacation and do not have an automated watering solution or are forgetful like me and just get busy and neglect those poor plants for a day (or two) too long.

Growing basil indoors with a desk lamp

14 years ago basil, indoor growbox 5 Comments

I recently moved to a new office building and unfortunately I had a lacked a few years at the company to get a window office.  With a desire to have some plant life in my office, I grabbed a couple of the basil plants I cloned, dropped them in some potting soil, and positioned a desk lamp with a CFL bulb.  I can’t seem to find my lamp timer so the light has been staying on for 24 hours a day.

The results have been great, the plants are thriving with great green foliage (much greener than its cloned parent was outside this summer)  Shortly after taking the picture above a harvested some of the leaves and used the top portion to clone into a new basil plant.

Just shows you don’t need a fancy grow box or AeroGarden to grow indoors and you are also not limited to boring shade loving potted plants in your office.

Multiple rain barrels hooked up with common garden hose connectors

10.7 years ago cheap, DIY, rain barrels 2 Comments

Last summer I setup some cheap rain barrels which I describe in this post which worked great though had one major flaw.  If you wanted to do some maintenance or add any new barrels you would have to literally have to saw them apart.  This time around I came up with a design that is not only simple but can be done with almost no tools and uses common garden hose connectors.

Materials needed

• 55 gallon food grade plastic barrels X 2
• 2 way garden hose splitter (plastic will work but recommend metal for longer life)
• Old garden hose
• Male garden hose mender
• Teflon plumbers tape
• Cinder Blocks (at least 2 for each water barrel…I went with 6 for each barrel for additional water pressure)
• 4”X4” Lumber (8 foot)
• Screwdriver
• Utility knife

 

Construction

Knowing Pascal’s principle I wanted to take advantage of all the height I could safely get.  I chose to elevate my rain barrels by taking cinder blocks 2 wide and 3 high.  I then place two 4”X4” lumber cut at 4 foot lengths to provide a few additional inches of height, but also provide some room for my connections under the barrels.

Now I have a firm foundation not it is time to get these barrels hooked together so I can get maximum water pressure and access to the water in all of the barrels.

The caps on the barrels (pretty common) I picked up had a nice feature of including some nice threads on the inside of them.  This provides me a nice 1 inch thread I can get a nice tight seal.  The only problem these are sealed closed.

Not having a drill bit just under one inch in diameter I used a pocket knife to carefully cut the inner cap off being careful to not harm the threads.

Whats also great about this threads is they match that of standard garden hose connections.  So my taking the male end of one of the garden hose splitter with a 4-5 wrappings in Teflon plumbers tape and screw it into the cap you opened up in the previous step.  Repeat this process for all of your remaining rain barrels.

Note: This addition of Teflon plumbers tape is technically optional should be water tight without this but seems like a cheap insurance for the alternative of having a slow leak under your barrels.

Next add one end of male the garden hose to the end you typically would hook up to your faucet and hook the other end (other male end created using Male garden hose mender mentioned above.  For this I cut an old garden hose which had a couple leaks in it to proper length since obviously 25 feet of hose between barrels would be some serious overkill.

 

If you have more than two rain barrels you can then use short lengths of typical garden hose (one male/one female) and link them together in a similar manner.

For overflow I went with a pretty simple option of drilling a hole and manually threading a pipe fitting that attached to piece of tubing (easy finds at your local home improvement store)

      

Better picture of overflow…this tube goes right down to the drain the water used to flow down with the drain spout.  So once all the barrels are full all the excess water will just flow down here.

Speaking of the drain spout I used some cheap vinyl drain pieces to redirect the water into a 3 inch hole I cut in the top of the barrels.

 

I added a piece of screen to filter out the leaves and little piece of sediment that may come from the roof.  I also screwed on a plastic lid I scavenged from the recycling bin which I cut a matching 3 inch hole into.  This had a decent lip on the lid to help direct the water into the barrels when the rain starts coming down pretty hard.

Overall I really like how this came out.  Not only does this allow me to easily add new rain barrels and I decide to add them but I also with the valves on the 2 way garden hose splitter I can easily start/stop flow from any barrel and do maintenance on another barrel without having to draining all of the water from the system.

How to harvest your compost from your portable compost bin

10.7 years ago compost 1 Comment

When it comes to making compost I am pretty lazy approach to this process, no turning, no tumblers, just stack up material in the compost bin and let natural decomposition process and worms do their job.

Given I use a portable SoilSaver Classic Composter with just a bit muscle I can lift this off my pile of compost.  As you can see with the composter removed you can view the various layers of composted and completely raw materials with various levels in between. 

I then take the empty composter and move to a new location where not much is growing.  What is great about having the ability to move your composter location is it will rejuvenate the soil under it so once you compost there for a year or so and move it it would be difficult for something to not grow there.

Taking a shovel keep removing the material that still needs some time in the composter and place back into compost bin in its new location. 

Keep taking a layer off at a time until you reach this stuff, nice finished compost. You may still have some uncomposted material mixed in there so I like to run this through my homemade soil sieve to filter out the larger material.  When I am running the material through I am not too careful to get every bit of finished compost out to leave some in the compost bin as a starter for the next batch.