The Cheap Vegetable Gardener

How to water your garden

16.2 years ago water 7 Comments

Many people may look at the topic of this post and think how basic a topic this is. The reality is proper watering is the most difficult part of growing a garden. The challenge ensures in the fact that roots need to stay moist, but not too moist since roots do not grow in the soil but in the space (air) between it so with too much water your can actually drown your plants. What makes this even more complicated is the visual signs of overwatering are the exact same as under watering with wilted leaves and yellowish color. Your immediate reaction is, “I am not watering enough” so you water more drowning the plants even more and eventually leading to their demise. Even if your plants look ok you still could be affecting your harvest. For example, if you overwater your tomatoes they will be green enjoying the perfect environment and never get around to creating some blossoms which will result delicious fruit. At the same time under watering your leafy plants can result in bitter tasting lettuce or even worse make them go right to seed and get very little or no harvest in plants like cilantro and spinach.

How do I know how much I need to water? Unfortunately the answer to this questions is “It depends” first you need to determine the structure of your soil (sandy, loam, or clay) If you do not know the structure of your soil you can to a simple glass jar soil test Sandy soils allow water to drain very quickly so you will need to water about three times as often as clay soil and about twice as much as loamy soil. If you live in a dry climate or just have a couple really hot weeks in your not so dry climate you will probably need to water at least every day to keep your plants healthy regardless of your soil structure.

The next factor is how deep do you want the water? It is important to make sure water actually gets to where the roots are, which has been the demise of my first years of tomato plants. Where I watered the surface but the soil was bone dry a several inches below the surface which I realized once I pulled out the dead plants. So first know your plants root system if you are growing deep root plants such as tomatoes, corn, cucumbers, peppers, beans, squash, eggplant, or melons you will need to water longer to ensure that the water makes it down to their deep root system but you can water less often since you will not lose as much to evaporation. If you are growing lettuce, spinach, carrots, radishes, peas, garlic, onions, cabbage, cilantro, or broccoli you need to water less but more frequent to ensure the soil stays most.

Now hopefully you have a better idea when and how much to water, here are some tips from Mel Bartholomew from “Square Foot Gardening” books/videos/PBS series. His first tip is “Don’t water from overhead” since first you waste water due to evaporation but you also get you leaves wet which can lead to disease and frying your plants. If you must water from above if you have a very large garden or if you are away from your garden and need to automate the process, he insists this is done first thing in the morning. If you are like me and enjoy sleeping at dawn you may want to look into his cup and bucket watering method where you fill up a couple of 5 gallon buckets and let them sit out in a sunny spot. You get the benefit of the sun warming the water to prevent shocking the plants with cold tap water especially on a streak of hot summer days. Another benefit is gives time for the tap water to purify itself a little before applying to plants. Once you have your bucket of water the concept is pretty simply just find a nice container (I normally raid my recycling bin) and scoop water out of the bucket and pour it directly under the leaves of the plant with little water waste and the delicate leaves remaining completely dry. This is also helps you measure exactly how much water you are giving to each plant which you can adjust as needed. You can also get some of the same benefits by using a trickler hose of a bubbler attachment if your back can not take the weight of packing around 5 gallon buckets full of water.

Now if after all of this explanation I haven’t scared you too much in fear of not watering too little or too much here are a couple more tips to make your watering more successful.

• Order on a consistent schedule: It is easy to forget the last time you water and watering a few days late or early can have significant effects on your harvest.
• Have a test hole: Normally there is somewhere in your garden where something is not currently growing after doing you normal watering dig into that hole and see how deep your watering is actually getting.
• Finger test: By sticking your finger into your soil if it comes back dry you probably need to water
• Get a water meter: If you want something a little more scientific you can always pick up a cheap water meter for less than $10 which can give you a measurement several inches underground

Vegetable Gardening Software Review

15.5 years ago computer, garden planning 3 Comments

When it comes to planning my vegetable garden I must say this is definitely one of my weaknesses.  I make a good attempt to map things out on graph paper ahead of time only to decide to add/remove a crop and eventually resort back to my memory and then get a surprise when I find I planted carrots and cilantro in the same place.

Given I am required to spend around 10 hours a day in front of a computer my first thought was to find a solution online in the form of some sort of vegetable gardening software.  I tried some trials of several products and got so frustrated I was about to create my own when I came across GrowVeg.com.  After signing up for their 30 day trial within 15 minutes I had my gardens planned out and saved for future reference. 

Now if when I change my mind on planting preferences I can easily modify my plan to the new desired configuration.  When I see easy I really mean it, it completely passed the “I am a man and don’t read instructions” test but there are some helpful video tutorials for those with more patience.  I can honestly say it is so easy a 4-year-old can do it.  She saw me “playing” with my garden and asked if she could “play” the gardening game as you can see below.

Once my daughter was done with her garden I proceeded to check out some of the other features.  The next feature I came across was by clicking on any of the plants it would return helpful plant information from how to plant, how to harvest, and even how/when to apply fertilizer.

Definitely the feature I was most impressed with was the planting schedule it automatically generates after you have added plants to your plan.  Not only does it tell you when to plant but also when to expect your harvest.  What I love about this is, if you are like me, you can’t decide what your frost date is, you can simply change it in the settings and the schedule automatically updates.  Now if you are forgetful like me, there is even a feature to notify you by email when it is time to plant your seeds.

Once you have built your history of garden plans throughout the years, the program will use this information my warning you if you are planning on planting the same type of plant in the same location you did before.  This enforcement of crop rotation can significantly help reduce the accumulation of soil borne fungus/disease.

For more information see GrowVeg.com

Stealing natures free blackberries

13.1 years ago Uncategorized 3 Comments

Normally blackberries are in their prime in early August, but with our cold winter they are just starting to come around now.  After a little bit of hunting my partners and I found a few good stretches of bushes and had out one gallon bucket of blackberries filled in no time.

In the past I have created the following with these seemingly never-ending supply of free produce:

Blackberry Pie
Blackberry Jam

 

This year I went with something with much less sugar and made a great low-carb blackberry ice cream recipe.  At just 188 calories per serving, 7 grams of carbohydrates, and 4 grams of sugar…this is a good alterative to other desserts in our freezer and much more tasty.

The most profitable plants in your vegetable garden

15.7 years ago cheap, cilantro, garlic bulbs, organic, seedling, seeds, vertical gardening, winter garden 152 Comments

Many vegetables can be expensive to purchase by growing the most expensive vegetables in your garden and buying the least inexpensive vegetables at your grocery store you can easily help drop your food budget.  This especially important for people like me with very limited space to grow everything that I consume.

It may be impossible to put a price on the satisfaction of bringing in a basket of produce fresh from your garden.  As well as the enhanced flavors from having truly fresh produce from your garden compared to that of your local supermarket.  Though when I was harvesting my potatoes this summer with my daughter I did have the thought, Would it have been smarter for me to grow something else in this space?  I estimate out of the 4-5 square feet I used for these plants I probably got about $4-5 worth of potatoes.

I did a little research first to determine yields of various plants per square foot and secondly what the value (organic supermarket prices USD) of the yielded produce at harvest.  Given I am a city dweller with a fairly small footprint for my vegetable garden (about 30-35 square feet) making decisions on what to buy at the supermarket and what to grow in the garden may be a huge money saver with just a few dollars invested in some seeds for your vegetable garden

Now from the results below you can see the winners for the most produce value per square foot are many of the leafy green vegetables/herbs (cilantro, lettuce, chives, dill, Swiss chard) next comes many of the larger vine plants (tomatoes, squash, pumpkins, peas) with many of the root plants taking up the rear.  Now much of this makes sense where many of the vine plants grow on trellises and are allowed to spread, which I guess is sort of cheating the square foot rule but I will let it slide.  Compared to the root plants whose production is entirely dependent on the space allowed in square footage they have to grow as well as these are normally inexpensive produce items to begin with.

Vegetable	USD Value/SF
Cilantro	$ 21.20
Arugula-Roquette	$ 20.92
Green Salad Mix	$ 17.55
Chives	$ 16.40
Dill	$ 16.40
Lettuce	$ 16.20
Tomato, Cherry, small & medium	$ 15.57
Turnip	$ 9.90
Tomato, large	$ 9.50
Squash, Winter	$ 8.40
Tomatillo	$ 8.00
Cucumber	$ 7.74
Basil	$ 6.63
Radish, Red	$ 6.22
Pumpkin	$ 6.20
Chard, Swiss	$ 6.14
Celery	$ 6.00
Squash, Summer	$ 5.96
Choi	$ 5.70
Peas, Snow	$ 4.50
Pepper, Jalapeno	$ 4.50
Squash, Summer, Zucchini	$ 4.17
Onion, Bunching	$ 4.14
Pepper, Bell	$ 3.60
Brussels Sprouts	$ 3.59
Carrots	$ 3.56
Rhubarb	$ 3.25
Squash, Winter, Butternut	$ 3.20
Kale	$ 3.07
Grass, Lemon	$ 3.00
Peas, English	$ 3.00
Onion, Bulb	$ 2.63
Radish, White	$ 2.60
Bean, Bush	$ 2.51
Peas, Edible Pod	$ 2.50
Artichoke, Globe	$ 2.40
Cabbage, Chinese Napa	$ 2.24
Squash, Winter, Delicata	$ 2.10
Spinach, Spring/Fall	$ 1.80
Leeks	$ 1.75
Potatoes	$ 1.50
Parsnips	$ 1.50
Garlic	$ 1.37
Squash, Summer, Yellow	$ 1.34
Parsley	$ 1.31
Corn	$ 1.25
Squash, Winter, Acorn	$ 1.20
Squash, Winter, Hubbard	$ 1.20
Eggplant	$ 1.10
Greens, Mustard	$ 1.10
Rutabaga	$ 1.00
Beet	$ 0.89
Cabbage, Savoy	$ 0.80
Broccoli	$ 0.80
Kohlrabi	$ 0.75
Cauliflower	$ 0.60
Broccoli, Chinese	$ 0.60
Cabbage	$ 0.50

Sources: http://www.mcgoodwin.net/pages/ppatch.html for plant yield information, http://shop.safeway.com for current produce prices

Now even with this information I will still plan on growing some onions and garlic since I more than likely would be forced to use dehydrated alternatives due to being too lazy to drive to the supermarket to buy fresh varieties.  Though I may be adding some more herbs/greens to my garden this year.

One important thing to remember is you still have to eat the vegetables, throwing $20 worth or arugula or cilantro into the compost bin is not exactly a sound investment.  You can also get higher yields by growing vertically, but don’t forget those tall plants produce a larger shadow so you may still need some extra ground space to support these alternate growing methods.

So go out and get some cheap vegetable seeds (or in many cases free) and plant some profitable vegetables in your backyard/patio garden this spring.

     

Youngest gardening blogger

16.2 years ago Uncategorized 8 Comments

Well not 100% sure there is not a younger garden blogger out there but at the ripe age of 6 pretty sure Megan is in close competition. You can check out “Megan’s Garden” at http://www.megansgarden.com. Now I must warn you that this blog is written by a 6 year old that does not use a spell checker so if you may need to read phonetically which can be a fun challenge to see garden blogging from a child’s perspective.

If you have any serious issues translating feel free to post in the comments and I can translate.

Computer controlled grow box – Part 1

15.7 years ago cheap, computer, electronics, indoor growbox, PC thermometer 96 Comments

The Idea and Design

My PC Grow box was very effective though it did have some shortcomings along with my desire for tinkering caused me to create a new version code named “Project Everbearing” after the test subjects for the project, several Everbearing strawberry plants I propagated from my garden last Summer/Fall.  The specific shortcomings I wanted to overcome were temperature control and limited size.  My grow box has to live in my garage so on cold nights the temperatures can fall low enough to kill my summer seedlings (tomatoes/cucumbers)  Size is an easy fix just make it bigger though it is more difficult to keep a larger grow box warm and still well lit.�

My solution to both of these problems was the addition of a computer to the system.  First computers generate heat, using this along with computer controlled fans and incandescent lights (heater)  allow me to regulate the heat to my desired levels.  This is the point a normal person may have just stopped, but I am far from normal and decided a few more features, which I will explain more below.

The Structure and Insulation

First comes the structure, upon inheriting a set of shelves from my sister, we ran out of room for some of our existing storage shelves (see above), though we used the buckets to store loose toys on our new shelves we had the structure of the old one sitting in the garage for some time.  After many passes by in the garage not knowing what do do with this shell, it finally came to me that this would be perfect for my new grow box, (Reduce/Reuse/Recycle) in action.  The only customization required was the removal of a couple of the wooden dowels and I was ready to add some hardware.  Of course you could do the same thing with an old bookshelf, cabinet or just with construct your own frame with a 12”X1”X8’ foot board cut in two along with two 1”X1”X8’ pieces of lumber cut into two.  Screw one 1”X1” in each corner and should should have a pretty solid frame.  For the top I used pegboard mainly because I bought a 4’ by 8’ sheet when I only needed half of it but worked really good to use zip-ties to secure various components and provides decent airflow between the computer and growing areas.

Second comes insulation, after some not so careful calculations and measurements I determined I could cover the 3 exposed areas with 2 sheets of 2’ by 4’ sheets of insulating Styrofoam.  I glued and taped (duct tape of course) the Styrofoam which was cut using a utility knife and straightedge to cut to size making sure I made the top straight and flush.  I then created an exactly copy of the other side and one more piece for the top.  Using a long strip of duct tape I created a hinge for the top and glued side of the box.  The last piece I simply fit into place using a tool box to ensure a tight fit but also allows easy access to plants when needed.

The Lighting

I went cheap on the lighting taking from the success of the PC grow box I decided to go with a similar setup using $2.00 home depot wired sockets hooked up to an couple old computer power cords.  I went with two 24 watt CFL bulbs and one incandescent bulb.  Though the incandescent is not as efficient and the CLFs it does provide a full spectrum of light and a little extra heat which the box can use in the many times cold garage where it lives.  The CFLs and incandescent exist on two separate circuits so they can be controlled independently by the software.

 

The Software — Grow box brains

Now I know all of this could be done with a Basic Stamp or Arduino pretty easy, but I wanted the ability to track history and have a decent user interface to look at, so I wrote a windows form application using C#.  To cover the basic functionality of temperature control I used the parallel port outputs hooked up to the computer’s parallel port to give the software the ability to turn the lights on and off.  By configuring a “sunset” and “sunrise” time which I am in complete control over the lights will turn on and off as appropriate.  I added some logic to ensure the plants stay at a comfortable temperature (thresholds configurable) by turning on the incandescent bulb when it is too cold and an exhaust fan when it gets too hot.  In order to allow the computer to know these temperatures I used a PS2 controller to create two temperature sensors one for the area the plants are growing and another for the top area where the CPU resides (computer was too old to have onboard temperature sensor)

My daughter thought it would be cool if we have some sort of automatic watering system.  I agreed, so I added a moisture sensor and created an algorithm to periodically check the moisture level and activate a water pump to add water until it reaches the specified moisture level.  I still need to buy and hookup the pump but coding portion is complete and tested.

I live in the Pacific Northwest it rains a lot and can get cold in the evenings and I don’t want to trek out to check on my plants.   solved this by adding the computer to my Wi-Fi network now I can take look at them by connecting to the machine wirelessly and see how they are doing through it’s webcam.  I also take periodic pictures of the plants so I can create cool time-lapse videos of progress like the one below.  I also have the ability to browse through pictures taken at specific time periods.

Finally to store all of this data I installed SQL Server 2005 Express (free) which allows me to track historical data of the conditions and images over time.  If you have data, you definitely need some graphs.  Being too lazy to do this graphic work I leveraged ZedGraph (free) to allow some visual tracking of temperatures and moisture content.

Features for future versions (Beta 2?)

• Finish automated watering
• Add automated red LED lights for flowering stage
• Install LCD Panel
• Make box look better (real door which does not require tape to open/close)
• Create single USB controller for lights/sensors
• Better/additional camera

Video of grow box “booting” up, personally I like the flashing lights when the computer sends signal through the parrallel port.  If you are old enough to ever have a printer that used a parallel port this is when it would make its annoying sound letting you know it was alive.

Updates:

Computerized Grow Box Update #1