The Cheap Vegetable Gardener

Strawberries in the PC Grow box (FINAL UPDATE)

16.8 years ago indoor growbox, strawberries

Okay, I promise this will be the last time I talk about our strawberry plant in the grow box. After a little more than a month in the grow box our plant went from a small lifeless plant to one that looks like will bear about 10 strawberries. We are planning on moving it to the garden with the rest our strawberry plants later this week to make room for the growing tomatoes.

How strawberry plant looked when we started 40 days ago.

Picture of my daughter showing off her strawberry before she ate the first one.

I sampled on the strawberries and must say I do miss “local” strawberries, looking forward to the rest of them in the next couple months.

Tags: cheap, growbox, led, outdoor plants, strawberry plants, tomato plants, vegetables

What is a lumen?

16.8 years ago indoor growbox, lumen

Lumen is a measurement of the intensity of light; one lumen is equal to the brightness of a candle at 1 foot away. Just to get an idea on a clear summer day by the time the light from the sun hits reaches us on earth it has an intensity of up to 10,000 lumens. If you wanted to simulate sunlight in your house you just need to hook up 6 (100 watt incandescent or 29 watt CFL) light bulbs and stand one foot away.

Fortunately plants only need 100 to 4000 lumens to sustain vegetative growth depending on the variety, so indoor growing can be setup fairly inexpensively. For example, with our strawberry plant in a grow box experiment we can get away with just 2 CFL bulbs and provide enough light to provide the 1500 lumen required to allow vegetation and flowering. All of this for about $1.00 a month of electrical usage, at $5.00 a pint for strawberries maybe I can make this profitable.

Tags: cheap, growbox, outdoor plants, strawberry plants, vegetables

Going on a worm hunt

16.8 years ago kids, worms

We had a good rainstorm the night before and my wife was returning from a neighbors house and noticed a bunch of worms crossing the street. Since she knows me and our girls so well she grabbed a couple Ziploc bags and we proceeded to have a worm hunt. Our older daughter didn’t want to touch them that morning but I was really proud of my wife who procedded to help collect some worms. Lets just say she normally is not a worm person.

Just for some history, last fall my oldest daughter wanted to have pet worms, I opted to suggest making a worm bin instead. Since I am a cheap vegetable gardener I wasn’t about to spend $20 for a pound of red wrigglers (Eisenia fetida) we spent a few evening catching our own.

After the worm hunt ground has finally thawed so took my daughters out to help take care of some of the weeding in our front garden beds. My 3 year old even started singing a gardening song. I believe it went something like “We are gardening, we are gardening”

Tags: cheap, vegetables, worms

Starting my first seeds of the season

16.9 years ago germination, indoor seed starting

My two daughters and I could not take it anymore and had to get our hands dirty and start some seeds indoors. Cute to hear my 3 year old say in the dead of winter “Can we garden now?” when it is 20 degrees outside and 4 inches of snow.

Given that our last frost date is March 15th and I don’t have a good southern facing window I might regret the early start but I always have my grow box if the steps start to get leggy. I was also thinking that my grow box would be a decent way to start hardening off young seedlings with wind and temperature a little more in my control.

I normally start my seeds with netted peat pellets, but this year for environment concerns and because I am cheap I went with coconut coir. I must say I love this stuff it retains water very well, which is great for those little seedlings. The kids also got a kick out of watching the little brick expand to half fill my 5 gallon bucket after adding the 5 quarts of water. Now one lesson learned is to cut that block up into small pieces especially if you are not doing all of your planting at once.

I was planning on starting some cucumbers, lettuce, and tomatoes but apparently I didn’t save any tomato seeds from last year so looks like I am stuck with the local seed selection this year. I didn’t have any small pots around so grabbed some of my kids’ water cups and cut a hole in the bottom and filled them full of damp coconut coir and let the excess water drain and put them in a strawberry container which may work as a nice little greenhouse. If you look close enough you can see some little sprouts already starting from the lettuce in just one day. I also cut the top off a 2 liter bottle to top off one of my terra cotta pots which I planted lavender.

Tags: cheap, garden seeds, growbox, led, outdoor plants, strawberry plants, tomato plants, vegetables

Cheap PC grow box for less than $20

16.9 years ago indoor growbox

I enjoy when I can be rewarded by overcoming mother nature, so when my 6 year old mentioned she wanted to figure out why strawberries will not grow in the winter for her science project I couldn’t have been prouder. Once she determined the reason was because it was colder and the sun wasn’t up as much, she suggested using lights to help them get more light and warmth.

The next obvious step was to create a grow box, now if this wasn’t cheap vegetable gardener I would just buy a commercial grow box, but by now you should know better than that…

Looking through my garage I found my first victim, an old PC case. After a few screws and a few drilled out rivets I had a good structure for the grow box. Next I added some Styrofoam insulation which I got at Home Depot on all 4 sides (this step is optional if your PC grow box will be inside)  Also at Home Depot I picked up a cheap extension cord, lamp timer, and a socket plug adapters that allowed me to plug right into the extension cord. Followed by a small hole in the top and about 45 minutes my work is done.

In January we had a strange couple weeks of 20 degree days so I also added an incandescent build for some extra light but more importantly little extra heat. Which I made from a old lamp taking up space in the garage. With all the sides up the box is able to maintain a 70-75 degree temperature even with the chilly conditions in the garage.

After a little over a week we seemed to be getting some good results with our first blossom on the strawberry plant my daughter chose under snow in our garden.

Costs for Cheap PC Grow Box

Some of our other grow boxes
Fully automated computerized grow box (Project Everbearing) Beta 1
Cheap LED Light and Grow Box

Tags: cheap, grow lights, growbox, led, outdoor plants, strawberry plants, vegetables