The Cheap Vegetable Gardener

Getting rid of aphids on pepper plants

15.5 years ago aphids, brown spots, ladybugs, peppers

It can be difficult getting rid of aphids on plants in your garden.  Fortunately you can get rid of those aphids with materials you have in your kitchen.

First of all I am a little embarrassed that I let the infestation get this bad before noticing.  I unfortunately set the grow box to have the sunrise at 1:00am and the lights always were off by the time I got home.  Though the cause is not as important as how to get rid of them.

If this plant was outside my local lady bug population would have kept these buggers in check though they seemed to thrive without the vicious predators.  For an outdoor plant a quick high pressure spray of water on the the leaves (as well as underside of leaves) would take care of the problem.  Though this does not kill the aphids, they will starve to death before they make it anywhere to do any more damage.

This has not been my first battle with aphids, so fortunately I had some insecticidal soap on hand.  I sprayed the entire plant from the top and bottom.  I removed the major yellowing leaves and did another quick spray.  Now if you don’t have any insecticidal soap, or just want to save $5 on buying a bottle here are a couple of proven recipes:

Simple Aphid Killer Spray

• 1 tsp dishwashing soap
• Fill 32 oz spray bottle with water

Directions:

Shake and spray liberally on tops and bottom of leaves ensuring aphids are covered completely.

Complex Aphid Killer Spray

• 1.5 tablespoon baking soda
• 1 tablespoon Murphy’s Oil Soap
• 1 tablespoon Vegetable Oil
• 1 tablespoon Vinegar
• 1 gallon water

Directions:

Pour into spray bottle and spray liberally on tops and bottom of leaves ensuring aphids are covered completely.

Extra Spicy Aphid Killer Spray

• 3 hot peppers chopped finely
• 1 quart of water

Directions:

Mix peppers with water and let seep overnight.  Strain and pour into spray bottle and spray liberally on tops and bottom of leaves ensuring aphids are covered completely.  WARNING:  You care not to get this spray in your eyes.

US Department of Agriculture Mix

• 2 tsp dishwashing soap
• 1 cup of vegetable oil
• Fill 32 oz spray bottle with water

Directions:

Shake and spray liberally on tops and bottom of leaves every 9-10 days, ensuring aphids are covered completely.

If none of these solutions work, squish those buggers with your fingers being sure to include a sinister laugh while doing it.  Which even if you are squeamish, this is what you will see if you let them have their way.

Tags: grow lights, growbox, outdoor plants, pepper plants, vegetables

Winner of $100 Gift Certificate from Home Depot

15.6 years ago contest, free, Home Depot

There were so many great entries I couldn’t just pick one and with no budget to select multiple I settled using random.org. 

And the winner is lucky number commenter 33…Chandra.  Please send us a email using the “Contact” link at the top of the page within 72 hours otherwise I will select another random commenter.

We have partnered with The Home Depot Garden Club to offer a $100 Home Depot Gift certificate to a lucky reader.

To enter the contest is simple, just respond with a comment on how you would spend $100 at Home Depot with a home/gardening project and we will pick our favorite and send you out a gift certificate. 

If you don’t have any ideas, here are some things I would do with the money (unfortunately I am not eligible) that may would help:

• Create a nice cold frame to extend my growing season
• Add drip irrigation to my garden which I neglect to water
• Install a rain barrel (they have complete kits there)
• New and improved grow box
• Shelves and lighting for seedlings next season
• Summer vegetable plants (peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, etc) for those I was a little too ambitious with earlier this season.

None of these sound good to you?  Feel free to check out some of the DIY Projects at The Home Depot Garden Club or many of their content and tools on their site.

Entry Deadline: 5/21/09 12:00 PM (Pacific)

Tags: garden seeds, growbox, led, outdoor plants, pepper plants, tomato plants, vegetables

Growing peppers at high latitudes

15.7 years ago hydroponics, indoor growbox, peppers

Here in the Seattle area we are, as you say, latitudelly challenged. We are fortunately to have the Pacific Ocean to give us mild winters and summers though our distance from the equator provides our plants with less intense light and a relatively short growing season for summer crops. One in particular difficult summer crop are peppers.

This is important because one of the major exports of my garden are the ingredients to allow me to make homemade garden salsa (tomatoes, garlic, onions, cilantro, jalapeño peppers) Al ingredients come from my garden (except for jalapeño peppers) This year I am determined to fix this.

I have a couple strategies for doing this, the first is to “start early” pepper plants require 80-110 days from seedling to harvest, timing is everything. Given our late winters here over the past couple years, I don’t really have much of a cushion here and would also be nice if the peppers were ripe when the tomatoes are getting red as well. To get a head start many weeks ago I planted several jalapeño pepper seeds and they currently are turning into some great looking pepper plants in my grow box. As they have grown I have potted them up to encourage them to continue to grow vigorously.

Not wanting to put my eggs peppers in one basket, I have decided to try a few different techniques in case one completely fails I hopefully have a couple backups:

1. Grow pepper plant in grow box in WonderSoil
2. Grow pepper plant hydroponically using a Grodan Gro-Blocks
3. Grow pepper plant in the ground beside my tomatoes
4. Grow pepper plant in large pot in sunniest location

I honestly can not really predict the outcome of this experiment. The grow box as the advantage of accurate temperature control but the CFLs though work great can’t compare to full sun. On the other hand outdoors has the great light intensity of the actual sun though given the pepper plants can stop growing lacking 60 degree nights and at least 70 degrees during day. Given we don’t have too many nights greater than 60 degrees the grow box might have a chance.

UPDATE — 05/25/2009

Plant grown in WonderSoil in grow box at temperature controlled to remain above 60 degrees at night and a high of 80 during the day.  This is amazing results compared to the 2.5 inch plants I started with less than a month ago.

Plant grown hydroponically using a Grodan Gro-Blocks also in temperature controlled grow box.

Plant grow in actual dirt outside in good light

Plant grown in pot outside…well this one is already out after some high winds and cold mornings this one was looking pretty bad to I brought to the infirmary (the grow box) to bring it back to life, which seems to have done wonders.

The obvious winner at this point is the pepper plant in WonderSoil in the grow box, though I have noticed some recent growth in the outdoor plant now the weather has started warming up, so might be some time for Mother Nature to redeem itself.  Overall I have been very impressed with the results of the grow box but still need to see if I can get flowers and fruit…until the next update…

UPDATE — 06/20/2009

We were blessed with some warm weather so the outdoor potted plant has been doing great blossoming and almost a dozen of good sized peppers growing.

I have seen plenty of blossoms on the pepper plants in the grow box though I have not have and fruit set.  I have two theories what is causing this, first is we have hat some hot weather with the garage getting over 85 degrees even with best exhaust and airflow it was hard to keep the temperature from exceeding 90 degrees which causes the blossoms to drop.  The second reason is I have been attempting to hand pollinate the flowers with the absence of some nice bees to do the work for me.  I have been using a fine paintbrush without much luck.  Switching to having better airflow and using a Q-Tip to simulate a bees bottom.

The plant I had in the ground eventually got overtaken by a pumpkin plant which I removed and moved to the grow box given it had not shown any significant signs of growth since I transplanted it there.

Right now seems the best method is grow the pepper plant to about 18 inches and just let mother nature take care of things at that point.

Tags: cheap, cilantro, garden seeds, garlic bulbs, growbox, led, outdoor plants, pepper plants, salsa garden, tomato plants, vegetables

Hardening off plants in the grow box

15.8 years ago computer, computer power control, cucumbers, electronics, indoor growbox, tomato

When you have seedlings growing indoors or a greenhouse during their life they have had the opportunity spending it in a near perfect environment with controlled temperatures, consistent lighting, no wind, etc.  If you take this happy plant and move it directly into the wild (your garden) it can, and probably will, go into shock leading to its sudden death.  The solution to this problem is to hardening off the plant.  This is a process of slowly getting the plant accustomed to the real world environment a couple hours at a time.

You start by bringing the plant outside for two hours in the late evening or early morning hours.  If the plant begins to wilt let it recover indoors until it appears healthy again.  Each day increasing the amount of time it is exposed to the outdoors over 1-2 weeks period, or until the plant can survive a full day/night outside.  At this time it is ready to get its permanent home in your garden.

This process takes a lot of patience, which as they say is a virtue.  Unfortunately I believe I am missing this virtue.  My history of hardening off plants follows a similar pattern; bring out a plant in the evening with the full intentions of bringing it back in after a few hours, unfortunately I forget and it spends its first day out in the cold all night which normally the demise of my summer plants.

This year I am using my grow box to harden off my plants.  Normally the grow box runs at about 68-72 degrees which is a great environment for my seedlings.  By allowing some hot air to vent and lowering the maximum temperature setting in the software I am able to bump the temperature down to a range of 57-65 degrees.  After a few days I will drop the temperature a few degrees until it has similar low temperature to the outdoors, while still staying at a safe temperature for the plants.

Given today using an unknown neighbor’s weather station we had a high of 48.2F and low of 35.1F I still have some time before I can safely bring my tomatoes/cucumbers outside but they should be toughened (hardening) up and ready to go when it is.

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

Time lapse video of cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers in grow box

15.8 years ago cucumbers, indoor growbox, peppers, tomato

As you can see they are starting to take over the even larger box and the camera.

Tags: growbox, pepper plants, tomato plants

EasyBloom plant sensor review

15.8 years ago computer, EasyBloom, electronics, gadget, garden planning, product review

I will admit, I have a weakness for electronic gadgets, when I got wind of the EasyBloom I just had to try it out.  The EasyBloom plant sensor is a device with built-in sensors to measure light intensity, humidity, temperature, and moisture content in your soil.  It has three basic modes: Recommend, Monitor, and Water.

With the Recommend setting you place the EasyBloom into a location you want to grow something, let it sit there for at least 24 hours, plug it into your computer, and it will provide a detailed analysis of your planting area and provide a list of plants that would thrive in that location.

The Monitor setting allows you to diagnose problems with a particular plant.  You first define the type of plant you want to monitor, turn on the device and place it next to the not so healthy plant, water, return 24 hours later, and plug it again into your computer.  It will use the data stored in the sensors to give you a diagnosis to what the plant’s ailment might be..  Of course, this will not diagnose various pest or disease issue but can let you know if you have planted a little too early, in the wrong location, or are not watering enough (or too much) based on your soil structure.

Finally it has the water setting which the name should imply, will notify you when you need to water your plants.

To test this thing out I had three locations in mind to take measurements, each of which would provide a huge diversity of readings.

First, I put the EasyBloom in my grow box in the Recommend mode.  I have complete control over the temperature and lighting I definitely could confirm the devices accuracy and I expected to see decent diversity of plants recommended.  After placing the device in my grow box for almost 24 hours (see missing results below)

Overall the readings were nearly exactly what I expected though I was hoping to get a full sun rating, guess I may need to add an extra bulb to the box.  Even with my conditions it did recommend 176 plants that I could grow inside it to maturity, though I am going to demand a rematch after adding a little more light

• 

  Second, I brought the sensor and set it up next to my office window.  Currently I am growing Lemon Verbena I transplanted from my garden.  I wasn’t concerned about moisture content so for this reading I didn’t include the moisture sensor and here were the results that were returned.

• 

  After this result I felt a little better about my grow box since it at least it was beating of an eastern facing window sill.  With this result the program recommended 92 shade loving plants with Lemon Verbena not being one of them, though I have been providing some supplemental light to the plants.

  Finally, I used the EasyBloom on my southern facing fence line plot (where I normally grow my cucumbers and tomatoes)  This is where I wondered of the usefulness of EasyBloom to actually give good information about planning a garden in the offseason.  Though I can not grow tomatoes outside right now due to cold, would it still let me know that it was still possible.  Well here are the readings:

  

  When I put the sensor outside it was raining pretty hard so passed the “weather proof” test.  Though it did clear up the next day which is reflected in the “Full Sun” light reading.  This was the obvious winner with 3458 plants recommended with the over 5000 in their database.

  In conclusion, I will be the first to admit that the EasyBloom would not be on the necessity list for gardening tools, but for a beginning gardener it could provide some valuable incites to help your first few years be much more successful.  For nerds/geeks like me it is a pretty cool toy, that I will be sure to be using in testing new lighting and grow box designs in the future.

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