The Cheap Vegetable Gardener

Hydroponics 101 “ Introduction to Hydroponics

15.8 years ago aeroponics, hydroponics, indoor seed starting, water

By definition hydroponics is a technique of growing plants (without soil) with water containing dissolved nutrients.  No soil is used but in most cases a growing medium is used to support the plant’s root system.  A few examples of popular mediums are perlite, vermiculite, Rockwool, coconut coir, clay pellets, peat moss, sand, and even small pebbles.  The basic idea behind the medium is to allow water to flow but also allow oxygen to be available to the roots.  Even if you are not planning on growing hydroponically, I would definitely recommend learning some about the subject since many of the concepts can help you get a different perspective to have a better understanding about plants needs in various states of growth even with conventional soil growing.  If you really think about it if you have ever added water soluble plant food while watering your indoors plants, you technically have already done some hydroponic gardening.

Advantages:
The primary advantage if hydroponics is the increased speed of growth in you plants.  This is possible because you are making life really easy for your plants, they just relax and just keep getting bigger.  Even with a small root system they are getting exactly what they need to thrive thus spending more energy upstairs instead of expanding their root system.  This is possible by careful control of nutrients in the water solution which the plant is completely dependent since the growing medium does not provide any nutritional support.  Another benefit is automation, though some work is required to monitor nutrient levels and pH of the solution once everything is setup you can walk away knowing that your plants will be happy.  Given the in most cases the systems are basically closed very little water is lost to evaporation so that means less wasted water (and less times you have to add water)

Disadvantages:
To create a large scale setup, there can be a significant cost to get started in hydroponics.  Purchasing water/air pumps various nutrient solutions during various growth stages, monitoring equipment, pH balancing, etc.  No worries though, there is a cheap solution to all of this which is my current project which I will write on shortly.  When automation fails, a simple pump failure can kill off your plants in hours depending in your medium since they plants require short and frequent watering since they have no way of maintaining the moisture over a long period of time.

How it works:
The great thing about hydroponics is essentially anything that holds water can be used to create a hydroponic system.  Even commercial solutions use your regular old Rubbermaid storage totes and 5 gallon buckets.  The uniqueness begins with the method in which you get the solution to your plants which I will explain some of the popular methods in detail below:

• Wicking — This is one of the simplest and cheapest methods of hydroponics.  The basic concept is you take a material such as cotton (shredded sock/T-shirt) and surround it with growing medium and place one end in the nutrient solution.  This is where the name implies, the solution is wicked to the roots of the plant.  You can make this even simpler by using a medium that has some wicking properties itself (perlite/vermiculite are good examples) and suspend the medium directly in the solution.  Mediums such as peat moss, Rockwool, and coconut coir should not be placed directly in the solution since they may absorb too much solution and suffocate the plant.
• Bubbler — This is also a simple and inexpensive solution where you suspend the roots directly in the nutrient solution and by leveraging a powerful air pump and air stone you create enough oxygen around the roots to prevent suffocation.  This can also work as flavor of aeroponics (which I will explain more below) where the force of the rising bubbles create a light spray to keep the roots moist which are suspended in air.  One benefit of this method is limited points of failure air pumps are normally pretty reliable and even if you neglect keeping your solution up the bubbling can create enough moisture to keep your plant alive for quite awhile.
• Ebb and Flow — A simpler way of thinking about this is flood and drain, using a water pump at a specified interval you flood the growing area with nutrient solution allowing it to slowly drain back into the reservoir.  You then repeat this process keeping the roots/medium at the desired wetness.  This method is a little more expensive than the previous methods since it requires a pump and timer that can turn off/on several times a day at short intervals.  Just to give you an idea how to build a system like this, find a Rubbermaid tub with a pretty deep lid.  Flip the lid over and place a small hole in the bottom (idea it will drain but slower than pump can fill) add some plants with medium, hook up a timer and you have a system.  A major advantage to this method is that it gives you more control over the watering which can be very important especially if you are growing plants that are accustomed to slight drying out periods.
• Drip — This method uses a timer (slow constant drip is also an option) and a water pump to provide nutrient solution to all of your plants using rubber tubing.  This does have an advantage over Ebb Flow were you can control specific watering needs of plants at different stage and the ability to spread out your plants with a little extra tubing.
• Aeroponics — Aeroponics is the process of growing plants in an air or mist environment without the use of soil or an aggregate medium.  Now there are some schools of thought one what exactly is considered a “mist” which separates aeroponics from “pure aeroponics” but for this discussion we will define it as directly watering roots just hanging in the air.  If you have heard of the AeroGarden this is a commercialized version of this technique, so this can definitely be an easy means of entry into aeroponics.  There are two typical ways to get nutrients to the exposed roots: fog and spray nozzles both of which providing a fine mist to the tender roots.  Both of these methods due have some drawbacks though.  Ultrasonic foggers can accumulate sediments from the nutrient solution on their discs but can be periodically cleaned and occasionally need replacement of their ceramic/Teflon discs.  Nussle on the other hand can get clogged due to the same sediments so though these methods are close to “Set it and forget it” you do need to check on them periodically for maintenance.  Though these techniques sound really complicated and expensive they really are not too bad.  You can use Pond Foggers which run $10-100+ depending on the number of discs they hold which directly to the volume of fog they will produce.  If you are doing a small experimental setup a one disc is a good place to start.  If you do go the larger setup route I definitely would advise spending a little extra for Teflon coded discs since they will hold up considerable better to the nutrient solution.  As for sprayers most of the materials for this can be found in the sprinkler aisle of you local Home Depot.  You can also create your own by drilling some small holes into a sealed (one open end for water input) PVC tubing, though cleaning a setup like this could be troublesome.

Hydroponics is obviously much different than conventional soil growing, but it definitely can be fun and rewarding to grow effectively in an unconventional way.

Tags: cheap, led, outdoor plants

$3 LED light bulbs coming soon…

15.8 years ago cheap, LEDs

Researchers at Cambridge University have come up with a method to significantly reduce the cost of creating LED light bulbs.  LEDs use gallium nitride and requires being grown on sapphire wafers.  The new technique allows growth on silicon wafer reducing the cost significantly from $28 to $3 per bulb.  The big news for the bulbs is they use 12 times less energy that incandescent bulbs, last for 60 years, and they are far enough in their research that they could come to market in just a two years.  Just imagine, in just a couple years you could be buying your last light bulb(s) of your life, unless you physically break them of course. 

This this so exciting for indoor growing, my cheap LED grow box works great for the small space for seedlings.  When I start thinking of expanding my growing area, the current LED prices make the start-up cost to illuminate a large space is considerable.  Because of this I am forced to resort to CFLs as the more economical solution.  With these innovations we could definately see indoor gardening much more accessible to a greater audience with this financial barrier lifted.  via Gizmodo

Tags: cheap, garden seeds, growbox, led, vegetables

Gardening products I would buy if I wasn’t so cheap

15.8 years ago cheap, compost, germination, indoor seed starting, tomato

Today I got my Gardener’s Supply Companycatalog, this particular catalog is dedicated to items to assist you with your gardening habit.  You should be able to guess from this site I do my best to resist buying anything for the garden I absolutely need, otherwise I make a cheaper alternative.  Well the point of this post is to show what I would like to get if I wasn’t as disciplined.

	They sell these Accelerated Propagation System (APS) seed starting kits which have all the basics you expect from a seed starting kits you would find at your local garden store. They include 6 to 40 cells to plant seedlings and a clear plastic dome to help raise the humidity to provide extra moisture for the tender seedlings.  The bonus in this setup is it also contains a reservoir which holds enough water to keep them moist for up to a week.  With the help of an elevated platform and capillary matting provides just the right amount of water to your plants.  At just $19.95 for the 40 and 24 cells sizes this is one purchase I am still considering, since I never have finished my automatic watering system on my computerized grow box and this makes much better use of space than my plastic tub, newspaper pots, and daily watering method I am doing now.
	Eco-Friendly Cowpots basically planting pots made as a byproduct of processing cow poo.  The poo is dried, composted and mixed with natural fibers creating a completely biodegradable pot which holds up well during growth and transplanting but biodegrades in the soil after several weeks.  I watched an episode of Dirty Jobs which went through the whole process and it was very interesting and environmentally conscience but, unfortunately due to the price tag (about $1 a pot) these are a little over my budget since my newspaper pots are free.
	Gardener’s Revolution Planter – You have probably seen something similar advertised between gardening shows on HGTV (Topsy Turvy) , I know my daughter has and has been talking about growing tomatoes upside down for some time now.  She even on her own came up with a ingenious design to do this (not 5 gallon bucket) which I will write-up when we get around to that project. In case you were wondering the improvement this year (or compared to the TV advertisement) it is the addition of a 1 gallon water reservoir which slowly releases water to the plant as neededSelf watering must be a big seller this year since there are also many other variances of self watering pots in many shapes and sizes with designs similar to the original (to my knowledge) the EarthBox.
	Now definitely in the gadget department the Push-Button Kitchen Scrap Composter can take your everyday kitchen scraps and turn them into compost in less than 11 days. The concept on this one is pretty simple:Food + Heat + Spinning = Compost Of course it crossed my mind of creating something similar myself, but probably would end up burning down the house or if I was lucky just launch partially composted food across the living room at 50 miles per hour.  Given the $299 price tag seems like I will be stuck to waiting 3-6 months for my compost to be created.  Though it would be much more convenient than walking through the snow to add kitchen scraps to the compost.

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

1st Blog-Iversary

15.8 years ago Uncategorized

Exactly one year ago I wrote the first post for The Cheap Vegetable Gardener.  Over this short time I have had a tremendous response, more than I ever had ever imagined.  I wish the January spike (below) would continue into 2009 but much of this was traffic was significantly elevated my the following honorable mentions:

• Hack-a-day (PS2 controller thermometer)
• Hack-a-day (Automated plant growing)
• Top listing on reddit.com/frugal for a few days
• MAKE: Blog: LED light grow box

Thank you to everyone who has read the blog this past year and actively participated with your kind comments.  Without your feedback I probably would have gotten bored and stopped writing many months ago.

Thanks,
The Cheap Vegetable Gardener

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

Why you should check on your grow box (especially if it is computerized)

15.8 years ago blueberry, computer, cucumbers, indoor growbox, strawberries

My day job is in software development, so of course it came to mind that software/hardware can fail while I was making my computerized grow box.  During its inception, I would check on it daily physically or remotely to make sure all was well.  After a couple weeks of this it was so stable that I started to not check quite as often.  Though in my mind there was never any question of if it would crash, it was when. Well that answer came tonight when I decided to check on my strawberries, cucumbers, and blueberry plant (trying to propagate a blueberry plant damaged in recent snow storm)

I noticed the lights were out and turned on the LCD display to see “Unable to find operating system.”  Before anyone screams “you should have used Linux”, the problem was completely hardware related caused by a failed hard drive (not even the one with the operating system).  Unfortunately this was the drive that had the SQL database, so hopefully I will be able to savage some of the data.  Once I got the machine to boot up I saw the temperature was down to 38 degrees (poor little cucumber plants) but fortunately in the time it took to write this post it warmed up to 47.3F 57.7F, so hopefully the cucumbers will feel better in the morning.

Tonight I am adding one more item to my software to do list, a Vista Gadget to monitor the health of the grow box to ensure it is up and running.  This was also a good time to ask the mental question, “When was the last time I backed up my code?”  Code now backed up and am wondering why I am breaking my cardinal rule of always having source control even with a single developer.

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

Why should you have a grow box?

15.8 years ago indoor growbox, indoor seed starting, LEDs, seeds

Other than the “Do you really just grow ‘strawberries’ in your grow box?”  question.  The most common question I have gotten is why exactly do I have a grow box.  Hopefully I will be able to answer this question below, as for the first question the answer is yes (without the fingerquotes)

Necessity:  I am cheap and don’t want to buy all my plants from local nursery or garden center, but do not have a good location inside my house to grow seedlings with a normal table/shelf light setup.  I definitely do not have the space to setup a greenhouse in the backyard.  This unfortunately forces me to do my growing in my cold windowless garage.  Using a grow box allows me to maintain a safe temperature for my plants no matter what the conditions are outside.

Control:  I have nearly complete control of the conditions inside the grow box.  I can provide my plants with the perfect temperature, humidity, lights (intensity and wavelength as well as day/night simulation) and even can simulate a slight breeze using a small fan if desired.  This gives me many advantages which I would not have even if I could grow indoors.  One example of this is growing peppers, which can be fairly difficult in our climate but with some modifications settings in the grow box can create the perfect conditions for it.

Saving Money:  Given my options such as the $20 PC Grow Box and my $6 Christmas Light LED Grow Box the cost of entry is pretty low.  You do have the expense of lighting the thing but given the 48 watts required for the PC Grow Box and 10 watts of the Christmas Light LED Grow Box even those maintenance costs are reasonable.

Portability:  All three of my grow boxes (PC Grow Box, LED Grow Box, Computerized Grow Box) all have a single plug that goes into the outlet and can literally be picked up and moved to another location if needed (try doing that with your greenhouse)

Scalability: Need more space in your grow box?  As little as $6 can get you a new one, or $10 worth of lumber can double the size of your existing one (assuming your old lighting can support the space)  You are limited to what your creativity can imagine.

Fun:  Call me crazy, but I like the idea of tricking my strawberries that it is a nice spring day and get them to start blooming and producing fruit.  If all goes well I can move the plants outside during the real spring and get even more harvest while freeing up some space for more plants.

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