How to collect and save onion seeds from your garden
15.9 years ago onions, seed saving, seed storing
Last year I collected cilantro seeds and they were a great success in my garden that this past Spring I made a commitment to myself that I would try to collect more seeds this season. Though I wanted to get more I was able to collect seeds from my onions, jalapenos, and cilantro. The jalapeno seeds were pretty easy I set some seeds aside on a paper towel while making some salsa. After they appeared to be dry I threw them in a brown paper lunch bag.
For the onions once the florets (flower balls you see above) got real ugly and dry and I could see the black seeds emerging I placed them in a paper bag before the birds got to them. I then put the bag on top of our kitchen cabinets and forgot about them for couple months. Today I pulled the bag down and confirmed they definitely were dry. To separate the seeds from the pods I broke apart (which happens easily) and placed the contents into a metal strainer. I gently broken open any remaining pods and agitate the strainer. This causes the small black seeds to move to the bottom, allowing the pods to float to the top and forcing many of the stems to fall through.
I then skimmed off as many of the stems/pods as possible leaving and putting the seeds into a brown paper bag until I can get into town to buy some more manageably sized brown envelopes (recovering from Seattle snowstorm)
After a few minutes of work I now have hundreds of onions seeds which I probably only have use for couple dozen. Seed exchange anyone?
Tags: birds, cheap, cilantro, garden seeds, led, salsa garden, vegetables
Effects of color spectrums on plant growth
15.9 years ago indoor growbox, LEDs, spectograph
I have written about the importance of lumens when growing indoors but the intensity of the light at specific wavelengths can be over even more important. NASA has done some significant research on the subject to determine the possibility of growing leafy vegetables on a trip to Mars using as little electricity as possible to get the most benefit out of every watt. In space any wasted energy (heat or light not used by plant growth needs to be severely limited.
It should not be a surprise that using LEDs is part of the solution they came up with since they use 20-30% of the energy of a comparable HPS (High Pressure Sodium) bulb which is considered very efficient given the lumen output per watt. The most interesting part of their findings was how specific red and blue wavelengths were imperative to the growth of plants and actually could sustain growth with just these limited wavelengths. Given the freezing temperatures and masses of snow on the ground the best use of this information for indoor gardening and specifically my $20 PC Grow Box. Understanding the wavelengths that your artificial lights creates can help you have increased plant growth and save on your electricity bill at the same time.
When evaluating which light you must consider wavelength and also the intensity of the light at that wavelength. A tool to do exactly this is a spectrograph, which you can purchase, make your own (this was a fun project with the kids), or just trust other peoples readings. I chose made my own, but am displaying results (led museum) since I would have to estimate the intensity based on the brightness of the spectrum created which would lack some accuracy.
Just to get some perspective, this is what how various light sources appear to a spectrograph:
| Sunlight |  |
| Florescent Bulb |  |
| Incandescent bulb |  |
| Low power blue LED (5mm) |  |
| Low power red LED (5mm) |  |
| Low power white LED |  |
As you can see incandescent appears to be the closest to matching the wavelengths and intensities of sunlight though it we need to remember that the orange/yellow/green wavelengths provide essentially are wasted from the plant’s perspective due to natural reflection of these colors. So if a light looks bright to you, there is a good chance you are wasting electricity, as humans our eyes respond well to these wavelengths why we will find these bulbs to be much “brighter” from our perspective. The fluorescent bulb is a good example where we see this light as bright for plants other than the small slices spectrum much of the light is unusable. I have had good luck growing indoors with CFLs along with incandescent, but from the information above I my results cold have less spectacular if hadn’t included the incandescent bulb. At the time the only reason I used it was to generate a little extra heat on some of the cold nights.
The key point is I could easily have much better results using significantly less power. According to NASA’s research the most efficient configuration is to only have red/blue LEDs consisting primarily of red (80-85%) with the remaining (15-20%) being blue LEDs. I would recommend replacing the some of the of the blue LEDs with white LEDs to provide a full spectrum including a pretty intensive blue spectrum in itself. As an added bonus this will provide some “human” light in orange/yellow/green spectrum to allow us humans to view plants with less strain.
By replacing the two 24 watt CFL and one 80 watt incandescent bulb with a few hundred LEDs I could drop at least 124 watts with my new configuration. Assuming I am running my grow box every day for 14 hours a day this could save me over $45 a year as well as just being the more environmentally conscious thing to do.
So during these cold winter months if you grow indoors whether just for seedlings or vegetables all year round be sure to remember that not all indoor lights are created equal.
Tags: cheap, garden seeds, grow lights, growbox, led, outdoor plants, vegetables
Another way for your plants to talk to you
15.9 years ago electronics, water
If the Botanicalls DIY Plant Twitter Kit is out of your technical expertise (or just too ashamed to have your plants tell on you) There is another product out there called Thirsty Light which you place in your plants and when the light blinks when you have neglected your watering duties. At only $10 this is not a bad investment for gardening nerds like me. You also have the option of pulling it out and checking the moisture in all of your plants to see who else you have neglected.
Tags: cheap, led, outdoor plants, vegetables
Broto Domestic Greenhouse grows plants through aeroponics
15.9 years ago aeroponics, hydroponics, indoor growbox
If you want something that is a little more aesthetically pleasing than the $20 PC Grow box and don’t have the counter space for an AeroGarden then the Broto Domestic Greenhouse might be the right option for you. Information such as price and if it will actually be commercially available seem to be missing, but seems to be a completely self contained aeroponics solution and given the use of LEDs for lighting I would imagine it would be a fairly low power consumer.
Tags: cheap, growbox, led, outdoor plants, vegetables
Control two 120v electrical outlets with your computer
15.9 years ago computer power control, electronics, solid state relay
Here is one more component for "Project Everbearing" which requires the ability to toggle a 120V power source using my PC. Now there are a few interesting applications for this, home automation, music synced Christmas display, or just the nerd factor of being able to say I can turn on my coffee maker from your web enabled phone. Whatever your need, hopefully with these instructions you can do this yourself.
If we had lawyers, they probably would want us to say this:
WARNING: I am not an electrician and do not pretend to be one. I do not know the specific building electrical codes of your area, so please be sure your wiring is completed under the proper safety code for your area. As always, using high voltage electricity can result in self-electrocution or burn down your house if not done safely so if you are not comfortable doing this wiring please contact a qualified professional.
Materials:
- 2 – 20 amp solid state relays (got off eBay for $4.00 each)
- 1 – Outlet box (Home Depot for $2.00)
- 2 – 20 amp outlets (Home Depot for $1.25 each)
- 1 – 2 outlet switch plate (Home Depot for $0.50 each)
- 1 – PC power cable
- 2 – LEDs (optional)
The outlet I am plugging this into is 15 amps, though my use for this project will be considerable under this but best to place for worst case scenario and I would rather trip a circuit breaker than who knows what happens when solid state relays or outlet exceeds their limits. I could have saved a couple dollars and gone with cheaper mechanical relays but solid state will last much longer even with frequent toggling on/off.
Now for the build, this was actually surprisingly easy and took less than an hour from start to finish. I first fed the power cable through and three stands of low voltage wire through access in back. I cut about 6 inches of wire off the end of the power cable. Using the continuity feature of my voltmeter I verified the hot, neutral, and ground, then checked one more time. I attached the neutral and ground in parallel to both outlets. I then connected the hot from the power cord to left side of both SSRs. I then used the 6 inches of wire I cut off to connect from left side of SSR on both and connected a wire from the left side to the corresponding outlet.
Now to add the ability to turn the things off/on using low voltage. I hooked up the wires fed through the back (which will later be hooked up to computer’s parallel port) green to positive SSR #1, red to SSR #2, and black to both grounds. Now with 3-12 volts of power to these connections will activate the SSR and provide power to the outlet. For a little added effect and easy confirmation everything is working (even with the unit unplugged) I also attached corresponding red/green LEDs that match the wires (I am getting old color coding helps) I was doing this hack indoors though first thought was to use my soldering iron to burn a nice little hole into the outlet plate but didn’t want to stink up the house, so risked using a drill instead. As you can see from the pictures I should have gone outside. With a little solder and hot glue everything seemed to be staying together. 
With all the wiring completed, I carefully packed everything into the outlet box. The SSR were already pretty snug but I added little but of hot glue in case they feel like shifting around after everything was put back together. Being careful that wires are staying secure and no shorts are being created carefully screw the outlets to the outlet box. Finish it up with a (cracked) outlet plate and the assembly is complete.
Now the scariest part still remains, which is testing, first part is plugging this monster in. If you plug it into the wall and no sparks occur you are in pretty good shape but not in the clear yet. Plug something like a nightlight into your switchable outlet box, should be off now. Using a 9-volt battery connect black to (-) and red to (+) if you didn’t cross your wires anywhere the red LED should come on and appliance plugged in should get power. Now switching to the other side do the same with the green wire and appliance comes on with sparks or fires looks like a successful build. 
Tags: cheap, coffee grounds, led, vegetables
Create a cheap PC thermometer with PS2/Gamepad Controller
16 years ago cheap, electronics, PC thermometer
You might be thinking what does this post have to do with vegetable gardening? Bear with me, I don’t have time to do a complete write up on it right now but let’s just say this is a component for “Project Everbearing” I gave my 7-year-old the honors of coming up with the codename, since he is my faithful assistant and cheerleader.
For my current project I need the ability to measure temperature with my PC. Now there are plenty of gadgets out there I could have simply purchased a commercial product for around $40+ and saved myself a lot of time but I really wanted to brush some dust off my soldering iron and try to save some cash, this is the CHEAP vegetable gardener after all.
After a little searching online seemed like a good place to start was to pick up a few thermoresistors which is a special type of resistor which increases resistance as the temperature increases. With no luck at my local RadioShack I picked up a few on EBay for less than $1 a piece.
Now comes the hard part of actually using them, since the computer I was using was old enough it still have an old 15-pin game port I went that route first. This would have been my easiest method of implementation by simply connecting the resistor to pin 1 and pin 3, since analog joysticks work with variable resistance as well. They use what is called a potentiometer which as the user moved the stick to left/right it raises/lowers the resistance. If this would have worked all that I would have needed to do is get the measurement and start calibration. Unfortinately this port was no longer responsive so I have to go with another option
Fortunately I never throw anything electrical out and pulled an old PS2 controller with an USB adapter out of my junk box. Knowing that the analog controllers also work with potentiometers, I found my victim. After removing the screws in the back I started warming up the old soldering iron to completely void the long gone warrantee on the controller. Now all I needed to do was attach two wires connected to the thermoresistors, solder the wires to the point connected to the potentiometer and that is pretty much did it. Given there are two sticks with X and Y axises for both you could have up to 4 temperature sensors (I chose to go with 2) The controller did does have one feature where it automatically turns off the analog control after no use for a couple minutes. After thinking about some more complicated solutions, I went low tech by forcing the L2 button to the on position by applying a piece of electrical tape over it.
I won’t go into the gritty details of the software to actually get the numbers from the joystick since M Harris has already done that so well on his CodeProject writeup.
Last comes calibration, when I purchased the thermoresistors they also included detailed specifications on the tested resistance values at various temperatures, which with a little bit of physics and some fun math, in theory I could have avoided the whole calibration but given the length of wire and/or my sloppy soldering could skew the accuracy of the temperatures I opted for a more manual approach. I put my “thermometer” in a plastic bag along with my trusty $5 digital thermometer and dropped it in an ice cold water bath, while recording the temperature changes as the temperature increased to room temperature. I followed this by doing the same with hot water bath until it lowered to room temperature, recording values as the temperature decreased.
With this data I entered it into Microsoft Excel and got a nice graph (see below) which gave my nice magic formula of:
Temperature = 0.0059(joystick X Axis position) – 138.57
By simply doing the math I now can capture values on my PC.
Tags: cheap, led, vegetables
