The Cheap Vegetable Gardener

Why should you have a grow box?

16.2 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

The most profitable plants in your vegetable garden

16.3 years ago cheap, cilantro, garlic bulbs, organic, seedling, seeds, vertical gardening, winter garden

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.

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.

     

Tags: cilantro, compost, garlic bulbs, herb garden, organic vegetables, outdoor plants, pepper plants, tomato plants, vegetables

Propagating peppermint and lemon verbena – UPDATE

16.4 years ago lemon verbena, peppermint

As you can see from the picture, my peppermint and lemon verbena propagation has come a long quite well. I did have a little aphid infestation on the peppermint plant which I attempted to take care of with manual pinching, but eventually I gave up and chopped off the top off the plant. I then followed up with a hefty dose of insecticidal soap to the soil and the remaining stem. I would have preferred an even more natural method such as ladybugs but sure my officemates would prefer I didn’t.

The lemon verbena did pretty well on its own with one exception I think I mistakenly broke or cut the top off the plant so there was no vertical growth and just crazy shoots horizontally so I cut most of these off and replanted to 3 new starts which have taken off as well as their parent.

Tags: cheap, outdoor plants, pepper plants, peppermint plant, vegetables

Hey, those cucumbers look like pickles

16.6 years ago cucumbers, summer

That was a statement my oldest daughter (6 years old) made which I must admit I am pretty sure I was much older before I had that thought. Seemed like a good opportunity for teaching the kids were pickles come from and a great excuse to make some sweet summer pickles. While heading out the door to get some spices we were lacking my wife told me, "these better not be $20 pickles." I have some history here, taking that advice I only came back with just mustard seed and decided to improvise the rest, here is what I came up with.

Cheap Vegetable Gardener’s Sweet Summer Pickle recipe

• 1 cucumber
• 1 clove garlic
• 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1 cup water
• 3 T sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper flakes
• 1/4 tsp cloves
• 1/8 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp coriander (mine were still a little green from garden)
• 1/4 tsp mustard seed
• 1/4 tsp black pepper

Directions: Pretty easy, just cut the cucumber into slices 1/4 in thick and add all ingredients to sealable container, shake well, and place in refrigerator. Wait at least 3 days and eat. Once empty just add more sliced cucumbers and repeat.

Tags: cheap, garden seeds, garlic bulbs, pepper plants, vegetables

Propagating peppermint and lemon verbena

16.7 years ago lemon verbena, peppermint, strawberries

Starting next week I will have an office at work with a window so of course I have to start thinking about what sort of vegetation I can put on that ledge. The first thing that came to mind was peppermint and lemon verbena seemed like a good choice since they provide an excellent fragrance and I can eat/drink them if I have to stay late and get tired of free soda. They can also be neglected for a weekend or brief vacation without relying on someone else to take care of them.

Unless this is the first post of mine you have never read or didn’t look at the title of this blog, I am cheap. I could have easily just payed $4-5 for a couple plants but I wanted to do this for free. First I prepared two terracotta pots with a mixture of potting soil and perlite and got the mixture about as wet as possible and set them aside.

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For the peppermint, the process to propagate is pretty simple. The stuff is tough and most talented people can not successfully kill the stuff if they try, so dig around in your existing peppermint until you find a good bunch of roots. Now the tricky part pull/cut/tear/scream whatever it takes to separate that clump of peppermint from the rest. Very obvious why this stuff can take over a bed. Take that clump of roots with hopefully some of the peppermint plant still surviving the extraction ordeal and place in a pre-dug hole and cover up with potting mix.

The lemon verbena is a little calmer process, to propagate this you use a process of taking a softwood cutting, which includes simply cutting a stem in which shows some decent life (green) in it. You want to make sure that your cut does not crush the stem so a sharp knife my work better than shears/scissors but that depends completely on the quality and sharpness of your equipment. Cut off any leaves on the bottom one third of the plant and place in potting mix leafing the remaining two thirds above the soil line.

Both of these plants currently have a pretty fragile root system at the moment so keeping their roots (or soon to be generated roots) moist is very important. To help with this I have covered both plants with plastic, if all goes well I will not kill these things and will have a nice addition to my new office come Monday.

Tags: cheap, led, outdoor plants, pepper plants, peppermint plant

Ok, so now where did the the cilantro go?

16.7 years ago cilantro, salmonella, tomato

Well I wrote a couple weeks about my surprise of the missing tomoatos, last week I went back to my favorite Mexican restaurant at work and noticed cilantro has also been removed as a choice of condiments. Going back to my desk I discovered that cilantro and peppers have been added to the list of produce that has been reported tainted with salmonella. With the whole law of supply and demand maybe I should start selling my cilantro and tomotoes at the local farmers market.

Tags: cheap, cilantro, pepper plants, tomato plants, vegetables