Cheap Hydroponic Bean sprouter
15 years ago cheap, ebb and flow, hydroponics
Maybe not the most hygienic solution but definitely cheap, innovative, and low maintenance. I’ll stick to my ebb and flow design, but thought I would share for those feeling adventurous.
Tags: cheap, outdoor plants, vegetables
Small facelift to site
15 years ago Uncategorized
As you may be able to tell I have been doing a little work on the site. I finally got around to moving from Blogger to WordPress, I never had any real problems with Blogger, I just have a few things I want to do with the site that requires me to self-host and WordPress was the way to go.
I am still doing some clean up so please bear with the mess for a little while.
The Cheap Vegetable Gardener
Tags: cheap, vegetables
Simple and cheap homemade ebb and flow hydroponics system
15 years ago cheap, ebb and flow, hydroponics
Though not my first hydroponic system this is is definitely a little more complicated than my last attempt of an fogger system created last year. This time I decided to go with an Ebb and Flow system, where the concept it pretty simple, flood the planting area with water nutrients and let it drain, wait a defined amount of time and then repeat. For this build I had a few requirements:
- Must be inexpensive: Hey this is the cheap vegetable gardener site
- Must be small: I have a limited space to grow and nutrients can be expensive and given what I am growing is legal don’t really need $20 basil
- Must be safe from flooding: Though this is running in my garage, I really don’t want to come in with 10/20 gallons of water/nutrients on my floor.
- Could be adapted for alternate hydroponic system.
Given these requirements, this is what I came up with and how I built it:
Materials
- 18 gallon opaque Rubbermaid container (happened to have one of these around
- 5 gallon basin — SLUGIS box from Ikea ($5.99)
- vinyl tape (plumbers tape)
- 1 inch hole saw
- 1 inch threaded (diameter) to 3/4 PVC adapter
- 3/4 inch threaded (diameter) to 1/2 in hose adapter
- 2 3/4 inch PVC caps
- Cheap pond/fountain pump (100 GPH)
- 1 foot of 1/2 inch plastic tubing
- 2 foot 3/4 inch PVC pipe (only need couple inches but smallest length I could buy)
- aquarium/food grade silicon (optional I used this to ensure very watertight seal but found not necessary)
Construction
Take the 5 gallon basin and drill two 1 inch holes in the middle of each side. One whole should be drilled from the top and the other should be drilled from the bottom.�
Take both threaded adapters and apply liberal amount of vinyl tape.
Screw in the 1/2 inch hose adapter from the bottom with just barely enough clearance to pop through. When the pump stops the water will drain through this same hole.
For the overflow pipe, screw in the 3/4 inch PVC adapter in from the top until hand tight.
Take both caps and drill in a bunch of holes slightly smaller than your media. The basic idea is you don’t want some Hydroton clay balls falling into your pump or reservoir.
Cut about 2 inches of 3/4 PVC pipe and attach to overflow and top with PVC cap with dozen or so holes in it.
Lastly attach the 1/2 plastic tube to your pump and place everything on top of your 18 gallon Rubbermaid tub (which fits perfectly and is very sturdy) Fill with water nutrients and hook up your water pump to a 24 hour timer (or grow box controller)
Here is the Ebb & Flow system in action, as you can see very simple but very cheap and versatile.
Tags: cheap, growbox, led, outdoor plants, vegetables
LED/Christmas light projects
Just a friendly reminder to pick up some discounted LED or non-LED Christmas lights for some of my previous projects
Christmas LED Grow Box
Basically take a old Rubbermaid container and drill some holes and insert lights and you have your own Christmas light LED grow box. This worked great last year to hold my seedlings until they were ready to move into the bigger grow box in the garage. Here are some posts on construction and updates:
Cheap LED Light and Grow Box
Christmas light LED grow box – Update #1
Christmas light LED grow box – Update #2
Supplemental Christmas LED Light
Similar idea to the LED grow box, though used in addition to your normal grow lights for a little additional red wavelength light, see posts below for complete construction directions:
Make your own supplemental LED grow light
Heating row tunnels (or grow box) with non-LED lights
Replacing your old Christmas lights with LEDs to save on your electricity bill? You can use your old regular old Christmas lights to heat your row tunnels to increase the temperature by about 10 degrees to help get your plants out a ahead of schedule. I have been using some of mine in my grow box to help during some of our colder nights this winter.
Heating row tunnels and grow box with Christmas lights
Tags: cheap, garden seeds, grow lights, growbox, led, outdoor plants, vegetables
Giveaway: $1354.83 worth of fresh produce
15 years ago giveaway, harvest, seed saving, seeds
Ok there is a little catch, you have to plant the seeds and grow the produce yourself and have perfect weather and unlimited space to do it. Over the past season I have intentionally harvested more seeds than I needed just for the purpose of sharing them so here is your first chance to get some of CVG’s seed stash. This should be a good addition to your current selection of seeds or great for a person just starting out next year.
The harvest values were calculated using my most profitable vegetables in your garden post, so numbers are estimated but I tried to be as accurate as possible. Below are also links to my harvesting techniques of most of the “Self” seeds below (just realized I never wrote up cilantro and radish seed harvesting so expect to see these soon).
CVG’s Seed Stash (Variety Pack)
| Seed | Seed Type |
Seeds (Est.) | Harvest Value (Est.) |
| Jalapeno Pepper | Self Collected | 10 | $ 45.00 |
| Radish | Self Collected | 30 | $ 11.66 |
| Lavender | ? | 50 | $ 10.00 |
| Cilantro/Coriander | Self Collected | 100 | $ 525.00 |
| Bhut Jolokia pepper | Self Collected | 10 | $ 150.00 |
| Sunflower (Big) | Self Collected | 20 | $ 10.00 |
| Spinach | Self Collected | 25 | $ 11.25 |
| Carnation | ? | 30 | $ 5.00 |
| Onions (White) | Self Collected | 50 | $ 12.94 |
| Tomato (Early Girl) | Hybrid | 15 | $ 233.55 |
| Corn (Sweet Yellow) | Self Collected | 25 | $ 31.25 |
| Pumpkin | Self Collected | 15 | $ 150.00 |
| Carrots (Finger) | Hybrid | 70 | $ 15.58 |
| Sunflower (Evening Sun) | Hybrid | 10 | $ 10.00 |
| Cucumber | Heirloom | 30 | $ 116.10 |
| Peas | Self Collected | 30 | $ 12.50 |
| Mint (Spearmint) | Hybrid | 50 | $ 5.00 |
| Total | $ 1,354.83 |
As always just enter a comment and a winner will be randomly selected using my patented “CVG’s Contest Winner Pickorama” on Jan 1st, 2010. This contest is open to everyone inside/outside the United States pending any export/import of regulations of sending seeds, which I am still doing some research on.
Tags: cheap, cilantro, garden seeds, outdoor plants, pepper plants, tomato plants, vegetables
EcoSmart Garden Insect Giveaway: Winner
15 years ago giveaway
Using the “CVG’s Contest Winner Pickorama” it has determined that =*N*= is the winner of their choice of an earth friendly product from EcoSmart. Please contact my using the link in the header with the product you want and you contact information and I will pass the info to EcoSmart. Thanks for everyone that entered and for those who didn’t win check in the next couple hours for another exciting CVG giveaway.
Tags: cheap, garden seeds, vegetables
