Late bloomers
15.5 years ago fall crops
Last February my 7-year-old daughter and I attended the Northwest Flower and Garden show for the first time, which is back on next year if you haven’t yet heard the good news. During our visit my daughter purchased a single dahlia tuber from Swan Island Dahlias.
We carefully followed the detailed planting instructions and it grew to about 5 feet by the end of the summer, though there were no blooms emerging. With Fall coming upon us we both were getting a little worried we wouldn’t see anything this year. Fortunately the plant finally started sharing some late blooms while the rest of our garden is more in the dying off state.
Tags: led, outdoor plants
How to determine your seed germination rate
15.5 years ago germination, seed saving, seed storing, seeds
Whether you are trying to determine if those seeds you have been stored for 3-4 years are still good or questioning your ability to harvest seeds on your own testing germination is a great way to take away from of the guesswork and avoid disappointment next spring.
The process is very simple, I believe I did the same thing in second grade during our plant section. Though that was to observe how a seed sprouts/roots the concept is exactly the same.
Take a wet paper towel and place 10 seeds on it and place the wet paper towel in a Ziploc bag. After a few days (or weeks depending on the normal germination rate) check back on your seeds and count how many sprouted.
In my case six out of ten of the jalapeno seeds sprouted. So just do the simple math using the following formula:
Germination rate = (# seeds sprouted/# total seeds sprouted) X 100
So in my case:
(6 seeds sprouted/10 seeds total) X 100 = 60% germination rate
Of course the more seeds you use in your “trial” the more accurate the results will be for my purposes the error rate is good enough for me.
If I was a seed seller this would be disastrous since most distributors have germination limits (90-95%), but given these are for my own use and I have about 300 more seeds that I will use no major loss. Though I will need to remember when I plant these out I will want to plant 2 seeds per cell to have good odds one of the seeds will germinate.
Another option is to give your 4 year old a handful of seeds and a pot full of dirt and see if most of them sprout. Much less scientific but my daughter didn’t seem to notice.
Tags: garden seeds, outdoor plants
Peppers sprouting in grow box (time lapse)
15.5 years ago indoor growbox, peppers
Well slightly more exciting than watching grass grow but for something that takes several weeks to complete is definitely worth a watch. If you watch carefully you can even see the automatic watering in action.
Joining the sprouts is a mature pepper plant which has been flowering and daisy seedling my 7 year old planted hoping it will flower as well.
Tags: garden seeds, growbox, outdoor plants, pepper plants
Do have have to follow the directions on the back of my seed packet?
15.6 years ago garden planning, seeds
Though the advice on the back of a seed packet gives some great information, they are recommendations and their advice may not exactly apply to your garden.
First is row spacing, many times you read something like “plant seeds 3 inches apart in rows 1 foot apart” This brings up some immediate logic of why can the plants be 3 inches apart one way but 12 inches in another. This sort of thinking the premise for intensive gardening techniques such as square foot gardening. This is where instead of growing your plants in rows you plant them in a grid pattern making best use of your growing space.
Now even these spacing requirements are actually optional. All plants compete for resources to survive. This can be sunlight (or even shade from sunlight), nutrients, water, airflow, etc. Depending on the quality of your soil and frequency of watering you can push the limits of your growing space. Assuming you add some fresh compost easy season and possibly do some side dressing with an organic fertilizer like fish emulsion or alfalfa pellets you can easily reduce this space and still have high yields. I did just that with my cherry tomato plants whose seed packet is above. I planted these about a foot apart and got great growth and yields.
One other factor is how you grow. If I was growing my tomatoes in cages my foot space probably wouldn’t even be technically possible but since I grew them on a netting this allowed for spread out much more naturally and provide adequate sunlight and airflow. Keep this in mind when growing sprawling plants such as cucumbers and squash using some vertical space can free up the valuable growing space on the ground.
The last factor depends on when you are going to pick them. If you are growing onions to simply pick as green onions you don’t have to give then the 3-4 inches needed for their bulbs to grow. You could easily plant an inch apart since you are going to pick them before they are competing for resources. A similar idea is growing for micro greens, plant picked when just a few inches tall.
Though I wouldn’t say to completely ignore the back of your seed packets, just make sure to use it as a guide not a requirement.
Tags: compost, garden seeds, organic vegetables, outdoor plants, tomato plants
How to use Vegetronix soil moisture sensor (VG400) on Arduino
15.6 years ago arduino, moisture sensor
With the summer starting to come to a close it has been time for me to start thinking back to the computerized grow box. I have been doing some considerable work on the electronics and software over the summer. Better to break stuff while the plants are outside and not while killing them inside.
Though I have been happy with my homemade gypsum soil sensors I decided to try out a commercial option hoping for better accuracy and longer life. This is important with my current plans to include automatic watering to the latest version of my grow box. Don’t want to wake up to a flood in the garage due to a broken sensor. After some looking I came across the Vegetronix VG400 which measures the dielectric constant of the soil using transmission line techniques. Which I have no idea what that means but sounds impressive.
The hookup couldn’t be simpler, red wire to 3V, bare wire to ground, and black wire to an analog input. As you can see below in my completely not to scale diagram below.
From here it all comes down to some simple code to write on the Arduino to get some values.
| void setup() { // Setup serial Serial.begin(9600); }void loop() { Serial.println(analogRead(0)); delay(200); // wait 200 milliseconds |
Upload the code to the Arduino and now I can get a moisture value from the analog input between 0 and 614 (0-3 volts) depending on the degree of water saturation.
Though not as hacky as my PS2 controller moisture sensor solution definitely more elegant and reliable. Stay tuned for more details of other improvements to the computer controlled grow box.
Tags: arduino, cheap, growbox, led, outdoor plants, vegetables
Big events this week
15.6 years ago kids, sunflowers
My four five year old has been patiently been waiting for the “color sunflower” she planted from seed at a friends house this spring to finally bloom. Every morning she will run to the kitchen window and check on its progress. It turns out the sunflower was waiting to share her blooms on my daughter’s birthday which was definitely one of her favorite presents that day.
Here she is posing with her flower (still in pajamas)
Tags: garden seeds, outdoor plants
