Anyone into gardening/growing your own food?

[sgreger1]

hey man, your inbox is full, so i'll just cut n paste here.

Oh thanks i'll have to clear it out, it's always full even though I delete everything for some reason. So here's something interesting that happened: I have those 8 basil clones i've been keeping for about 2 weeks, and put one in a DWC under the light, it's not growing much yet but has been doing great over the last 48 hours. The other plant I have in there was a Thai basil plant I bought at the farmers market. That one I put under the light overnight for maybe 10 hours and it got holes burned into it or something. Definitely from the lights. I raise the lights a bit more and hopefully tonight they won't get burned, but i found it funny that the clones did great with the lights right up on them and the transplanted one burned in a matter of hours.

Also I learned how to prune finally and pruned my tomato plants back (I had a pile of leaves that nearly filled up my compost bin..). Turns out I have quite a few tomatoes growing, one which is big enough to be the size of one at the stores but it's still green. It's an heirloom one so I am guessing it will get bigger before it turns red. How long does it take for the tomato to become red once it's turned into a tomato? I have some cherry tomatoes that have been on the vine for 2 weeks and they are still green, though they are growing slowly. Maybe it's the weather, it's been kinda warm (~75 degrees), and then suddenly we had 2 days of rain & ~65 degree weather. Hopefully they will start yielding more soon. Any week now it'll start being 80 degrees every day. My eggplants has like 10 flowers and one of them has bloomed completely open, that thing is about to shit out an eggplant any day now for sure.

As far as the basil goes though, it's all just an experiment at this point. I had 8 clones, so i'm putting them in different systems to see where it does best. I got one in my big ebb&flow system with the larger plants, I got 2 in 5 gallon bucket DWC's, and I got the rest in a cloner. The ones in a cloner have HUGE roots now, at least 6-7 inches, but they never grow. Now that I put them under the CFL light hopefully they will grow, but I expect most of them to die since I don't have anywhere to put them ATM.

How high up to do you keep the lights from your basil? Mine are about maybe 6 inches from the top of the plant right now. I had them less than 2 inches from it, but that burned the thai basil plant's leaves and left a bunch of burned brown holes in it so I had to move it up. I think where I have it now is optimal hopefully. I a split on the light cycle. I have been letting them go for 24/7 light, but I am thinking about letting them have a few hours to cool off like you said. Many people seem to swear they do important stuff during lights out, so maybe that is the way to go. The guy at the hydro store said 24/7 but I think that is what caused the burns.

[voodooman]

hey man, your inbox is full, so i'll just cut n paste here.

been away for the weekend. sounds like you got it right. fluorescents are good for this type of stuff. that's what i had used. think i was using two at about 35w each for that stuff in the pic. the black contraption on the left is an aerogarden. that's DWC. the white thing is something else, that uses aeroponics. i think that's pretty much like your cloner.
for nutrients, i have always used general hydroponics three part flora series. i mix it up a bit different each time, but you can just go by the recommended ratios on the bottle.
people argue about light cycles, but i firmly believe plants need some dark time. they do their respiration, and some important chemical conversions at night. i've forgotten about the details since college though. i'd give at least 6 hours of dark. they won't flower with that.

[sgreger1]

So I bought two 6400k CFL bulbs and put them in my garage as an experiment to grow my basil. Ihad no where else to hang them but in a place that impeded the garage door, but I got it set up so that when the garage opens it moves out of the way, and then when it closes it goes right back into place lol. Pretty awesome, check the video.

[sgreger1]

Here's sort of a front to back of my main system here in pics: Outdoor Hydro - My Grows

[sgreger1]

Hey what kind of light would I need if I were to grow my basil indoors? I kind of want to try that, but havn't tried any hydroponics indoors yet.

As for the bucket system, it makes a lot more sense now that I know it's DTW. I just havn't tried DTW because it seems like I would have to spend a fortune in nutrients and stuff. I relaly want to try that coco fiber soon, is it essentially used the same as hydroton or do you have to do anything special to it?

Aside from the wasting of the nutrients, I imagine DTW is great outdoors since there is no reservoir to get full of bacteria. Then again I havn't had any issues with bacteria so far so hopefully it will stay that way.


Edit: Have you ever thought to try just putting your tomato container in a big bucket and getting a small pump to just circulate the water constantly, so that it uses up all the nutrients from the water before you throw it out?

[voodooman]

and i found a pic of some basil i grew indoors over winter.

[voodooman]

i may make another one and take a few pics in process. not much going on inside it. whole thing is full of coco fiber. the holes help bring oxygen to the roots. it's drain to waste like that bed with the lettuce and stuff. actually that bed drains into the tomato, so it ain't really waste. that's the tube. DTW does use more nutrients than a recirculating system, but if you are careful you can put them to good use. you don't ever want to drain into the sewer or the local water supply. it's a drop in the bucket thing, but it makes serious problems when large scale industrial farmers do it.

[sgreger1]

dood. that's awsome!
looks like you're doing friggin' good for your first time around too.
did you make the site/graphics yourself?

The general layout of it is just a wordpress theme that I tweaked the CSS code to. The logo, graphics and pictures and everything are all made by me though. Made the main logo using adobe illustrator. If you have more pictures of your awesome tomato container there I would love to feature it on the site, it's a great design and I want to show off cool DIY setups people have made for outdoor hydro all over the states. If you have more pics and don't mind me featuring them on there (giving you credit of course) than that would be sweet dude.

The website isn't complete yet but i'll get there eventually, i'm adding a little bit every day. Glad you liked it voodoo!

[sgreger1]

i just put a tomato outside.

i've had good luck with this contraption in the past. five gallon bucket with holes in the side and bottom. lined with wire mesh, and filled with coco. expecting explosive growth in the next few weeks. i live well north of you, so i am a bit behind.

Wow you did a really good job making that, i'm impressed! I'm a little confused though, I see a plastic hose coming into it for watering, but there are holes in the side and bottom of the bucket. How does that work? Does the water pump through constantly, at a drip, or does it flood the bucket at predetermined times throughout the day? Doesn't the water quickly come out of the holes? Is it a drain to waste kind of thing where the water flows through it, and then comes out of the holes and just forms a pool under the bucket or what? I don't think i've seen it like this before with holes in am really curious.

Is the whole thing inside filled completely with coco coir? I still havn't tried coco yet but I hear it is great for outdoors, do you have any more pictures of your kickass design, or what it looks like inside of the bucket?

[voodooman]

i just put a tomato outside.

i've had good luck with this contraption in the past. five gallon bucket with holes in the side and bottom. lined with wire mesh, and filled with coco. expecting explosive growth in the next few weeks. i live well north of you, so i am a bit behind.

[voodooman]

dood. that's awsome!
looks like you're doing friggin' good for your first time around too.
did you make the site/graphics yourself?

[sgreger1]

Hey since there weren't many resources for outdoor hydroponics when I started my grow, I decided to start my own blog so that I could document my various projects and have tutorials, hints, and pretty much focus on outdoor hydroponic growing in general.

Feel free to check it out, it's only been up for like 3 days but I have over 600 pageviews so far which is pretty cool. It's not fully developed and only has like 4 articles right now, but I am adding at least one new thing a day. Check it out and please give some constructive criticism on what shit you do or don't like about it.

OutdoorHydro.com

[sgreger1]

Here we are at week ~6



Whole garden:






The cucumbers are growing at a rate of about 8 cucumbers every 4 days:







My first tomato!






My first cherry tomatoes!

[sgreger1]

it's really a judgement call on you. basil likes some heat, but a hot rez may get slimy. i'd probably do it since it's fairly isolated as you describe. you can learn a lot from reading, and others experiences, but you'll get a feel for it by experience. try something, fail; try something, succeed. don't be afraid to fail.

edit: something i mentioned before: painting that black plastic white will really lower the temp. sometimes i just wrap in a silver foil duck tape from the local big box. works quite well.

I have it where it is now because the cord on it isn't too long and that is where the outlet is. I guess I can go get an extension cord and move it out into the sun. I mean even if the rez temp gets to 80 I still don't think it will be a big deal, I change the water out frequently and like you said it is isolated. I have been using those little mini kids sized water bottles with water in then (frozen) that I dunk in there each morning. It melts pretty quick but the rez doesn't seem to get higher than 78 so far. If basil likes that direct light than it will be worth it.

I am trying to do as much trial and errror as possible this season so i can get it right for next year. <y big problem is that every single flower on every one of my tomato plants has now fallen off. Maybe 50+ flowers. The plants are healthy, the nutrients are not the problem, and there are bees there plus I polinate them, but the flowers bloom all nice and pretty, then after about a week they dry up, and eventually fall off. Maybe it's just not time to have fruit yet. I just hope this trend doesn't continue. Even the setting spray hasn't helped, in fact I almost think it made it worse. Not sure yet.

Gonna build that DIY DWC out of plastic bin from wall mart, throw a few air stones in there and try growing lettuce in some rockwool cubes and net pots. How long do you think it takes lettuce to grow from seed to useable form? I tried starting a lettuce seed in peet moss plugs but it took like 4 weeks and only got an inch high and then nothing. So I let it die. Maybe rockwool will work better.

[voodooman]

it's really a judgement call on you. basil likes some heat, but a hot rez may get slimy. i'd probably do it since it's fairly isolated as you describe. you can learn a lot from reading, and others experiences, but you'll get a feel for it by experience. try something, fail; try something, succeed. don't be afraid to fail.

edit: something i mentioned before: painting that black plastic white will really lower the temp. sometimes i just wrap in a silver foil duck tape from the local big box. works quite well.