Anyone into gardening/growing your own food?

[sgreger1]

glad to see things going well. for the seeds; no need to pre-soak. i'd give them light nutrients. transplant when roots start to come out of the rockwool.
i like that spiral pvc tube design you posted. don't think it would technically be considered dwc, (deep water culture) but rather more similar to ebb and flow. i may have to try that myself if i get ambitious.

edit: also, basil likes it hot like the tomatoes. so keep 'em warm.

Yah I thought the PVC pipe thin looked pretty awesome. They run it as a business, and sell them to local restaurants and stuff. What's odd is that they sell them for $700, then charge $25 per week to come change nutrients, pesticide, trim plants etc, and then the owner can pick them or plant what they want. It just seems like $700 + $1200 year in maintenance is a lot considering you can only get maybe 20 plants on there, I imagine a restaurant could go through that in a week. There seems to be a market for it though so whatever. I think I could build one of those for about $200 myself, and will probably build one some time this year. It's Water Culture, but not really deep water culture. I mean it's just a constant stream that passes by the roots 24/7 so maybe that is more of an ebb&flow like you said.


I actually decided to get a small aeroponic cloner for the basil. It was $50 and has 8 sites. It's actually made to be a cloner, but would be perfect to grow basil in full time. It's a little black bucket that has 8 sites on it, and you slip the basil clones into it (the guy at the store has awesome basil plants and gave me a bunch of free clones to start off with), and then it has an aeroponic sprinkler system in it that pulls water from the bottom of the bucket and sprays it onto the clone/roots. As the root system developes, it will grow down further into the bucket/rezevoir, and will just live off the water like a DWC setup. Once the roots get big enough to where they are sitting in the water, I will put an airstone down there to keep them oxygenated.

I will post some pictures later, hopefully I am able to get some good basil going. 8 plants should last me pretty good considering it only takes a few weeks to grow.

[voodooman]

yes. i grew basil indoors in a setup similar to the cloner you describe. supplied me with way more than i could use all winter.
that business does sound a bit pricey, but if there is a demand for it then good for them. would be a fun business to get into. i'm sure you could make your own though for much less. just pvc pipe, some fittings, pump, etc.

[voodooman]

also basil is really fun to grow as it can be cloned really easily. i kept taking clones of clones, and grew the same basil for years without going back to seed.

[sgreger1]

yes. i grew basil indoors in a setup similar to the cloner you describe. supplied me with way more than i could use all winter.
that business does sound a bit pricey, but if there is a demand for it then good for them. would be a fun business to get into. i'm sure you could make your own though for much less. just pvc pipe, some fittings, pump, etc.

Sweet, i'm so excited. We use basil in our cooking a LOT so this would be awesome. I didn't know if 8 plants would be enough but I figured it would be a good start, i've never grown them so don't know how much to expect. I'm trying to find out the correct nutrient PPM at the moment but I will figure it out eventually.

I am doing it outdoor right now since I know they like it hot, but can it be done indoors without all the fancy lighting? I am going to just leave it out with my other plants for now since its hot and I have space for it. I hear basil attracts bees for some reason so hopefully it will attract some polinators to my tomatos. The damn flowers grow all pretty but then die and fall off, likely due to lack of polination. I'm sure not sure why that is through since I do see bees out there and there is some wind, plus I go stimulate them with my electric toothbrush to vibrate them a bit. I even tried a calcium setting spray but that seemed to kill them off faster.


I also plan to just keep cloning em forever!

[squeezyjohn]

I don't know - it's the first time for me!

The seeds are tiny and germinate into the tiniest seedlings I have ever seen which is a bit of a challenge. But I think once you get them to establish and can plant them out they're fairly easy. They do seem to be a tasty snack for snails, slugs and caterpillars though - so if you're going organic that might be a problem! I tend to rely on copper rings to stop snails & slugs and pick off caterpillars myself so I can see it being a bit of a battle.

You should definitely do it though. Nothing can be better than mixing the two passions up, eh?

[voodooman]

can't seem to find any of my old pictures.
finally warming up a bit here. this is my lettuce, spinach, and radishes in coco fiber:

[sgreger1]

can't seem to find any of my old pictures.
finally warming up a bit here. this is my lettuce, spinach, and radishes in coco fiber:

Sweet. What kind of system is that, how is it watered?

Also, can you clone lettuce? I want to grow some lettuce in this aeroponic bucket, it seems like it'd be perfect, but i'm not sure what one would do to clone a lettuce :/

[voodooman]

that's drain to waste coco. for now i'm manually irrigating. coco retains a lot of water, so it only needs it about once daily. when it gets really hot, it will need much more. i'm in the process of setting up a second bed, and an automatic irrigation system. will just be a pump on a timer, and some drip tubing.
and you can't really clone lettuce. you need to start from seed, but is does respond quite well to hydro. grows crazy fast.

[sgreger1]

that's drain to waste coco. for now i'm manually irrigating. coco retains a lot of water, so it only needs it about once daily. when it gets really hot, it will need much more. i'm in the process of setting up a second bed, and an automatic irrigation system. will just be a pump on a timer, and some drip tubing.
and you can't really clone lettuce. you need to start from seed, but is does respond quite well to hydro. grows crazy fast.

But how do I grow it from seed and then transplant into my cloner? The cloner has these little inserts made to hold stems from clones, I don't know how I will get the lettuce in there.

Here is my basil setup:

[voodooman]

yeah. it may be tough to do in the cloner. you could fashion a piece of rockwool or open cell foam into a plug that would fit into the opening of your cloner. only way i can think of, as it doesnt really have a stem.
also, i think i see flowers on that basil. you'll want to clip that off. it needs like 8 or 10 hours of light to keep it from flowering. once it does, all the energy goes into the flowers and not the tasty leaves.

[sgreger1]

yeah. it may be tough to do in the cloner. you could fashion a piece of rockwool or open cell foam into a plug that would fit into the opening of your cloner. only way i can think of, as it doesnt really have a stem.
also, i think i see flowers on that basil. you'll want to clip that off. it needs like 8 or 10 hours of light to keep it from flowering. once it does, all the energy goes into the flowers and not the tasty leaves.

I don't think there are any floweers on it, I picked em all off when we were clipping the clones. The flowers are tasty as hell too, a littly spicier than the leavesd but still good. I will check again today since I know we don't want the flowers growing, only the leaves.

What do you mean it takes 8-10 hours of lighting to keep it from flowering? Like it won't flower if there is 8-10 hours of sunlight on it? I have it in a warm place but that is does not get a lot of direct sunlight (only a few hours). I am trying to keep the rez temp down but the pump in there generates heat which of course makes it more difficult.

[voodooman]

What do you mean it takes 8-10 hours of lighting to keep it from flowering? Like it won't flower if there is 8-10 hours of sunlight on it?

exactly. it's highly dependent on photoperiod. i don't remember the exact value. i kept mine indoors with artificial light like 10 hours on, 14 off. once the light period goes below a certain length of time it will flower, and keep flowering even if you clip it.(unless it gets more sun. indirect sun still counts.) it is also harder to clone at that point. but if it gets enough light, it will stay in it's vegetative state indefinitely. certain varieties may not obey this rule, but the ones i've grown do.

[sgreger1]

exactly. it's highly dependent on photoperiod. i don't remember the exact value. i kept mine indoors with artificial light like 10 hours on, 14 off. once the light period goes below a certain length of time it will flower, and keep flowering even if you clip it.(unless it gets more sun. indirect sun still counts.) it is also harder to clone at that point. but if it gets enough light, it will stay in it's vegetative state indefinitely. certain varieties may not obey this rule, but the ones i've grown do.

Okay so where I have it currently, it gets about as much sun as in the picture. I don't know that direct sunlight ever touches it for more than but a minute. But there is direct sun for half the day about 3 feet away from it. Should I move it over into the direct sun, even though it will make the rezevoir hotter? I kinda don't care about rez temps because it's a small bucket and I will change the water real frequently. So not too worried about shit growing in it. Should I be shooting for as much directly in the sun time as possible in an outdoor setting?

[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.

[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.