The Cheap Vegetable Gardener

Top gardening posts of 2010

14.4 years ago cheap, garden planter, LEDs, moisture sensor, upside down planter 1 Comment

2010 has been a pretty exciting year for CheapVegetableGardener.com.  Bringing on a significant number of more readers and many great mentions by some large publications, I thought I would mention the top 5 posts of 2010 which helped this happen in case you missed them.

	Being kicked off by an awesome mention in a New York Times article and subsequent interview on Science Friday on NPR, this article on making your own tomato planter held the #1 spot.  By taking a two liter bottle, a little spray paint, and a chopstick (or small stick) you can make your own upside down tomato planter.
	This article has received some decent traffic from numerous sites but the mention on lifehacker.com is what put this one on the #2 spot.  Now if you are trying to make a little profit from your extra harvest or just trying to save a little extra money at the grocery store this post lists the top vegetables for your gardening square foot.
	Want to start some seedlings indoors without spending a fortune on lighting?  Check out this Christmas light LED grow box post which has held the #3 spot.  All it takes is a couple of strings of LEDs (purchased during after Christmas sales of course), a Rubbermaid container, a drill, and a little patience you can have your own indoor growing apparatus.
	Sometimes I got busy in the early spring and forgot to water my neglected seedlings in the grow box in my garage.  To solve this problem I made these great little soil sensors using galvanized nails and Plaster of Paris.  Check out this post which help the #4 spot for the full build instructions.
	Finally after some personal trial and error the #5 post of this year goes into detail on how to create a new garden bed.  This covers the basics of picking the proper location and also some cost benefit analysis for using various materials (cinder blocks, wood, chiseled wall blocks, bricks) to build a new bed.

Gift ideas for gardeners on your Christmas list

14.5 years ago garden planning, gardener, gifts 7 Comments

Maybe you are looking for something to add to your Christmas list or a fellow gardener you still need to buy for here are a few items on my list…let me know if anyone needs my address (smile).

	Have some on your list just starting out with gardening (or has been very unsuccessful in the past) how about the PlantSmart Digital Plant Care Sensor?  You simply turn the device on and place it in your problem area for 24 hours and plug it into your computer and it will provide important info on temperature, humidity, and light intensity.  Too see a full review of the EasyBloom (same product different name) here.
	The Japanese Hori Hori Digging Tool is probably the most versatile tool you can get for your garden.  It has a curved blade great for planting and weeding.  The serrated blade can easily cut through small branches or break off a piece of twine two tie up some tomatoes or to take on some vengeance on pesky garden pests…but wait there is more flip it over and it even measure the depths of your planting holes to make sure you planted those bulbs deep enough.  This is definitely a welcome addition to any gardeners stocking.
	The AeroGarden with Gourmet Herb Seed Kit is a nice system to get your gardening loved one a way to use their cold green thumb during the wintertime.  Using a special CFL bulbs and automatic timed watering using aeroponics you can have delicious herbs growing on your kitchen counter for easy use in your cooking.
	Now the Felco F-2 Classic Manual Hand Pruner is a little more expensive than the ones you normally would find in your local home improvements store, but for a tool a gardener will use for many hours every season a quality tool like this can easily last a lifetime with minimal care.
	Finally there is a little something for the little ones.  The Kid’s Size 3 Piece Gardening Hand Tools is great to give your gardening helpers their own tools to assist in the gardening task…I can also say from personal experience that these tools can come in handy for light planting when you don’t feel like walking back to the garage to get your Hori Hori Digging Knife

Strawberry picking Robots

14.5 years ago robot, strawberries 7 Comments

Well this is not the first time we have seen robots harvesting food and probably not the last but a team in Japan has created a robot that selectively picks strawberries that are at least 80% red.  Though this might be good enough for the average consumer at the grocery store, I would personally insist on closer to 95% and hold off until they are a slightly darker red for some extra delicious super ripe berries.

They estimate that this robot can reduce picking time by by 40% but at 9 seconds a berry I am pretty sure I can easily keep up with this monster…though I eventually have to sleep and eat so the numbers may work out.  I also would have to make the assumption that this is being targeted for growing hydroponic strawberries given even with my primitive human vision I need to move some leaves around to see most of the berries I pick in my back yard.

There is no word on the cost of this strawberry picking robot but you can check out a video of this bad boy in action below.

Seed types: Heirloom, open pollinated, hybrids, GMO

14.5 years ago seed saving, seed types, seeds, Uncategorized 5 Comments

When you pick up a packet of seeds knowing what type of seeds you are growing is very important especially if you are planning on saving seeds from the fruits of your labor.

Much like man’s best friend seeds come in many varieties, sometimes these occur with careful consideration of pedigree. others are brought together to complement both parents good (or bad) physical traits, and finally there are the nature chooses their own way.

Heirloom: These would be the purebreds (English Bulldog) of the seed world.  These seeds are carefully pollinated and saved for decades or even hundreds of years to preserve the quality product that has been stabilized over many generations.

Hybrids: These would be those carefully planned mixes (cockerdoodle) with both parents being specially selected to produce offspring that carries traits of both parents.  The tricky thing about hybrids is the seeds these plants create more than likely will not be that of their parents since it normally requires at least a few generations to stabilized their genetic makeup.  So your “tasty slow bolting cilantro” might end up being “tasty fast bolting cilantro” or “not so tasty slow bolting cilantro”  Even if you decide to collect your seeds if the seed company has patented that variety you could be sued for patent infringement…though I have yet to hear of a case of this occurring to a home gardener.

Open Pollinated:  These can be thought of as the “muts” of the seed varieties.  Just like in the canine world these can produce some very fortunate accidents and produce some seeds no one could have even considered trying to create on their own.  There are many benefits to growing with open pollinated seeds.  First there are very little worries in collecting seeds from these varieties.  There are no patents to worry about and these varieties have a few more generations to stabilize their genetic traits.  By collecting your seeds and growing these along with other varieties to add some diversity to your garden and avoid establishing a monoculture which can be susceptible to pests and disease after a few short seasons.

I should also state that Heirlooms are also open pollinated thought for most strains extra care is taken to prevent cross pollination to keep the end products as true as possible.  These

GMO:  Now GMO or Genetically Modified Organism, would be the the creation of a dog which is crossed with a cat which has the loyalty of a dog but the bathroom habits of a cat.  In the seed world this would be seeds that are grown with “good intents” such as the creation of a potato that is resistant to the potato beetle, reducing the need for pesticides.  On the more scary side are seeds with “terminator” genes whose offspring that does not create viable seeds.  From first thought, this seems like a justifiable way for seed makers to protect their patents being infringed on, until you think about cross pollination.  For example lets say your neighbor is growing some GMO tomatoes where your friendly bees cross pollinate your open pollinated heirloom varieties.…now to your dismay now your seeds are now crossed with the “terminator” gene and you no longer can produce your own viable heirloom seeds.

Though I have never actually found GMO seeds being sold to home gardeners, though for commercial seeds these are much more common.  Basic rule is to avoid these seeds at all costs.

Saving carrot seeds

14.5 years ago carrot, harvest, seed saving 9 Comments

Like many of my seed saving in devours they have occurred by accident.  This year saving carrot seeds with one of those cases.  I must have missed picking on of my carrots last fall, this carrots would be completely woody to eat so I left in in the ground knowing that carrots go to seed after their second year.

To get the best results I only kept the first three umbels for two reasons.  This will give me the largest and best quality seeds.  Second, this means less flowers for the bees to pollinate so I should have a better changes of having a higher number of quality seeds.  At the end of the summer I cut off the umbels and hung them upside down in my garage and forgot about them for a little while.

Harvesting the seeds is pretty easy, just rub the umbels between your hands into a large bowl or container.  Pick out any remaining stems or big pieces of chaff.  Rub between your hands a little more to cause the chaff to become closer to a powder.

Now with a quick shake in a sieve (used from the kitchen) most of the chaff should fall through leaving the seeds.  Just to remember there are up to 2000 carrots seeds in a teaspoon so don’t go overboard since these seeds normally only last a maximum of 3 years in the refrigerator.

You may notice that the seeds do not look like the ones you buy in the packets and have funny little “beards” (which is actually technical name) surrounding the seeds.  You can leave these on but it can cause the seeds to stick together making planting a bit more difficult.  You can take care of these by giving the seeds a hard rub into the same sieve with firm pressure from your finger.

Though this takes a little more time than some other seeds in about 15 minutes of work I have fairly clean seeds which is more than enough that I can use for this season and more to share/trade with others.

Making homemade pumpkin ice cream

14.5 years ago pumpkin, recipe 2 Comments

Looking for some more ways to use up some of my pumpkin puree, I decided to make some pumpkin ice cream.  Here is the pumpkin ice cream recipe I used.