Haven’t mentioned the computerized grow box for a while, so think it is a good time for an update. The moisture sensor corroded away, but have plans to make a much more beefier one. With the exception of the hard drive failure, the basic functionality of the computerized grow box has been excellent and the plants have been thriving. The only physical improvement I have made is adding some…
“University of Texas, Austin. Davis claims the average vegetable found in today’s supermarket is anywhere from 5% to 40% lower in minerals (including magnesium, iron, calcium and zinc) than those harvested just 50 years ago.” Not only are those vegetables you been eating at the grocery store less tasty, but may be getting marginal nutritional value. They discuss some of the potential factors in this including use for synthetic…
If I ask my four year old what it takes for a plant to grow she can quickly respond with response, “Sun, water, air, and soil” This is a great answer for photosynthesis since plants need energy from the sun. They leverage the carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air and water (H2O) to create starches and sugar. Now the soil part of this answer is where things get a…
In my post about basic the basics of hydroponics I mentioned the potential high cost of entry but with a little creativity this can be avoided. I went through this exercise and here is a pretty inexpensive way to try out hydroponics without having to spend hundreds on a prebuilt system. The solution I came up with cost me $1.00 to setup though I did have many of the…
I came across this great new design and thought I would share. The inspiration is to provide a cheap way of capturing rainwater for developing countries. This would be a great way to prevent some water bottles from going into landfills but also a space saving way to capture some rainwater without requiring the large footprint or cost that rain barrel(s) can take up. No word on these going…
By definition hydroponics is a technique of growing plants (without soil) with water containing dissolved nutrients. No soil is used but in most cases a growing medium is used to support the plant’s root system. A few examples of popular mediums are perlite, vermiculite, Rockwool, coconut coir, clay pellets, peat moss, sand, and even small pebbles. The basic idea behind the medium is to allow water to flow but…
Researchers at Cambridge University have come up with a method to significantly reduce the cost of creating LED light bulbs. LEDs use gallium nitride and requires being grown on sapphire wafers. The new technique allows growth on silicon wafer reducing the cost significantly from $28 to $3 per bulb. The big news for the bulbs is they use 12 times less energy that incandescent bulbs, last for 60 years,…
Today I got my Gardener’s Supply Companycatalog, this particular catalog is dedicated to items to assist you with your gardening habit. You should be able to guess from this site I do my best to resist buying anything for the garden I absolutely need, otherwise I make a cheaper alternative. Well the point of this post is to show what I would like to get if I wasn’t as…
Exactly one year ago I wrote the first post for The Cheap Vegetable Gardener. Over this short time I have had a tremendous response, more than I ever had ever imagined. I wish the January spike (below) would continue into 2009 but much of this was traffic was significantly elevated my the following honorable mentions: Hack-a-day (PS2 controller thermometer) Hack-a-day (Automated plant growing) Top listing on reddit.com/frugal for a…
My day job is in software development, so of course it came to mind that software/hardware can fail while I was making my computerized grow box. During its inception, I would check on it daily physically or remotely to make sure all was well. After a couple weeks of this it was so stable that I started to not check quite as often. Though in my mind there was…
Other than the “Do you really just grow ‘strawberries’ in your grow box?” question. The most common question I have gotten is why exactly do I have a grow box. Hopefully I will be able to answer this question below, as for the first question the answer is yes (without the fingerquotes) Necessity: I am cheap and don’t want to buy all my plants from local nursery or garden…
Looking at my web logs I have seen the query for “cheap vegetable seeds” a few times so figured would be good to help people find what they are looking for. Being The Cheap Vegetable Gardener, I can do better than “Cheap vegetable seeds” how about some “free vegetable seeds” as well. Cheap Vegetable Seeds Buy online — You can find a much greater selection and some great prices…