Here in the Seattle area we are, as you say, latitudelly challenged. We are fortunately to have the Pacific Ocean to give us mild winters and summers though our distance from the equator provides our plants with less intense light and a relatively short growing season for summer crops. One in particular difficult summer crop are peppers. This is important because one of the major exports of my garden…
When you have seedlings growing indoors or a greenhouse during their life they have had the opportunity spending it in a near perfect environment with controlled temperatures, consistent lighting, no wind, etc. If you take this happy plant and move it directly into the wild (your garden) it can, and probably will, go into shock leading to its sudden death. The solution to this problem is to hardening off…
As you can see they are starting to take over the even larger box and the camera.
I will admit, I have a weakness for electronic gadgets, when I got wind of the EasyBloom I just had to try it out. The EasyBloom plant sensor is a device with built-in sensors to measure light intensity, humidity, temperature, and moisture content in your soil. It has three basic modes: Recommend, Monitor, and Water. With the Recommend setting you place the EasyBloom into a location you want to…
There has been some major changes since I started the plants above in my cheap DIY hydroponic setup about a month ago. Since then I have added a couple of pepper plants I saved from thinning. I must say the plants are doing better than I expected. I am still using the same homemade nutrient solution, 2 pumps of liquid plant fertilizer and half a teaspoon of Epsom Salts. …
I never got a round to making a hydroponic system out of my Cafe Steamer, but I did use part of it to create a supplemental red LED light. The construction of this was very easy and you can do the same thing with an old string of LED Christmas lights and some soft plastic (margarine or frozen dinner container) from your recycling bin. Take the plastic and drill…
My wife saw this wireless indoor/outdoor thermometer on clearance at Eddie Bauer and knew this was something I could use. I simply put the wireless sensor in the computerized grow box and instant temperature monitoring where at a quick glance I can be sure my summer vegetables are toasty warm in the garage. Sure, I could connect to the machine remotely, or look at the backup digital thermometer inside…
I haven’t done many posts in a while about regular old gardening in actual dirt so figured a good time to do an update. Though I enjoy indoor seed starting in my LED grow box and computerized grow box, some plants need to be started outdoors. Today my daughters and I planted the last these plants for fall outdoor planting. A few weeks ago, we planted garlic, onions, spinach,…
Soil sensors can be pretty expensive to purchase but a few minutes and a few cents worth materials around your house you can make your own accurate cheap soil moisture sensor. UPDATE: Though this still a great sensor, check this post for the latest version of a more heavy duty soil moisture sensor. I mentioned in a previous post that my previous soil moisture sensor did not hold up in my…
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…
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…