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…
I noticed some of my daisies were getting a little leggy so added 60 more LEDs (red) to my LED grow box. This time I was a little less calculated about positioning but still fee like I got a decent pattern going. I also decreased the drill size and didn’t even need to use the hot glue gun. As you can see from the pictures below the plants (cucumbers,…
Don’t want your back aching after working in your garden? Our friends at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology have got your covered. With 3 years for only $10K you can have your very own power suit to complete your gardening choirs. At a current weight of 55 pounds it will support your joints as you squat and reach. Though for that much money might be a better…
I have been pretty impressed with the results of the Christmas lights LED grow box so far. I did have some preconceptions that I may need to double the lights or upgrade the LEDs, but so far the plants look healthy without white leggy stems, though still need to wait until the true leaves come in. As you can see in the picture above I have quite a selection…
I had great results using coconut coir last growing season it was great to work with, retained water great for young seedlings, and was economically priced. The only challenge was actually finding some to use this year. No luck in local stores, last year I only could find a single block in one hardware store. Online there are plenty of locations that sell them, but unless you have a…
The Idea and Design My PC Grow box was very effective though it did have some shortcomings along with my desire for tinkering caused me to create a new version code named “Project Everbearing” after the test subjects for the project, several Everbearing strawberry plants I propagated from my garden last Summer/Fall. The specific shortcomings I wanted to overcome were temperature control and limited size. My grow box has…
I have one major problem last year with growing seedlings, running out of space. I grow many different types of plants with various germination/growth rates and varied start dates. This forces me to make sacrifices for placement of my movable light and eventually forced to move some plants outside earlier than I should. The light needs to be close to the newly emerging seedlings, but can’t be burning the…
Last year I collected cilantro seeds and they were a great success in my garden that this past Spring I made a commitment to myself that I would try to collect more seeds this season. Though I wanted to get more I was able to collect seeds from my onions, jalapenos, and cilantro. The jalapeno seeds were pretty easy I set some seeds aside on a paper towel while…