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Growing vegetables using grow boxes, LEDs, computers, and great soil

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Growing vegetables using grow boxes, LEDs, computers, and great soil
  • garden planning | gardener | gifts

    Gift ideas for gardeners on your Christmas list

    ByThe Cheap Vegetable Gardener

    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…

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  • robot | strawberries

    Strawberry picking Robots

    ByThe Cheap Vegetable Gardener

    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…

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  • seed saving | seed types | seeds | Uncategorized

    Seed types: Heirloom, open pollinated, hybrids, GMO

    ByThe Cheap Vegetable Gardener

    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…

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  • carrot | harvest | seed saving

    Saving carrot seeds

    ByThe Cheap Vegetable Gardener

    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…

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  • pumpkin | recipe

    Making homemade pumpkin ice cream

    ByThe Cheap Vegetable Gardener

    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.

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  • cheap | freezing | last frost date | thermometer | weather station

    How to make your own cheap weather station

    ByThe Cheap Vegetable Gardener

    Though the prices for personal weather station have dramatically dropped (around $100) over the past few years, I decided to work on making my own. The primary measurement I wanted was temperature given this is the specific one that could be dramatically different from my neighbors (or neighborhood weather station) given the many unique microclimates your yard can have. Step 1: Create an account and weather station at Weather…

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  • garden maintenance | leaves | mulch | weed prevention | weeds

    Using leaf mulch in your garden for weed prevention

    ByThe Cheap Vegetable Gardener

    Above is unfortunately what my vegetable garden looks like, still have some cilantro, bunching onions, bulb onions, garlic, broccoli, and spinach growing but obviously I have a blanket of tiny weeds emerging with large amount of rain we have been getting.  This gives me a few options: A. Painfully pull every weed from the garden bed…repeat B. Give up on my plants and just lay down some black plastic…

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  • pumpkin

    Pumpkin with 259,764J of energy smashing a car

    ByThe Cheap Vegetable Gardener

    For most people watching a pumpkin dropped on a car from a crane is good enough…though the scientist in me wants to know how much force did this pumpkin have on impact.  If I have you curious as well I did the math below… WARNING MATH/PHYSIC CONTENT!!! UPDATE: It has been too long since I have thought about physics…thanks for the corrections to my incorrect memory of Weight/Mass in…

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  • halloween | pie | pumpkin

    Making a pumpkin pie from scratch

    ByThe Cheap Vegetable Gardener

    While out picking out pumpkins for my daughters I saw some nice organic heirloom pumpkins (Winter Luxury Pie) and decided to try my hand in using a couple of these to make a pumpkin pie instead of using canned pumpkin.  One note make sure you are using a pumpkin labeled as a sugar or pie pumpkin, using your standard jack-o-lantern variety will lead to very watery and less velvety…

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  • cayenne | dehydrator | peppers

    How to make cayenne powder

    ByThe Cheap Vegetable Gardener

    After letting my cayenne peppers ripen some more in the grow box I decided that this was good enough and decided to make some cayenne pepper for winter BBQs.  The different stages of ripeness provides slightly different flavors, from what I have read partially ripe can give an excellent heat with a unique flavor.  As you can see the color is also a little different than what you would…

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  • computer | electronics | indoor growbox | Uncategorized | windows phone

    Controlling my growbox with a mobile phone

    ByThe Cheap Vegetable Gardener

      How many times have you been riding the bus and have been curious what temperature your computer growbox was running and if the plants needed to be watered?  Ok maybe never, but I decided to solve this problem anyway.  There is also no point in identifying that you may have a problem without having a way to do something about so I also implemented the ability to override…

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  • basil | indoor growbox

    Growing basil indoors with a desk lamp

    ByThe Cheap Vegetable Gardener

    I recently moved to a new office building and unfortunately I had a lacked a few years at the company to get a window office.  With a desire to have some plant life in my office, I grabbed a couple of the basil plants I cloned, dropped them in some potting soil, and positioned a desk lamp with a CFL bulb.  I can’t seem to find my lamp timer…

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