When I mention I grow tomatoes upside down many people ask me, “Why don’t you grow tomatoes in the ground?” The surprise answer is, I do grow both in the ground and in the air. The picture above shows my current tomato plants I am growing in the one location with sufficient sunlight to grow them, which might explain the reason why I look alternate options for adding more…
We normally would have already had our annual ladybug release for aphid control, though this year it has been a little colder than normal so we have to postpone until this evening. You want to release your ladybugs at sunset since they do not like to fly at night and gives you the best odds of keeping them in your garden. For fun and a little carnage we decided…
With a piece of cedar fence board and a few nails you can make your own ladybug house to give your army of aphid eaters I nice comfortable place to take shelter between battles This project started with my youngest daughter (5 years old) has been asking every weekend, “Can we build something with wood?” Finally I came up with this project which we had a great time building….
It is fairly uncommon for me to see these little green bugs on my peas. In case you didn’t guess these are pea aphids, which suck juices from the plant leaves ad spread disease between plants. This is a rare occurrence because normally it is warmer and drier this time of year and we would have our annual ladybug release to take care of these little pests. If the…
When building a pea trellis it is actually pretty hard to do it wrong. All that is needed is a little stability and once the plants grab hold they will make the structure even more stable. My typical strategy when making a pea trellis is to use whatever I happen to find closest to me. Here are a few examples from past and current years of building Bamboo Pole…
This site was practically started because of my oldest daughters science fair project Why Don’t Strawberries Grow in the Wintertime? Now with my youngest in kindergarten she was very excited to have a science fair project of her own, which should be pretty obvious from the picture above. With no influence from me she decided on answering the question if smaller seeds will sprout faster. These days science fairs…
Another exciting day this week to be included in an interview on Science Friday with Ira Flatow. I’ll update this post and press page with a link to the interview when it becomes available. For people who were listening live here are a few of the topics that were discussed for quick reference: How to make your own upside Down Planter In your Garden The most profitable plants in…
I saw this quote on a project at my daughter’s science fair tonight, this could totally be my tagline for this site…
We were very excited to be featured in The New York Times last Thursday. Welcome to the many new visitors that visiting us this week. If you want to check out the entire article it is available online. I have been considering creating a press page and figured this was a good opportunity to start a “CVG featured in the press page”
Over the past year I have created a few different versions of garden planters for growing tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers inspired from my daughter watching a Topsy Turvy tomato planter commercial. Here is a quick summary of the different options which you can click the link for full instructions how to build on yourself. 2 Liter – The Original — This is the one that started it all. Very simple…
I wanted to see if (how much) my yields varied by allowing more volume of dirt in my homemade tomato planter, so I made this variation with the same type and size “Husky Cherry” seedling I am using in my 2-liter planter version. The build for this one is also very simple: I started with an organic milk carton given it was already opaque, but if you have the…
Though my first attempt at an upside down tomato planter worked out great, I have a habit of forgetting to water the plants everyday. More commonly when we have decent rains when only the hanging tomato planters need to be watered. So this year I have modified my design a little to make this a little easier. As a bonus you can create this new version much quicker and…