To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk. – Thomas A. Edison
I saw this quote on a project at my daughter’s science fair tonight, this could totally be my tagline for this site…
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Featured in The New York Times
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”
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How to make your own upside Down Planter In your Garden
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…
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cheap | peppers | tomato | upside down planter | water
1 Gallon Milk carton upside down tomato planter
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…
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2-liter bottle upside down tomato planter
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…
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More Fun with Food Dehydrator
I decided to be adventurous with the food dehydrator and grabbed some stuff from the refrigerator to make some nice nutritional snacks. I started with some strawberries, the process is very simple, take some strawberries slice about 1/4 inch thick and place on the tray. Next I moved on to apples which I soaked in a solution of lemon juice (about 1/4 cup) with 1 cup of water. To…
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Drying peppermint leaves
Excited to try out my new to me food dehydrator, I collected some peppermint leaves from my 2 year old peppermint plants which is fighting the confirms of the 1 gallon pot I have used to keep it from consuming my entire flowerbed, lawn, house, etc. For the best potency, it is best to collect mint right before they start to flower and first thing in the morning when…
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Sometimes it is cheaper to not make something yourself
Though I will be the first to agree it is much more fun to make something homemade, but in my case this weekend I was better off just making a purchase. I am growing plenty of herbs this season and want to dry some for convenient use during the cold season. I got the idea to make my own herb dryer. The basic design was to make several one…
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cilantro | cold season crops | garlic bulbs | onions | peppers | tomato
Earth Day in the garden
I decided to take the day off to catch up on some things at home and as I ended up outside of course I went right to the garden. We have seen a few warm days here in the Northwest and in my area we haven’t dipped under 40 degrees at night so seemed like a good time to plant a few of my tomatoes spending their time this…
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Life in the growbox
Right about now the temperatures outside should be increasing and I should be thinking about start hardening off my summer plants over the next few weeks. Unfortunately we seeing hail the past few days along with some pretty cold nights. Looks like even though I was fairly pessimistic about my last frost date I may have another battle of tomatoes/peppers over taking the growbox or bring them out into…
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Robotic Wheel Barrow
If you ever have spent a day hauling soil/gravel you know this can cause some serious pains in your back. Now with the Lawnbot 400 you can save some pain and let the evil robots do the hard labor for you. The project started as an arduino powered lawn mower with a custom PCB motor driver powered by a couple of wheel chair motors, which mike many projects he…
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Solar Powered automated Rain Barrel watering system
This is a very cool project, grab a few rain barrels, timer, water pump, and a solar panel and have automated the tedious task of watering. With all the rain we get (especially this week) in WA could fill up a dozen barrels in a short time. My only suggestion would be to add a moisture sensor to only water when it has not rained lately. Might be another…