Yeah, I Know ... I Should Post More

Well this is current status folks. I have not generated a hydroponics garden this year. The reason has already been mentioned I think, but it never hurts to mention it again. I was going to go traveling for about two weeks and didn't want to spend the whole time worrying about an automated hydroponics system losing power or running out of water or any of the other myriad of things that can go wrong. So this year is garden year. Also Jessica (my better half and the 50% tomato consumer) says that I need to plant bigger tomatoes. She's tired of Donas, my favorite, because it is a medium to small sized tomato (4 ounces or so) and she wants "real tomatoes." Now that's really not fair. Donas are beautiful. Round, really red, seamless and totally delicious with that slightly acid taste that I love in tomatoes. I don't like the meaty but mild and chewy ones nearly as much.

So this year is big tomatoes ... all of these puppies are Big Boys. although there might be one or two Better Boys in the mix. There are also a couple of sweet pepper plants but they are still too small to notice. All the tomato plants are caged and today was the day we laid old newspapers down all over the garden and then covered them with some straw to discourage the weeds. I didn't do that last year and the weeds got pretty much out of control. So here it is. The plants are not as big as they might be had I started the seeds earlier but they're coming along nicely and should start flowering any day now.

Can It Be June Already

Blink ... blink and it's June already. Well I've not put together a hydroponics system. I didn't really have anything new to try and I've been thinking about taking a two week driving trip sometime and none of my systems will work very well, especially later in the season, if they are neglected for two weeks. I suppose I could more fully automate them, but then I'd be worried about things like power outages and other kinds of failures. People are more adaptable then automated systems usually.

So what I did is take the little baby rototiller (should have popped for a real rototiller but this one was cute, but not all that effective) and I rototilled about an 8 foot by 8 foot plot ... maybe a little bigger and put in a whole bunch of large tomato plants (the plants weren't large but the tomatoes they produce are supposed to be (Big Boys and Better Boys) but they were seeds in April so they're not all that huge even now. We'll see how they flourish. Pictures maybe next time. I also planted a couple of sweet pepper plants.

And So It Begins ...

The beginning of the process: 1) Planting seeds in Rockwool Cubes, 2) waiting for them to germinate, and 3) nurturing them until they are about 3" tall and then 4) Planting them in something, a hydroponics system or an in dirt garden.

I always grow from seed. I just started about 20 Big Boys in pelleted seeds, and 20 or so Better Boys also in pelleted seeds. I bought the seeds today at WalMart and they were Ferry~Morse seed packets at a $1.00 for 20 pelleted seeds in each packet. I also have a packet of Early Girls which I might plant too but I'll have to bring up some more Rockwool Cubes from downstairs.

I operate on the maximum laziness principle. Do as little as possible. In this case I had a lot of Rockwool Cubes from last year which were still languishing on the side screen deck so I used them. They might not be the best choice but since the maximum investment was two bucks, how can I go wrong. We'll know in a few days if the Rockwool Cubes were too salted up with nutrient to be good starter cubes and then we can start again. It's always an adventure.

As for what kind of system will go up this year, I'm distinctly in the air about that. I'd like to try some kind of totally passive system that doesn't require much maintenance or intervention but I don't have any new ideas and I'm not in the mood to do the float system (although it worked quite well last year), so I'll have to mull things over and see if anything comes to mind.

Bong! Spring Has Sprung!

One of the sure signs of Spring here in the Shenandoah Valley is the opening of the Green Valley Book Fair which opened today and so I joined the mob at the book fair. I love books and have a zillion of them to the eternal annoyance of my light of love who thinks they are just dust collectors and fill up books shelves which I'm then always in need more of. (Was that a sentence?) Anyway, aside from some science fiction and a slug of audio CDs for driving in the car to while the time away the image above captures the three gardening books I scarfed up. There was only the one hydroponics book, but I figured that container culture was close enough to hydroponics to grab a copy and chug through it as I begin conspiring for a new year.

One of my goals is to try to make a system that is almost zero maintenance but still grows great crops. Actually last year's float system came rather close to that goal. If I had a bigger place I might already be making some kind of shallow float container with a waterfall to generate a hydroponics delight. The central fountain, small as it was last year, gave plenty of oxygenation given the success of the plants. The kiddy pool size was a little constraining, but you can't have everything. The biggest problem was I didn't think it through so I had a plant support problem that was not handled well by the wire cages I got and strung up.

The problem this year is going to be the fact that I want the system to be able to be unattended for significant periods of time. Last year ran fairly well for a week if you had it filled up at the beginning of the season but by the time the season was ended you had to attend to it ever day or so. The kicker though is that in addition to not wanting to have to attend too much to it, I'm also lazy and would like to not have to put too much effort into setting it up. The root of all progress is human laziness they say. If we can find a way for some mechanism or gadget or somebody else to do it, we will. So the challenge is to substitute creativity for work. So it is time to put on the thinking cap and start thinking about Summer 2011.

A Sign of the Future:— The Totally Tomatoes Catalog Arrived

The Totally Tomatoes Catalog came floating in through the mailbox today. That's a sure sign that the Winter design dreaming period is about to begin. The past season was the first no-sweat, easy to run float system contrasted with a backyard, largely neglected garden. Both systems were pretty neglected, that was the beauty of them. I did have to add water to the float system ever few days after the system got well underway and there remains the issue of a better support system for the plants. But for all of that the systems met the majority of my goals.

Easy to operate: CHECK!

Inexpensive: CHECK!

Lots of tomatoes: CHECK!

I didn't grow very big tomatoes so Jessica gave me what for. She's always after me to grow big tomatoes. The systems this past Summer depended on old seeds, at least a year old and fairly small cultivars. The Dona's were the smallest but I always love them. Part of the reason I used old seed is I couldn't find very good sources for Dona seeds. Maybe that will change.

If you want a Totally Tomatoes Catalog their address is 334 West Stroud St., Randolph, WI 53956 and their website is Totally Tomatoes I enjoy it because it has so many varieties. It's just fun to read.

November 13th Summary

Well I thought I'd do a recap of the total tomato weight taken from the garden and the float system and discovered that I can't find the notebook that has the data from August 31 through September 21 where the count picks up in a new notebook. So I can only give the totals with a hole in the data which I'll have to fill in when I find that book.

FLOAT SYSTEM: 34.06 pounds
GARDEN: 26.73 pounds

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Found the missing book which took the totals up to:
FLOAT SYSTEM: 49.44 pounds
GARDEN: 46.79 pounds
We also had a mysterious volunteer in the flower garden in front of the house left over from one of last year's tomatoes which we noticed and it contributed a whole bunch of small tomatoes totaling 29.75 ounces, pushing 2 pounds ... didn't actually get them all so there were some more.

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Since there were at least 14 plants in the garden that's not a great record, but a lot of tomatoes actually didn't get picked. The Float system had 10 plants but a third of them were small tomatoes and that was also true for the garden since there were a lot of Dona's and they tend to be small 3 and four ounce tomatoes. When I find the other notebook I'll add that data to get the overall total.

I'm a little disappointed in the total since generally with the NFT systems I've had larger per plant totals. On the other hand the float system was essentially zero hassle compared with the NFT systems where a pump failure or a power failure will cost you the whole system in a few hours. Great fun! Don't know if I'll have a chance to do it again next Summer since we're thinking about a trip, but it might work if we schedule it right. I was thinking that this system might work well on a platform with some sort of grow down a slope kind of netting. I've tried something like that with an NFT system but it was more hanging and that stressed the plants too much. We'll have to see. As Winter approaches I go into sketching and design mode thinking about new systems.

Hydroponics 2010 RIP

Yesterday we took down the float system and the garden. It only took a little more than an hour to pick up all the dried stalks of corn and root up the dwindling tomato plants. The hydroponics float system took even less time since you just dumped the nutrient and then took the plants, although there is always a tangle of roots, and pulled them out and put them in the trash cans.

We scavenged some green tomatoes and some last minute ripe ones and got about ten pounds in that category. The total summation for the season will have to wait a while until I have a few minutes to go over all the records.

SUCCESS

Overall this float system was a big success. It grew a lot of tomatoes, more than the garden despite having fewer plants. The support system was a disaster but tomatoes grow anyway so it wasn't all that big of a disaster. Next time we put out a float system we'll fix a better support design. I've already got one in mind. I don't know if we'll do a hydroponics system next Summer. The better half says she has plans and you fellows know what that means.