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.

A Little Catch Up Ball ...

A friend of mine sent me a very nice email saying that he was worried about me since there had been no update on the gardens since September 12th. My only excuse is that I've been very busy. However in the interim I've topped off the system at least 3 times putting in two cups of concentrate twice and one and a half cups just today when I topped it off. I may have missed a topoff here since that would be 9 days (but that sounds about right, an average of 3 days between topping off).

I've also been taking a large number of tomatoes off both the garden and the float system every couple of days. The counter never gets empty, just more and more tomatoes ... I'm getting really tomatoed out since Jessica has abandoned eating them, the challenge is all mine even though I've given some to the neighbors.

As I take them I keep a record, weighing each tomato. But I'm way behind in posting the data. I used to just post it to a spread sheet (I should go back to that). But I'll get around to catching up in a few days.

Pictures and Such ...

Well here the counter is covered with tomatoes. I'm eating them as fast as I can and they are still rolling in even it the density is a bit slower than in the past. Probably only another few weeks of tomato harvesting left.

This is what the garden looks like. You can see that it has a lot of tomatoes still coming. There are something like fourteen tomato plants in the garden and frankly they've been prolific but not as nice as the hydroponics tomatoes. For some reason a lot of garden tomatoes seem to be a little hollow. I'm guessing it is some kind of deficiency. They also have not tended to turn red as uniformly as as the float system tomatoes.

Here are two views of the float system. In the first you can see the floats and the pool and get the picture of how they just sort of fell over and were all skewed to one side by the rains and wind. I really think the system has been terrific, but it certainly doesn't look like much right now. I'm still taking a lot of tomatoes off it but you have to hunt them up by picking through the leaves.