‘Dig’ The Earth

What is hydroponics?

The easy answer is growing plants without soil in a nutrient rich solution. There are several ways to set up a hydroponic system but each have a few things in common.

• They must allow enough room for the roots to grow.
• They must offer proper aeration for the roots so they do not drown in the water.
• They must offer a pH balanced and nutrient rich solution specific to the types of plants you are growing.
• They must offer sufficient lighting of the proper spectrum to support photosynthesis for proper growth

What is aeroponics?

Aeroponics is a division of hydroponics that suspends the plants above the nutrient rich reservoir.  The roots are fed the nutrient laden water either by drip irrigation, misting, fogging or highly aerated bubbles.  The most widely recognized aeroponic system is the Aerogarden by Aerogrow.

If you have the cash to lay out for the Aerogarden it is a very nice system that has all the necessary parts, pieces, nutrients and even seeds to make a small seroponic system work.  Whether it’s for flowers to britghten your mood or herbs to brighten your food there are a number of plants that can be grown in the Aerogarden appliance.

If you are more frugal and like DIY projects search for homemade aerogarden and you will find a number of alternatives.  None of them are as pretty as the aerogarden and it will take some time and expertise, but the DIY systems all seem to be practical and will grow plants.  Make sure you have enough space to accommodate a Rubbermaid tub with a lid and an external lighting apparatus.  Space issue and the potential for marital problems because of a loud ugly tub sitting in the front window.  The only place I have that has the space is the back porch, but it is way too cold out there right now so I’d have to rig up heating to.

Year Round and Urban Applications

Upon doing further research on hydroponics and searching on ebay I came across another idea – vertical hydroponic gardens.  I searched how to make a vertical hydroponic garden and I found a grass roots movement called WindowFarms.org.  They encourage the use of hydroponics to grow herbs, greens, and fruit crops year round in available window spaces.  Their system can either be purchased or built with readily available tools and items and repurposed plastic water bottles (they suggest using ones made by Nestle).  Their community forum and blog, our.windowfarms.org, offers the opportunity to read about the experiences of others using the windowfarms idea and how they have succeeded, modified and improved the basic windowfarms concept.  So whether you are a gardener that longs to have fresh produce from your garden in the dead of winter or an apartment dweller who does not have an outdoor space available for gardening a window farm is a space saving way to “get your green on” .

Google Search results: midwest storm on Tuesday (My story starts below)

Huge storm trundles across Midwest, South – MSNBC

Oct 27, 2010 … As it howled across the Midwest and South on Tuesday, the storm packed wind gusts of up to 81 mph Tuesday, snapping trees and power lines, …

Get more results from the past 24 hours

Savage storm blasts Midwest – USATODAY.com

Oct 26, 2010 … A fierce storm rocked the Midwest with screaming winds, … Only minor injuries were linked to the storm by late Tuesday but it caused …

www.usatoday.com/weather/storms/2010-10-26-midwest-storm_N.htm

Another very windy day today across the Midwest brings back memories of the ugly storms that slammed our region yesterday. Monday night to Tuesday morning was unseasonably warm. It made it hard to sleep. Early in the day despite the wind the girls and I wanted to go out and play. By the time we got ready to step outside it had started raining. It was only light rain so we decided to go out for a few minutes. We barely got up to the swingset when the raindrops started to sting. The wind picked up and so did anything that wasn’t nailed down. It was time to go inside.

No sooner did we get in the door that my phone started ringing. It was DH telling us we should get ready to take cover. The radar images showed that a nasty storm was headed right for us and there were at least four unconfirmed sightings of tornadoes to our west. Right away I asked Yeyda to get her’s and her sister’s pillows, some blankets, and books and take them to our little bathroom. It is the most interior room of the house and the only one without windows. That is our storm shelter since we do not have a basement .

This was taken after the storms had passed. The girls decided to play in here, thus the mess .

I ran around getting flashlights, water bottles and snacks as well as jackets and ID to take in the bathroom with us just in case. Bonbon was very frightened because the winds had seriously picked up and the rain was falling so hard and fast you couldn’t see anything out the window. She kept saying, “Mommy, ouside, ouside Mommy,” in a very worried tone. I just kept asking her to go back to the bathroom with her sister and sit and wait for a few minutes. I opened a west window to see if I could hear the tornado sirens of the nearby town, but I couldn’t hear anything with all the wind and rain. DH had said the sirens had already gone off in the town where he works and they were 20 miles to the east – the storm hadn’t reached them yet. The storm roared through and shook the house and by 11:30 the Tornado Warning was lifted. DH called and left a message that a guy that works for him got a message from his brother that a tornado had touched down just 20 miles west of us. I thought this was odd since most of the storm had past us according to the radar images.

Needless to say this ruined our outside playtime for the rest of the day. I need to cut down the rest of my plants and harvest what hasn’t yet been ruined by frost. Hopefully, I find some more that is still OK. The other day I picked up a few tomatoes that apparently had rotted on the vine. They looked OK but tasted terrible so I had to pitch them.

Winter blues seem to be setting in early with me this year. I don’t know why. Going from being outdoors everyday to almost nothing at all is hard to get used to. I need to be less of a chicken and go out even on cold days.

Does winter mean we have to forgo the pleasure of eating fresh vegetables? If you live in the Midwest US like I do getting those fresh veggies from your garden ended a couple of months ago (unless you have shelter for your plants). It’s only 10 degrees F outside, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have some delicious fresh vegetables that are in season right now.

With the advent of transportation and improvements in refrigeration over the last century many of us can and do enjoy vegetation in our diets year round. During these colder months we can look forward to finding fresh versions of these veggies in our grocers produce section:

* Broccoli
* Brussels Sprouts
* Collard Greens
* Fennel
* Leeks
* Pumpkins
* Sweet Potato
* Turnips
* Winter Squash

You can make delicious sautes, sauces, soups, salads, and slaws out of these bountiful veggies. If you’ve ever seen Good Eats with Alton Brown on Food Network you know there are endless ways to prepare these winter vegetables in tasty and interesting ways.

Our first snow of the season and it has to be a yucky one. Monday morning it started snowing and it left about an inch on the roads. Tuesday it was more of the same until about 6 PM.

Wet, heavy, slippery snow started to fall in blankets across the landscape. Great for plants, bad for driving. I called my mom who’d come to visit us earlier in the day with dad and they were on their way home at about 8:30 PM. They’d been trying to get a hold of my brother because he had stayed to work late with DH. Dad wanted me to convey the message that if he could stay where he was to do so. The roads were treacherous and the visibility low.

By the time I called DH to let him know they had already left the office. The next 45 minutes was tough. This will be 4 years since our bad accident that left my husband broken and my car in pieces. The last thing anyone wanted was for that to happen again. I had a knot in my stomach and I thought for sure I was going to lose my supper. Finally at :15 after 9 DH walked in the door and I could relax. Then my thoughts went to my brother. He lives with my parents an hour north and therefore in the middle of the heavier snowfall.

Thankfully he was also OK. I called him an hour after my DH got home just to make sure he’d made it home OK. He said you couldn’t even see the main roads and that the country road they live on was like a washboard with drifts of snow 5″ deep. Yikes.

Today we are in for lots of wind, rain and snow. There is actually a wind warning in our area. You can hear the wind howling or “talking” as my daughter calls it outside the house. It’s a little unnerving. Hopefully we didn’t leave anything in the yard that will get blown away by the 70 MPH gusts.

It is so gratifying to be able to make meals with vegetables and herbs harvested from your own garden. Yesterday I made a mushroom soup that called for a mixture of herbs like sage, thyme, marjoram and rosemary. I had all but the marjoram – which I substituted with oregano – right in my garden. It felt really good to do that. I have a huge load of tomatoes that I need to process – chop and freeze or allow to ripen.

I did get one small watermelon from my garden this year. There were about a dozen sweet dumpling squash I was able to harvest. I might make some soup or pies out of them. Next year my plan is to make the garden even bigger so we can have more of a variety.

It’s Saturday morning and though I got a late start on seeding my flats this year I am pretty happy with my progress.  I have one mini greenhouse, one milk jug and 2 of the 10″ x 20″ black plastic flats with clear plastic domed covers planted.  After just 4 days I even have some sprouts from one of the flats.

Green Mini Greenhouse: The Basil Flat

I had forgotten how many varieties of basil I had until I went through my seeds the other day.  This will be my second attempt to get some decent plants out of these seeds.  Instead of using store bought peat pots or plastic trays in this mini greenhouse I used my hand rolled newspaper pots that I made a few years ago.  There was enough room for 11 rows of 7 little pots.  I labeled the lid with the seed name and L for left and R for right and the base with L and R so I could keep tabs on which row was which.  They were planted, watered and set in a south facing window with the cover on and vents closed on 4/14/09.

These are the seeds planted in the mini greenhouse from left to right:

• Cinnamon Basil
• Purple Basil
• Italian Sweet Basil
• Dwarf Bush Fineleaf Basil
• Spicy Globe Basil
• Greek Basil
• Fino Verde Basil
• Summerlong Basil
• Siam Queen Thai Basil
• Lime Basil
• Easter Egg Plant (no this isn’t basil, but I had an extra row )

Flat 1: Tomatoes and Peppers

I have a myriad of tomato and pepper seeds.  Since they have similar requirements for temperature and light I decided to plant them in one flat together.  The flat has 16 rows of 8 cells each.  The seeds were planted, watered and covered and placed over the top of my 30 gallon aquarium on 4/14/09.  The temperature above the aquarium and aquarium light is about 80 degrees providing a warm enough temperature to encourage germination.  After 3 days some of my tomatillo seeds (that are 6 years old) already started to sprout.  Yesterday morning, the 17th, I moved the flat to the south facing window.  This morning I noticed that one of Robbie’s Tomatoes had started to sprout.

These are the seeds in Flat 1 from left to right, and bottom to top (or front to back):

• King’s Choice Hybrid Tomatoes/Beefsteak Tomatoes
• Robbie’s Tomatoes/Spike’s Tomatoes (unsure of varieties, harvested from relatives gardens 2 years ago)
• Mom’s Tomatoes/Mystery Hot Pepper
• Olena Ukranian/Italian Market Wonder/Bonny Best/Golden Queen – only had a few seeds so I planted 2 of each
• Costoluto Genovese/Cosmonaut Volkov/Marglobe VF/TigerLike Tomatoes – 2 of each
• Assorted Tomatoes/Speckled Roman Heirloom
• Tomatillos
• Delicious Tomato/ Mystery Tomato
• Jelly Bean Hybrid (commercial ’07 pelleted)/commercial ’08 pelleted/harvested ’07 fermented
• Chile Arbol
• Chile Bola
• Chile Guajillo (4)/Cajun Tabasco (2)/Cuban Hot (2)
• Chile Ancho (aka Poblano)
• Green Bell Pepper/Red Bell Pepper
• Jalapeño Early Pepper/Serrano Pepper
• Marconi Red Pepper/Cayenne Pepper

Milk Jug Greenhouse 1: Mary Washington Asparagus

In this milk jug there are 19 hand rolled newspaper pots with Hoffman Seed Starter mix.  There are air holes cut in the top and sides and drain holes in the bottom.  The pots were seeded and watered and placed outside on 4/16/09.  The Mary Washington Asparagus seeds from 2004 season were put in warm water and allowed to soak for 10 days (hope it wasn’t too long; I kind of forgot about them ).

Flat 2: Herbs and Veggies

This 10×20 flat was filled with 8 9-cell trays.  Each tray holds one variety of seed.

These are the herbs and veggies planted in flat 2 listed as laid out in each tray (since I didn’t plant them in rows per se):

HTML clipboard

Well then here is the start of my planting for the 2009 season. I truly hope I didn’t get started too late. I think this afternoon Yeyda and I will go outside once the baby falls asleep so we can start cleaning up the yard. It feels phenomenal to have the windows open finally after being trapped in the house for so many months.

Last week I noticed as I looked out the window that my tulips are peaking out of the ground as are my daylilies, wormwood and phlox.  It won’t be long and we will have a lush display of many shades of green with different textures and shapes of leaves.  It made me itch to do some gardening.

My “winter” sowing has become a moot project.  Since it is officially spring I’m going to try the same technique but without the benefit of snow cover or so I thought. Last night in an effort to keep my little 3 year old entertained I asked her to help me go through my seed collection and remove seed pods from some dried out sedum flowers.  She thought that was great.  Later I checked the weather report since it had been raining most of the day and it mentioned something about snow on Monday.

Today so far has been a soggy, messy, rain/snow mix.  Not enough to look pretty or stick, just enough to make you feel blah.  My only consolation is that my flowers and plants that are in the ground are getting plenty of water right now.

I’ve picked out the seeds that I want to start indoors today.  Tomatoes, basil, and easter egg plant are among the candidates.  I also have several varieties of peppers that I want to get going before it gets to late.  When you think about 90 days to mature that means I’ll need to have plants ready by the first part of June if I want fruits before the first frost.   Any later than the mid part of June and I’m asking for a very short window to harvest any fruits off my warmer weather plants.  I’ll keep you posted how things go.

There are many products on the market that are made to make remembering to water your plants easier.  Whether it’s a ceramic worm that changes color or a glass globe with a long tube that sticks into the soil and self waters there is one thing you have to do – PAY ATTENTION.  Neither of these products tell you when the plant needs more if you aren’t looking right at them.  I’ve been known to neglect watering my indoor plants to the point of utter dehydration.  My “alarm” is a very observant 3 year old who notices when the plants look “sad”.

The talented people at the Botanicalls Project have found a way to bridge the gap of communication between people and plants.  They have created a sensor which monitors the plant’s moisture levels and sends Tweets to your mobile phone when it needs watered.  It even sends a “Thank You” when you show it love by watering it.  In an effort to show the public how this works they have a tweeting plant set up named Pothos.  As of today it has 3,025 followers and 152 updates and indicates it is in Urgent need of a watering .  How cool is that!?!

This would be a great gift for the avid gardener in your life. (*hint*hint*)

Last weekend and the beginning of this weeks were horrible days of scary weather. We had tornado warnings, continuous rain and massive flooding. Everywhere you looked in NW Ohio there were rivers and creeks overflowing their banks and low lying areas in farmer’s fields that were flooded. Roads were impassible and even sections of area cities were inundated to the extent they had to evacuate.

One sad revelation of this recent flooding is that a close friend of mine discovered all the fish in their pond had died. Apparently the ice cover on the pond got too thick and it was too cold for the fish to survive. When their pond flooded the property they found large bass, catfish, amors and bluegill floating all over their yard. The last time they had such a catastrophic loss of fish was the drought of ’88 that caused a turnover in their pond water. It was the first time I’d heard of such a thing. The water on the surface heats up to such temperatures that somehow it forces the cold water from the depths to rise to the surface and the hot water that sinks cooks the poor fish seeking shelter on the bottom.

You can thus imagine how large some of those fish they lost were since they were from the restocking of the pond 21 years ago. I guess they’ll just have to start anew. My suggestion to them since they were planning on having a larger garden this year is to bury the dead fish underneath since it would give their plants some very rich food. If I recall that is how the American Indians taught the Pilgrims to farm.

One of the reasons I feel so strongly about involving my little one(s) in the gardening process is because it is such a great learning experience.  They learn how to plant seeds, when and how to prepare the ground, what to look for as far as weeds, what parts of a plant are edible or not, the colors of the flowers,  etc. etc.

DD1 simply loves to play in the herb garden with me.  She knows that the basil, mint, stevia, sage, lavendar and rosemary are edible as opposed to the hostas, petunias and sedum in my flower garden.  Her favorite combination is the mint and stevia because it tastes like gum.

For me it is amazing to watch her marvel at the textures, colors, smells and tastes of the garden.  We also have some apple trees and a good size yard that offers many different creature experiences.  The NatureBag company has created an educational packet to take full advantage of all the different items you find outdoors.

To learn more about the NatureBag and enter to win one for your munchkin go to GrabBagReviews for several chances to enter.