Some Summer Updates

Hello again! It has been a busy few months since last summer, in non-horticultural areas of my life (looking for and starting a new job being a big part), but I have been sitting on a bunch of pictures from a project I had worked on for a while and finally put into action last summer without a great deal of success.  None the less, I will share with you one big design failure. Though I will say while this particular iteration was unsuccessful, I am hopeful many pieces of this can be reused.

My goal was to build a free standing, plastic free, vertical, drip driven berry patch (mostly using strawberries, but with intent to add raspberries, and maybe blueberries once I stabilized it...)  And while in the short term the design worked, later due to what I have assumed to be a poor material choice, and inadequate monitoring of my nutrients, the plants succumbed to incapacity to thrive, and eventually most died off before I decommissioned the whole structure.  None the less there were a few cool parts to talk about, and up until everything started going brown I took a number of pictures, so let's look at the highlights!

As it always does, it started with an idea, this particular idea being for a check valve lift mechanism, rather than the ball inflation needle design I had used in the past.  The theory being without the possibility of backflow due to increased pressure with increased height, this could lift higher easier. If the only way out is up, then up the water and air must go, right?

My ideas often become drawings:

Then I find materials, and my ideas get simpler:

Then I run into issues, like it not working. And I tweak to get it to where I want.  This alteration being that I cut the piping between the check valve and the T joint, and added a 4"piece of 1/4" copper tubing, as small reservoir. It worked:

So I had this new pump mechanism, this was back when I had the Pentatower going, but I didn't trust it there because it was untested, and I was a little skeptical.  So I had this dirty old galvanized trashbin at my apartment, and sitting on the deck one day I thought it might be a good reservoir. So I got a clean one, and caulked all of the seems with silicone. 

This more than anything else was the poor material choice,  by the end it had rusted (but the seams were good!), and while it wasn't structurally at risk I suspect that there may have been toxic levels of iron in the solution.

 

Punched a whole in the center of the bottom.

Did this:

And there it sat for a bit, until one day I was cleaning up some things, and found this old tripod, formerly the base of a drum kit cymbal stand, which had lost its matching pieces.  Oh and I made a giant net pot out of 1/4" steel mesh.

And so it sat for about a year, I put some water in it to check for leaks, there were none.

Put some air stones in it to prevent stagnation. Put a lid on it, and left it in the summer of 2011. I just didn't know what to do next with it I was planning to suspend the pentatower from the top, but just couldn't think of how to do it. So it sat, until I remembered I had another piece of pipe like I used in my portable tower, which I thought would sit nicely on top of the tripod. It did, I stabilized with some insulating foam strips coiled around the base, and made a cut out of the lid to use as an umbrella of sorts to keep water of the iron wire I used to anchor the base:

Giant net pot, connected the lift tube:

It worked! This thing was easily 7-8' of lift, and it had no trouble, even with low pressure due to long air lines:

So me and my friend stared at it for a bit and eventually had a couple ideas that seemed interesting, so I went with it.  Whole thing, made a cone thing out of mesh:

Filled 'er up (over 5 gallons of hydroton) and cut little inverted Ts in the mesh to make planters:

And put in the berries!

And so it was for weeks, the plants did great at first, then they started looking a little iffy, the airline got detached for a day at one point, and then it was all down hill.  Plants dropped like flies, turning vibrantly red first.  And around this time I realized how impossible the idea of a water change was...  I will also mention that while I stopped taking pictures at this point, I also put berries in the giant net pot, with a fogger in the reservoir, though it wasn't air tight, so everything outside of the drip ring from the 'umbrella' dried out on a hot day.  And in the end when I disassembled everything there was A LOT of corrosion everywhere, so changing water was at least necessary.  Also not having a good way to monitor nutrient levels was a problem with rain, and hot days skewing my conception of water::nutrient usage.
While I did not produce anything, I still think the pump mechanism was great and will use it again.  The cone tower thing, well that I am up in the air about, I may give it another go.  The tripod, detachable, scalable lift tube is definitely a keeper, I could potentially put the pump mechanism directly at the bottom, drop it at the shores of a lake and call it a day.  And who knows, maybe with the right coating (wax maybe?) the galvanized been could work too.  Just a perfect storm of issues this time around.

In other news!

10 foot tall tomato plants!  And some awesome daily harvests from the soil:

Our compost sprouted tomatoes, and then our whole garden did! And those raspberries really took off!

And my pineapple is unwieldy. No fruit yet, hopefully in the next 6 mos.

Thank you for reading,
Namaste.

Basic Permacultural Forays

Finally did something interesting that warranted a post again! This time on the soil front.  Over the past few months I have been doing some mild research into permaculture, complimentary plantings, traditional practices and the like, and this season had the chance to try some things out in our garden.  The first thing is a new style of corn cultivation.  In past years, we did the basic rows, and while we certainly have had some very fruitful years, I always have believed that grain cultivation in general (corn less so, but still) is very inefficient in its use of space.  So this year we decided to go the traditional route, and try growing our corn in hills.  And then we took it a step further, putting our squash plants in the middle of the hill, so they will fill out the ground beneath corn, utilizing multiple vertical layers of growing space in the given ground space.  And still plan to take it another step further, by adding pole beans into the mix once the corn has reach 6" or so, effectively using the corn stalks as poles for the bean vines to grow up (hopefully) utilizing yet another layer of grow space in the given ground space.  So in the long run, we hope to get three crops from one 6' x 10' plot of our garden.  I made six hills, all planted with eight corn stalks around the outer ring of the hill, and three squash plants in the middle (two hills are spaghetti squash, the other four ar butternut), we will probably pull/ transplant a couple of those plants once we know how many sprout, but that is the initial.  And I have yet to definitively decide, but at the moment am planning on 1:1 bean:corn.  

On a minor side note, this was also inspired by our lack of space left for corn, after half of our potato patch from last year (even at half a large piece of our garden) re-sprouted from potatoes (accidentally) left in the ground last year.

You can see the potatoes just to each side of he hills.  Will post more pictures as these fill out.

Also inspired by my boredom with row planting, and by my brother's quickly approaching wedding, I planted our lettuce with a little more creativity this year.  Hoping it will fill out just in time for when we have guests in a week from now.

Also, we have added yet a few more plants to our permaculture (perma being short for permanant) repertoire.

Raspberry canes just beginning to sprout.  These will become an approximately 2' wide thicket over the next couple of years.

 And asparagus, which could technically have been harvested this year, but is better to be left to establish for a year, hence the lankyness.

 And this is what asparagus becomes if not harvested!

 And this isn't new, but the strawberries really took over this year, most of them are already flowering and fruiting from our unseasonably warm spring.  Plan to grab a few to reattempt growing them hydroponically, see if I can't conquer my mite problem. And those blueberries are starting to really fill out! Just hope the birds don't eat them all this year!

Now the benefits of permaculture are diverse, and there is a whole (growing) school of thought surrounding these benefits, and the ways to implement come in a wide range of methods.  Everything from hydroponic systems that utilize aquaponics, and complimentary plants on a small scale, to edible forest gardens where people spend years establishing a plot of land as a hearty ecosystem that is also very fruitful relative to a natural untamed plot.  There are tons of principles that go into these different methods, and depending on the goals, the means change just as much if not more.  But things like thinking of how to best utilize a plot of land (i.e. looking at vertical layers, complimentary plantings).  How to best reduce input into the ecosystem (i.e. using aquaponics or vermiculture [worms] as a nutrient source, complimentary plantings as pest deterrents).  Reducing carbon loss in the soil (i.e. not tilling or burning, increasing composting). Increasing soil retention of water and nutrients (also not tilling, but also introducing fungal growth in the root zone).  And utilizing multiple points from the ecosystem (plants but also animals and fungi).
One thing I have been getting really interested in as of late is mycorrhizal fungi.  I was given a sample of Extreme Gardening's Mykos recently, which is essentially the spores of one type of these fungi, and it spurred my research mode.  So I looked into what the benefits of this type of inoculation is, and even the off hand benefits are fantastic.  Basically, these fungi come in a variety of types, and you could probably spend your life researching them, but they generally create a complimentary relationship with the root systems of different plants.  They grow around, or connected to the root hairs.  And because of the biology of fungi, they are able to effectively increase the surface area of water and nutrient uptake to the root system, simply because fungal mycelium (kind of like fungal 'roots') are smaller than even the smallest root hairs.  They also have the benefit of increasing water retention, can process otherwise inaccessible minerals into forms the plants can use, and in some cases can act as a buffer/ bank for some nutrients that would otherwise wash away in the rain (phosphorous comes to mind).  All around leading to fuller, healthier soil systems and plants!  And occasionally you can find an edible fruiting type, so all the more potential for food production.  These can also be used in hydroponics, though I am just trying it out now, so I'll have to let you know how it turns out.



And on the hydroponics front! Nothing particularly new compared to last year (aside from the mykos inoculation). Though I have added a new supplement to my nutrient solution that is focused on root growth and health.  Interestingly it contains brewer's yeast, which I would have previously assumed would damage the roots (in fact once one of my systems started to smell faintly like a brewery and I hastily changed the water because of it), but apparently not, so I will have to do a little research on that. But my plants seem to be loving it, they are only a week or two established in these pictures and they are loving it.

This year I am trying all cherry tomatoes in this system, straight DWC this time. Varieties are yellow pear, polar baby, and a traditional red cherry. So we will see which does best.

Went for a jalapeño pepper rather than bell this year, hoping that a smaller pepper will be more fruitful in the system.  Circled in sweet basil.  And cilantro is expected for the last spot, if/ when they sprout.

And my pineapple plant! (Or ananas plant as most other languages would call it...)

It is probably 10 months since I put the cutting in my system last year, and has been loving life since the sun came out a few weeks back.  And I changed the water/ cleaned the bucket for the first time in over a year, and since it looks healthy as ever, new growth is hearty and a nice deep green.  Still a ways to go before it would fruit, but at this rate, I am hoping!

And on a side note, the other day when I was looking through our seedlings I found this little guy hanging out in one of our seed starter trays, inside of our sun porch.  Lucky for him though, he avoided a chilly night, and I noticed him and set him free before he became dog food.

Be well wonderful readers, Namaste.

Summer Successes

So I have been super awful at keeping up with my endeavors online since things went awry in the spring, but I have continued endeavoring! And over the course of the summer my family and I have had a few successes despite some crazy weather for MA (We had perpetual rain for some weeks, tornadoes, hail, hurricanes, early frosts, and snow in october!).

The three tomato plants that I started in the spring are probably what did the best of anything. At their peak I was harvesting a large bowl full of heirloom tomatoes daily! They were super delicious. Up until earlier this year I never ate tomatoes, even on anything, and I would eat the yellow pears right off the vine daily. The yellow pears were the most prolific of the three by far, my speculation is that it was because of the placement of the plants in the system; the yellow pear was in the center, directly over the primary of the two airstones I had in the system, and the most area to grow due to the shape of the basin which the water was in. Aside from the fogger, which was removed mid-season, the system contained no plastics whatsoever. It is hard to see in the pictures, but I built a support cage out of chicken mesh, and used an old shovel handle to hold the plants up.

These first two pictures are from just before, and just after moving from inside to outside.

They took a bit of a beating, especially the yellow pear (center/ tallest). Taken in late May.

These are from a couple days, and about a month later

After some overzealous branching up  top in late July, my tying up gave way and the whole bush started to fall over, so I put a 12 foot 2"x4" in the ground next to it and began tying it up.  It reached about eight or nine feet before we got hit by a hurricane, and some sort of a mold/mildew/fungus took out all of the tomatoes in the area.

Also in this system, I rooted my new pineapple plant!

Next to the tomatoes, the other hydroponic things did pretty well. A DWC system which I had set up for my mom in the spring, which had three basil plants and a pepper produced a number of peppers and good deal of basil, though the pepper overshadowed a little. This system survived hell, the pepper plant, and even the whole system were blown over multiple times, causing branches to break off. There was also a twelve site fog culture planted with two peppers and eight or so basil plants of assorted varieties. It was not the best fogger system set-up, a lot of sediment built up on the fogger which clogged it. But none the less it was very bountiful, we made multiple pesto dishes throughout the summer simply through picking little bits off, and then when we really harvested, we made dozens of 4-8oz jars of pesto with it.

All of these pictures are from very early in the season, by the end everything was much larger.

Before move outside.

After move outside.

Though I shelved my indoor systems for the summer, I did set up one simple, experimental ‘garden’. I built a table out of scrap wood we had laying around and cut two holes in it the size of a five gallon bucket. Then I built something of a light box around it, and lined it with reflective film on all sides. I planted five basil plants in each bucket, placed one new airstone in each bucket, fed by the same pump. If I had light on, it was equidistant from each bucket. The one difference between the two buckets was that in-line to the airstone of one bucket I placed an algaculture relay system. In theory, via passing the air through an active algaculture, the oxygen content will rise in the air relative to the external atmosphere, thereby diffusing a higher oxygen content into the DWC nutrient solution. In practice, I took a clear mason jar, drilled two holes in the lid, ran a line-in which was to be submerged in nutrient water (to the bottom of the jar), then ran a line-out which was mounted just enough into the jar to be sealed, this was all sealed air tight with hot glue (silicon caulk in the future), the jar was filled with nutrient water leaving a small gap, I inoculated the solution with algae from a fish tank, and the lid was tightened on. The plants in each bucket grew equitably while the jar was establishing. It took a while to get established, but eventually the jar was a vibrant green and all surfaces were thick with algae. I then cut all plants back to the base-most node placing them on the same level literally and figuratively. Effect, after leaving them to grow freely all summer, the plants in the inline-algaculture-bucket were substantially taller, approx. 140% taller (~ 4-6 in.). I don’t consider this at all definitive, and I will likely try the experiment again, multiple times, before I am positive it is beneficial. The idea being that as with all life, plants use oxygen, especially at night, especially in the roots, so increasing the atmospheric oxygen in the root zone would potentially increase growth in some capacity. Whatever the end result, these plants produced wonderfully. Unfortunately it was too close quarters to get any good photos.

This is all of the basil we grew, inside/outside, soil/hydroponics from the night we made pesto.

Top is from soil plants.

Bottom left is outdoor DWC.

Bottom right is from my experimental DWC.

Now for the soil. It was super wet this year, and as I previously said we had some intense weather. But we have an extensive garden and some things did quite well. Potatoes, we grew nine different heirloom varieties, and we actually bought another fridge to store them all. The soil tomatoes (as well as the hydroponics, though earlier) were attacked by a mold, mildew, or fungus in the area and took a hit for it. Beans did okay though we had some pole beans labelled bush and vice versa, so we didn’t have the proper set-up for maximum yield. We planted strawberries, and they spread like wildfire, and produced some fruit. Onions did well, beets not so much. And as always we had plenty of lettuce, kale, chard.

This is the primary part of our soil garden, before much had sprouted.  In the center are onions, chard, lettuce, beets, spinach.  To the right of the central tree was all potatoes, ~25'x25'.  To the left of the tree out to the rope was all corn, but it didn't do fantastically.  And in the back left were our soil tomatoes. Kale and broccoli scattered everywhere.

The next picture is from what is now our berry patch off on the northern side-lot of our yard. Four blueberries, and a lot of strawberries (even more now!) this has all been covered in mesh.  Just out of frame to the left were our beans and some cucumbers.  An the picture to the right is of one of our cold-frames which we use to start plants outdoors before it is warm enough, and now to keep our lettuce alive past frosts and even snow this year.

I will likely be posting again soon, with the summer gone, and winter quickly approaching, I will be bringing much more life back indoors.  I have a few hydroponic things that I worked on, but never planted anything in due to timing which I will post some designs and pictures of.  And my WindowFarm(s) will be running and planted again in the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned, follow to be notified of any updates, and keep farmin'! Namaste.

There's Water in the Tub

So as of the first of this year, I have moved into a new apartment with a good friend of mine from home.  We are both pretty into WindowFarms, particularly in their potential practical application in providing a  complete, fresh, organic diet for a person free from the limitations of exterior conditions.  My goal since before being introduced to WindowFarms was to become self-sustaining, within average limitations; not necessarily becoming a farmer, maintaining a similar or better quality of life, spending similar or lesser money than purchasing food.  Around the time that my friend pointed me to WindowFarms I had been thinking about how to best utilize window light, though my design wasn't remotely as elegant as what the WindowFarms team has been coming up with, and I wasn't yet thinking of using recycled materials.  I came up with something like this:

I was thinking more of an ebb and flow design, using large diameter PVC pipe on a slight incline.  I was planning on wrapping the whole structure in mylar, but still there would have been a lot of blocked light, and overlap with a system like this.  And there is the whole plastic thing, which I hate.  

With the basic mechanical design provided by the WindowFarms team, I turned my focus to the materials, and condensing of my system, while getting the hang of hydroponics, and just developing a mass of supplies and techniques for making more assemblies.  With the recent move, me and my roommate now have the space to move on to the original goal I was aiming towards, growing all of my own food.  We only have five months though, so we are aiming kind of low for the time being, maybe all of our food for the last week or month that we are here, and if we manage that, then I will aim for the whole next year with supplemental food from my summer gardens.

So with this new aim, we need to greatly increase our plant numbers in the WindowFarms.  I currently have three functional systems, two nine bottle modular towers, and my portable tower described in the last post.  Initially we planned on two more triangular modular towers of twelve wine bottles cut to half length (I had a number of people collecting wine bottles for me over the past couple months).

Going back to my First Steps I quickly realized it wouldn't be so easy to use my original method.  It being winter in New England, it is really cold, and considering the heat and cool method I used, I thought lighting bottles on fire in sub-freezing temperatures wasn't a particularly good idea.  So me and my roommate got thinking, and figured possibly doing it in a bathroom would work; not much flammable material, good ventilation, and we figured if there's water in the tub, then we are all good if something on fire were to fall from the bottle.

Though, I also planned on cutting the bottles in half, because the plants seem to never fill the full bottles, so I could save a bunch of space.  I had yet to have success doing a half wine bottle with the burn and dunk method.  So I thought maybe the novelty of no power tools was wearing thin considering my time constraints (I don't really have anywhere to cut bottles here in the apartment).  I commented on potentially buying a wet saw to my parents and come to find out, my brother had one all along.  So I collected every bottle in the house and spent a few hours over new years weekend cutting and washing them all.  While this is for a different end, This Process is the same as what I did to cut the bottles in half.  Be wary when doing this, it makes a lot of glass slivers, I had one stuck in my toe for two days because I stupidly didn't wear shoes.  It's also really messy, sprays water everywhere.

It comes out really clean, like this:

After moving in, we started laying out the bottles to design our new towers.  Between the length of the bottles, and the new S-hook suspension system that we used on the portable farm, we figured we could fit twice as many bottles in the same vertical space as the previous systems.  After some thinking, and looking around the hardware store, we ended up getting a length of PVC and some fittings to make a hanger assembly to put the tower on.  I also grabbed these suspension clamps and threaded rods from a previous project after unsuccessfully attempting to do something like What This WindowFarms User Did with the reservoir on my portable tower.  And I thought they were perfect for hanging the rope from, with one modification, tying a string between the front two ropes to align them.  Unfortunately, this PVC tower isn't very sturdy, so I had to tie it up to a hanger rod.  Also PVC looks awful, but I plan to wrap it in mylar, so hopefully that will help.  As I was hanging the rope, I realized that with my new method I could expand beyond three bottles, and decided to go with five.  So here is my work in progress pentagonal tower:

As odd as it is, this window is in my closet, it is a north facing window, but we don't have many windows that get direct light, just one which the other triangular towers will likely be in.  This one is going to have supplemental lighting, likely a 150w HPS on for twelve hours out of the day, possibly more if necessary.  I am not quite sure yet how large this will be, currently I have the fifteen pictured here, and have added an additional two, I believe I have twenty five cut bottles, so I may do a full five tiers if it fits.  For the reservoir I plan to use a gallon apple cider jug, with some iteration of the airlift pump, through the same copper I have been using.  Once I have it functioning, I am going to box the system into only a couple square feet of floor space, completely surrounded by reflective film, aside from the window.

For the drip ring, I had a thought for an organic option while cleaning the bottles, specifically a Triple Sec bottle that I had cut the bottom off of.  I will use the bottom of a large diameter bottle as a small reservoir and distribution cap.  I will cut notches over each tower, and run wicks into the hydroton of the top bottle to guide the water as it overflows into the bottle.  Here is a picture of the rough pieces in place, and an illustration showing the goal:

The vertical tube is the lift tube.  

Dotted line is potential cover.  

Wide arrow is copper tubing, 

or wick leading out to towers.

I plan to sow seeds within a couple days, I will be doing my best to keep track of updates on their growth Here on Folia.  Please check out what I have planted, and help me think of some more seeds to pick up, me and my dad have quite a stash of seeds, which is what I am planting out of, but I am going to undoubtedly need some other things to create a more rounded diet nutritionally.  Particularly I need things with protein, any recommendations for plants are welcome, just please give some nutritional information in case I am not familiar, thank you all for reading!

That's all for now, Namaste, and Keep Farmin'