On 2022-01-10 04:36 Avon said...
:) well posting to this echo and getting some traffic in it will certainly help that cause, so thanks for doing so :) Hopefully a few others may care to join in too :)
I hope they will. :)
How fascinating, what sort of climate are you in and given the locale I can only imagine you're rather creative when it comes to getting stuff growing? Is it vegetables you grow or flowers?
While it's nice to have more land it also means more to look after, weed, etc. :)
I live in the middle of Sweden, we have four seasons, and if one prepares plants by pre-growing them early enough in the winter or spring, depending on what you are growing - one can get most things to harvest in the summer or autumn.
In the autumn things needs to be taken inside to be overwintered if it can not handle freezing and snow.
I tried to overwinter some chili plants, after cutting them down heavily, it didn't work out this time (either) though, they got too infested with leaf lice. I've read that something called "neem oil" helps against leaf lice, so I have to get some of that for next attempt..
To some extent tobacco juice works against leaf lice, but this time it was just too many of them.
For tomatoes, and especially paprika/bellpeppers and chilis one needs to start the seeds early. To get some early chili fruits it is a good time to start the seeds now, indoors, in January.
I grow both vegetables and flowers, mostly pelargoniums, because they are sturdy and easy to maintain, and look nice and flower for a long time too.
For this year I will try to grow beans against one of the walls on my balcony, I tried last year too, but the ones I planted didn't germinate, and I was a bit late with planting them too, but I had cucumber that totally took over the wall instead, and gave me quite a few cucumbers actually.
I saved lots of seeds from them.
When it comes to being creative, I am currently trying to overwinter the cherry tomatoes from last year, in any way I can, I let them grow quite wild, some of them laying down on the shelf under the growlights, and then letting them shoot up new stems along the "backbone" main stem.
I have them in differently sized containers, one being a Pringles tube, to test if giving them a relatively long rooting area along the stem, though in a relatively small amount of soil will work well.
I also overwinter pelargons, and the tomato vines I let grow on top of their leaves. I will probably have to cut them down, or take new cutlings atleast, when they grow too long, but so far I just let them do what they want and try to keep them happy. :)
One of those is also giving me little tomatoes, while growing laying down, in a quite small square planting pot. It is quite amazing what they can get out of a small quantity of soil, as long as they are watered somewaht correctly.
I keep most things on trays, which enables me to water them from the bottom, which also makes it easier to actually do it in time, since the tray half filled with water gives them, and be a buffer of water for a few days, up to almost a week.
But.. another thing I want to play around with is of course to automate watering and monitoring, with Pi's, Arduino's, sensors, and so on. :)
I have not done any hydroponics but saw something on our local TV news the other night about a business supplying micro-greens?? to Auckland restaurants that were grown hydroponic-ally in a basement of a building that used to be a night club, the new business was doing well.
Microgreens are very popular nowadays, I have tried a little bit of that too, but I have to try a few more times to get better results.
I tried spinach, and pea-shoots.
Basically microgreens are densely sown flats/trays, with a little bit of soil or other growing medium if growing hydroponically, just to give the seeds something to let the roots hold on/dig in to, that you let grow to 10-20 centimeters, depending on the crop, but you only let it sprout and give its first leaves, and then cut it to eat it fresh, young and crisp.
One can then let it re-grow a couple of times, as long as it tastes good.
Since the modular and stackable nature of plastic trays it is very suitable for compact and dense growing on shelves with growlights.
"Vertical farming" is another related buzzword.
I find this very interesting too, and will try to experiment more with it.
Of course I want to grow things outside, and/or in greenhouses, but my prepper/survivalist side finds it fashinating to try to do things in an indoors (and possibly underground) environment too.
I gave tomatoes a miss this summer here (it's currently my summer here in New Zealand) and instead we grew courgettes, cucumber, lettuces, broccoli and cauliflowers. Have had some issues with aphids but otherwise they are going well.
I grew cucumbers last year in our summertime here, I only planted two plants, but they grew very fast, and they climbed very well up a lattice I put up on the wall. It was the first time I tried cucumbers, an interesting plant, their outshooting string like "grabbers" that twirl around anything to hold itself up and climb further is very cool to see.
Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you too. :)
Best regards
//beardy
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