Tray planting

So, been on track with various planter methods of growing.

Most recent is a seed tray that sells for $3.

Then half a coir block, which sells for $5 but since we only need half, its $2.50 used. Coir block (how do you pronounce that??) is sort of compressed material that becomes soil like material when you leave it in water to soak. So it's easy to carry home from the shop and much easier to fill planting containers with than soil from around your house (as in you don't have to leave holes everywhere and home soil is often full of grass seeds and is not terribly consistant in quality)

Then some lettuce seeds. I collected mine from a previous lettuce I grew that I allowed to go to seed. Just one plant produces more than you get in a packet if you buy from a store! The variety I grow is green mignonette. The snails seem to leave it alone and although strong if you eat it right from the plant (which is probably why the snails leave it alone!) if you soak the leaves in a bowl of water for a minute or two they become just a regular lettuce leaf in flavour. Actually, a bit tastier!

If we treat the lettuce as worth $1.50 each on maturation and plant eight of them in the planter, the first four basically cover the costs of materials (materials which can be used again multiple times!) and the next four result in about $6 saved in groceries - ie, a profit of $6! Per tray!

I actually had some lettuce seeds I'd casually sewn into a bucket of soil awhile back - there were too many and they were crowding each other. But that worked fine for the new trays as I just transplanted the already growing lettuce plants to it! Giving a big head start and allowing the lettuces in the bucket more room to breath (I will probably transplant more from the buckets elsewhere - it seems one bucket suits about one lettuce each. I've a good head growing in one particular bucket)

Cabbages & Caterpillars (and a watermelon)

The cabbages growing in buckets are doing quite well now - the leaves have toughened and it seems fewer or non catterpillars are being laid upon them. Some leaves are almost complete (somethings nibbled the tips though - perhaps grass hoppers?)

This after going through them each day and picking off a number of caterpillars from the plants - they like to hide under the leaves when they are small. Having the plants in buckets helped because this would have been a strain to do repeatedly if they were ground level. But at bucket level they are much easier to clear (or you could even put the bucket on top of something else!)

Also the watermelon out the front has started to fruit! I slipped a piece of cardboard under it to help keep it dry. I wonder if I'll actually get a melon from it? I'm anticipating some idiot passing by will spot any fruit just before I harvest and decide to stamp on it, because of what inflicts their minds. Still, if it leaves behind some viable seeds, that's a good result.

The tomatoes I trasfered into the ground - well, some were lost to heat. But now I seem to be about to lose some to hammering rain? A few look limp and unhappy after the sky bucketed down and washed away some of the top soil around their roots.

Meanwhile I'll see how the potato buckets go - I've had to tip over some of the more shallow buckets to drain, then just left them that way with more rain on the way. The ones with large plants I've left for now (will probably tip to drain tomorrow) as the plants tend to drink up some of the water.

Anyway, with the rains coming this is a big test for the bucket system!

Potato buckets are going fairly okay. Harvested from a couple more and as usual the potatoes cluster around one layer. With a couple of buckets where I planted the potato low, it's grown higher than the bucket now, so I've topped it up with soil. Though leaves half covered with soil died off, the plant seems to be keeping on. So hopefully it grows potatoes at a number of levels, ala the idea behind hilling potatoes when grown the traditional way in the ground.

Also with the summer sun here burning the lawn down, I've taken advantage of where I tore out some weeds to dig eight small holes, then transfered some tomato plants into them that I had been growing in the greenhouse. Often when I transfer, I don't make the hole deep enough and the tomato plant sits on a mound, both not having it's roots very deep and also the mound washes away with watering, exposing it's roots. This time I am avoiding that and hoping to take advantage of what is a very dry lawn at the moment.

Carrot tops amongst the lawn grass?

With shorn mown grass burnt by the sun, I've taken a section of front lawn and spread some heirloom carrot seeds around upon it as well as watering a few times. I don't use chemicals on my lawn, so I'm curious about growing a few carrots in that area. So this is an experiment.

However watering it seems to have activated some of the annoying deep rooted weeds I thought I'd removed from it. Perhaps by seed or remaining root stems, they are shooting up. It's annoying as I thought I'd cleared them all and was congratulating myself on that progress.

Can't find the name of the weed. It has a thick root, with leaves that come out in a circle around that and flat with the earth. When it flowers, it sends stems out from the center with little ovoid heads on them that have little white stems extending from their middle, with small white blobs on the ends.

Old swamped out bucket not such a great yield

I went through a bucket with a dead potato plant. It was one of the originals I'd started and I'd had some swamping problems with it, so I'd cut a hole in it's side about an inch from the bottom.

Not much of a result in the end - one medium potato (nice looking) and one tiny potato that was already sprouting. I wonder if becoming a relatively dry bucket (because of the drainage hole) contributed to that? The soil looked and felt nice, though - that seems a thing with this set up, it takes the kind of rough leaf litter and sandy soil and seems to make a nicer mix out of it. And also I have one more potato than I did before.

Anyway, put the soil back in the end and planted the sprouter in a small pit I made at the top, so I could hill in around it as it gets taller. Assuming hilling works.

Further P Bucket Experimentation

Gah, I think I over watered one bucket that had a nice patch of shoots coming out. The leaves went all wilty and then died back alot.

So I tilt it over to drain what I can.

Days latter it still seems wilty and dying back - so I press my finger at the side of the bucket to the bottom to feel if any water is down there. It's completely dry!

So I give it a little bit of water, just on that side I checked.

Now the shoot looks even less happy.

Meanwhile the other buckets shoot is bursting up at hyper speed!

The match stick trick worked out nicely - one potato shoots leaves are almost double what they were before! Perhaps because there's some organic fertiliser in there with it.

Though I looked at the chart and technically it's not the time to put in potatoes in these parts, that's supposed to have ended last month. But...still going to do at least three more buckets. But also try to grow carrots and beetroot in them. Got alot of carrot seeds from plants that went to seed, including a heirloom that I must keep marked separately.

Low fill experiment working out well!

You can just see the green shoots

So after shoots have been scorched off by extra nitrogen from bought compost soil or perhaps sudden exposure to the sun, I brought them in and then they seemed to send up new green shoots. Putting them out again they seem to be leaping up a few millimeters in just a day. It's at this point you could put a spent matchstick into the ground with it's tip level to a leaf, to get an idea of how much they grow over time. It's too easy to get no sense of progress because the progress is small and hard to tell (ones memory simply doesn't record the old height ver well!).

Anyway, grow quick so I can get on with the next step of the hilling test!

Interim stuff

Obviously growing plants for food involves alot of interim stuff. The plants do their growing thing, taking about four months from shoot to actual edible produce. And of course the potato plants are shedding all the sun scorched leaves.

Currently setting up new buckets, with the potato very low in the bucket and only a little soil, letting the shoot from the potato show. Also I had stripped off all other shoots but one (storing them in the fridge for now for latter separate planting) and let the potato dry it's wounds over night. Having just one shoot is supposed to help, as they don't compete with each other.

Anyway, All the harvests so far have had the growth of potatoes at about the level the thing was planted at, not much deeper, not much higher. Hopefully the advice about hilling potato plants is true so once the shoots have grown up, I will add more soil (still leaving the top most leaves exposed) and hopefully the covered stem will start sending out tuber shoots as well. That or I'll find out hilling was just a myth.

Currently some of the plants have made tubers right near the surface, so they have become green. Which is annoying as they were quite nicely sized potatoes. I guess those ones will become the next seed potatoes!

So how do potato buckets stand to hot weather and a week of no watering?

Was away for awhile and could only top up the buckets with water as a scorcher loomed and they'd have to spend over a week without any more help from me. Did fairly well in the end, I think if plants returning to some green leaves amongst the burn is any indication. The tall corn plant growing from one bucket really recovered nicely - must be the sort of plant that's used to that sort of cycle.

One particular plant seems pretty badly burned though. Or perhaps it's more nitrogen burning - it's in a bucket with a lot of grass - the plant seems to be dying from the base upwards.

Potato Bucket Revival

Interesting. The potato bucket that seemed to be killing the shoots from the shooting potato I'd put into it...well they still look like they are dying but two new outbursts of potato leaves are coming through the surface! So maybe it's discarding the old shoots, making new ones?

While in the other bucket the shoots are going fine, producing many leaves along their length.

Not sure what to conclude? I did keep the bucket fairly drained. Once the new shoots are established, they'll be a strong indicator of how much to water it. Certainly the other bucket potatoes will show a drooping leaf when they need it.

Stale bucket

One of the buckets I have going actually has a store bought potato that germinated and produced a long stem, searching for sunlight. I put this into a bucket that didn't seem to be working, with the stem above - but the stem is slowly turning brown and withering!? I have alot of grass at the top of that one - I wonder if too much nitrogen from the decaying grass is burning the plant?

Anyway, I've set it on it's side to drain, if it's becoming swamp like. But not much liquid is coming out.

Meanwhile other buckets with huge potato plants (much taller than the first one I harvested) actually look a bit wilty, running out of water! So I top them up a little. Looking forward to harvesting those ones!

Washing machine grey water and more soil containers

Scuse the dirt, that's there because I
used the bucket to move some earth
just before. 

Currently I can't collect grey water from the showers drain pipe, as a large box is in the way for the time being. The only grey water I can collect is from the washing machine. You know that curved pipe that you sling over a sink, for the machine to pump it's water out - well, put a bucket in that sink and sling the curve over the bucket. It'll likely overflow the first bucket, but since it's in the sink that's fine. The prob is you'll probably want to fill a second bucket, so hauling them to switch positions, timing it with the wash (I set a kitchen timer for about thirty minutes to try and catch the first lot of water), isn't as convenient as the shower collection system I have.

In other news I've taken a packing box, one which relatively low and flat with a lid that fits it, and simply sat the lid down upsidedown then put the bottom in, still upright, so the lid simply braces the inner wall. Then I've filled it with alot of leaf litter and then some soil across the top. I'm trying this out because it'll sit over the ground, blocking weeds from growing below (I wasn't too happy with the number of weeds amongst the broad bean crop) and like the potato buckets, it lets you get at any underground crop. It should be easier to weed as well - weeds can't do their horizontal trick, only start with seedlings.

Hunted around for a worm to put in, but just found dry soil. Perhaps I'll have to either wait for rains or water a spot of soil in hope to raise up some earthworms?

And yup, I'll probably put some second generation small potatoes into it - the ones dug up from a plant, but were a bit green.

Again harvesting from a box should be alot easier.

Only downside is that for this advice to work out for you, you'd need a constant supply of carboard boxes like that. Might look into using cereal boxes in future, to address that.

Potato Bucket first harvest

Bucket potatoes! I have a series of these at the moment, as an experiment, and finally one of the potato plants was at it's dying stage, leaves yellowing and falling apart. I decided to harvest before it became a completely dry husk because as it was it was still draining the bucket. I have only put holes in a couple of buckets as an experiment. Generally it works out once the plant is growing, because it's leaves sweat excess water away and you can even end up with a water starved/droopy plant. But I've had some buckets turn swampy and the seed potato rotted - I'm considering what to do about them. Snow pea plants are one angle - they can be planted near the surface so they wont rot, the leaves will sweat water and they'll put nitrogen into the buckets soil as well.

Anyway, I have a container I usually use for storing grey water, but it was dry currently, so I was able to tip the bucket into it and sift through the soil. For a start, I found about five earthworms and little tiny white worm like creatures which may have been baby earthworms. I'm pretty sure I only put two in at most, so the buckets are creating a worm farm environment it seems!

Onto the actual potatoes, they seemed to be mostly around the plants base. Not much lower. I'm not sure if I should have the buckets half full then plant, then hill more soil around the potato plant as it grows. Really I want more of a set and forget arrangement, rather than 'tend to it over and over again' arrangement. I already have kids for that! So possibly ways of getting more per bucket with a hilling technique.

Anyway, 200 grams of desiree potatoes! Not a huge amount, but more than zero! Though I grant you need to take the largest of the potatoes and use it as your next seed potato. I guess that might indicate that hilling is the next step - perhaps just a two stage hilling, once the plant will be above the second half of soil once it's put in. Could also be a moisture thing - I've heard there's a critical time when the plant wants alot of water for potato production. It's going to be an experiment to manage more water, but not making the bucket become a swamp!

Still, it was alot easier to harvest these ones, with out the potato paranoia that you missed digging up a big one!

Put the soil back into the bucket with a bit of fresh soil along with a new seed potato. Also with a plastic contained on top held down by a stone, to block some amount of rainfall getting in so as to stop the bucket swamping before the plant get's leaves out to drain it. Put four Oregon dwarf snow pea seeds in as well.

Water Melon and Tomatoes

Back onto it! Currently I have a medium size plastic greenhouse, bought at the Reject shop for around $25. This is really handy for getting plants up from the seedling level without snails eating them when they are young and vulnerable and also the trays you use in it wont have encroaching weeds building up in them.

One of the more recent experiments is growing watermelon plants from bought seeds. The germination rate wasn't good - only two plants out of about ten seeds tried. However, you get quite a few seeds in a packet and if you keep the seeds from any melons grown (which you will if you want to be good with money!)

Also took dried tomato seeds from paper sheets and planted them in a tray inside the green house. These seeds were taken simply from when you cut up a tomato on the chopping block and seeds seep out onto the block. Use a knife to lift them and place onto paper, then leave the paper to dry. Latter after they are nicely dry, scrape off with your finger nail and put into the soil.

At the moment I put in a small piece of cardboard next to each seed, so as to get an impression of where to look and the sucess rate for every single seed I've put in! Also I'm experimenting with this tray, to simply put the seed on the surface and let gentle watering with a watering can do the work of pressing it to soil. If you can skip sticking each below the soil, why not? :)

I actually did a smaller tray and was so heartened by how many cardboard markers had a tomato plant sprouting up (from seeds that I had dried months ago) that I set up a bigger tray. Though according to a chart I have, for this location planting tomatoes ends at the end of december. Should be able to set up a patch easily before then, though!

Gathering water

At my place for some reason I was lucky enough to have one of the downpipes end before it contacted with the ground. This allowed me to cut the top of a platic container of drink and invert it, creating a syphone. Making holes in the plastic I added large size paper clips that I'd stretched out, through the holes and then bent them over to hook onto the bracket that held the pipe to the wall.

Then from the syphon I made a make shift pipe from plastic milk bottles, cutting out the platic, rolling it into a pipe and duct taping it with a cheap roll of duct tape. The pipe aims into a 45 litre platic container, one of those ones you can buy to store stuff in. Here, the stuff is water. I had stuff in it before, but didn't need to now, so it switched roles.

All my other downpipes are flush with the ground though, which makes this process not work out as it's gravity fed. If you own the house you could make a small incision at a higher level and insert a pipe - it wont gather all the water, but it'll get some. Even if you don't own the house, it might be possible to make a descrete incision on the side more toward the house and hidden away.

My own progress making money through growing suger snap peas

Currently I have a row in the ground, with lots of green shoots coming up. I actually did weed this area, as it was soil contained in a brick enclosure and the weeds weren't that deeply rooted. Also I did it over time, about 20 pea seeds a day or so, weeding roughly the right amount of ground for them and putting them in. The bricked area seems to not be visited by slugs/snails very much.

Now I've put them in, it's a good feeling as the plants are now in effect working for me, growing even if I leave them for a bit.

In terms of being even cheaper, it's also possible to harvest grey water - one simple way is to put the plug in your shower about half way through, then use empty milk containers to collect the water after your shower. Instead of the water going down the drain, it goes to your plants.

Finding a spot & Germinating

Finding a place in your garden, or if you don't, finding a sunny spot. Basically in a garden you don't necessarily have to plough the earth, since that is a big hassle. You can just mow the grass really short and/or burn some paper on the spot to kill off the grass. Then (after the earth has cooled) you can simply take a stick and poke holes into the ground for each pea, leaving about 5 centimetres between them.

If you don't have a garden, you can use the bases of 3 litre milk containers. Cut the top off (ie, the part that includes the handle, upwards). You can grab leaves from a local park and stuff the base with that, then on top of that add a layer of soil. Perhaps you'll need to 'borrow' a bit of soil from the local park for that, if you can't get any. It's certainly a drab day when you can't even have access to the basics like soil! Once done, apply the following instructions for the garden (sans the paper burning!!) to the container and find a spot by a window which gets the most light.

Back to the garden, you will get long grass there in the end and it'll compete with the peas a bit, reducing their return somewhat. But if you don't own a shovel or aren't inclined to digging over a patch of grassy ground (which, let's be honest, will be thickly matted with grass roots and hard to clear), then it's a way to get started right now!

You don't just put them in though. Put the dried pea seeds into a dish of water for about 12 hours. Don't leave it for longer otherwise the seeds sort of drown! Then find an old sock that you were going to throw out. Utterly soak the sock in some regular water then take the seeds from the dish and lay them on one half of the sock, then fold the other half of the sock over the top of them (note, the sock can be used for this multiple times - other sites will suggest using paper towels which, of course, you'd have to spend money on). You can check on them whenever you want, but it'll take about two days for the seeds to start sprouting. It's really satisfying to come back after an hour and see the white shoot of a seed having visible extended from the seed.

After they have made a shoot that's at least a few millimetres long, you can pop them into the holes you made in the garden. Pour water into each hole and cover it. Put something over the top as birds like to explore the hole for insects and they tend to pull the seed out. Laying newspaper down will be fine and it helps kill off the grass as well. Remove the newspaper after a five days or so. This way you don't necessarily have to fill each hole with dirt. Just water it again after you remove the newspapers.

Making Money with Sugar Snap Peas!

It's really easy to start making inverse income and effectively making money - that's income where since you didn't spend money on a necessity (in this case food/vegetables) you keep that money for something else. You've made that money in as much as you've eliminated the need to spend it on a necessity.

I'd recommend sugar snap peas to start with, because you can eat the casing as well and it means less shelling. So you can either buy the pea seeds from a local hardware store or nursery, or you can simply buy sugar snap peas at the grocer and super market. If you do this though, you will have to shell them and dry them in a cool, dry place for say 15 days or so. They need to be dried to trigger their germination properties.

If you buy a packet, you get a lot of them for around $6. Since each plant gives around $35 cents worth of peas or more, you need to plant just 18 plants to cover the cost of the 'investment'!

Okay, time to decide how many seeds you want to plant. You will probably need a five centimetre gap between each plant so they don't crowd each other. You can crowd them a fair bit, but as they compete for nutrients and light they will produce less pods and might even go below the bottom line of five pods per plant.

In terms of planting in a garden, or if you don't have a garden, in planters, finding a good spot will be part of the next article!