October 31, 2008
· Filed under Uncategorized
Once the yummy yummy pickles were gone, I decided it was time to clean up the garden. I harvested about a gallon of beets and Emily will be making borscht with them on Sunday.
The onions I planted never got bigger than a golf ball. The pumpkins were also disappointing, but now that I’ve stripped the rest of the garden down to the soil and clipped off a few juvenile pumpkin starts, the remaining large ones appear to be taking off.
I believe the reason for our sub-par growth was perhaps a bad soil mix. I laid compost down on top of the soil that was there when we bought the house, but I never tested that deeper soil to see if it needed any repair.
I have a soil testing kit that I’ll run some dirt through at some point. I may also take a few samples into Tilth, who apparently does soil sample testing as well.
September 9, 2008
· Filed under Gardening · Tagged pickles
Last night I picked some cucumbers, dill, and an onion from our garden and made over one and a half gallons of pickles using the No-Can Refrigerator Dill Pickles recipe. They should be ready in a week.
August 19, 2008
· Filed under Gardening · Tagged beets
Even the cat liked them. A lot.
August 5, 2008
· Filed under Uncategorized
August 3, 2008
· Filed under Gardening · Tagged beets, cucumbers, dill, hydroponics, indoors, luffah, outdoors, pickles, pumpkins, tomatoes, upside-down
Pumpkins
Our pumpkins are coming along quite well! Of the 12 mounds I originally planted, around 7 are growing. As a bonus, two of the pumpkins from our carving party last year that I unceremoniously tossed in the garden to rot away over the winter have also sprouted up new vines in other areas of the garden.
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August 3, 2008
· Filed under Gardening · Tagged ninja, squirrel
Yesterday I was out in the city of Issiquah, about 20 miles east of Seattle. While there, I spotted what I call the Vancouver Black Ninja Squirrel.
Photo credit: bebouchard
I understand that this is a spreading variety and that for some reason the black squirrels either push out or breed away the lighter colored ones once they appear. So, I guess the old saying is true: once you go black, you don’t go back.
They seem just as curious, hungry, and harmless as any old squirrel so I for one welcome our new ninja squirrel friends.
July 16, 2008
· Filed under Gardening · Tagged outdoors, peas, tomatoes
Last Friday our dwarf pea plants were four feet tall and they had beautiful little white flowers all over. Two days later, almost every one of the flowers was sporting a 3″ pea pod.
I’d never seen anything grow so fast. If only the rest of our garden kept such a pace.
The beets are too small to eat just yet, but the leaves really are just like red spinach. Tonight we had our first salad made entirely of greens from the yard.
Our neighbor’s tomatoes are very large and already producing many small green fruits. Ours are still less than a foot tall and only the largest of them is flowering. From what I gather from talking to him, I brought the plants outside too soon. They also don’t get nearly as much reflected heat and light as his plants since his are about four feet from his yellow house.
July 5, 2008
· Filed under Gardening · Tagged beets, hydroponics, indoors, loofah, outdoors, tomatoes
Hydroponics
The original blower I built for the fog hydroponic rig was a simple $7 desk fan that I put inline with the fog stream. It did a good job for a time, but it was destined to fail from the moment it was submerged in supersaturated air.
When it eventually did fail, there was rust on the brushes and every part of it looked like unhealthy electronics. When I got around to replacing it, most of my strawberries had died, but my loofah plants hadn’t yet sprouted so there is still hope for them.
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June 12, 2008
· Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged aeroponics, hydroponics, indoors
Fog hydroponics shopping list
I’ve recently completed the second phase of my ultrasonic fogger based hydroponic rig. Here are the rough outlines of what I did along with some pictures of the rig.
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June 2, 2008
· Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged outdoors, pests
