My grow shelf was getting rather crowded, so I’m putting my plants to work! Well, I’m taking them to work anyway. One of these 1000 watt LEDs supposedly can blanket a 4″ x 4″ area with ample light, so I’m hauling some of the bigger plants to the office to continue to grow. As of today, I have the two Kratky kale (already showing root growth!) along with the two Kratky spinach. The four cucumber plants I have started will likely be growing up the back wall in the not too distant future. I’ve also brought in the two cauliflower, a basil plant and a small maple tree sapling one of my girls found growing in a flower bed that we’ve had potted for a couple of months. This extra room is going to come in handy!
With only a western facing window in our home to use for plants, the lighting situation has been holding back the power of the desktop aquaponic system. But no more! At my disposal is a 1000w LED light, that is supposed to be equivalent to a 600w HPS light, and draw less than 200w of actual current. I’ve had this left over pepper plan in the grow bed for some time, but now that there is a light above there the plant has produced many flowers and just yesterday did I notice what looks to be the tiniest pepper fruit emerging from the plant! See above my thumbnail in the picture below? Does that look like a pepper to you?
Over the next few days, I should get a definitive answer as to if we can look forward to fresh, homegrown peppers or not. The free light app has the light power measuring at about 14,000 – 15,000 lux. For comparison, the florescent lights I have been using for my seed starts registers at 3,000 – 4,000 lux while the light in our dimly lit rooms in our house measure at less than 100 lux. That should be enough to get some fresh vegetables going. And enough to get some curious questions as to what is in my window from our neighbors.
Genesis 1:3
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
Brown mites in your worm bin is not uncommon, and they are generally harmless. Too many of them, however, and the mites could be eating too much of the food you intend to feed the worms. Presently we have TOO MANY brown mites in our worm trays!!
We’ve tried the trick where you place cantaloupe rinds into the bed and when they get covered in mites, dunk them in a bucket of water. It works a bit. Bait, rinse, repeat. Maybe we will continue with this hands-on method if need be. Perhaps, too, we will attempt this with watermelon rinds, which I hear they like as well.
We’ve also heard that laying the trays out in the light will drive them off as well. As they are suited for life in the worm bin, if they venture out too far they will simply die. At least that’s the urban legend among brown mites, if you happen to slow down enough to hear their tales. Too much moisture, or too many breads/grains in the food may be exacerbating our mite situation.
If you have other tips or tricks to share with us about addressing an overpopulation of mites in the worm bin, please let us know in the comments below. Until next time … GOD BLESS !!
On day four of the black sunflower seed sprout experiment, the jar is completely jam-packed with sprouts! If I were to be continuing the sprout process, I may go with one cup of seed for the quart mason jar instead of the two cups of seed used here. We are not worried about running out of more space in the mason jar because we are more than ready to get the sunflower microgreen tray up and running.
I put about 2 inches of soil into the bottom of a 10″ x 20″ tray with holes, and placed a similar try without holes beneath it. The soil was wet down so it was moist, but not wet. Then I dumped the black oil sunflower sprouts from the quart mason jar into the tray. It was so packed that it wasn’t as easy pulling them out without damaging them as I thought. Running my finger around the inside of the jar seemed to knock them free enough to fall out without much damage seemed to work rather well. Take a look at the pile of sprouts packed in there!
Next, I just spread them out flat into the tray and gave them another healthy mist of my aquaponic fish water. With another 10″ x 20″ tray without holes, I pressed the sprouts flat into the soil. Next we just keep that additional tray, right side up for now, inside the planted tray to keep them covered and in the dark. Twice per day I am to give these sunflower sprouts a spritz and keep my eyes on them for growth.
When they start pushing up the tray, I will flip the tray over to give them more room to grow, but still keep it on top of the sprout tray to keep them in the dark so they get nice and leggy before we green them up prior to eating … hopefully in about a week we will be enjoying these in our salads !!! Stay tuned to see how this goes.
Isaiah 43:18-19 ESV
“Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”
Did you know that sunflower microgreens contain 20%-25% protein? I had no idea! Now I just have to find out how tasty these will be on our salads, so we have yet another experiment going on in Humbleville.
Seen below is what black oil sunflower seeds look like on day three of the sprouting process. In the next day or two, I will be laying these out on a 10″ x 20″ tray on two inches of fertile soil. In perhaps a week, we shall see how many pounds of these highly nutritious sunflower microgreens we can grow in a single tray. I can’t wait to eat these!
This Kratky method of hydroponics has me fascinated. I love the idea of fresh greens with a set-it-and-forget-it style of maintenance. The thought occurred to me that this perhaps is a perfect use of the high nitrate water we extract from our desktop aquaponic system, so we are giving it a go! The Kratky method uses water filled with fertilizer hydroponic nutrients, so instead we are going to use the nutrient rich waste water that I get from the necessary water exchanges from the fish tank to keep my aquaponic system healthy for the fish.
For the first experiment, I have taken two kale plants that were started with seed from our garden a season or two ago. They are nestled in a net cup and surrounded with Hydroton clay pellets. Placed inside a half gallon mason jar, we filled the water such that it was just 1/4 inch above the bottom of the net cup. To help prevent algae growth, I wrapped the mason jars in aluminum foil and placed them under our florescent lights. Let see what happens now …
It’s been a while since we have updated you on what’s going on in HumblevilleUSA, but let me tell you, it’s been quite a bit! We will need to get in at least one or two more Square Foot Garden video updates before the 2017 growing season comes to an end here in Michigan. But the fun is going to continue over the winter!!
That’s right, we are dipping our toes into the amazing world of indoor vegetable growing. We are going to see if we can’t bring a couple of greenhouse variety of cucumbers to fruit indoors. Lettuce, kale and spinach should be even easier. And even Mrs. Humbleville is looking forward to having fresh greens and herbs all winter long.
There are a dizzying selection of lettuces from which to choose, and we’re going to have a blast growing and tasting any number of them. One experiment that I’m looking forward to is with the use of a “fabric grow bag”. I’ve been reading that the additional oxygen available to the root system with the use of a fabric grow bag versus a regular pot will aid in it’s growth. Well, I just so happened to have two cauliflower plants started from seed that I did not transplant into our Square Foot Garden. Can you say “side-by-side test”?! We also transplanted our basil plant into one of these one-gallon grow bags. Stay tuned as we share the results.
We do have some rockwool ordered along with some net cups in order to start more lettuce next week, and every other week thereafter, so we can have a continuous flow of fresh, homegrown lettuce. The sprouts you see below are the kale seeds we collected from our own kale plant last season (or was it the season before? I’ll have to check our garden updates to be sure)! So exciting to be able to keep your own seeds and grow even more food. The germination rate was up near 100%, too !!
“Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” —Isaiah 43:19 (ESV)
It has been a fun year and a half, building and maintaining a custom built desktop aquaponic system. One of the biggest lessons we learned is FORGET THE FEEDER FISH !!! We wasted a lot of time trying to do the fish element on the cheap. Maybe we had a couple of bad batches of the inexpensive feeder fish, but we are so much more comfortable running the system with a single Oscar and a single Plecostomus. The algae-eater keeps the sides of the tank clean, and the Oscar is a hearty fish that thrives on fish pellets, worms or even bits of lettuce.
The other big lesson we learned is to stay on top of the water chemistry! The hardest has been in keeping the nitrates low enough. The Oscar seems to survive it all, but it would be better to have the water chemistry in more acceptable ranges. One problem is our municipal water supply isn’t that great. It has a lot of chlorine in it which is very bad for fish. During our more aggressive water changes we are bubbling several gallons of city water for 24-48 hours before introducing it to the fish tank.
The high nitrate fish water, however, is GREAT for plants. Our houseplants certainly do well with this water, and any excess is gladly introduced into our garden beds during the growing season to amp up the nutrient content of our soil. Due to our configuration of the desktop aquaponic system, a manual water pump has been a very necessary tool to extract this high nitrate water from the tank. Siphoning from the bubbled city water container above the fish tank is a breeze using the manual water pump as a siphon, with the only caution being DO NOT OVERFILL YOUR FISH TANK !!!
Anyway, this has been a fantastic learning experience. If you can tell that along the window are HUGE green onions, I think you can tell how great this system is for growing food indoors! These green onions were started with the small root ends of grocery store green onions that would have otherwise just been thrown into the trash. Pretty amazing if you think of it.
After 1.5 years of building this desktop aquaponic system, this is what it looks like!
2 Corinthians 4:2-6New King James Version (NKJV)
2 But we have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness nor handling the word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. 3 But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, 4 whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them. 5 For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your bondservants for Jesus’ sake. 6 For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Each cell contains a spinach seed. Some of them have sprouted. The blue light will help supplement the natural light from the west facing office picture window. When they get just a little bit larger, we will transplant them into the clay pellet grow bed of the aquaponic system and hopefully will be eating fresh spinach leaves in our breakfast omelettes in the near future.
