self sufficient life

Aphid control with ladybugs

A little while ago our potato plants where infested with aphids. Trying to combat them without the use of pesticides, we went out looking for ladybugs. Our search wasn’t too successful, we only found about half a dozen of them and released them in the greenhouse. Placed on the infested plants you could immediately see them start to feast on the aphids. Happy to have found Cockaigne, they soon started to lay eggs. About a week later the potato plants where full of ladybug larvae all happily eating and growing.

With each larva eating over 30 aphids a day, our potato plants where soon freed of those unwelcome guests. The larvae had done such a good job, that the last ones that hadn’t gone into pupa stage yet, had to turn on their siblings.

The hatched adults flew out through the greenhouse roof vents to control aphids elsewhere.

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Our first harvest

Earlier this week we had our first harvest apart from the occasional strawberry, raspberry and herbs that I use regularly for cooking. We harvested some potatoes, just enough for one good meal, about 900 grams. The next day I decided to dig up the rest of the row to make room for some new plants. I did all of the digging and the girls had a blast taking all the potatoes out. The total harvest was 5.5 kg from a 4 meter row. A little less than I had expected, but a pretty good harvest none the less!

We are going to try to get a bit more next time by going vertically. I have read some good things about growing potatoes in stacked car tires, so we are going to give that a try. I went down to the local car tire shop to ask about getting some old tires and they told me to take all the tires I could carry. I could fit about 14 in my car which should be more than enough for starters.

Urban Garden Magazine

The mailman was just here to drop of my first copy of Urban Garden Magazine. UGM is a bi-monthly magazine focusing on hydroponics and indoor growing. I hadn’t heard of this magazine before, since it is distributed through hydro- and grow-shops in the US, Canada and the UK. That is until Dan, one of the magazines editors contacted me and asked me if I wanted to write something for the magazine.

So, I wrote a piece on greenhouse temperature control and the people at UGM loved it, in fact, they already have me booked for another gig in their next issue!

If you don’t know UGM yet you should check out their website at www.urbangardenmagazine.com, they normally have a few of their articles published on their site, or pick up a copy at your local hydro-store.

If any of you already have a copy, I would love to get some feedback on the article!

Aquaponic basil

My goldfish have been polluting the water for a little while now and all the plants I have transplanted into the aquaponics grow bed are doing good. A few days ago I decided to add the NFT channel, that I made a while ago, to the system and pop some basil seeds in. The seed packet says that germination takes 15 to 20 days, the seeds I put in started sprouting after 3 days! The picture was taken this morning, 4 days after sowing.

Growing cat grass

A few weeks ago I grew some cat grass from seed. The growth rate was really amazing, so I decided to grow some more, this time with a camera pointed at it. The below video was shot over the course of 12 days.

Fertilizer home brewing

Spring has really started and everything is starting to grow, but not every plant is wanted in our garden. We have a lot of stinging nettles in our garden and getting rid of them can be quite a challenge. This plant, however, can be put to good use in our garden by using it to brew a natural, highly effective, fertilizer. You can use the whole plant to create fertilizer: leafs, stems and roots.

Roughly cut up the plants and dump them into a barrel with water. You’ll want to add about 1 kg of plant matter to 10 liters of water (about 1 pound to a gallon) After 24 hours you will have a plant strengthener that is very high on silicic acid, a substance that will strengthen your plants cells and protect them from stinging and sucking insects.

Letting your nettles stay in the water a little longer will break down the contained nutrients and leave you with a fertilizer that is very rich in nitrogen and trace elements. Place your barrel in a sunny spot, but think about where you place it as the process of breaking down the plant matter into its elements will release a very bad smell. Give it a daily stir with a shovel and after two to three weeks your fertilizer is ready to be used. All the plant matter that hasn’t been broken down can be added to your compost pile.

The liquid fertilizer can be sprayed directly onto your plants, in which case it should be diluted: 1 part fertilizer to ten parts water. Or you can water the plants with it. One treatment a week will give you noticeable better growing, healthier plants.

Who can grow the biggest sunflower?

Our girls love to plant sunflowers and each year again, they are amazed at how big they can grow in such little time.

Inspired by Melinda’s Growing Challenge, I decided to host a small growing challenge here as well: who can grow the biggest sunflower?

A contest isn’t complete without prizes, so I’m working on that. If you have any suggestions or have anything to add to the prize pot, please leave a comment!

I’m going to keep a list of who is participating as well as keep track of growth, so send in your measurements every now and again.

It would also be nice to know exactly how you are growing your sunflowers (i.e. type of soil used, watering schedule, fertilizers, etc.)

Please leave a comment if you want to join or if you have any suggestions.

Get ready to grow!

Growing Under Glass book review

I got my ordered copy of Growing Under Glass, a book by Kenneth A. Beckett in the mail yesterday. It contains a big section about different types of greenhouses, finding the best location for your greenhouse and how to build your own. All information I obviously don’t need, since we already have our greenhouses. Still, it was a very interesting read!

The book covers about everything you need to know about building a greenhouse, equipping it and growing plants in it. It teaches you how to prepare your soil as well as less known planting methods like growing in straw bales. Growing plants from seeds as well as propagating cuttings are extensively covered and everything is accompanied by clear, step by step, illustrations.

I own quite a few gardening books, but if I had to pick my favorite one, Growing Under Glass would be it!

The Growing Challenge – from seed to seed

Melinda, over at One Green Generation, has started a new round of The Growing Challenge. The goal of the challenge is simple: grow a new crop from seed, organically of course, and save its produced seeds for a new round of planting next year. Sounds simple, and it is, if you pick the right crop to plant.

I planted a lot of seeds yesterday: kohlrabi, strawberry, tomato, cauliflower, bell pepper and lettuce from seed packs that we already had. I also planted broccoli and basil from seeds that I saved from last years crops. I’ve planted tomatoes and basil from saved seeds before and they grew very nicely. If you’re new to seed saving, tomatoes and basil are probably the easiest to start with.

While waiting for the seeds to sprout, we are getting the greenhouse ready for planting.

Sterilizing seed starting soil

These past few weeks we have had snow and freezing nights, but also a couple of very sunny days that warmed our greenhouse up to 30 degrees. Spring is just around the corner, it’s still 3 weeks before it officially starts on March 20th but we’re close enough to start planning for planting. April and May are the preferred sowing months for most vegetable crops when growing outside, but we can start a lot earlier in the greenhouse.

Last year we had quite some weeds growing in our seed trays. Some where so badly infested that it was impossible to tell the weeds from the planted seeds, so I decided to try to sterilize the compost this time. After a little digging and sifting in our compost heap I got more than enough material to mix some seed starting soil. I mixed in about 30% peat and 5% coarse sand.

To sterilize the mixture it should be baked in the oven, the first try didn’t work out too well though. After sitting in the oven for well over 4 hours the center of my soil mixture was still pretty cold. This shows the great insulating capability of soil, a trade that is much appreciated by people building earth sheltered homes. What I did wrong was compacting the soil in the deep oven tray by pressing it down with my hands. By doing this I could fit al the soil I had mixed into the tray, wrongly assuming that this would be the way to sterilize double the amount of soil in the same time. The compacted soil, however, has a greater mass per volume unit and thus has a far better insulating and heat absorbing capability.

The mixed soil was far more than I needed anyways, so I gave it another try today. This time I made sure the soil in the baking tray was nice and loose. The soil should be a little damp and covered tightly with aluminum foil. A meat or candy thermometer will show you the temperature in the center of the soil. With the oven set to 90C (195F) It took about 4 hours for the soil to completely heat up to about 85C (185F) Maintain this temperature for another 30 minutes and the soil sterilization should be all done.

Be careful not to let the soil heat up beyond 95C (200F) or it will form toxins that will not be appreciated by your plants. Allow the soil to cool down and keep the foil on until you are ready to use it.