The decline of bee populations has been a hot topic for quite some time now. While the decline has been slowing slightly, bee colonies are still being decimated by causes that are not fully understood yet. Bees are the most important pollinators for many fruit bearing plants, so it is important to attract bees to your vegetable garden.
Bees are constantly searching for nectar and pollen, so make sure they can find plenty of flowering plants in your garden. Plant many different kinds of flowering plants, so the bees will find something in bloom from early spring until autumn.
You can also provide them with housing. A chunk of wood with holes drilled into it makes the perfect home for mason bees. If you want something that is better looking, you could get a ready made bee house
In addition to housing and flowers, bees need water. A nearby pond or bird bath is not a safe water source for bees: they can get trapped in the water’s surface tension. A small container filled with sand and water is preferred. Keep the sand wet and the bees will be able to drink from it.
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I have been doing quite a bit of testing with aquaponics over the last year. One of my aquaponics systems is growing herbs and lettuce right in my kitchen. The distance to the stovetop is about 80 cm, how’s that for reducing food miles!
This system is a small aquarium with some NFT channels on top. I made the channels from rectangular plastic air duct, the ones that you can buy at any home improvement shop, they are normally used for kitchen and bathroom ventilation. Water gets pulled through the black filter box on the right and pumped into the channels where the plant roots can take up the nutrient rich water. One channel has 7 planting sites for herbs and the other one has 3, which are spaced further apart to grow lettuce. Since the plants don’t receive any direct sunlight, I had to provide them with some artificial light. Things are growing quite nicely and I often use fresh herbs from this indoor garden.
The fish are growing pretty fast as well, but they will take some while until they are big enough to eat.
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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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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.
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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!
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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