Category: Garden/Plants

A Plant Update

As promised, I have an update on the aeroponic garden. It took a little longer than I was expecting, but I suppose plants are kind of slow and I’m a bit of a procrastinator. Here’s the new set up in the basement:

I’ve got a shelf that should be able to hold up to six bins total, plus another identical shelf in pieces behind this one. I have unfortunately few plants in the garden currently, thanks to the cats and my own horticultural inexperience. The cats managed to murder a few of the plants I was getting started in the egg carton and glass cups, and the egg carton started decomposing and growing mold. So, note to self, don’t use egg cartons for this thing again. Additionally, I was worried about over-watering the plants, so I accidentally under-watered them causing them to sprout very slowly. I have a second bin that I plan to fill with dirt to start more seeds and grow underground things like carrots, it’s just full of stuff right now. I’ll probably just buy another bin.

The lights are regular LED shop lights, recommended by someone on YouTube. They’re nice and cheap and very bright. The plants seem to be enjoying them so far.

The rosemary and peas up front seemed to stall out in the last week or two, but I’m noticing some more growth on both of them today. They both had brushes with the cats early on. The garlic continues to grow like gangbusters and the other peas are going nicely. I think I need to get something better for them to climb though. I reduced the amount of nutrients in the water this week and I think it’s been helpful.

Roots are looking great!

The reason for the delay in getting this garden in the basement is that there was only one inconveniently placed outlet available, and it’s already fully utilized. I added a new 20 amp circuit and six outlets (12 plugs total) myself. It took me some time to research how to add a new circuit and then wire up the outlets. It was pretty easy, and whether this garden is permanent or not, we needed additional power in the basement.

Some of the outlets I added. The timer controls the lights, and the thick wire goes to a power strip with another timer for the pump.

I’ve also started adding some overhead lighting, which needs its own circuit. I’ve decided to take a break from that for a week or two, and I’ll probably finish it soon. The lights I bought should be able to screw directly to an electrical box, but I couldn’t find the right type, so I’m doing the ye olde string and nails thing. Someone else can fix it in the future.

I’ll continue to update on this project as needed. I hope to start seeing some fruiting in the next month or so, and I’ll be getting more seeds started in the next week or so.

My New Indoor Garden

A while back I thought an indoor garden would be nice so I could have fresh herbs and vegetables year-round. I thought a hydroponic or aeroponic system would be best so I could eliminate plant pots and increase the number of plants I could keep. I decided against it at the time for a few reasons: first, the only spot in my house that gets any direct sunlight is the landing on the steps, which isn’t a large area. I assumed that the yield of fruits wouldn’t be high enough for it to be worth my time. Second, I have cats, and cats love to mess around with plants, so I’d have to come up with some kind of cat exclusion system. Finally, it would cost a decent amount of money that I didn’t really want to spend at the time and it would take a long time to design and refine.

A few weeks ago at my parents’ house, my mom was showing me her plants and I realized I completely forgot about the existence of grow lights. I had a little Jimmy Neutron brain blast when the revelation that I could create a vegetable and herb farm in my basement hit me. I could set up a couple of shelves with grow lights, and the plants would get plenty of light and no trouble from the cats. I set to work doing some research and development.

I knew I wanted an aeroponic garden over a hydroponic one. Aeroponics is basically an advanced hydroponic setup with less complexity. In an aeroponic garden, plants are held in the air above a pool of water where nutrient-laden water is pumped through nozzles aimed at the plants’ roots. There is no dirt or other growth medium involved. There are many different hydroponic setups, but you can build one with the same nozzle setup as the aeroponic systme and add rocks for the roots to grab onto. My research seemed to indicated that hydroponic gardens are popular, and aeroponic gardens are a thing, there was a lot less information out there on the latter. For both kinds there was a dearth of how-to type information. The best aeroponic DIY resources I found were a couple of YouTube videos. I roughly followed them and I have the beginnings of a garden now.

A quick aside into why you might want an aero/hydroponic garden seems in order. Both aeroponic and hydroponic systems can grow larger, healthier plants more quickly than dirt can because of the control you have over the whole system. You can easily adjust the nutrient mix and concentration, amount of light the plants get and the amount of water they get. Additionally, the roots of the plants have much better access to oxygen than they do in the dirt. Because you don’t need a pot for each plant you can, depending on you setup, fit more plants per square foot than you could with dirt. Hydroponic and aeroponic systems are a really efficient way to grow plants. Plus, throwing seeds in dirt and waiting just feels a little to neolithic to me.

A couple of pictures can probably describe my garden better than words, so here you go:

Top of the garden, showing net pots and collars for the plants. Seeds are trying to start in the egg carton and glasses. The lemon peels are an attempt to keep the cats away. The garden was fashioned using a cheap 17 gallon bin from Home Depot
The interior view, showing the manifold with nozzles on the bottom, and the net pots on the top. You can see the roots of the garlic plant. The green box is the pump.

I have the pump connected to a basic outlet timer that mists the roots for 30 minutes each hour, and then turns the pump off for 30 minutes of rest. The garlic seems to be doing very well so far. I have an oregano sprout coming up, so hopefully that will be in a net pot next week. The other seeds haven’t shown anything yet, but I remain hopeful. The germination time for most of them was 10-28 days, so I should start seeing something in the next couple days.

Everything is working perfectly so far, I just need to get some more plants into it. I noticed a mildly foul smell when checking the pH this morning, so I may have to black out the lid eventually, but I’m going to wait and see. It might just be wet garlic/plastic. This one bin is a proof of concept that, if it works, will be scaled up into several bins on a shelf in the basement. I’ll update when I get another plant or two into the garden.