Anyone into gardening? (for food)

[Kaido]

Gardening or "home farming" has been a growing interest of mine lately. I have a friend who does it and brought over some tomatoes the other day...the taste difference from store-bought was unbelievable. That plus reading through the aquaponics thread here got me interested in it from a technology perspective. There's some really interesting things going on with aquaponics, hydroponics, indoor growing with grow lights, greenhouse technology, Arduino-based controllers & sensors, etc.

I'm particularly interested in pesticide-free year-round indoor growing for continuous food output. It seem like if you had a temperature-controlled environment with grow light, you could pretty much have a year-round mini farm indoors. I do find it kind of hilarious how many search results come back for growing cannabis (not interested at all lol), but those guys also have some pretty high-tech setups for their indoor "gardens". And now the NSA will be knocking on my door any time now :biggrin:

I've been getting more into food storage as well, especially since I have food allergies and have to prepare the bulk of my meals myself. I have a FoodSaver vacuum sealer and have been learning about canning as well, so that would go nicely with a home food garden.

I think it would be interesting to do a modern take on a greenhouse as well - we have highly-insulated concrete construction available with ICF blocks, Low-E windows, ductless mini-split systems like Mitsubishi's Mr. Slim, water generators, solar panels, Arduino boards, and tons of information available online.

However, I've never really grown anything before, so I'm wondering if anyone can jump in & give me some pointers. Did a bit of googling today to see what's available online and it's fairly overwheming haha. Some resources I've found so far:

GardenWeb

Backyard Aquaponics - good forum

Lifehacker - articles tagged with Gardening

AeroGardens indoor herb appliances

How to grow 100 pounds of potatoes in 4 square feet

Hydrofarm radiant grow lights

 

[NetWareHead]

I thought about it but it is very energy intensive. You need to provide all of the sunlight and keep it at a proper temperature. Can you imagine the heat loss on a greenhouse outside? Supplying your own light and heat is $$$

I grow alot of my own food during the summer. End of summer to fall is when we can. There are many food preservation techniques from the days when nobody had refrigerators that still work. You can can food that can tolerate acidic environment in a boiling water bath or you can pickle them in either vinegar or brine. Food that are n ot suitable for acidic canning need a pressure canner to remain food safe.

I have a food dehydrator and a smoker so those are 2 more tools to use for food preservation. I'm going to try my luck at making sausage and other kinds of preserved meats.

The only part about what I posted is there are no fresh veggies. I would kill for a fresh tomato in January. Sure they have them at the store but garden fresh tomatoes have no equal...

You surely can try to grow veggies all year round. Be aware that growing so many veggies in an "artificial" environment has its own difficulties: disease and pests must be kept under control. You are also completely at mercy to your environmental systems. Many indoor/greenhouse grow setups also need round the clock ventilation to prevent stagnant air, more electricity use driving up your prices. If your heat fails then all of your warm weather sensitive plants like tomatoes, zucchinis are ruined.

Personally Id rather grow what I can and buy from a local organic farm nearby during the summer and then preserve it for the winter. Once sealed, a jar of canned tomatoes lasts years and you can ignore it in a cool basement. Make jerky or sausage and it will keep forever in its dried form. Vacuum seal other things in a food saver bag and you have a year or 2 in a freezer. Much easier IMO than actively cultivating a garden in the winter. if you choose to do this, post some pics please!

 

[Kaido]

Yeah, I too have a food dehydrator and I'm torn between a pellet grill that can double as a smoker, or just biting the bullet and going with a Bradley Digital Smoker. So many packaged foods have stuff that I'm allergic to that I'm kind of forced to go the DIY route for most of what I want to eat, so it's more or less worth the investment from a health perspective for me.

I do go to the local farmer's market on occasion, usually with a group of buddies so we can split crates of food. $20 buys you a ridiculous amount of fresh fruits & veggies! And yeah, I hear you on the tomatoes. For starters, I've tried every single type of tomato at my local grocery store and they ALL taste like water. There is not a single one that tastes like a tomato. So when my friend brought in some of her home-grown tomatoes, it was a revelation about flavor - even on simple meals like burgers, it made a HUGE taste difference. I've had the same experience with potatoes & a few other plants. I live on the border of a bunch of small farms and get to pick fresh apples there in the summer (for cheap too!) and it's the same thing, the flavor different is just phenomenal. Fresh pears are like eating candy too!

There's some good canning resources here:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1608610896

http://www.sunoven.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/EverythingUnderTheSun.pdf

This lady has a really interesting system - she does food storage via canning & rotates her stock into her family's daily meals. Her system uses a pressure cooker and the shelf life on most stuff is 10+ years. She also has REALLY interesting recipes, such as canned cinnamon buns & canned sweet & sour chicken (cooks while canning!) - stuff that she & her family already like to eat, but they don't have to spend time thinking up a menu every week, cooking all the time, wondering what's for dinner, etc. Really slick!

I'm not a survivalist or anything, but I have been burned a couple times due to power outages during heavy snowstorms & hurricanes over the past few years, so I am definitely more aware of having some degree of food storage, particularly of stuff that I can eat and won't make me sick from allergens. They have 25+ year food storage systems ready to purchase off-the-shelf, but my body is not compatible with a lot of the ingredients or preservatives, so I'm forced to take more of a DIY route.

Yeah, that's why I want to dip my toes into researching stuff like greenhouses & growing at home. I'm sure it's not cheap to do it properly; you also have to deal with those things you mentioned - pests, diseases, etc. I'm renting right now too, so I don't have a backyard, but I do have a concrete pad outside that has about a 10' x 3' garden already blocked out, so I can start on that when the weather gets warmer.

 

[Ventanni]

I'd try your hand at an outdoor garden before you invest in the equipment necessary for an indoor one. And yes, pot growers contribute a lot towards proper indoor gardening techniques, which is funny. But hey, whatever.

My parents have a huge fruit and vegetable garden in their backyard, and they freeze and can a lot of their food, which is nice for the winter time (Eastern TN). They spend a bit of time tending to the garden, but they find it relaxing. I probably would too. Chickens are excellent for gardens (they have 4) as long as you don't let them get into your berries (they love berries...lol). They eat bugs endlessly, partially fulfilling the role of pesticides, and their poop makes for excellent fertilizer, although they won't necessarily eat all the garden-destroying bugs, so you still have to watch it. In exchange for their voracious bug eating habits and fertilizer laying, you get about an egg a day from them. And let me tell you, the eggs are vastly more flavorful, plentiful, and healthy for you than what you can get in the store (chickens are NOT vegetarians!). Chickens also have a lot of character and are fun to have around.

Goat poop is excellent to mix in with your soil at the beginning of the year, and can be bought by the truck load for fairly cheap. Gardens will attract deer, which while cute from afar, are voracious eaters of your hard grown fruits and vegetables. Chickens may also attract other predators, so you'll need decent fencing and a good chicken coup for your garden.

Aquaponics is a neat concept, but it's a lot more work than it's worth. I tried it with my dad, and the difficult part is keeping a balanced pH going. For what you can grow in an aquaponics setup, which isn't a whole lot actually, it's easier just to stick 'em in the ground and let the good Lord do the work for you.

Edit - Just read that you live in an apartment, which nix's the outdoor garden idea!

 

[Ventanni]

You bring up an interesting point about the tomatoes. The truth is, your fruits and vegetables taste only as good as the soil they're grown in. Tomatoes just happen to be, at least in my opinion, the fruit whose flavor is the most effected by where it's grown. I live in Florida and we grow a lot of tomatoes, but our soil is pretty awful in comparison to Tennessee soil. The flavor of tomatoes, and the flavor of most food in general, is the one thing I notice that's different when I go to Tennessee to visit my parents. A lot of big farming techniques also prioritize the look of a fruit/vegetable rather than it's taste, as ask any grocery manager and they'll tell you people buy fruits/vegetables based on what they look like. As a result, you get a lot of flavorless tomatoes from the store. Home grown tomatoes are a different story!

Tomatoes are a little more difficult to grow though. You can definitely grow them on your back porch, but they can be finicky.

 

[Kaido]

Aquaponics is a neat concept, but it's a lot more work than it's worth. I tried it with my dad, and the difficult part is keeping a balanced pH going. For what you can grow in an aquaponics setup, which isn't a whole lot actually, it's easier just to stick 'em in the ground and let the good Lord do the work for you.

Edit - Just read that you live in an apartment, which nix's the outdoor garden idea!

I do have a small outdoor pad, which already has a garden cutout (around 10' x 3'), so I can use that when it warms up. It's been like 10F lately tho, so nice dice on that for awhile :biggrin:

As far as aquaponics & hydroponics go, a hydroponic tower garden looks pretty slick:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj4MzjxjGck

More info here:

http://veggardens.com/diy-gardens/

Detailed instructions here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/v7gnn66hqfoh0wc/DIY Hydroponic Garden Tower.pdf

That would fit in my existing gardening space as well and looks pretty straightforward to build.

 

[Kaido]

You bring up an interesting point about the tomatoes. The truth is, your fruits and vegetables taste only as good as the soil they're grown in. Tomatoes just happen to be, at least in my opinion, the fruit whose flavor is the most effected by where it's grown. I live in Florida and we grow a lot of tomatoes, but our soil is pretty awful in comparison to Tennessee soil. The flavor of tomatoes, and the flavor of most food in general, is the one thing I notice that's different when I go to Tennessee to visit my parents. A lot of big farming techniques also prioritize the look of a fruit/vegetable rather than it's taste, as ask any grocery manager and they'll tell you people buy fruits/vegetables based on what they look like. As a result, you get a lot of flavorless tomatoes from the store. Home grown tomatoes are a different story!

Tomatoes are a little more difficult to grow though. You can definitely grow them on your back porch, but they can be finicky.

Interesting, I didn't realize soil affected flavor so much.

Part of the appeal of growing my own food is to avoid food allergens. A lot of commercially-purchased fruit & veggies have been gassed or have had waxes applied. I have a corn allergy, so sometimes fruit & veggies bother me. Bananas are gassed with ethylene (a corn derivative) to induce ripening & apples are typically coated in wax (corn again) to make them shiny, so it's kind of hit-or-miss as to whether something will bother me or not. Fortunately it's more of a corn intolerance than a true allergy (I mostly get headaches from ingesting stuff made from corn) and it's hit or miss with fresh fruits & veggies, which is why I like local stuff like farmer's markets and the idea of growing my own stuff at home. It's kind of a hassle having this particular set of food allergies because we live in an extremely processed world of food in the U.S., which can be good & bad.

 

[Kaido]

And yes, pot growers contribute a lot towards proper indoor gardening techniques, which is funny. But hey, whatever.

I'm curious to see if indoor growing technology gets a boost from this sector, since it was just legalized in Colorado:

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest...elebrate-legal-recreational-sales-in-Colorado

 

[Capt Caveman]

I grow a container garden in my backyard. Good potting soil, water and organic fertilizer.

4 types of tomatoes, yellow squash, zucchini, egg plant, mixed lettuce, 3 types of kale, little leaf and lemon cucumbers, baby watermelon, 4 types of hot peppers and 3 types of sweet peppers. Plus herbs - mint, oregano, lemon thyme, two types of basil and sage.

Would love to add a honey bee hive and chickens for fresh eggs.

From early summer:

 

[Kaido]

I grow a container garden in my backyard. Good potting soil, water and organic fertilizer.

4 types of tomatoes, yellow squash, zucchini, egg plant, mixed lettuce, 3 types of kale, little leaf and lemon cucumbers, baby watermelon, 4 types of hot peppers and 3 types of sweet peppers. Plus herbs - mint, oregano, lemon thyme, two types of basil and sage.

Would love to add a honey bee hive and chickens for fresh eggs.

From early summer:

Nice! That's a lot of output for not a large space!

How did you get into it and where do you get your growing information from? I think the last plant I had was probably a cactus when I was a kid, haha. Also, do you like to use fresh herbs in your cooking?

 

[Kaido]

Would love to add a honey bee hive and chickens for fresh eggs.

Found a really interesting blog on an Arduino-based chicken coop:

http://arduino-coop.blogspot.com/

I've seen automation for beekeeping in the past as well. Pretty neat what you can do at home & in the 'burbs these days!

 

[Kaido]

Here's an interesting thing in vertical growing - the Garden Stick:

http://thegardenstick.com/

Saw it in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vr6sFtbNPs

Edit: That guy actually has some pretty awesome videos! His Youtube channel is "Learn Organic Gardening at GrowingYourGreens"

http://www.youtube.com/user/growingyourgreens/videos

There's a more advanced vertical growtube system in this video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlMNXAV4M7M

Website here:

http://www.gardentowerproject.com/

I wonder how easily that beast could be converted to an aquaponic system...

 

[Capt Caveman]

Nice! That's a lot of output for not a large space!

How did you get into it and where do you get your growing information from? I think the last plant I had was probably a cactus when I was a kid, haha. Also, do you like to use fresh herbs in your cooking?

Thanks! I'm lucky to get sunlight all day in the backyard from all directions - east, south and west which lets me grow most anything.

My gf is a semi-farmer. She has an even bigger garden at her house and works at a local farm for her CSA share.

She gave me this book to help - http://www.amazon.com/McGee-Stuckeys.../dp/0761116230

And the farm also had a facebook page where I could ask questions too.

I also used a moisture meter which made it easy to know when to water - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001A5OR5I

Used fresh herbs definitely have a lot more flavor than dry but did dehydrate a lot of the herbs for the winter. Also, made a lot of pickles from the cucumbers and canned them for long term storage.

It's pretty awesome to just pick what you need for salad and grilling.

Note - in my area, there are a number of community gardens where you can rent plots at a minimal price for the whole season to grow what you want for those that may not have their own growing space.

 

[noobsrevenge]

hydroponics would be expensive and require some tools to do correctly such as ph and TDS meters. resevoir of nutrient water that you constantly need to maintain, pumps, tubing, etc.

Not to mention the lights required are also expensive, produce lots of heat, then you need to regulate temperature and vent the heat produced from your lights.

Its a big undertaking and big initial investment. Have fun.

Unless this is going to be a lifelong undertaking that "needs" to be done indoors, just go soil and grow outside. Then can as much as you can as preparation for the winter months. You will get tastier veggies from good soil growing instead of hydro too.

 

[BoomerD]

Do a search here. Lots of gardening folks about.

I didn't plant one this past year, (lived in an apartment) but I THINK we'll have a small garden this year. Probably a few maters, some peppers of different varieties, not sure what else we'll plant.

 

[BrokenVisage]

Dum-ditty dum-ditty dum-ditty vegetable garden!
Dum-ditty dum-ditty dum-ditty dum, dum-ditty dum dum corn!

-Al Bundy

 

[Phoenix86]

I'm interested in doing a small outdoor aquaponics system, but it'd likely be next year before I could start. The basic idea behind aquaponics is really neat.

 

[GagHalfrunt]

You bring up an interesting point about the tomatoes. The truth is, your fruits and vegetables taste only as good as the soil they're grown in. Tomatoes just happen to be, at least in my opinion, the fruit whose flavor is the most effected by where it's grown. I live in Florida and we grow a lot of tomatoes, but our soil is pretty awful in comparison to Tennessee soil. The flavor of tomatoes, and the flavor of most food in general, is the one thing I notice that's different when I go to Tennessee to visit my parents. A lot of big farming techniques also prioritize the look of a fruit/vegetable rather than it's taste, as ask any grocery manager and they'll tell you people buy fruits/vegetables based on what they look like. As a result, you get a lot of flavorless tomatoes from the store. Home grown tomatoes are a different story!

Tomatoes are a little more difficult to grow though. You can definitely grow them on your back porch, but they can be finicky.

The difference in tomatoes is not so much about the soil. Supermarket tomatoes are picked in the unripened green state so that they can hold up to transport and handling without bursting or spoiling. They're then gassed with ethylene to fake ripen them. It turns them orange so they look normal, but they stop developing flavor the moment they're picked. As most of the flavor develops late in the ripening, any tomato picked unripe is going to suck, period, it won't matter where it's grown. You can probably grow decent tomatoes on a highway median in New Jersey, but they have to be vine ripened. Nothing else will taste the same.

 

[jsalpha2]

I spent a couple hundred dollars last year (more if you count the tiller) and got about 6 tomatoes. I'm going to try again this year.

 

[GagHalfrunt]

I spent a couple hundred dollars last year (more if you count the tiller) and got about 6 tomatoes. I'm going to try again this year.

Last year was the worst I've ever had for tomatoes. The cold wet spring delayed the start and the one uber-hot week in early July killed a lot of the buds. But even with that I spent $8 on the seedlings and had so many that I gave away a bunch and froze some.

 

[akugami]

Kaido, another thing with growing your own fruits/veggies is to experiment with different types of plants that you won't normally find in most grocery stores.

Try planting some Japanese cucumbers. They're tastier than the normal varieties you find in most grocery stores. You'll need something for them to climb on but they're low maintenance once they get going and you'll have lots of fresh cucumbers. You can eat them fresh, or stir-fry them. You can also put them in a regular garden salad. Also try them marinated. The wife takes the cucumbers, slices them up, then marinates them for a few hours in a lemon juice & fresh diced chili mixture. You can then add that to a regular salad or eat as is.

Also, depending on the type of leafy vegetables, you can grow them, pick off the older "ready to eat" leaves, and leave the plant in the ground to grow some more. This ensures a good supply of greens.

 

[noobsrevenge]

Kaido, another thing with growing your own fruits/veggies is to experiment with different types of plants that you won't normally find in most grocery stores.

Try planting some Japanese cucumbers. They're tastier than the normal varieties you find in most grocery stores. You'll need something for them to climb on but they're low maintenance once they get going and you'll have lots of fresh cucumbers. You can eat them fresh, or stir-fry them. You can also put them in a regular garden salad. Also try them marinated. The wife takes the cucumbers, slices them up, then marinates them for a few hours in a lemon juice & fresh diced chili mixture. You can then add that to a regular salad or eat as is.

Also, depending on the type of leafy vegetables, you can grow them, pick off the older "ready to eat" leaves, and leave the plant in the ground to grow some more. This ensures a good supply of greens.

Thats a good point, how are japanese cucumbers on seeds ? I love cucumbers but have apparently gotten some really seedy varieties.

 

[akugami]

Japanese cucumbers are not that seedy, but the skin is spiny. You can actually feel the points on them, though they're not that hard. I'd still wear gardening gloves to pick them as they're still prickly.

Here's a nice picture of one to illustrate the spines.

And the Japanese cucumbers are not always straight, I'd say about 1/3 of them have a tendency to curve and look somewhat ugly.

 

[Naer]

I'm starting a vertical apt grow for practice. Cacti seeds. I have dreams of starting a vertical farm in my city

 

[DrPizza]

I do quite a bit of our own food. I have several bee hives. Getting the honey out, even with a good extractor, is kind of a pain in the ass. I have about 100 pounds of honey in my kitchen, sitting in the frames still. Occasionally, I grab a frame, cut a chunk of honeycomb off, and enjoy. Otherwise, I'm not a huge fan of the process. Plan on making mead, if I ever get around to it.

I have nearly unlimited apples - far far far more than I could ever consume. I froze a lot of half gallon jugs of apple cider, and canned a lot of half gallons of the cider (which turns it into apple juice.) And, I have at least 15 frozen gallon bags of peeled & sliced apples (plus sugar & cinnamon added.) And enough apple butter to last me for 2 years. Ditto apple sauce.

In the garden, I have a lot of fresh veggies, and things like cantaloupes and water melons. In fact, I just grabbed the last water melon this past weekend. Sadly, it had a small soft spot on it, so I just tossed it in with the chickens. But, for a couple of months, it's a non-stop supply of veggies that are harder to store.

I also try to grow a nice variety of squashes - many types store well for the winter, in a cold room. I have enough squashes left to last another couple of months. Plus, I did freeze some squash - a hubbard is far too much to eat for 2 people, so I cooked one up, and froze quite a bit. (Plus have a few more hubbards to cook) And, though I grew tired of eating zucchinis during the summer, I did grind up quite a bit and froze that in pre-measured amounts. It's awesome to make loaves of zucchini bread year round.

Tomatoes - I grow several varieties of good eating tomatoes. I'm impatient, so I'm not the type to want to save up cherry tomatoes for a couple of days in order to have a lot of them. I like to be able to go out and pick a quart of them at once. So, I usually put in about a dozen cherry tomato plants. This year, they were awesome. And, I can a variety of tomato items. Sadly, this year, the variety of Roma tomatoes I had sucked. They were tiny - barely as big as 2 cherry tomatoes. Canning them sucked donkey balls. But, I have enough to make fresh spaghetti sauce for the rest of the year, plus made a dozen or so pints of salsa. OMG, it was sooo tasty - next year, I'm planning on at least 75 pints. What an awesome and healthy snack. I generally plant far more plants than I need to. Saves on effort. I could easily double or triple my yield if I cared, but it's just as easy to plant so much extra, then ignore them for a couple months, and come back to a tangled overgrown mess of vines all over.

Chickens - more than enough eggs for most of the year, though they haven't been laying for a couple of weeks. I could also raise chickens for meat, but f*&% that. Been there, done it. Chicken is so cheap in the grocery store - split chicken breasts for under $1 per pound... I can't raise them for so little - and butchering them is just a pain in the ass to do if you're going to do them one at a time - the time it takes to butcher one, including set-up and clean-up, isn't a whole lot different from the time to do 5 or 6. But, I don't like freezing chicken.

I *might* start raising a couple cattle for meat. But, instead of doing it here, I'll do it on my brother's farm with him & offer to put in a bit more time helping him with hay, etc.

Besides the apples, I also have peach, pear, and cherry trees, though they're pretty young. Plus a bunch of younger blueberry bushes, and a variety of grape vines. And raspberry bushes. Out wild, I have more than enough black berries and thimble berries. There's about 25-30 pounds of black berries in my freezer; they're destined to become wine. I just haven't gotten around to starting the blackberry wine - I'll be bottling the apricot wine in about a month, and maybe bottling the blueberry wine. Plus, I have hard apple cider, and hard apple-pear cider that has just a bit longer to go. The apple-pear I just racked this weekend. OMG it smelled so good. It'll be a couple months before that flavor really develops - at least, I hope it develops the flavor similar to the smell. Only 24 gallons at the moment, the blackberry will push it to at least 30 gallons for the year, and the honey mead would add another 6-12 gallons to the total, but I already have more than I really need, so doubt I'll bother with the mead. In fact, I was going to make 12 more gallons of hard cider, but ended up deciding not to bother. I stored half a dozen bushels of apples & gradually fed them to the goats. Just finished off the last bushel as a Christmas present to the goats on Christmas eve.

Year by year, I plan to slowly add to what I grow/raise. I haven't ruled out a greenhouse; I'd actually like to get a nice sized one. And, if so, I'll consider aquaponics - raising fish alongside other veggies. Given a large enough greenhouse, I'd bring in a backhoe & put in a good sized indoor pond (probably need a liner though). During the summer, it would serve as a heat sink. During most of the winter, it would serve as a source of heat, allowing for about a 10 month growing season.