Learning a Lot

These little bottle gardens of mine have taught me a lot over the past few weeks.Mostly, that I need to be patient and that the plants need far more sun than they were getting on my windowsill.

While the bean plants are producing pods, the leaves were getting very pale and sickly looking.
The tomatoes were not really progressing much and neither were my lettuce or rocket- until I re-arranged my windowsill and opened the blinds  up almost completely. That was a week ago and the plants are looking considerably better.

One of the problems that we have where I live is that we have rather a large and fearless monkey population which if given half a chance would get into and destroy one's kitchen in search of food.
The result is that the windows and the doors never get opened unless someone is in the kitchen and the place gets stiflingly hot in summer.

Obviously one cannot have much of a vegetable garden unless its in a cage, much less put my little hydroponics experiment out in the yard to get more sun.This year so far the monkeys have destroyed a papaya tree, eaten and wasted 1/2 a large bunch of bananas and bitten and wasted countless lemons and grapefruit.I don't mind sharing my garden with the local animal and bird population but its soul destroying when they are so wasteful and destructive.

Checking up

This is a quick note to tell you that each of the bean plants have beans which seem to be growing well, two of the tomato plants are showing signs of spreading along with new leaves and the lettuce seedlings definitely have potential.

So far the only seedlings that are not very happy players are the rocket seedlings but I must admit I don't know very much about growing rocket so I might just have to be patient.

An interesting side issue is that my experiment with an Amish fly trap/repellent seems to be working.
We always have a problem with flies in hot weather and the last few days have been really hot.

The Amish fly repellent is simple: 
A plastic ziplock bag, a couple of silver coins and some water.

Put the coins in the bag, add a couple of cups of water and hang up- mine is over the garbage bin and next to a window. I have no idea how it works but it seems to.Please let me know if you try this. I would be very interested to know if it works for you.

Succuss at Last!

FINALLY, I have been able to germinate my lettuce seedlings!

It seems these are very tender beings and they didn't like being buried underneath the vermiculite so it was on to Plan B.

The vermiculite was damp and absorbing water from the little tank below so I laid a single layer paper towel over the vermiculite and dampened it.The lettuce seeds were sprinkled on top of the paper and covered with another piece of damp paper towel.And there they sat- and sat- and sat- until a couple of days ago when I noticed that they were germinating under the paper towel.

Yesterday, I removed the top towel and this evening they are showing every sign of sprouting leaves.

Lettuce seedlings on damp paper towel on a vermiculite seed bed

It seems we might be on our way with these lettuce.

I tried to grow  baby spinach greens in this seed bed earlier on without the use of damp paper towel and they didn't germinate. I think I will try these again and see what happens.

The second set of bean plants are thriving and are just starting to throw beans. I think that the change in diet for these plants is helping.
The tomatoes are sort of standing still and the rocket doesn't seem to have made much progress this past week.

Week 3 going into Week 4

I went away for the weekend so this has taken a little longer to photograph. However, its been worth the wait as while I was away, the first beans appeared on the first bean plant. It looks like more beans will be appearing on the other plants very shortly.

Here are some photos:

1st bean plant with its beans

2nd bean plant with the embryo beans.

The first plant has only produced two beans so far but I suspect that more will be following but the second plant has a LOT of potential beans on it.

The tomato plant bottle produced  a great clump of plants which sort of just sat until the end of last week when one seemed to take off. I'll be watching this one with interest.

Tomato plant starting to show some promise

The rocket plants got to a point of growth and have just seemed to be sitting.

When I took a look at them this afternoon, some of the plants seemed to be showing a bit of activity.

The most disappointing has been my lettuce seeds planted in the ice cream tub. Nothing has come up so far so I might have to add some more wicks to the tub.

I have changed the liquid fertiliser from my mix to a commercial mix as of today and it will be interesting to see if it makes a difference. If there isn't then I will go back to my mix.

Its essential to feed the plants once a week and to check water levels in the bottles.

I am seriously thinking of using bottles to plant basil, given the amount of basil pesto we use in this house. Pesto is ridiculously easy to make- if one has the basil.

Week 2 - Bean plants

Remember those bean plants from last week?
This is what they look like this week- 

 I am a bit disappointed though. The lettuce seeds haven't come up yet and the rocket and tomato seedlings don't seem to be doing anything.
Maybe the lettuce seedlings need more water.

Before I left on leave for a week, I filled that green bottle right to the top with water. That water level has hardly dropped.

Grow Time!

Wow! Eight days after planting, the beans are taking off!

The rocket and tomatoes don't seem to be doing anything at the moment
so maybe the time has come to add a bit more fertilizer to the water.
I haven't quite got this part right yet.

It will be interesting to see what happens over the next week.

These beans could make quite a nice holiday project for the kids.They seem to grow fast with very little input on my side.

Windowsill Hydroponics

Ok, so I admit it: I finally had a bit of time to myself- and spent it bumbling around the net.
I came across information about DIY hydroponics and got curious.

The more I dug, the more information appeared about all sorts of innovative ways of growing veg and flowers hydroponically in one's back yard or on a windowsill.
Of course, this was a challenge I couldn't resist, given that all the supplies were so readily available - AND CHEAP or for nothing.

Cool drink bottles? Courtesy of the dear son.
Mutton cloth? there was a whole roll lying in my garage.
Vermiculite? Had to buy that but I now have enough to set up 100 bottles if I so choose.
Liquid Fertiliser? There is 50 kilos lying in the garden shed which we use for the shrubs in the garden and I only need about 20 grams.

I came across these plans on this website:
Recycled cool drink bottles
I have subsequently drawn my own set of plans and to save you having to go looking they are now on the second page on this blog.

This was my first attempt:

All I needed was a knife with teeth to get the cut going and a pair of kitchen scissors, a cool drink bottle and a strip of mutton cloth.

This is the finished garden- minus the vermiculite.

Notice how the cloth strip sticks up to the rim of the top of the bottle and right into what will be the reservoir?
When you fill the planter area with vermiculite, the cloth strip must remain vertical and you have to pack the vermiculite around it. The cloth strip becomes a wick for the water to be drawn up into the vermiculite.

The last bit is to tape a piece of black plastic sheeting or a piece of black garbage bag round the reservoir part of the garden in order to prevent algae growing in the nutrient rich water.

This first pot got a bean- which has now grown about a meter tall and had to be staked. Here is a photo of another more recent bean pot where the bean seeds have sprouted after around 4 days.

I have subsequently planted rocket, rosa tomatoes and lettuce and plan on planting basil 

and baby spinach.

Rocket

Rosa Tomatoes.

All the plants have now been fed with liquid fertiliser.