the hydroponic okra

peat pot cage fight

hydrokra — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 17:42:58 +0000

I thought I’d try some CowPots out, but to really try them out I’m going to put them up against some very cheap paper pots and a free egg carton.

Let the cage fight begin. Two weeks later I found that the paper pots had some mold issues under the dome, but the CowPots were mold free. Nice try paper pots but the CowPots must be resistant. The egg cartons were the first to germinate and held the lead for a while. While the egg cartons had the CowPots in a head lock, the paper pots were whimpering in the corner. We’ll see if they recover. Out of nowhere, the CowPots did a reversal and now are whipping on the egg carton. This might get ugly.

big-box cactus

hydrokra — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 20:29:16 +0000

Today I bought three plants from IKEA. I felt disgusted really, buying plants from big box store. I’ve always advocated for folks to support their disappearing local garden shops, to keep them from disappearing! This was more of rescue mission, yeah, that’s the ticket! They had all sorts of plants, even flowering phalaenopsis orchids, bromeliads, palms, and other plants that looked great, for now. If you’ve ever been to IKEA, you may be familiar with their three distinct levels. There’s what I’ll call ‘purgatory’ which lies between the showroom ‘heaven’ and the warehouse ‘hell’. it’s the most confusing part of IKEA where the rooms are laid out as a maze and people are just strolling along picking up extras. My husband and I decided today that we’d go in backwards and start with the “broke shit” area, move through the warehouse area where the zombies roam, and go into the second floor and find something we think we need. the first thing i came to in rear entrance of purgatory were plants. Oh, of course, the last thing you need to top off your IKEA home! the only interesting things to me were on a sad rack of cacti and succulents in the darkest area of this maze. they were $2.99, planted in mulch, and severely dry and anemic. on the plus side, they had their Latin names! this is pretty rare in the mass production houseplant business, so i had to get one.. or three. This definitely was worth something in it’s value, knowing these had their names. So I bought Aloe dorian black, Gasteria hibrida, Aloe juveena (clockwise). I honestly wanted to buy a whole tray, but I couldn’t rationalize it other than to save them from evils unknown. Come to find out Aloe juveena is actually Aloe congolensis, and seems juvenna is a big mix-up classification of three other aloe species. It could be based on a misinterpretation of the English word juvenile from who knows when. Gasteria hibrida only lead me to a spanish translation of Gasteria hybrid, but i’m pretty sure I have Gasteria maculata ‘little warty’. Although somewhere, someone put forth an effort to give these botanical names, the effort stopped there. How could so many plants be sold with wrong names on such a mass scale and nobody actually really caring. I’m sure the next person that picked up one of these plants could care less about its name, just as much as the guys who wheeled the cart into purgatory. I could get bent out of shape about this, but I’ll stop. I picked out three cool plants that were in good condition when i found them (no thanks to checkout lady that broke off a aloe leaf after dropping it). I kept them warm under my coat in the parking lot (intentionally being shifty) and carried them into the dealership when i got an oil change (in a bag… trying not to be a crazy plant lady). hey, it was cold outside and I’m a responsible plant owner. I guess the point of this story is that you can find some gems in the big box stores, but never turn your back on the true growers at your local family garden center.

snow-globe seed

hydrokra — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 02:48:09 +0000

Feeling as though I was stuck in a snow-globe, having a morning of windy snow (that later turned into a sunny snow). At home with day off and nothing to do but care for my sleepy, sick husband. I was compelled to start the first round of seeds for 2011. bring on the drums.

This year I ordered seeds from Territorial to revive the seed stash tin. They arrived about a week ago and I’ve been planning my “plant attack 2011″. I am craving trying the sugar snap peas ‘Sugar Sprint’ paired with the ‘Baltimore’ carrots in a makeshift trough full of perlite and peat. the trough I have to work on, and I don’t want to start these moody transplanters too early… but they’re next. Today i just started a few greens and herbs in rockwool. One 6 pack of mixed lettuce seeds from Territorial’s super gourmet salad blend. I was trying to get one of each of their ‘Slobolt’, ‘Buttercrunch’, ‘Red Sails’, ‘Salad Bowl’, and ‘Valmaine’ by picking two of each color of three colors of seed. Throw in a few ‘Nero Di Toscana’ kale and ‘Fizz’ kale, and yummy ‘Tyee’ spinach for the stark greens. ‘Italiko Rossa’ italian dandelion and ‘Redventure’ celery for the heat loving reds. Looking forward to seeing this Malabar Spinach, or Basella alba grow up the sliding glass door. As the season and deck heats up, I’ll seed again directly in the fading pea troughs. The Basella will hopefully go the distance in creating productive shading this year. Of course I didn’t forget a couple of my favorite herbs. Did I mention these are all going into my free knockoff of these fabulous hydroponic bubbling window boxes. bring on the bass solo. ahhhh yeah.

Digging the good vibes of starting seeds after a month of living in this snow-globe, I decided to use a gift certificate towards some fun new gear. Coming next in the mail: a rad new self watering seed tray system and two dozen CowPots. bring on the massive guitar rifts.

glass flowers

hydrokra — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 14:46:11 +0000

Perhaps I get a bit excited when it come historical methods of collecting, preserving, classifying, and sharing new discoveries in the plant kingdom. Maybe that’s geeky, but anyone can appreciate the method of Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka. Beginning in 1886, this father and son hand blew glass replicas of specific plants commissioned by Harvard’s Botanical Museum. There is 840 plants in this collection and I only saw one broken leaf. I highly recommend a visit to the Harvard Museum of Natural History. There’s plenty of stuffed squirrels from around the world too, if you are into that sort of thing.

the everlasting poha

hydrokra — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 22:01:55 +0000

The story began when friends in Indiana shared some of their poha harvest with us. “What the heck is poha!” It looked like a ground cherry. A ground cherry, if you’ve never had one, looks like a tomatillo. and if you haven’t had a tomatillo, well, I’m terribly sorry. This was the largest and sweetest ground cherry I’ve tried. Most ground cherries have a not-so-ripe strawberry flavor, but this one had a juicier pineapple taste. Boy, was I going to make some good treats out of this, I thought. Flash forward to the next summer. I was now living in Boston, and just planted some new plants on the balcony. a few weeks later, I had a bunch of these mysterious seedlings popping up all over the place. I thought they were eggplants, so I chose to save them. Even the flower kind of resembled the eggplant, but I knew something was up. BAM! All of a sudden all these POHA were everywhere. OHHH! It all came back in a flood. I did not end up making that poha culinary masterpiece. Whatever we couldn’t snack on, went into the worm composting bin. the bin and the worms traveled with us, and I had used the castings in the soil. It’s been called poha from folks hailing from KY, but is one of many ground cherry species. Physalis peruviana is the latin name for this particular plant, and more commonly called Cape Gooseberry. It is related to the tomatillo, but not related to any gooseberries or currants in the Ribes genera. These are rowdy little plants that love the hot sun, and hardly need to be watered everyday. They make great snacks when we relax on the balcony. Last year they would fall from the edge and land by front door. Then they made good snacks for coming and going. You don’t have to eat them all at once, they can linger in the hot sun for days and still taste good. This year, yet again, I had poha sprouting up and I knew instantly what they were.

Hello again.

the rockwool diaries

hydrokra — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 16:06:33 +0000

Soaked up some rockwool today for starting another round of sweet and thai basil. My love affair with rockwool began 5 years ago when I discovered this curious new alternative to soil. I sought to learn everything I could about what looks like fiber insulation’s hippie twin. I later saw Vee from Grodan eat a bit of rockwool. It must be pure, I thought. I found that nothing that I have ever tried beats rockwool in speed to germination, success rate, and ease to use. yeah, you can grow to maturity in larger blocks and slabs of this media. It comes in all sorts of sizes of preformed blocks and slabs, but also loose for you use in pots like you would soil. You can find rockwool at any indoor gardening center, but you should also pick up a lemon or some pH down. Rockwool is alkaline and needs to have it’s pH dropped down to slightly acidic before use. I also like to cover the top of my rockwool with some fine coconut coir to keep algae from forming. It’s true, not all fairytale love affairs are so pure. My one hangup about rockwool is that you can’t reuse it. It’s essentially disposable, since roots will grow freely throughout the media and cannot be removed. I have heard tales of folks getting one or two more rounds of crops out of it, but it’s nothing I have had luck with. It comes from basalt rock with the occasional blend of limestone and an adhesive to hold it all together. It doesn’t breakdown to my knowledge, leaving you wondering how to dispose of it. Most gardeners will be mindful and find a reuse in their garden. Have you tried putting cut-up, used rockwool cubes at the bottom of your hanging baskets? Brilliant! Personally, I choose to enjoy rockwool in small pieces. In an urban apt, it’s best that way.

herbs on the patio

hydrokra — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 20:47:39 +0000

5 days into Summer, and the herbs on the patio are starting to feel the love. I had purchased quite a few herbs from work over a month ago and learning how to grow them. It’s an intensely hot and sunny porch, and they seem to bask in it. I made some random pairings of three or four plants in large pots, knowing I’d learn what pairs good with others. I’m already thinking of dividing out the Kent Beauty oregano and putting it solo in a hanging basket. This isn’t an edible variety of oregano, but it’s flowers are magnificent! I also picked up some Hot and Spicy oregano, which has a nice kick to it’s traditional oregano flavor. it grows more dense than Kent Beauty, and I think it’s out to strangle the red salvia and Chantilly snapdragons in it’s pot. Also thriving is the lemon verbena, which i have debated on whether or not to cut the flowers back. The flowers can be used for teas as well and doesn’t inhibit growth or flavor of the leaves. It was cut back early on and has a nice shape to it. it’s best to keep these shrubby early on, trimming back at 6 inches of growth if you intend to keep it year round indoors. I’m planning on keeping mine inside under T5 fluorescents this winter, so I’m going to cut it back again this year to keep it compact. Most herbs really need to monitored and flowers cut quickly, if you want production all year. I’ve tried to be diligent with my basil but they are really working hard to get that flower opened! My salad leaf basil is proving to the most heat and sun tolerant, slow to flower, and most productive basil on the porch. It produces those large leaves that drape over and prevent the soil from drying out fast, making it a perfect potted herb. A new basil on my repertoire is African Blue basil. I was won over when I heard it keeps easy indoors over winter. It has lovely flowers that I don’t want to sacrifice, but probably should since I’m keep it around a while and want cuttings off it. The Berggarten sage is slow to flower, supposedly if it flowers at all. The leaves on this sage are huge! It will be delicious to cook with, and maybe even deep fry the leaves. I’m loving this one big time, growing it solo in a 5″ square pot. The “scenteds” as I like to call my two scented geraniums, are also doing fabulous, as expected, on the balcony. I have started my collection with two: Rober’s Lemon Rose and French Vanilla. This is a plant I could really get attached to and go overboard on collecting all the scents I can find. Besides, I see it being a long term relationship, so I plan on taking it slow. Aphids absolutely love the scenteds, so I’ve got to make sure to keep them separated to prevent an unnecessary outbreak. Scented geraniums are great at remediation of lead contaminated soils, making them a great urban wild plant. Unfortunately they aren’t hardy in Boston. The Woolly thyme and the German chamomile are hardy, and I hope to find a permanent home for them in the fall. The German chamomile apparently flowers more than the Roman, so I’m trying this variety out this year. New herb plants recently brought home include angelica and pineapple sage. I bought the angelica a little too late, now that the stems are more tough. It’s a biennial, so I can expect to harvest the seeds until next year. I’ll still experiment with it’s uses as an alternative to celery (why on earth would you want to replace celery?), and making angelica liquor. If all else fails, I’ll plant it somewhere where i can expect to have access to harvesting it’s seeds next year. The pineapple sage isn’t flowering yet, and I’m going to harvest it soon for using fresh in tea or one of the delicious recipes I’ve seen floating around the internet. Undoubtedly, it’s going into some cream cheese soon.

Orchid winter

hydrokra — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 20:49:22 +0000

I am dubbing my first New England winter as the ‘Winter of the Orchid’. My growing collection of these beautiful blooming houseplants has kept me cheery for the last 6 months. Thanks to my new greenhouse position, learning about this extensive, challenging group of plants is required. I have learned so much about these plants that I have feared for so long. Aren’t they just so intimidating? Growing in their special bark media, I swore I would have to own a greenhouse to grow these little creatures. I still can’t believe how much care for one genus will differ from care for another genus. As you delve deeper into different care specie to specie, you begin to imagine them each thriving in such specific environments. Thinking we could recreate it sounds absurd. Luckily I’ll never turn down a ‘grow’ challenge. I’ve been rewarded with Orchidaceae, the largest family of flowering plants. For me, it’s like unlocking the door to a new planet of wonder. I can’t wait to experiment with growing them outside this summer. Creating a whole new understory plant on the balcony, in some cases, trying my luck with hydro orchids. perhaps there will be a sidekick to hydrokra…

So I encourage you to get an orchid. Spend around $35 and get a healthy specimen. Get it from a place you trust, somewhere where they’ll know the answers to your questions. Always look it up on the internet, and find out what it likes, and find forum posts about how others have successfully grown them. If you can grow it, great! If you can’t, give it to a friend. Go to your local orchid society and trade locally for a different genus. don’t give up, and you too can find a new planet of wonder.

and besides, how could you not love Miltoniopsis Arnold Linsman ‘hot and spicy’?

reflections after the first snow

hydrokra — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 23:53:20 +0000

What a year. For me, this gardening season has been one of personal success. Moving from the midwest in May to a top level apartment in Boston some twenty feet from the earth was my first challenge. I had missed the deadline for your typical germination dates for many vegetables. I was determined to maximize my vegetable garden this year, utilizing all the skills I had obtained on pushing the envelope of where gardens can exist. Spending the last four years playing with hydroponics, I had no fear that I could harvest just like the rest of them this year. I went out and bought soil, and got started. I was amazed at the low germination rate. What was I doing wrong? After blaming soggy cool spring weather long enough, I finally saw a window in the weather and went for it. I was sowing seeds yet again… problem was it was mid July.

three months later I am sitting next to the platter of green ‘black’ tomatoes ripening in the window. From the three surviving tomato plants I have nearly 30 tomatoes. Back in August I wasn’t satisfied with the restraints that the soil was putting on my tomato plant’s productivity. We knocked off the soil, and put the tomato plants into a deep water hydroponic system. Their growth was satisfying, but the huge burst of blooms was exactly what I wanted out of the 3 foot tall plants. I knew I was close to achieving my goal of a vegetable harvest.

The hydroponic okra was the real monster. We named it Hydrokra. It went from a stunted plant wondering why some fool planted it so late so far north to a super productive late bloomer. It was given a rare opportunity to push the limits of it’s short life on earth and it went for it.