Different Harvests

For later weekends in August, I spent little time maintain the garden. I would check the water level every few days, and use a watering can to add 2 or 4 gallons.  Most weekends I had some small harvests, usually a bowl or two.  I even gave a lettuce plants to my mother.  With experience I found that there was different types of harvesting for basement gardens, like the selective, the pruning and the final harvest.  One of these are the types typically used in your outdoor garden.

Most outdoor gardeners want each plant to thrive and grow, harvests are made to keep the plants alive.  In an indoor garden, the less plants in an enclosed planter, the bigger the remaining plants can grow.  When lettuce is grown indoors, the leaves are not harvested, it is the entire plant.  The harvested plant’s root system should be pulled out of the planter.  Finally, additional dirt is added to fill the planter and provide additional nutrients for remaining plants.

Only harvest the amount needed.  How much of the vegetable is needed for the meal?  If the need is only enough for a few sandwiches, this would be a selective harvest. Pick the largest of the plants, and don’t take out chunks.  The selection should be distributed across the container, making space for adjacent plants.

When harvesting enough for a side dish, that’s a pruning harvest. The goal is to harvest a significant chunk of the plants in one container, and have the remaining plants to recover, expand and grow.

Then there is the final harvest.  This is when all the plants from one planter are harvested. There are other harvests earlier, but this should be a large harvest to turn the planter space around faster for the next harvest. Additional work after a final harvest is needed to plant the next vegetable.

There is also a Grand Harvest, which is when you are harvesting for a special side dish, typically for a party.  For a family gathering in February 2011, I had grown a full container of Swiss Chard that I rarely touched.  The leaves were huge, and a tall 20 gallon pot was filled.  I was able to steam enough for 6 adult Swiss Chard lovers, and even had leftovers. Harvested basement vegetables shelf life is pretty high, especially if refrigerate in vegetable bags available at supermarkets.  The bags are reusable.

It doesn’t take more than a few pinches of seeds to plant an entire container, and usually takes a month until the first harvest of any leafy vegetable such as lettuce, spinach or Swiss Chard.  The first few harvests can be early harvests of “baby” plants, where it might take many plants to make a meal.  When planning this approach, the distance between seeds when planting is closer than recommended, increasing additional plants in each planter by a factor of two or three.  Early pruning harvests of baby plants makes recommended space for the remaining plants. Additional dirt should be added to the planter after any pruning harvest.

Basement Farm Framework: Version 2, Part III

Basement Garden 8/5 - just before vacation
Note Beans sprouting

When we got back from our vacation, I heard a gutteral cry from behind the basement door.  It turns out the oldest cat, Patches, was in the basement.  We had a neighbor house sit and take care of the pets while we were gone, but I didn’t warn them that Patches will sneak down to the basement to spend time.  The way this cat was complaining, I guessed she may have been there for a few days.

Later when I checked the framework, it turned out that the cat created a “nest” in one of the planters closest to the window and under the grow light, so she could sun herself uninterrupted.  One of the lettuce planters had half the lettuce pushed down, and a newly planted Swiss Chard container had seedlings pressed into the dirt, covered with cat hairs.

Aside from that, the other 6 planters where growing well.  The Beans were going nuts.  I left with seedlings barely breaking ground and came back to six inch plants!  I underestimated the growth rate and size of beans, and realized I need to move things around in a few weeks.  The Swiss Chard planting looks like it was recovering from the squirrels, and one container of lettuce was ready for the first harvest.  I measured that under 2 gallons of water was used during the time we were gone, leaving plenty left in the 5 gallon pail.

Basement Garden 8/11 - back from vacation,
Note size of bean plants

Chuck and I arranged time to work on the watering via eMail while on vacation.  He showed up early on one of my last vacation days to give me a hand. I had already done some some carpentry work on the frame to support the 5 gallon water container, that’s 8.6 pounds.  I found a twenty gallon tank, but I needed to reinforce the framework to cover the additional weight. The 20 gallon reservour would weigh 170 pounds, a significant increase for the overall frame load.  Additional support would need to be in place before I purchased the reservour.

We wheeled the platform out of the basement, manuvered it down a two inch concrete lip to the garage.  Once we had it in the garage, we spent only 10-15 minutes removing the containers and disassembling the major components.  We had to put it on its side to install a 2x6 support beam under the location for the water tank, I also added a 7th pivot wheel under the beam, allowing the extra weight to rest directly over a ground support point.

We also reviewed my design for watering.  The upgrade would replace tubes tied to a 1x1 rectangular wooden frame with PVC pipes arragned as rectangles with large pre-drilled holes for the feeding pipes.  The original design two rectanges with a shared side, and 3-pipe corner PVC connectors with PVC holding it up to be over the planters.  I couldn’t feed the water tubing through the corner pieces, so T connectors were used instead, with the tubing going thouth the top of the T and support provided through the lower beams.  Each pipe had a T connection at each edge.  Three sides of each rectangle was a single pipe. The water feed came through the shared side, breaking two sides in half.  All together about 30 pieces of PVC pipe were cut. 20 of them used for support within a T connection, and under a foot in length.  Chuck couldn’t stay long that day, but his input in the design was helpful. The work on the watering system took much longer than expected, well into the night.  I completed test drips of the new water system.  All the drips were working fine, The new pump was driving water with regular dripping at all end-points. In a few additional places there were small drips came from the connection between the small feeder tubes and the larger ones.  I didn’t want to fix it immediately, but watch to see how long it deteriorates over time.

After making calculations, I realized that each of the drips completed two gallons per hour, with eight drippers in the farm platform. That is 16 gallons per hour, even though the tank is 5 gallons.  That means each our the entire water would flow through the system over three times in one hour.  Thank goodness for closed cycle watering.  I run the system for 2-4 hours, twice a day.

The worked went until late at night.  After completing the drip test, I filled the trays with the planters.  I forgot about the two inch step between the garage and basement.  This wasn’t something I could lift, but used a small piece of scrap plywood to make a ramp.  Once I got the first set of whells up over the ridge, the rest came easy.  I didn’t even spill any water.

After putting the framework back in place, I examined the working system.  There was little planned maintenance work to be completed at this point, I still need to fill the water tank with two gallons a few times a week.  Even though the normal New England farmers were planning for their early fall harvests, I was now focused more on planting for a late fall and winter harvest.

Why I started growing vegetables in my basement after 9/11

When people ask you where you were on 9/11, most people over 25 years old can tell you what they were doing when they first heard about the airplane strikes in the World Trade Center.  Before 2001, September 11^th was the date to celebrate my lovely step daughter’s birthday.  On that day, the date took on a whole new meaning for our country.

I remember hearing about a plane hitting the world trade center while driving to a customer site in MetroWest. I was listening to NPR, and the 9 am news announced the first plane hitting the World Trade Center. While working at the customer site, I kept up to date by checking the Wall Street Journal web site.  I could access live feeds from web sites based in the vicinity. What many people don’t know is when the buildings went down, it was the ultimate testing of the capabilities built into the Internet. The Internet was designed to survive a nuclear attack.  It turns out that on September 11, 2001, one of the largest Network Access Points on the Internet was destroyed.  A NAP is a data center used to exchange binary traffic between providers, and typically has more weight in legal paperwork than the actual equipment used for traffic.  The NAP located in the World Trade Center was demolished, and the Internet barely hiccupped.

Within a few hours it became apparent the scope of the attack.  Few of the planes took off from Logan airport.  I knew those flights, and realized that there may be people I know on those planes.  The attack also changed the Technology industry. Companies didn’t want to spend money on new enterprise software solutions, or consultants, and Venture Capitalists started to shut down startups.  I was working at a startup as a Product Manager consultant, but within 45 days I was out of work.

I was in a transition point in my career.  I had a solid engineering background, but little recent hands-on experience.  I was working towards an MBA, but was a Semester short of graduating.  I decided to focus on finishing my degree while the terrorism and wars filled the news channels.  I got my degree the following spring, but couldn’t find a full-time job.  I continued to look for work.  Eventually the unemployment ran out, we were on food stamps.  Eating healthy isn’t easy on a limited budget.  Produce, especially during the winter is an expensive side dish. 

I needed to find a job with benefits and decided to take a job doing retail sales at a local computer store chain store in early 2003.  I worked there for over two and a half year until I was able to get another job within the High Technology Industry of Corporate America.  It was over five years after the terrorist attack when my career recovered.

The family did go through some hard times, and I realized the first thing that we couldn’t afford is good food, specifically fresh produce and vegetables.  While growing up, our family always had a vegetable garden, but we had too many trees in our property to grow a garden.  Separate from improvements in my career, we decided to spend some money on improving the house.  Part of that improvement was removal of a few trees to make room for a 3-season porch.  That also created a spot in the back yard to try growing a vegetable garden.  We started planting our first garden in 2009.

In the spring of 2010, I was laid off again.  Unfortunately, the technology industry has become a transitional career.  I had a great garden that year but realized my future plans were uncertain.  Unemployment would stop some time later winter, and based on the economy, I could not guarantee if I would have a job by then. 

That’s when I decided to start a basement farm.  I had containers, a tray from early planting, seeds, and could water the plants by hand. all I needed was a grow lamp.  I planted indoors throughout the fall, winter and into early spring.  Throughout that time I also had enough lettuce for salads on a regular basis.  I thought that if I could get something growing, it would be cheaper than purchasing produce in the middle of winter.  If our family ended up on foodstamps, whatever grew would help us eat healthy at a low price.

The commitment to grow a basement farm is like cooking, you mix the ingredients together and let the fire or heat do the rest.  Within a few minutes or hour you consume the results. The difference is with any framing it takes months to see the outcome.  I did a planting of Swiss Chard in early November, got a job in January, and had my family over for dinner in early February.  I harvested enough Swiss Chard (a favorite family dish) for 8 people with leftovers. I even had an occasional spinach harvest.  I kept it going to spring, when I moved the containers outdoors, then discovered squirrels got to the harvest of Swiss Chard before I did.

It seemed like an overall successful project.

Basement Farm Framework: Version 2, Part II

When I was a little kid, I remember playing and building elaborate designs using plastic brinks, tinker toys and erector sets.  During grade school and into Junior high. I drew spaceships and submarines.

Somebody told me once “You’d be a good engineer.”

I asked “What that?”

They responded, “People who design things.”

“Cool” I replied, and from that day forward knew what I wanted to do when I grew up. Engineers are multi-disiplinary problem solvers, mathematicians and physists.  In the late 70s and early 80s, the computer industry was exploding, and starved for engineers with backgrounds in computer technology. I have spent all of my career with computers.  Starting with punch cards with mainframes, computer terminals connected to Prime and DEC VAXes, Workstations, PCs, Servers, hardware, software, networking before and with the Internet.

Now I was facing new territory of engineering and exploration, having completed building a framework to grow vegatables 365 days a year, in my basement.  I would have about10 square feet of farmland to work, with no weeds, no critters.  I wouldn’t have to worry about frosts or torrential rains. I built the system within 12 square feet of large cabinet space in the basement, with wheels in case I need to move it.  I am looking forward to see what can grow.

The last weekend in July was planned to set up the water and complete the planting.  I had four planters in the outdoor garden with Swiss Card and Lettuce, one of each was planted indoors and outdoors.  The difference between indoor and ourdoor planting became less apparent during the month they shared outdoors in the garden.  Both Swiss Chard containers shared various squirrel bites.  There was also four containers that  were to be planted from scratch.  Two containers were planted with green and wax beans and two with more Swiss Chard and Lettuce.

There was now a need for enough dirt to fill containers, decided to use the dirt in the container used for growing potatoes. Most of the dirt from this container was used to fill the planters, adding a little fertilizer as well.  I got down six inches into the dirt before I found my first potato!  I took a few pictures to send to my wife, then started to find more and more potatoes!  Most of them where small finger-size, but there were quite a few that were serving-size.  I collected about five pounds of potatoes. The planting was around April 23rd, and the plants died in mid-July, only about 80 days later.  That was a lot of potatoes for such short time! I was definately going to try planting this again!

The other major task was to get the water system running, with the first focus on drainage.  Two rectangular plastic bottles and cut off the tops were used as drain funnels.  Each was superglued to a threaded PVC pipe junction. Two nails were put into the 2x4 under the hole of the tray, and made slices into the bottle sides so they could be mounted onto the nails.  Water would drain through the hole, be captured within the rectangular funnel below it, and down the hose to the 5 gallon drum.

The old water distribution system could be used to start. The the water system was tested before the planters were in place.  This effort was worthwhile.  The draning had issues since the water was “running back” under the tray before it dropped by gravity.  The stream was more dynamic than I expected.  I did a quick improvise by taking a milk carton safety ring and hot-glueing it around the drilled hole.  This created a ridge which kept water flowing down almost directly under the hole.

The water system worked fine when resting on the trays, but when resting on the planters, it didn’t work.  It turned out my old cheap water pump was significantly underpowered and couldn’t reach the greater height.  This required a lunch-time motorcycle ride to a hydroponics store in Foxbrough.  He recommended one with over twice the power. It was home and installed it in the weekend evening, I noticed a significant difference in water output with the new pump.  This allowed me to reduce the watering time.

There was a new level of urgency to make sure the system worked, hands-off.  Within a week the family was going to go on vacation from Saturday to Thursday night.  The system needed to worked unattended, and hopefully not spring a leak while we where gone.  I did some additional drainage redesign and had something I was comfortable with. The original idea for drainage, using nails to hold plastic funnels made from a rectangular drink bottle for each of the two trays, worked okay. But didn’t survive long.  I ended up making loops and hooks out of electrical wire to hold the drainage systems in place.  Also, the garden hoses where changed to regular tubing to significantly reduce weight.

Basement Farm: 8/5/11

I took the following picture before we left on vacation.  I was hoping nothing would happen to this little farm. I didn’t know what I would be coming home to, and I was hoping there wouldn’t be a tragic failure while we were gone.  Otherwise the system would just work, automated lighting and watering unatteneded for 5 days.  This is really a trial run. It should be able to do longer than that!

Basement Farm Framework: Version 2. Part 1

Or, how Dave spent his summer instead of Blogging.

During the month of July, 2011, I found most of my spare time spent in various garden work.  I had moved the remaining containers in the basement garden outdoors, transplanted the last of the container plants.  The outdoor garden in the back yard was full of weeds, and I didn't have the time needed to take care of that issue.  It seemed that using all the compost from last year included lots of grass seed, and to pull everything out would take hours that I don’t have.

Also, I had made plans with my friend Chuck to help me build my "version 2.0" basement farming framework.  He is much better with woodworking tools than myself, but we both agreed I needed a design before we start building it.

I downloaded a CAD software package for my iPad and completed some basic design sketches.  I learned a lot from last winter's indoor farming "prototype" to understand structure, support and size.  Weight distribution and drainage was important.  At one point last winter, a small, rusty table collapsed while I was working downstairs, forcing me to quickly drain and disassemble half the prototype before I could even replace the broken table with a more sturdier one.  Fortunately, not much spilled out of the tray so my wife wasn't the wiser until the system was up and running in a few hours.

Where I have been doing my basement farming, there are two medium size west facing windows about 4 feet above the basement floor, I positioned the basement garden to capture late day sunlight, and would continue to use a similar position with the next design.  In the original design of 2.0, I had three independent sections, where the middle section could be removed to drop the height of the frame when the plants got too large.  I calculated and purchased the wood needed the weekend before Chuck was to come over, and arranged to review the design with him in an early morning breakfast before going to work.

I have known this man since grade school. Both Chuck and I had degrees in Engineering from Northeastern University.  We car pooled together to school for many years, and after he graduated he got a job at the same mini computer company where I was working.  While we went to the same school and worked in the same department, we never worked on the same project together.  Most of the people I knew agreed he was one of the best engineers in the group, and I was looking forward to finally work together with him.

I reviewed my design with him, and he asked some good, probing questions about my assumptions behind the design.  He asked asked some fundamental questions, like “Do you really need that much wood?” I learned long ago the art of collaboration through constructive criticism.  This is a core practice of any engineering team. Questions like this are constructive, and should not be taken personal.  The goal I was working towards was a simple easy design. Once I shared the design with others the path to that goal became clearer, but not what I originally expected.

We both agreed that this design needed to be solid, and the trays holding the planters needed some special work for support and allow drainage.  Aside from that, he questioned everything, throwing out some "What if" scenarios that I didn't think about.  It boiled down to a basic concept; I was using too much wood in my design.  Even taking my own basic issues into account, a simplified design would be easier and quicker to build, and use less wood.  These were good points, and I found myself needing to redesign the system within two days before Chuck would be over to help build it.  I spent the motorcycle ride home from work mulling over his points and reworked some of my basic design to become a single unit.  When Chuck came over on Saturday, a new set of plans where completed, but we “Improvised” some of the design on the fly. 

We started working on this mid-morning, and by mid-afternoon the framework was in place and what was left was more assembly than construction.  Chuck had to leave, but I continued my work into the evening. I installed wheels on the bottom to simplify moving, and had the trays positioned on the frame with the proper angles.  Within a day the frame was completed, and I had half the purchased wood left unused, and needed to be returned.  I started to plan for the following weekend where I will set up the watering and plant the next harvest.

Comparing Indoor to Outdoor Gardening

Last week, I started to take apart the final indoor planting.  Since mid-April I was pre-planting indoors an assortment of tomatoes, squash and peppers.  What was left is a handful of peppers and either cucumbers or  melons.  Some of them I planted outdoor that weekend, while others I'll take care of this weekend.

The space under the grow light is precious for indoor growing.  With less plants for transplanting I decided to start a few experiments. To compare how effective are by growing techniques, specifically indoors vs. outdoors.  These aren't perfect controlled environments, but it at least provided a reference to compare against.

• Back on June 4th, I planted swiss chard in two containers and in a section of the garden.  One of the containers I kept indoors under the grow light.
• On June 19th, I planted lettuce in two containers, one was indoors and one was outdoors.  At this time, I had a few lettuce heads growing in pete containers downstairs, so I decided to transplant them into the indoor container as well.

Fast forward to July 9th, I needed to clear out the plantings to make room for the next generation planting stand.  I put the plantings outdoors in the garden and compared them.  The picture below shows the four planters, the outer planters were growing indoors, while the inner planters where growing outdoors.  The large lettuce heads were planted some time in May.

It's interesting to note that the indoor plants also had less weeds, less diggings from critters, etc.  but the outdoor plantings also seem more resilient to changes of weather.  In the week since I put these plants outside, the swiss chard and lettuce seem to have some sort of shock, while the outdoor plants continue to grow without a problem, as shown in the picture below.

Now the indoor planters are to the far right and second from the left.  It is apparent that some of these plants have suffered some sort of shock.  During the week these planters are leaning against a fence.  The plants that I completed in the ground didn't fare as well.  Well, I'll admit that I need to do some serious weeding in this area of the garden, but the plants are about half of the size I had in the container, as shown in the picture below:

I'm comfortable enough to claim a significant advantage in indoor planting over outdoor planting.  Since I can control the light and water better, the plants definitely respond better.  Indoor planting isn't perfect, the sheltered environment results in plants that are more fragile than outdoor plants.  Fortunately, that doesn't seem to affect the taste.

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Other plantings in the garden are doing extremely well.  I have collected a few cherry tomatoes from the front garden, and there are many more tomatoes of various sizes, shapes, and shades of green to red.  I expect a deluge of tomatoes by the end of the month.  Not bad considering that all these tomato plants were started from seeds under the grow light, and I had enough tomato plants left over to share them with my sister.

In mid-May I started a Potato Planter experiment.  This is taking potatoes and planting them in a deep container, and fill the container over time, covering the roots of the plants.  I used a deep planter and thought it was going successfully for the first few months.

This picture was taken on June 29, and the plants look pretty hardy.  because of the location I needed to water them by hand.  then I noticed parts of the plants started to turn yellow.  During the early part of July, our area had a heat wave, and considering that the planter is right next to the asphalt roadway, I thought the extra heat could be causing the problem.

By July 9th the potato plants were seriously deteriorating, I made sure to water these plants regularly, but they seemed to be reacting to something.  Assuming it was heat, I moved the plants indoors and put them under the grow light, thinking that they would at least recover in the cool temperature of the basement.

The plants have not recovered, even though the grow light was on constantly for a few days.  I made sure the ground remained moist, but not damp, but watered it a few times.  I kept the planter in a tray to capture any water that would leak out of the planter (so it wouldn't go on the basement floor) and yes, the planter is on a dolly since this much dirt is pretty heavy.

The plants continued to deteriorate over the next week.  as shown in the final picture below.

I will take the planter out and see if any potatoes grew out of this experiment.  Considering that it grew for only a few months, I doubt if I have much of a harvest.  Reading from Wikipedia, the ground temperature should not exceed 80 degrees.  Considering the location and position of the planter, that temperature would have been reached a few times in early July.

I will continue to experiment with an assortment of plants and plantings.  Some times I will succeed, other times I will fail, and most cases the outcome will be some where in between. I may start planting potatoes again later this year with the expectation of moving them indoors to put them under the grow light.  The fascinating opportunity of growing potatoes this way is the small amount of space needed for growing.