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.