2018 Gardening, Cloning, Aeroponics

[redcairo]

For reasons I won't bore you with I have not gardened in years and my property and garden are sorely in need of maintenance. So this will be a major "improvement" project, this season. But I am getting back to it now, and I got an aeroponic cloner from my best friend for Christmas and am really excited about taking up gardening yet-again!

 

I got into gardening pre-Y2K after reading about it solely for survival reasons. Prior to that my only exposure to it was when as a teen, my dad decided to grow some tomatoes in the backyard in California. A few months later my stepsister and I were going door to door in a ten block radius with grocery bags full of tomatoes begging people to take them. I was not real fond of gardening after that. And I didn't even have to do any of the work. :-) 

 

When I moved to the Ozarks, I read this book "Behaving as if the God in all life Matters" -- I loved the title, is why I read it -- and the whole "talking to nature spirits" bit fits right in with my interior-universe and archetype work, so I loved it. I first went crazy with flower pots on my front porch. The next year I decided to plant a garden. A REAL garden.

 

In my backyard, I have two cinderblock beds in "L shapes. 6'x4'x32"h is one set, and 16'x4'24"h is the other set. A foot or two off, I think it's about 185sqft total for those beds. I have five, 4'w x 4'd x 6'h arch trellises of cattle panel along the side wooden fence in the backyard, those had 26 gallon tub "homemade earthboxes" at their base until an ice storm shattered all plastic and terracotta on the property. I might replace some of them this year. There's a round trellis in the middle of it all I sometimes vine things up. And I often put a few tubs out front where there's a little sun.

 

Anyway, so it's not a ton of space, but it's enough to have quite a few plants, which is good because I have a whole experimental series lined up. :-)  Some old pics for context:

 

Empty season

Spoiler

Arches

Spoiler

Wilting late summer old season :-)  (prior to someone making off with my copper-tubing framing haha)

Spoiler

 

Not long before my (birth-defect-heart-valve) health wrecked my life for several years, I did a couple seasons of seed-starting using hydroponics -- I had about five Aerogardens at the time -- and that worked much faster and easier than regular seed starting.

 

I had the idea, since I'm so excited to use my cloner (mostly on anything I am not supposed to legally propagate) (er, I am referring to patented pretty flowers people, not altered-state supplements! :-)) to hijack the seed-starting process and see if intervening with aeroponic cloning can actually succeed.

 

Plan:

Experiment #1: Grow seedlings to about 3" then snip off that stalk and stick it in the cloner. See if that tiny baby stalk with grow roots -- robustly and fairly rapidly (~10-14 days).

Experiment #2: See if the remaining root and stub, left in the seed-starting environ, will regrow.

Experiment #3: See if the very-rooted clone can go back into a soilless seed-starting environ (some ferts then) with grow light to develop some leaves.

All this before planting out.

 

I have a variety of minor issues that tend to impact gardening that aren't huge individually but which I think could be improved by having this ability to get 2+ plants from one viable seed, or even just at least one truly robust seedling, much more than the average, for the garden. The cloner will hopefully allow me to get ONE seedling from the nursery (if they will sell that few, or split buys with friends) and from that plant, end up with 2-4 seedlings for planting (I'd prefer to grow from seed though, for food plants).

 

I will post my experimental steps and results here for anybody also crazy about gardening. :-)

 

I'm hoping the cloner will allow me to fill my front porch with (dollar store pots probably :-)) lots and lots of pretty flowers (I'm a double-impatiens freak), and herbs, and maybe some great stuff for my semi-shade beds, and CHOCOLATE MINT which is currently my favorite plant on earth.  I can't BELIEVE it smells and tastes exactly like a peppermint patty. I don't understand why it's not the most popular plant in the world. :-)

 

RC

 

PS Does anybody else here garden?  Or do hydroponics??

Edited February 13, 2018 by redcairo

[thelerner]

Looks good.  I have 2 small gardens.   I keep it simple, keep'em on my front lawn so I see them and take care of them often. My 'secrets' I love cherry tomatoes, they tend to grow fast and be fool proof.  I'll stop by coffee places and get grounds (my goto is Whole Foods) and mixed with leaves and grass it makes for a nutritious mulch (so much so, it needs to sit for awhile couple weeks to break down so as not to burn anything). 

 

I've started a bit of a trend on my block to start front lawn gardens, just laying down decent quality 40# bags of soil (one slit on bottom, open on top) and planting straight out of them.  The next year, get rid of the plastic bags and put a bit of boarder around it.  Being narrow, weeding and watering is very easy.  Keeping larger critters away, not so much. 

 

I keep to a gaspacho theme, ie tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers.  Thus when the growing gets tough, I can juice/blend more then I can eat.  I'll plant marigolds around the garden in hopes they scare bugs away.   I tend to be too impatient to grow from seed or clone (except for leaf lettuce).  I'll buy small plants and put a half bottle on top to protect them while young.  I always end up growing too much, and things go to seed, plus I get a few tomato plants sprouting up naturally from last years fallen fruit. 

 

The chocolate mint sounds good.  Mint is the ultimate weed and you can go straight into your mouth. 

 

I don't do hydroponics, but the systems I liked the best used 'canoes', ie tank below and growing the plants in floating canoes, where the root could hit a little bit of the water. 

Edited February 14, 2018 by thelerner

[joeblast]

Clone tips

 

you'll want at least 3 or 4, max 5 nodes or so depending on...species.... to work with in terms of length.  too tall and it wont have the suction to reach the top, too short or not enough nodes, it just never works out.

 

had the best luck with plastic cups, colored ones, need to block out the light from the roots or they dont root, poke a hole half inch up or so, so that it can retain some water but not too much or it could get moldy - everything's getting transparently closed up so as to keep the humidity nice and high, after all.  its just too chilly for the babies outside

 

use white perlite, fill 3/4 way and then gingerly apply water, very light saturation - you should be able to poke a pencil in it and make a hole for the stem.

 

now take your cuts, and then nip the tips.  you dont want to whack the leaf too hard, just take the growth tip off of it - when the plant loses all of the growth tips off of its leaves, it shocks it into a rooting mode.

 

just water, maybe a little sugar perhaps, but really, they just need water, humidity, sunlight, and some time.

 

lol two....two plus....try two hundred, depending on the health/species of mama, more...dont beat 'er too hard any single session, of course   just keep in mind that as she ages, depending on how you've planned mama's bansai process over her lifetime, you might accidentally wind up with trunks of root that are killed off, so that's something to look to avoid also.

 

wherever you make your first snip, you usually want to make sure its enough away from the ground, so maybe a little more than 3 inches.  let those grow 3, 4 inches and then snip both of those - clone process on each top you snip off.  a topping will produce two sprouts off the cut.

 

mama also seems to like a little bending, too - dont crease, of course, but dont be afraid to do some bansai bending at appropriate places, it'll keep er strong as she grows.  a little bit a day, even, especially if indoors and there's no natural wind.

 

its been a long time since I gardened but I started young back in the day, pop had a huge garden, and when we were bad, we were made to go pick the bad tomatoes and toss them into the woods

Edited February 14, 2018 by joeblast

[Nungali]

20 hours ago, redcairo said:

For reasons I won't bore you with I have not gardened in years and my property and garden are sorely in need of maintenance. So this will be a major "improvement" project, this season. But I am getting back to it now, and I got an aeroponic cloner from my best friend for Christmas and am really excited about taking up gardening yet-again!

 

I got into gardening pre-Y2K after reading about it solely for survival reasons. Prior to that my only exposure to it was when as a teen, my dad decided to grow some tomatoes in the backyard in California. A few months later my stepsister and I were going door to door in a ten block radius with grocery bags full of tomatoes begging people to take them. I was not real fond of gardening after that. And I didn't even have to do any of the work. :-) 

 

When I moved to the Ozarks, I read this book "Behaving as if the God in all life Matters" -- I loved the title, is why I read it -- and the whole "talking to nature spirits" bit fits right in with my interior-universe and archetype work, so I loved it. I first went crazy with flower pots on my front porch. The next year I decided to plant a garden. A REAL garden.

 

In my backyard, I have two cinderblock beds in "L shapes. 6'x4'x32"h is one set, and 16'x4'24"h is the other set. A foot or two off, I think it's about 185sqft total for those beds. I have five, 4'w x 4'd x 6'h arch trellises of cattle panel along the side wooden fence in the backyard, those had 26 gallon tub "homemade earthboxes" at their base until an ice storm shattered all plastic and terracotta on the property. I might replace some of them this year. There's a round trellis in the middle of it all I sometimes vine things up. And I often put a few tubs out front where there's a little sun.

 

Anyway, so it's not a ton of space, but it's enough to have quite a few plants, which is good because I have a whole experimental series lined up. :-)  Some old pics for context:

 

Empty season

  Reveal hidden contents

Arches

  Reveal hidden contents

Wilting late summer old season :-)  (prior to someone making off with my copper-tubing framing haha)

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Not long before my (birth-defect-heart-valve) health wrecked my life for several years, I did a couple seasons of seed-starting using hydroponics -- I had about five Aerogardens at the time -- and that worked much faster and easier than regular seed starting.

 

I had the idea, since I'm so excited to use my cloner (mostly on anything I am not supposed to legally propagate) (er, I am referring to patented pretty flowers people, not altered-state supplements! :-)) to hijack the seed-starting process and see if intervening with aeroponic cloning can actually succeed.

 

Plan:

Experiment #1: Grow seedlings to about 3" then snip off that stalk and stick it in the cloner. See if that tiny baby stalk with grow roots -- robustly and fairly rapidly (~10-14 days).

Experiment #2: See if the remaining root and stub, left in the seed-starting environ, will regrow.

Experiment #3: See if the very-rooted clone can go back into a soilless seed-starting environ (some ferts then) with grow light to develop some leaves.

All this before planting out.

 

I have a variety of minor issues that tend to impact gardening that aren't huge individually but which I think could be improved by having this ability to get 2+ plants from one viable seed, or even just at least one truly robust seedling, much more than the average, for the garden. The cloner will hopefully allow me to get ONE seedling from the nursery (if they will sell that few, or split buys with friends) and from that plant, end up with 2-4 seedlings for planting (I'd prefer to grow from seed though, for food plants).

 

I will post my experimental steps and results here for anybody also crazy about gardening. :-)

 

I'm hoping the cloner will allow me to fill my front porch with (dollar store pots probably :-)) lots and lots of pretty flowers (I'm a double-impatiens freak), and herbs, and maybe some great stuff for my semi-shade beds, and CHOCOLATE MINT which is currently my favorite plant on earth.  I can't BELIEVE it smells and tastes exactly like a peppermint patty. I don't understand why it's not the most popular plant in the world. :-)

 

RC

 

PS Does anybody else here garden?  Or do hydroponics??

 

 

Yes, I have a small  personal plot .      Your pics look like someone invested some time in  infrastructure - thats good.

 

Regarding your experiment ... I will wait and see, but I have never done and would not do it that way.  If I get you right ; raise a seed and chop the  shoot off and re grow the cutting and hope the stem will also re shoot ?  Good luck with that one !  Most plants need to be established, develop side shoots and it is these that are cut and 'cloned' .  In other cases ( as in many Australian natives) aerial cloning needs to be done .

 

If you like impatiens, I have a mass of   niamniamensis   ( Parrot Plant  )  on the   shady side of the cabin;

 

 

 

 

They sprout roots up the stem so just need to snap sections off and stick them in the ground.    ' Cloning'     

 

 

 

 

 

[redcairo]

:-)  The parrot plant is weird-cool! Never saw that before!  Looks awesome.

 

Yeah my stepmom was like, "Propagation. Stick it in the ground or a vase. Get another one." She didn't see the magic of the cloner at all. I'm still all eye-popping excited about it. My best friend always gets me the BEST christmas presents! I'd been hopping about the idea for awhile.

 

Will have to get past a growth node before snipping the seedlings of course. They'll probably have a few leaves or couple nodes by then and hopefully will just branch at the point where snipped. I could be wrong. It'll be real obvious pretty quickly if I am. But it's ok... that's why it's an experiment. :-)  The REAL goal is simply to go from seed to plant-out and end up with even just one, but vastly-more-robust, seedling. The only reason I am growing the seedling to put into the cloner is, of course, because I don't have a plant to sample to begin with. Growing the roots out in the cloner is the goal, so they're strong/big, but cloners can't do anything with seeds.

 

I did do hydro seed starting one year in an aerogarden (a misnamed product which is a hydrogarden). They did grow a lot faster than those I've done in the ordinary way. It's possible this aero 'intervention' won't be any superior to the hydro, just a lot more trouble, but we'll see.

 

Keeping all the bleeping cats from knocking this stuff over will be the hard part... my darling child and her boyfriend have FOUR cats, in addition to my two (one of my two is so old she is nearly inert). They are supposed to move within a couple of weeks. We will see. My other temporary roommate, a young girl with infant I was housing as she was in a hard situation end of last year, is supposed to move within a few weeks too. So it's entirely possible that before march is up I'll have my house all to myself (for the first time ever! I moved here when my kid was 3), and maybe late March can be a truly massive spring-cleaning effort that I haven't had in over ten years. Then I'll have lots more room for hobbies/crafts -- including grow lights and aeroponic cloners in a back room rather than in my front room. MUCH better, I am sure.

 

I just found a 100w red/white/blue/IR spectrum regular-socket LED bulb on amazon for like $27. That's unheard of -- man LEDs are getting so much cheaper! I got it the other day but haven't tried it out yet. IF it's legit at 100w that'll be the best grow-light buy online, pretty sure.

 

I was so excited about the topic that when my just-previous boss made the mistake of telling everyone they could do a presentation on anything -- didn't really have to be a work topic -- I did one on the development of '-onic' gardening, and aero vs. hydro vs. aqua, and cloning. I don't think that's at all what he had in mind but he'd said it out loud so he was stuck LOL. This led to others courageously jumping outside the boring business trail and resulted in two weeks of meetings that for the first time probably nobody slept through.

 

(I'm actually kidding.  Mostly.)

 

The stuff I really WANT costs too much!  I'm still a single mom darn it. I make a good income but life costs a lot. So I'm hoping I can get one thing and end up with several, or split a buy with friends to the same result.

 

Stuff I want:

Spoiler

 

So far my plan for this year was get lots of diff seeds including unique things, for as little money as possible. Fortunately gardenweb has been supportive. A couple people for a few bucks each are sending me a whole lot of diff seeds. Most people who garden have extra of lots of stuff, often years of stuff, so they're happy to get something free or paypal to cover that in exchange for stuff they wouldn't use anyway. Saves me having to spend $3-7 for every diff type of seed I want. I'm hoping the experiment will have normal stuff, root veg, alliums, vines, leafy stuff, etc. to see how it works out. I suspect some plants will just keel over being interrupted so early and others might be fine, so we'll see.

 

Online, aeroponic cloning has not gotten too popular let, aside from growing pot. Which I find totally boring as a drug and uninteresting, a good thing I suppose since it's illegal in my state.

 

Is the parrot plant a type of impatient? The way you said it made it sound like it. Looks nothing like 'em to me! :-)

 

RC

Edited February 14, 2018 by redcairo

[thelerner]

Ikea had some inexpensive green spectrum bulbs.  There's also a wide underground re-purposing movement for there furniture.  I wouldn't be surprised if people had hacked there inexpensive stuff into hydroponics.

 

asks google hacking ikea into hydroponics .  Oh yeah, two million hits and the first page or two has lots of ideas-

[Nungali]

On 2/15/2018 at 7:58 AM, redcairo said:

:-)  The parrot plant is weird-cool! Never saw that before!  Looks awesome.

 

Yeah my stepmom was like, "Propagation. Stick it in the ground or a vase. Get another one." She didn't see the magic of the cloner at all. I'm still all eye-popping excited about it. My best friend always gets me the BEST christmas presents! I'd been hopping about the idea for awhile.

 

Will have to get past a growth node before snipping the seedlings of course. They'll probably have a few leaves or couple nodes by then and hopefully will just branch at the point where snipped. I could be wrong. It'll be real obvious pretty quickly if I am. But it's ok... that's why it's an experiment. :-)  The REAL goal is simply to go from seed to plant-out and end up with even just one, but vastly-more-robust, seedling. The only reason I am growing the seedling to put into the cloner is, of course, because I don't have a plant to sample to begin with. Growing the roots out in the cloner is the goal, so they're strong/big, but cloners can't do anything with seeds.

 

I did do hydro seed starting one year in an aerogarden (a misnamed product which is a hydrogarden). They did grow a lot faster than those I've done in the ordinary way. It's possible this aero 'intervention' won't be any superior to the hydro, just a lot more trouble, but we'll see.

 

Keeping all the bleeping cats from knocking this stuff over will be the hard part... my darling child and her boyfriend have FOUR cats, in addition to my two (one of my two is so old she is nearly inert). They are supposed to move within a couple of weeks. We will see. My other temporary roommate, a young girl with infant I was housing as she was in a hard situation end of last year, is supposed to move within a few weeks too. So it's entirely possible that before march is up I'll have my house all to myself (for the first time ever! I moved here when my kid was 3), and maybe late March can be a truly massive spring-cleaning effort that I haven't had in over ten years. Then I'll have lots more room for hobbies/crafts -- including grow lights and aeroponic cloners in a back room rather than in my front room. MUCH better, I am sure.

 

I just found a 100w red/white/blue/IR spectrum regular-socket LED bulb on amazon for like $27. That's unheard of -- man LEDs are getting so much cheaper! I got it the other day but haven't tried it out yet. IF it's legit at 100w that'll be the best grow-light buy online, pretty sure.

 

I was so excited about the topic that when my just-previous boss made the mistake of telling everyone they could do a presentation on anything -- didn't really have to be a work topic -- I did one on the development of '-onic' gardening, and aero vs. hydro vs. aqua, and cloning. I don't think that's at all what he had in mind but he'd said it out loud so he was stuck LOL. This led to others courageously jumping outside the boring business trail and resulted in two weeks of meetings that for the first time probably nobody slept through.

 

(I'm actually kidding.  Mostly.)

 

The stuff I really WANT costs too much!  I'm still a single mom darn it. I make a good income but life costs a lot. So I'm hoping I can get one thing and end up with several, or split a buy with friends to the same result.

 

Stuff I want:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

So far my plan for this year was get lots of diff seeds including unique things, for as little money as possible. Fortunately gardenweb has been supportive. A couple people for a few bucks each are sending me a whole lot of diff seeds. Most people who garden have extra of lots of stuff, often years of stuff, so they're happy to get something free or paypal to cover that in exchange for stuff they wouldn't use anyway. Saves me having to spend $3-7 for every diff type of seed I want. I'm hoping the experiment will have normal stuff, root veg, alliums, vines, leafy stuff, etc. to see how it works out. I suspect some plants will just keel over being interrupted so early and others might be fine, so we'll see.

 

Online, aeroponic cloning has not gotten too popular let, aside from growing pot. Which I find totally boring as a drug and uninteresting, a good thing I suppose since it's illegal in my state.

 

Is the parrot plant a type of impatient? The way you said it made it sound like it. Looks nothing like 'em to me! :-)

 

RC

 

Impatiens niamniamensis ;

.     http://www.strangewonderfulthings.com/102.htm

 

Seeds up quick  ?   Keep warm or if not water  the raising medium early in the day with  warmed soda water  ( CO2  blast )  . 

 

I also grow some unusuals;  ' Xanthosoma monstruosum '

 

 

 

Gynura aurantiaca ;

 

 

 

some unusual bromiliads ... a range of ancient Australian cycads ;

 

      

 

 

 

pitcher plants, sundews ;

 

 

 

 

sensitive plant ;

 

 

 

a new one that grows well 'giant maidenhair'  and other maiden hairs  ( they love to be near or overhanging a body of water, pond, etc . and Aussie maidenhair , which I have found in hot dry sunny places, under a house with no light ...

 

 

Plants .....    

 

 

etc.

 

 

Edited February 16, 2018 by Nungali

[thelerner]

I think I'll try this come spring-  seems like good bang for the buck:

 

and some people use smaller bags, that they open occassional to pull out potatoes throughout the growing season as needed.

from the video producer-

Home Grown Veg 1 year ago

Hello Sheila. Taking just the bigger potatoes and leaving the smaller ones + the ones in the middle of the compost that you can't see will let the potato plant concentrate all its energy into the remaining potatoes making them bigger so that when you finally take the pot there will be more bigger potatoes. If you have a small space with room for just a few pots of potatoes this is a way of getting just enough for a meal time after time. HGV

&

Home Grown Veg 2 weeks ago

Hello Linda. I try to give them a drink every other day and every day if we get a really hot spell. Check this out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gah8HU8h6HM&t=1s I usually add enough fertilizer to the soil at planting then its just water after that. HGV

Edited February 17, 2018 by thelerner

[redcairo]

My stepmom grows potatoes. I talked to her about those bags once. She said they would probably work great for growing potatoes, though she hadn't tried them.

 

My idea of gardening is decent soil, weed-barrier the heck out of it, plant into it, auto-water it, now and then yank out some weeds and tell the plants they're beautiful, show up in autumn and pick food. This added to my 'standing' garden gives you a clue about how hard gardening isn't for me, lol. Most people work it much harder.

 

Growing potatoes seems like those working-much-harder thing, since you have to regularly keep mounding dirt up over it as it grows.

 

Last week I was reading about growing in 'grow-bags'. I'd never heard of them until now.

 

RC

 

[windwalker]

Was wondering if you looked into aquaponics 

 

"Aquaponics is, at its most basic level, the marriage of aquaculture (raisingfish) and hydroponics (growing plants in water and without soil) together in one integrated system. The fish waste provides organic food for the growing plants and the plants naturally filter the water in which the fish live."

 

https://www.1millionwomen.com.au/blog/how-hell-does-aquaponics-acutally-work/

Edited February 18, 2018 by windwalker

[thelerner]

At Burning Man there was seminar from a guy who did trout farming with aquaponics.  His 'secrets' were digging long ponds deep so they'd stay cooler, getting leftovers from fishmongers to cut down on fish feeding costs, but he also made it clear that with trout it wasn't easy.  You had to keep very close tabs on a number of critical factors from acidity to temperature.  Still there were other types of fish much more forgiving. 

 

Even now there are lots of commercial little units for goldfish and betas to grow with some symbiosis with plants.  But the real thing, to get real harvests seemed to be a major effort unless its a serious hobby.  

[redcairo]

Yeah, having had a big fish tank at one point, my complete disinterest in the smell they tend to have if you don't clean them religiously has made me disinterested in anything fishy. I figure the hydroponics will be work enough.

 

So prior to beginning the 'garden room' I have two things that have to be done which all this time later I am only just now getting to:

1/ the electric in the room needs rewiring, it kills electronics and I have something like 87000 Lux in LEDs (not to mention humidifier, fans, window A/C unit, and the basic electronics of the aeroponic and hydroponic systems) I don't want to wreck. It's taken me forever to find an electrician who will work in my small city. All the people listed do business not residential stuff. Finally I found a handyman who can do part of it and thinks he can talk an E. friend into doing the main box upgrade we need that the city has to verify. So maybe if I'm incredibly lucky that will get done in the next couple of months.

2/ because the room is going to be hot and humid all the time it needs to be repainted, so I got a solid primer and a mold-resistant (bathroom sort) of paint, both of them colored a light pistachio green (because white was boring) and I still need to actually do the work of painting the whole room. And the back wall of the closet since my house helper and daughter at some point in the last few years, removed AND LOST (threw away??) the DOOR to her closet. WTH, who does such a thing?! Anyway.

So I have not begun yet.

 

But I did, some months ago, buy I think everything I need for the project. I'm going aeroponic misting for the cloning, and several big tub ebb & flow systems for the various plants. I want to grow not just peppers (my favorite thing) but specifically alliums, which nobody I know has ever grown indoors hydroponically (they require a lot of light), and I couldn't even find much on the web about it sadly.

 

On the bright side everybody moved out so I have the back room to make the garden. And I had the bright idea to have a handyman build me a big box in the garage, on legs of a sort, that connects to the joining wall of the living room, with a cat door. And the litter boxes are gradually moving into that so they are technically in the garage in a way -- and I will get my other back room returned to me so I can put my gym in there -- my squat cage, bench and rack has been dominating my living room for a long time now :-) -- and then maybe have more room to do crafts and stuff in the living room (I need to decoupage my kitchen cabinet doors and drawer faces, do some sewing, and so on).

 

I totally have garden fever now because of the season. Usually hits me right before the new year for some reason. I have some novel seeds this year I haven't tried before. Since I'm growing indoors with lights, the season shouldn't much matter for whatever I'm doing. So starting things in -- hopefully -- March, which with Feb is serious winter here on the flat edge of the Ozarks -- hopefully won't matter much. :-)

 

RC