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Monday, December 21, 2015

Add calcium to your soil using egg shells

In 2009, Jenn really got into plants. It seemed like every time I came home from work there was a new plant in the house or out in front of it. Back then I was working so many hours that I was too tired to care or even get interested.  However, one thing I did notice is how she had some of her plants in pots with no soil. One day I stopped and looked and noticed the only thing in the pot was some charcoal and a few egg shells. I remember wondering how these plants were living in this stuff with no soil. As I said, at the time I was too tired to really care and so, I never bothered to ask her about it.

Well, looking back on that, I now understand why. The charcoal was actually biochar and the egg shells were for calcium. Basically, it was a slow release system that allowed the plants to pull nutrients slowly over time. Obviously, this is knowledge I learned relatively recently.

Something else I learned is if you pulverize the egg shells you can sprinkle them into the garden for a slightly faster release. You can also add them to your worm bin. Supposedly, this serves two purposes.
  1. It helps the worms with digestion. Worms, like chickens, have gizzards. So, the coarse material really helps their digestive system.
  2. It adds calcium to the worm castings. This one I am not too sure about, though. It's just what I heard, but it seems logical to me.

Preparing the egg shells


The first thing you want to do is open the egg. You can either hard boil them and peel them or just crack the egg and wash the shell out.In my opinion cracking them open raw and rinsing them out is the easiest way. Trust me. I learned that from experience. Trying to peel that inner membrane off the shell is not easy. You certainly do not want to leave the membrane on. You want just the shells. Nothing else.

Once you've got the shells separated from the egg toss them in the microwave for a couple of minutes to kill the bacteria and micro organisms inside the egg. I usually do 2-3 minutes, but your microwave will probably differ from mine based on power settings.  The way you can tell they are done is when you start hearing popping sounds coming from the microwave. Just open the door and don't stand too close. The fumes that will escape will make your eyes tear and I mean that literally.

Another option is to boil the shells, but I found the microwave to be easier and faster.

 How to pulverize the egg shells

Most YouTube gardeners will recommend using a coffee grinder to get the egg shells down to a fine powder. The problem is I do not drink coffee and even if I did I do not have the money to buy a coffee grinder.

So, I got creative. I put the shells into a plastic bag and took them outside to the curb.  I used a hammer to smash them into some pretty small pieces. Obviously, I was not able to get a fine powder, but I got pretty darn close. The nice thing was, the bag ripped just a tad in a few places which made sprinkling the shells just that much easier.

Helpful Tip:
This method works equally well on biochar if you want it in a fine powder form.

Friday, December 18, 2015

Vermicomposting

My vermicomposting efforts used to be comprised of two separate projects. The first was a single worm in its own bin. The object of the project was to see how much material a single worm could process on its own and how much worm castings it would create. The results were impressive, but unfortunately I recently discovered the worm had died. I don't know why, but it did. I guess maybe old age. Anyway, I decided to close down the project.

The other project was a more traditional vermicomposting undertaking. It consisted of multiple worms in a single bin, which I had dubbed: The Breeding Bin. I had included the updates for the breeding bin in the article about the Single Worm Vermicomposting Project.  Since that project is now closed down, I felt it would be prudent to start a new article.

The rest of the updates for this project are located in The Single Worm Vermicomposting Project.


UPDATE: December 18, 2015

It's been raining for a few days, due to a typhoon, so the compost in the garden bed outside has been getting drenched pretty good. I trimmed the two bush/trees out there and put the leafy branches over the beds to try to keep them from getting saturated.

Today has been pretty dry, so when I went out there this afternoon to turn the soil/compost I discovered a baby worm. I went inside and got my breeding bin and tossed the baby in. I quickly found another and then an adult. As I worked my way through the bed I found one or two more babies and a second adult. I've lost track of how many I have in the breeding bin now, but it has to be close to ten, if not more.

Tuesday, December 1, 2015

The Miracle Seedling

Well, this one is kind of interesting. I was sitting here going through pictures and videos, renaming and organizing them, when I noticed a picture I took of a seedling growing wild in the garden. Now, the only reason I really noticed the picture was because I had accidentally lumped it in with the pictures of the turnip I am trying to regrow from a store bought turnip.  I realized it did not belong there and figured I better move it out. Then it dawned on me. Where do I move this picture to? I do not have a folder for this. So, where do I move this picture?

That is when it dawned on me. DING!  Hey genius! This is a new project. It is interesting because it is a miracle plant.

I know. I know. What am I talking about, right? A miracle plant?

Well, one of our earlier projects, which is still undocumented, was growing papaya from the seeds harvested from a store bought papaya. For those of you who have never cut into a papaya, it has A LOT OF SEEDS!!!  As a result, we ended up with a lot of seedlings.  As with anything else, some of them did better than others. The ones that looked weak I pulled out of the dirt and tossed out the window. I also ended up with a lot of seeds that failed to germinate.  More than a few of those also got tossed out the window.  90% of what goes out that front window ends up in the garden bed, so it stands to reason that either a seed or a seedling that I tossed out the window decided to take root and grow.  Oddly enough not only did it grow, but it looks better than most of the papaya seedlings I kept. Go figure.  Well, that was my original line of thought.

Now, I took this picture a day or two ago (Nov. 28, 2015), but it did not dawn on me, until just now, how interesting this is.  A seed or seedling that was tossed out the window and happened to take root and thrive.  That's pretty cool.







When you look at this picture you will notice three leaves. Two of them are larger and rounded. The third leaf (smaller) is kind of jagged. I can't figure that out.  Actually, looking at this picture now, I am not even sure if this is a papaya. How funny is that?!?!?!

Looking at the leaves and comparing it to the papaya seedlings I have outside, this seedling doesn't even resemble the other papaya seedlings.

Close up image of some papaya seedlings
However, in this next picture you can see that some of the leaves are indeed rounded.

You can clearly see some of the leaves are rounded.

I know they start off rounded and then, I guess, the new growth is pointed?

At any rate, I will keep an eye on the Miracle Seedling to see what it becomes.

UPDATE: December  2, 2015


I went outside this morning to water a few plants and do some other maintenance when I noticed there is a new leaf. I guess this settles it. It is definitely a Papaya Seedling.

The Miracle Seedling sporting a new leaf

What gets me is how much bigger and healthier this plant is compared to the ones growing indoors. Although, I guess I shouldn't be shocked. The ones I grew indoors got very leggy and are still recovering. The indoor seedlings put out a lot of leaves, but they are nowhere near as big or as vibrant as the Miracle Seedling's.

UPDATE: December  4, 2015

Not much to tell, but I wanted to show you some new growth. In the picture from two days ago you can just barely see a new leaf coming in at the center. Well, it has really developed now. Check out the picture.


There is another seedling that also took root. However, this second one is a leggy one I threw out the window. It's still pretty leggy and not looking too great. That's why I think the miracle seedling is from a seed I threw out the window.

UPDATE: December 8, 2015


Well, I was outside today turning the compost in the garden bed and watering a few things. I go to water the Miracle Seedling and BAM! Look how big that new leaf got!!!  It's huge!


I don't know if you can see it in this picture, but there is another new leaf growing right in the center. You will have to click on the picture to make it full screen if you want to see it.

UPDATE: December 20, 2015


December 10, 2015



December 16, 2015
December 17, 2015 (Top View)

December 17, 2015 (Side View)
December 20, 2015 (Top View)

December 20, 2015 (Side View)
December 20, 2015 (Side View)

UPDATE: December 25, 2015


Since I have some time today I figured I would do an update. Anyway, the miracle seedling is DEFINITELY a papaya and I transplanted it into a pot. The reason I did this is because it was starting to grow horizontally reaching for the sun it would never find. There is just way too much shade in front of my house.

So, what I have been doing is in the morning I move it to the roof pad and then I bring it back in just before sundown. I would love to leave it out there all night, but it is very windy up there and I am afraid of what will happen to it if I leave it up there indefinitely. So, until it gets stronger I am going to keep doing this.  Anyway, here are some more pictures.

 




UPDATE: January 4, 2016

Since I moved the Miracle Seedling into a pot and started putting it into direct sunlight, it has really exploded with growth.  The stalk has gotten thicker and the leaves have gotten bigger and more numerous.

The only problem with this is the leaves have gotten so big and there are so many that the stalk is having trouble supporting them all. I think part of the problem is the fact that the stalk grew at such an odd angle. Anyway, I have been very hesitant about putting it up on the roof pad for sun. The wind is just way too strong up there. So, I am going to have to build some kind of a support system before I put it up there again.

One odd thing about this plant is that there are these weird strings growing out of the top of the plant. You can see them clearly in the pictures (below). If anyone knows what these are, let me know.





UPDATE: January 8, 2016 - A shocking development

Over the past two days I have had two different Filipinos tell me that the miracle seedling is not papaya. The first guy said it is squash. I knew that was wrong. I haven't seen squash in my house in a very long time and it isn't exactly something people walk by eating as a snack and toss seeds from willy nilly.

Early this afternoon, a lady says it is "pipino" (Filipino for cucumber). I was getting mad and told them both,

"I know what it is because I am the one who pulled the seeds out of the papaya and planted it."

Looking at it later on I started to wonder again about those tendril looking things. Why do they curl like that?  Why do the leaves on this plant look so much different from the other ones? Why is the stem so skinny and weak and growing in odd angles and not upward like a tree should?  Why does it look like a......A VINE!  Wait a minute!

Could she have been right? I thought about it for a second? This is the miracle seedling. I do not actually know what seed this came from, do I? I never planted this. It grew on its own. I had thought it was a papaya seed I tossed out the window, but what if it is from the cucumber I threw out there to rot in the compost?

The New Miracle Seedling


Apparently, growing outside in the garden bed is a better idea than trying to do them in a more controlled environment. A second seedling has sprouted.  It came up next to the leek. You can just barely see it in the picture above. There are some better pictures below.

December 16, 2015

December 20, 2015
December 20, 2015

My plan is to let this one grow and see if it gets to be as big and healthy as the first Miracle Seedling. If so, then I will transplant it into a pot. If not, then I will pull it up. One thing I am concerned with is the fact that it is so close to the leek.






Saturday, November 28, 2015

The Single Worm Vermicomposting Project



I want to start off by saying that if you want to read the full story behind the single worm vermicomposting project, then you have to visit my personal website.  Due to SEO concerns I can not just move the whole article here.

Brief Overview


We have two vermicomposting bins. The first worm bin has a single worm in it and I did it as an experiment. I wanted to see just how much material a single worm could process into worm castings and just how fast it would do the job. I have to say, I was impressed with the results.

As I said, I wanted to start a second bin as a breeding bin. I'd love to see how quickly I can get two worms to reproduce into a thriving colony. There is a lot that I have learned throughout the first experiment and I look forward to learning more and refining my methods.

UPDATE: November 28, 2015

Well, I either lost a worm from the second bin, or he is really good at camouflage.  As of now, both bins have a lot of castings.  The problem is there is also a ton of unprocessed material in both. Unfortunately, I don't have a screen sifter.

One piece of good news is that I found a couple of baby worms outside. I brought them in and put them into a third (smaller) container hoping they grow a bit. I am hesitant to put them into either of the big bins because I don't want to accidentally harvest them with the castings.

UPDATE: November 30, 2015


Yesterday, I had checked on the worm bin. It looks to be doing pretty well. There is still a bunch of cardboard strips and even a sliver or two of the writing paper I had added in a week or two ago to soak up some excess water that was in there after some rain. I guess the moisture built up inside the bin. Anyway, I still can't find the second worm from the other bin, so I guess I have two single worm bins now.   I considered combining them to try to get them to reproduce, but when I found the baby worms I didn't see the point.

Baby worms? What baby worms?


Well, I guess the babies ran for the hills, as well. I got busy and forgot to check on them for a couple of days. When I checked it yesterday the dirt was dried out and both babies were nowhere to be found.  Oh well. Maybe, I should combine the two bins into one.

UPDATE: December 1, 2015

Today, I decided to harvest the worm castings.  I wasn't planning on doing this, but I had decided to up-plant a few of my pepper seedlings and I ran out of castings. So, I took about an hour or an hour and a half to separate the castings from the rest of the material in the bin. I had to do this by hand (literally) because I don't have a screen.  I have been planning to build one, but the only screen I have doesn't have big enough holes. I haven't had the time or the money to go buy the proper size screen, much less buy or go looking for the wood to build the screen frame.

At any rate, I am glad I did it by hand. If I had not I would never have noticed the 5 or 6 baby worms in the bin. After what I saw yesterday, I was extremely happy to find them in there.  I will be uploading the video soon, hopefully.

CLOSED: December 18, 2015

Well, I have no idea why the single worm died, but he did. There is absolutely no reason I can think of for why. The soil was moist, but not too wet. There was a decent amount of food and I even put some pulverized egg shell in there to help with his digestion. (Worms have gizzards.)

Whatever the reason, he is gone and I am closing down this project. All future updates about the breeding bin can be found in the new article titled: Vermicomposting

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Composting in a garden bed

If you have already read the article on how we attempted composting in a bucket, you will know that we restarted the project and that the original material was dumped into the garden bed. Well, we have decided to start a new project. We've decided to try to compost in the garden bed itself. Keeping the compost limited to a small layer, we are hoping the elements will help us to break the material down that much faster. Now, like all our other projects, this is strictly an experiment. For all I know, this could be completely counter-productive. However, that is the entire point of experimentation. I've looked online and I can't find anything that says a compost pile can't be a thin layer.  Contrary, I can't find anything that says it has to be thick and deep either. I do know that a lot of people say that the pile should be a lasagna of layers. However, I also found a video on YouTube where a guy is at a conference and he says that composting should be limited to just leaves or just grass and that food scraps are unnecessary and should be saved for your vermicomposting efforts. So, I am getting the distinct impression that composting is as much of an art as it is based on science. Hence my desire to do this experiment.

Background Information

Before we go any further, I think it is important to get some background information out of the way. The first thing you should do is go back and read our article about composting in a bucket. As you read that article, you will notice a section labeled "Experiment 1 Updates". That refers to this article that you are reading right now.

UPDATE: November 23, 2015 

As of yesterday, the soil quality has improved a bit, as it is darker and a bit looser. However, it still needs more time. One of the things I had done, and I am not sure if this was a good idea or not, was to take the improved soil and cut the area in half. I scooped up the improved soil from the right side of the bed and dropped it on top of the improved soil on the left side of the bed. I put in a board to separate the left and right and added more low quality dirt on the right and recovered both sides with organic matter. I figure I can make the right side a starter area and the left can be the finishing off area.  At least, this is what I am hoping for.

I am going to start turning the soil on the left every week in an effort to keep it loose and to keep it oxygenated. Also, it allows the bottom layers access to the breaking down/broken down organic material.

UPDATE: November 25, 2015 

This morning, at around 7 AM, I was putting the plants outside and I found some pretty large dalandan peels. (It is similar to an orange, but it is the size of and same color as a lime.) I took a few minutes to pick them up and rip them into much smaller pieces so they break down faster.  I also took a few minutes to turn the compost material and to aerate the soil a bit.

This afternoon, while cleaning out the refrigerator, a bag of vegetable scraps was found in the crisper drawer. I vaguely remember someone telling me they were putting them in there, but that was sometime last week. Anyway, they were pretty gross, but I dumped them in the right side of the bed.

A couple of hours later, I decided to aerate a spot in the left bed to plant a turnip top in the hopes that it will grow. I don't have great hopes for it, but I did mix some of the composted material in with the soil.

UPDATE: December 2, 2015 


OK, well, the material in the garden is composting nicely. In my last update I mentioned that I dropped a bag of vegetable scraps in the garden. Well, most of that is gone already. I don't know if there are worms in there I haven't seen or if the ants carried it away. Personally, I don't see the latter as being the case, but who knows?

The Ant Invasion: Round 2

Yes. I have a new colony of ants out there and I am not happy about it. What you have to understand is these are not those harmless black ants we get in the states. Oh no. That would be too easy. Nope. We have those small red ants that bite or sting and hurt like the dickens.

A few weeks ago I had destroyed a nest between the right garden bed and the water meter cage. They were nestled in under the concrete. I discovered them when I was tilling the soil. Once I realized what I had unleashed I ran inside and got the bug spray and just kept digging and spraying until I had them all taken out. Well, I thought I did. Later on that night I found the ones with wings crawling up the wall trying to get onto my front porch. I pulled out the spray again and attacked them and the nest again.

Ever since then I have been occasionally finding more of the winged ones and, of course, the little normal ones. I have been leaving the little ones alone, while doing my best to take out the ones with wings. I don't know much about ants, but the way I figure it the winged ones are either queens or they are similar to those red guards who were always around the Emperor in Star Wars. LOL LOL

At any rate, getting back on topic, the new colony was right on the border of the left and right beds up against the external wall of my house. Instead of digging I just flooded them out. As of this afternoon, the entrance is still muddy and there is a killing field of ant corpses just sitting there. Tomorrow should be interesting, to say the least.

UPDATE: December 4, 2015


Here is a nice shot of where the second ant colony USED TO BE.  Those green leaves are just there to keep the moisture in.


UPDATE: December 8, 2015


I finally covered the hole back over today. I guess that colony is truly wiped out.  On a lighter note, the right side bed is composting nicely. I turn it every morning and then water it to keep it nice and moist. Usually, the top layer dries out, but the lower bits are still OK. The soil is even starting to look nicer, so I am encouraged.

UPDATE: December 16, 2015

We are expecting a typhoon, so I thought it would be a good idea to turn the compost and try to protect the bed so that it does not become saturated.  What I did was I trimmed the two bush/trees out in front of the house and I used the leafy branches to cover the right side compost bed.



Before covering it I decided to loosen the soil. So, using a hand (gardening) fork I lifted the soil and turned it a bit. In the process of doing that I noticed that the vast majority of the leaf material I was composting was already gone. This was definitely a pleasant surprise and the soil was nice and loose and rich looking.

At this point I have two choices.
  1. I can use the composted soil now.
  2. I can add more material to the soil and allow that to compost and enrich the soil even more.
I am extremely tempted to try to enrich the soil further, but I am in desperate need of soil. I have decided to transplant the Miracle Seedling out of the garden bed and into a container. I want to move it to the rooftop garden so it gets more sun. Sitting out front it is starting to grow horizontally towards the street. It is supposed to be a tree, so this is obviously a very bad development. The rooftop garden gets plenty of direct sunlight, so I am hoping that putting it up there will make it grow vertically instead.

I also need soil for the green tomato project. I have one plant which will need to be up-planted soon and that is going to require a ton of rich soil. I want to plant it deep so the stem grows more roots. This should make the tomato plant healthier and also allow me to water it very deeply for water retention purposes.  This is something I learned from Ray at the Praxxus 55712 YouTube Channel.

As a result, I am going to strip out this newly composted soil, add in some dead soil and more shredded leaves that I have been letting decompose in a bucket in the garage.

Regrowing turnips from the supermarket

Like any other gardener worth his mettle I watch YouTube videos. I was watching some videos with my daughter one night when we came across a video about a guy who was regrowing a pineapple from the top. Basically, he put cut off the top and trimmed away some of the leaves and placed it in some water. A quick check revealed a few other videos he had done with other fruits and vegetables he had purchased and had done the same thing with. He would use toothpicks to suspend the fruit or vegetable, so that just the bottom was in the water. The idea is that roots would grow and because it was suspended there would be room for the roots to grow down.

So, I tried that with a carrot. Unfortunately, it didn't work. The carrot just got soggy and slimy and generally...nasty.  I tried it twice more and both of those resulted in the same slimy mess. So, I decided to try something else.

It's Turnip Time!!! 


We eat turnips at least once a week because we eat sinigang on a pretty regular basis. So, I took three toothpicks and suspended the turnip in the water to allow the roots to grow out the bottom. Result? A slimy mess just like with the carrots. I tried it again with another turnip and I ended up with the same results.  I don't know about you, but by that point I was getting pretty frustrated. A lot of my other projects using this method worked out well. Why wouldn't the carrots and turnips?



UPDATE: November 25, 2015


Well, today we were cleaning out the refrigerator and someone discovered an uneaten turnip in the bottom of the crisper drawer. Judging by the texture, not very firm, it was not going to be something we would be eating. However, unlike my other turnip experiments, this one had some pretty good looking leaves coming off the top.  So, I started to feel a bit more encouraged.  I cut off the bottom three quarters, chopped it up and tossed it into the compost garden bed. The top part I put into a small cup of water.



With such a nice looking turnip I decided I had a pretty good chance this time. So, I sat down and did a little digging on Google and found a site that talks about regrowing turnips, specifically.

BINGO!

OK. Now, I know what I was doing wrong. Turnips and carrots are not the types that you regrow in water. Instead you have to plant them in some deep (8 inches or so) of loose nutrient rich soil. AHHHHHHHHHHHH

Well, I don't have any soil that deep. I certainly don't have any nutrient rich soil that deep. So, I decided to deep six this experiment. Oddly enough, I can't bring myself to toss away the turnip, considering how good that top looks.

At this point, I have no idea what I am going to do with it. I have a feeling that in the end I am just going to toss it out into the compost garden bed.  I may even just plant it behind the leeks, but from what I read turnips need full sun and that area definitely doesn't get full sun. I don't know. Maybe, I will try it anyway, just to see what happens.

UPDATE: November 26, 2015

After letting the turnip sit in some water over night, I decided to try and plant it in the left garden bed by the leeks.
Turnip is in the center of the picture. 
The white curly stems and yellow leaves.

The first thing I did was dig a nice deep hole and I made sure that the surrounding soil was nice and loose. As I did with the leeks, I mixed in some of the decomposing leaves to make sure the soil stays relatively loose. 

UPDATE: December 2, 2015


I have a few pictures of the turnip now. Those long white...stems?...are gone and the plant has sprouted some nice looking green leaves. Needless to say, this turnip has really taken to being in the soil. I am excited to see what happens with it.

Planted turnip surrounded by some fallen leaves.

UPDATE: December 4, 2015


Two days ago I had high hopes for this plant. Unfortunately, it has taken a turn for the worse.


CLOSED: December 8, 2015


Well, all trace of this turnip above the ground has disappeared. I have no idea what is happening below the soil and I am hesitant to dig it up. It's really a shame because at one point it really looked like it was doing well.

For now, I am declaring this project dead. If something happens I will post another update.

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Propagating the big red tomato

If you read my article about propagating the big orange tomato you would know that I accidentally killed off the entire batch of seedlings.  At the end of that article I mentioned how I went to the store on Monday, November 23rd, to buy another tomato to collect seeds from. Well, this article is about that tomato.  So, let's dive on in to this, shall we?

For lunch today I decided to have a BLT. Unfortunately, when I was at the store yesterday I forgot to buy the Lettuce. So, I dropped the L and had a bacon and tomato sandwich. Of course, I had no mayonnaise, so I settled for some sliced American cheese, instead.  Now, that I went way off topic, the reason for all this was, since I decided to cut up the tomato, I figured I would collect the seeds from it.

Once I upload the videos, you will be able to see what I did. I sliced up the tomato and scraped the seed sacs into a small ice cream bowl. Once they were all collected, I rinsed them in the sink using a fine metal mesh strainer. This got off quite a bit of the juice, but it left behind some of the pulpy material. I scraped the seeds and pulp into an old plastic egg cooker we have and added some water.

The idea is that some of the pulp and the bad seeds will float to the top. This makes it easier to scoop it out and dispose of it. The rest is left to ferment for a couple of days. Once fermented, all that unwanted material floats to the top leaving the seeds at the bottom. I will then dump out the fermented material, rinse and then strain the seeds one last time. From that point I can either germinate them or allow them to dry on a paper towel, so they can be saved. If stored properly, seeds will last as long as five years or so. My intention is to plant these seeds, but I may learn from my previous mistakes and store a few in case I have to start over again.

UPDATE: November 28, 2015


Well, I rinsed off the seeds getting rid of all the fermented material. I put the seeds back into some clean water to ferment some more because there was still some material to get rid of and I was too lazy to pick it out.

UPDATE: December 7, 2015


I finally got around to planting about half of my seeds. I had left them sitting and they dried nicely. I had not intended to do that, but I have been busy with a job search recently. Anyway, I had to remove some pepper seedlings from the egg cartons where they germinated. So, I replaced them with tomato seeds. Once they germinate I will start getting them into the sunlight, from time to time, to encourage growth.

UPDATE: December 10, 2015


This morning I noticed that some of the seedlings have started sprouting. Some of them have popped straight up and seem to be doing well. Some of the others didn't break through. I looked and realized the soil had caked and hardened. So, I took an awl and gently poked through the soil to loosen it up.

Newly sprouted tomato seedlings .The cells with a single seedling are peppers.
As for my germination rate, well I am not all that sure. The reason is because I put a bunch of seeds into each cell. I had quite a few seeds and wanted to make sure I had seedlings. Even having done that I still had quite a few left over that I put into an envelope for storage. Getting back to my germination rate, I would say it was pretty good in the cells that sprouted.



I know I said I would put them into direct sunlight, but I am rethinking that. I may wait till they get a little bigger first. Or maybe I will put them into direct sunlight for an hour in the early morning hours.

A close-up of the tomato seedlings. You can see how there is more than one per cell.

Monday, November 23, 2015

Propagating the big orange tomato

November 4, 2015 - Collecting the seeds


I had gone to the store to buy a few vegetables in an attempt to propagate them. One of my most important purchases was two large round very orange tomatoes. One of them we ate and the other we mutilated in an attempt to collect the seeds. I say "mutilated" because there was so much flesh and so little seed, that getting all the seeds out was no easy chore. Every time I made a cut expecting to find a seed sac I found nothing but flesh. Needless to say, there wasn't much left intact by the time we were done.

We rinsed off the seeds we gathered, using a large fine metal strainer and them put them in a jar of water to soak and ferment. We put the jar up on a high shelf just as we had done in the Green Tomato Project.

November 6, 2015 - Germinating seeds in a paper towel

 

My youngest daughter, Samantha (Sammi), and I took down the jar, emptied it and rinsed off the seeds once again. I folded a paper towel in half and then in thirds. I showed her how I wanted the seeds placed on the paper towel and let her and her friend Essel have at it.  They made a bit of a mess of things, as four year olds will do, but in the end they got a lot more on the towel than I asked. I told them good job and send them off to play with their toys while I did the rest neatly.

I started off with dry paper towels, but quickly realized it was easier to wet the towel some because the seeds stuck to the wet paper towel a bit better. I decided that three rows of five seeds would work well and that is what I tried to stick to. There were so many seeds that I ended up doing it something close to ten times. Anyway, once I completed fifteen I soaked the paper towel and placed it inside a plastic sandwich bag. We didn't have any resealable bags, so I made do with what I had. I realized the idea was to maintain the moisture inside the bag, so I folded the bag over on itself to form a crease.

I placed the bags in a clear plastic container, sealed the top and put it on top of the refrigerator.

November 22, 2015 - Planting the seedlings...or....maybe not.

 

The first thing I want to say is that I messed up. I left the seedlings in those towels and bags WAY too long. I realized that when we started opening them today.

When we first pulled the bags out of the plastic container you could see the leaves and all the sprouts and it looked like a huge success.  You can even hear me saying that in the video.  Then came the point where we actually took the paper towels out of the bags and opened them up. That's when I realized that I had definitely screwed the pooch as they say. It's amazing how many of them sprouted, but then rotted away from sitting inside that wet environment for so long.  I'd say we had well over a 95% germination rate, but we lost 85% of the ones that were still viable and didn't rot away.

After we got the tomato seedlings unwrapped we decided to open the pepper seedlings we had also done. However, that will be a totally separate article because it is a different project.  I mention this because it is important when explaining what ultimately happened to the tomato seedlings.

Basically, what happened was I decided to plant the pepper seedlings first because there were so many of them. Yes. Looking back on it, I now realize how bass ackwards that logic was. What happened was as I was planting the pepper seedlings the rest of those and the tomato seedlings started to dry out. So, I misted them with my spray bottle to keep them alive. Yeah. Well, that didn't work out too well. By the time I finished with the peppers, all but one of the tomatoes had died and that lone survivor was pretty pathetic looking. I did plant it because, well, I like to experiment. If it grows, then great. If not...no harm, no foul.

November 23, 2015 - Reboot!

 

I had to run some errands today. I pay my rent by making a bank deposit and since there is a grocery store nearby, I decided to pick up a few things we need for the house. I always take a stroll through the produce section and spotted red plums. Now, I love plums and they are a very rare find in the Philippines. Of course, that means they are also super expensive, so I didn't buy any. A little further along I spotted the tomatoes. Those were on my list, so I looked through what was there and picked out the best looking ones in the bunch. One of them is another fat orange tomato, although, not nearly as big as the last one. Well, looking at it again, it is darker than the last one, so I guess it is more red than orange.  Anyway, look check out the Big Red Tomato project and the peppers, as well.

Monday, November 16, 2015

Composting in a bucket

The house I live in is not exactly spacious, which means I don't have room for a compost pile. With one child in private school and a second starting next year, money is also very tight, which means I can't afford to spend money on luxuries like a garbage can to use for composting. So, as with everything else related to my gardening projects, I was forced to get creative.

Luckily, I have an abundance of mop buckets. We got two brand new ones for free when we bought laundry soap a few months back. It was some kind of promotion. So, I appropriated one of the news ones and our old mop bucket to use for composting.


Composting Material Sources


I have tried this two different ways, but both centered around leaves picked up from around the neighborhood. My daughters love going for walks, so we decided to make the walks functional. Both girls carried their small sand pails and I had one of the mop buckets. As we walked around they would pick up any leaves that caught their fancy. Then when their pails filled up they would dump them out into the mop bucket I was carrying. When that filled up we would head home to shred the leaves.  This usually meant the kids would start to help, but they would soon get bored and get up to run around outside and play. I would be left to shred leaves alone.

How I shred the leaves


Shredding the leaves usually involved a pair of safety scissors, which was not exactly efficient, but it gave me something productive to do while sitting outside watching them run around, ride bikes or play. I once jokes that my neighbors must have thought I was nuts for sitting there cutting dried up leaves into a bucket. I am sure that was once true, but I have since been asked by a couple of people why I was doing it and knowing the grapevine on this block, that explanation has spread up and down the street. They also know that I have a worm bin, why and also that I am gardening. I am routinely asked what my plants are and I have gotten used to pointing out which are which. I have also started grouping them together to make that explanation a little less painful.

Oh yeah. I just remembered


Before the leaves collecting walks started, I used to get my leaves from two big bushes in front of my house. Whenever I would prune them I would strip the leaves off and then cut them up. The problem was they were all still alive and I wanted some organic matter that was already dead and drying out. That is when I got the idea of letting my girls run up and down the street collecting leaves. Well, actually it was their idea because they started bringing them to me. I suggested getting their sand pails to make their collection efforts easier. Before I knew it I had a mop bucket full of dried up mango leaves and okra leaves and God knows what else. It was after I finished processing those that the walks began.

Back to Experiment 1


Anyway, I guess I wasn't cutting the leaves small enough because despite keeping them good and wet and turning them everyday, it just seemed like I wasn't making any progress.


So, I started taking clumps of the decomposing leaves and cutting them up really really fine. I kept those in a small container to see what would happen. Sure enough that worked out well.

Experiment 1 Updates


About a week ago I decided to give up on trying to compost that first set of leaves. So, I dumped them into the garden bed in front of my house and started adding food scraps to it. Some of the food scraps go into my worm bin, but most of them go into the garden bed. That dirt out front is really sandy and not very good quality. So, I am hoping that by being out in the elements it will help it to decompose faster and that it will attract more worms that I can stick into a second worm bin I want to start.

Experiment 2


That is when I started the second bucket. Any leaves that went into that bucket got cut up much smaller. I would say on average they are less then half the size of a dime. Many are even smaller than that because I had another little boy helping me at one point and he was really diligent at ripping them (with his bare hands) into very small pieces. I guess he didn't quite understand my instructions.

Anyway, I am waiting till the bucket is at least 3/4 full before wetting them down to actively get them to break down. Collecting large quantities of leaves is easy. Getting them shredded is the hard part. I can't afford any type of a machine, so I am forced to do it by hand. That's fine by me because it is relaxing, even if it is tedious.

At any rate, from this point forward this post will be about experiment 2.

UPDATE: November 25, 2015


Well, it's time to get this started. I had a full bucket of finely cut leaves and as promised I added some water to it. I allowed it to sit for a day, but then I stole some of the leaves to use in the garden. I still have half a bucket left, but I couldn't let this sit any longer. I need compost.

UPDATE: November 30, 2015


This morning I woke up late (1030 AM) to put the plants outside in the sun. When I finished I remembered that it has been almost a week since I added water and I forgot to turn it during all that time. Well, predictably, what happened was, it went anaerobic.

I had not expected that to happen, and I should have, because the top inch or so of leaves was dried out.  When I started turning the leaves I noticed a nice puddle of water at the bottom. I guess all the water just sunk down allowing the top to dry out.

As I turned it I got a good whiff of that anerobic bacteria. UGH! Not pleasant and certainly not when you just woke up. LOL LOL  Anyway, I kept turning it to try to get the dry leaves at the top to rotate to the bottom to soak up that water down there. It wasn't a lot of water, but it was enough to get all the leaves wet.

Saturday, November 14, 2015

The Green Tomato Project

I am not exactly sure when I started this, but it was definitely a few weeks ago.  My daughters and I had decided to practice saving tomato seeds.  We just so happened to have two small green tomatoes in the house that had started to rot, so we decided to use those instead of throwing them away. As I said, this was for practice only and we certainly didn't expect to get anything from them.

So, we started off by watching a couple of YouTube videos about saving tomato seeds. The one my daughters liked the most was the one by CaliKim29. So, once we finished that I explained a few other methods, but they stuck to their guns and decided to follow the method Kim demonstrated.

Our process


The usual process is to cut the tomato in half, scoop out the seeds, rinse them off in a strainer and then allow them to ferment for a few days before rinsing them off again. Then you can either dry them for storing or germinate them.  We cut open both tomatoes to find something interesting. Neither one had any flesh left inside. Both had gotten so soft that there was nothing surrounding the seeds but liquid. This meant we could skip the fermentation process completely. (We did the fermentation wait anyway, because I wanted them to experience the whole process.)  Anyway, we took the seeds and rinsed them off real well in a fine wire mesh strainer.
Those are not popsicle sticks under the strainer. I know it looks like they are, but those are the slits in the chair.
I had Nikki and Sammi carefully scrape the seeds into a jar of water to see which seeds would sink (the good seeds) and which would float (the bad seeds). To my surprise, the vast majority of them sunk to the bottom. We dumped out some water to remove the bad seeds and loosely fitted the cap on the jar. We stored the jar high up on top of our cabinets where nobody could see the jar, let alone disturb it.

It was well worth the wait.


After a few days, we pulled the jar down and I reminded them that had we done the process the normal way, the jar would smell due to the fermentation process. Obviously, there was no odor coming from our jar of seeds. One of the things I was concerned about was that the seeds would have rotted sitting in the water for so long without any of the tomato flesh covering them. So, I dumped out the water, added some more, stirred it up and waited to see how many floated now. To my surprise and delight only one or two floated. I took this as a good sign, although my hopes were not very high in regards to these seeds actually germinating.

Let's germinate!


We rinsed off our seeds one last time in the fine wire mesh strainer and then scraped them onto a plate to dry out just a little. I figured the seeds would be easier to work with if they were dried out a bit. I was wrong. They still stick to your fingers pretty well even when they are dry. Oh well.

I pulled out a clear plastic clam shell cake container I had saved from our last trip to the bakery. I had actually saved two of them, but somebody in the house decided it was garbage.  The funny part about that was it had sat in a cabinet for weeks and it got thrown out the very same day we decided to actually use it. It's funny how life works that way.



We filled it up about halfway with pure worm castings. Yes. I know. This was complete overkill, but let's not forget. These were not exactly the best quality seeds and I was hoping to get something to grow to reward my daughters for their hard work.

I let the girls gently sprinkle the seeds throughout the container and then we covered them up with another layer of worm castings and lightly watered it in.  I had pre-drilled some holes in one of the halves, but as I was watering the seeds in I realized I had the contained upside down and the holes were now in the lid and not in the base. OOPS! So, instead of having drainage holes and a closed top for the greenhouse effect, I had no drainage holes and no greenhouse effect. DOH!!!

We took the container and put it on top of the refrigerator and let them be. I did occasionally add some water to keep the soil from drying out.

The results


I am not sure how long we waited, but eventually the seeds did sprout. I showed the girls who got very excited. We put the container back and let it sit a few days more and we were rewarded with more sprouts. YAY!

I have to say, I was totally surprised. I didn't have very high hopes for this working and I wasn't expecting anything to sprout. We actually ended up with a very high germination rate.

Now, this was my first ever attempt at dealing with tomato seedlings, so even though I had done my research, I didn't have any practical experience. As a result, I lost more than half the sprouts.  As I've said, our hopes weren't high to begin with and this was more of a science experiment/practice than anything else.

Transplanting the seedlings that survived.


This is something that I had been putting off for a while. Friday afternoon (November 13th) I had about an hour of free time, so I decided to sit down and get it done. So, from around 4:45 PM to 5:45 PM I transplanted the (green) tomato seedlings from the clear plastic clam shell container. I threw out two of them and transplanted seven into the tall tin cans and two smaller ones into a single tuna can.

 

How I transplanted them


For the tall tin cans (sardine cans), I first inserted a clear plastic bag. Then I filled it halfway with some soil, added the seedling and gently added more soil. I tried to cover as much of the stem as I could without getting the soil near the leaves. I did this with the soil because a tomato plant will grow roots all along the stem. Take a close look at a tomato plant and  you will see little hairs all along the stem. These have the potential to become roots.

Definitely the best greenhouse bag of the bunch.

The purpose of the plastic bag is two fold.
  1. It makes it much easier to get the seedling out of the can when it comes time to transplant it into a bigger container.
  2. I was able to use it as a make shift greenhouse. I blew into it, adding carbon dioxide which plants use for photosynthesis, and then quickly sealed it like a balloon. I twisted the top of the bag and then used a rubber band to maintain the seal.

Caring for the seedlings


I've been putting them out in the sun in mid mornings because I do not want them to get too leggy like my papaya seedlings did. However, I am being extra special careful with the ones in the plastic bag greenhouse cans, because it is hot enough inside that bag to begin with. The direct sun would just about cook them inside there.

Today, November 15th, I undid the greenhouse bags and folded them down over the cans to expose the seedlings. They all have nice stems now and look to be doing pretty well. This should allow me to keep them in the direct sunlight for longer periods, which should help them to get established even better.


UPDATE: November 17, 2015


I guess I cooked two of the seedlings. I had left them out in the lunchtime sun too long and two of them dried out. I am trying to revive them, but it doesn't look good. I have since added some leaf mulch (leaves that I shredded into very small pieces) on top of the soil to help maintain the moisture in the soil.

UPDATE: November 23, 2015 

This morning, when I put the seedlings outside I noticed that three or four of the seedlings had more or less doubled in size. Unfortunately, they are still growing slowly, but that is because they are not getting a lot of direct sunlight, which they most certainly need.

UPDATE: November 28, 2015

At around noon or so, Nikki and I decided to up-plant our seedlings into some cups. I grabbed some biochar and had her smash it into a powder, so we could mix it with the soil.  I am not sure if that is how to use it or if I just drop a few chunks on top of the soil or in the soil or what. I do know that we have a flower plant that thrives off of bio char and water. There is absolutely no soil inside the pot.

Anyway, she pulverized the bio char pretty good...a little too good considering the mess she made. I removed the largest seedling from the tin can it was in by lifting the plastic bag. It came out easy enough, with a bit of coaxing, and I noticed that the bottom was pretty wet. I snipped off a bottom corner of the bag and let it drain. I slit the bag up the side to allow air to dry out the soil some. I wanted it moist, not saturated like it was.

I was able to get the one seedling up-planted, but the others are still drying out. I will probably do those tomorrow. I wanted to do a video but between the neighbor's dogs barking, the laundry lady doing her thing and a crying baby, it just wasn't in the cards today.

UPDATE: November 29, 2015


Nikki and I got the next two tomato seedlings up-planted.  We made sure to plant them a little deeper, so that more roots from from the stems. I even clipped off some of the lower branches/leaves.  I want the plants to get taller and the stems to get thicker before they start to spread out and produce fruit.

You see, I agree with Ray from Praxxus 55712, who says that it is better to let the stem get good and thick so that it is better able to hold the weight of the plant and fruit. So, I am going to go with his method. However, with one deviation.  Ray likes to let the seedling grow two or three suckers so that he can spread and bury the plant to get more than one plant from a single root system. I do not have the kind of space needed to do this. So, I will be growing one plant per pot.

At any rate, I still have two more seedlings in a tuna fish can. I need to separate and up-plant them both very soon. I wanted them to get a bit bigger and they've been growing pretty well the past two days. If they keep it up, I will do it this week.

I have two other seedlings, each in their own tin can, that are still way too small to up-plant. They really have not done much, but they do look healthy, so I am going to sit back and see what happens.

UPDATE: November 30, 2015


I finally finished up-planting the rest of the seedlings. Well, I still have two more in tin cans, but they are still pretty small. However, I was able to get the two in the tuna fish can separated and into plastic cups. I have been making sure to get them out into the direct sun everyday. I actually started getting up at 6:30 in the morning to get them up onto the roof patio. Well, it isn't really a patio. It is more of a concrete pad.  Anyway, there is some great sun up there. It is just a real pain in the... to get up there because I have to use  a ladder. Luckily, there is a shelf there I can use to rest the plants while I make the climb.

UPDATE: December 8, 2015


Well, I now have all the seedlings up-planted.

I know. Not the greatest picture in the world.


The last two that I up-planted are not doing all that great. One of them I have virtually no hope for. The other stands a chance, but I'd say only about 50/50.

Three of the plants are simply thriving. Tonight, I was telling a friend of mine, that I didn't even think the seeds would germinate and sprout. To see these three growing like this is amazing.

One of the three that are thriving.

One of the other thriving ones.

The last two are just kind of doing their thing. They look healthy enough, but they are not growing like the other three. At the same time, they are not puny and sickly looking.