46 day update!

Ok, so I still haven't gotten my cajun pepper out into it's new set up, but I'm going to try to do that right after I post this. Also, I picked out a spot (finally) for my cukes and melons, I just have to figure out how to block my dogs from getting to it. They're going to be too big to have in my hydro room.

So here's everyone at 46 days :)



You can see how tall the tomatoes are getting!! I don't think that other one is a green tomato, but we'll see ;) But I know I have one german green for sure.

I know I have spots on my cukes, it's because the water was splashing them... hopefully that'll take care of them.



Look how great my bell pepper is doing tho! I was worried about him for the longest time. Remember, he was one I saved from the soil. I think he likes the hydro better :)

And here's the melons...aren't they pretty!!?? Someone questioned me about trellising the melons because they had never heard that before...but why else would they shoot out feelers to wrap around things?? Makes sense to me!



Although I lost a few plants, I still think things are going pretty well :) I AM conserned that the two tomatoes are too close to each other, but we'll see what kind of trouble that causes later. I still have to rig up the yo-yo system to support them. For now I have old school gardening tape ;)

Comment down below and tell me what you think!
~C~

Update!

I haven't taken any pictures, but I will in the next couple days when I move everyone outside! But I thought I would jump on and give an update about everyone. I've lost 2 green tomatoes, I think the nutes were a little too strong. Going to look up recommended EC for each different plant and not go by what the company recommends. Right now it's at 1.6, I also think it might have been due to water dripping on a couple of the leaves. But the one that made it is doing awesome.
The pepper plant is still growing slow, but it IS growing! And the melons are about ready to be moved to their outside permanent home!! I just have to rig something up for them to vine on. Same with the cukes. I did lose one also to leaf damage.
I also have an insane aphid problem!! I'm groing them organically, so I'm not using chemicals. I caught some ladybugs and let them loose in there, but that was a huge fail LOL I'm looking for natural remedies, so if anyone has any, please forward them to me! I know there's something with neem oil, and i have some so I just have to find the recipe! So far they're just on my bell pepper plant (not the small hot pepper plant) and starting to go on my melon plants.

So that's it for now. Everyone's doing great for the most part. Not growing as fast as I'd like. Going to flush the system for a week and start over with the nutes (nutrients) and then move most outside in the sun. Hope to get my HID lights up also for my other plants and plant some lettuce in a home made DWC system. Hubby's going to help hopefully :)
~~Cheri~~

Getting bigger!

Wow, what a weekend! Memorial Day weekend is always pretty busy for me. My husband usually comes home for the long weekend (he works all over the country and has to fly home) so we have a lot of things to fit into one weekend! He hasn't been home for 7 weeks, so you can imagine! We always have a family barbeque (and by family I mean him and I and our kids and occasionally a friend who has nowhere to go). We went to the creek and took our mini bbq to cook on. It was nice :) Kids had a great time and I got some much needed sun! (I'm pretty sure people went blind from my legs/...)

So, my hydro plants are doing awesome! They started to get a little nutrient burn, so I've changed the water and went a little lower EC then the recommendation from the manufacturer. I also found out the reason why my little cajun pepper plant hasnt really grown much is because the ec is about 3 times as high as peppers like!! Learn by mistakes. I hate doing that, but it really is unavoidable I guess. So I'll be switching it to its own system tonight or tomorrow. I still have to cut the holes and get it ready LOL

So here's everyone now.

If you can see the plants in a bag in the back, those are my blueberry bushes. idk where I'm goign to out them yet, so they're just kind of hanging out in the hydro room. But here's my german green tomatoes (aunt ruby's).

My Lemon Cucumbers:

My Tigger Melons:

And my Cajun Peppers that need some help!

All in all everything is going pretty good. It could be worse ;) lol The water change should help things out a lot and getting the cajun pepper in its own system with the right EC will be a difference of night and day I'm sure!!

~~Cheri~~

On our way!!

OK, so it's been a while since I posted here. Truth is I've just been super busy! But here's a highlight of everything so far!!

Caleb and I planting the seeds!

Closer

We used a mix of 4 parts perlite to 1 part vermiculite. Great combo!

The 'grow room' (aka the laundry room lol)

Hole in the cup. I added many more because this just didnt cut it!!

13 days!! The cajun pepper plant is taking it's time. It had barely sprouted!

Day 22 - I have now separated everyone and you can see how the pepper hasn't really done anything.

The room NOW. All 3 systems up and running. Tomatoes are in the one on the right, cukes are in the bucket with the pepper plants, and tigger melons in the left.

I changed the res (water tanks) and gave everyone fresh nutes and we're good to go!! I'll chekc back in in a few days!

~C~

Hydro stuff!

The Hydro stuff started getting delivered yesterday!! YAY! Got the systems yesterday with two 10" netti baskets (they fit on 5 gal buckets), and today we got the EC meter (tests the water for nutrient levels), Nutrients, pruning sheers, plant clips, and seeds!

As soon as the PH strips show up I can start getting the system ready. I have to wait for the PH up and down, and the rockwool plugs before I can actually add plants. ...I think that's all I have left to get actually...

Things are coming along well. All the seeds except the yellow squash and half of my zucchinis have sprouted.

My sugar baby watermelons

Roma tomatoes are looking great! Lots of plants!

my cukes are doing insanely well! And on the right are two of the 3 sprouted zucchini plants.

...where my bell peppers should be...

These are my my beefsteaks I think.

I got some new seeds yesterday. Midget melons. I'm going to build a hydro system for those. I should get more stuff today...we'll see!

Coming along well!

The rockstar cukes today. Not such dramatic growth in the last 20 hours or so, but still good!

The whole tray. The bells are starting to germ along with the melons.

I had to take the cukes out of the tray because they were getting too tall for the tray. They're now uncovered in another window. Everybody looks healthy and strong, I'm quite happy :)

I should get more seeds today and my hydro systems have been shipped! Should get those in the next couple days. I should get a lot of the stuff I ordered in the next couple days actually. Half of it has been shipped!

I'll keep ya updated ;)

Cucumbers are rock stars!

Watermelon seeds finally busting through! I think these ones are the Sugar Babies.

Self Explanitory lol

These guys came out of nowhere!

And WOW!! Can you see those cukes in the back!? Like 3 times the size!!!

All in all I think these guys are doing REALLY good! I found lots of homes for some of these today too! I was worried! Most everyone wants the tomatoes though...I might get stuck with a lot of melon plants! Maybe I'll just put them by the street with a free sign... HAHAHA

...actually that's not a bad idea... $1 a seedling...hmmmm.....

I can't wait for my hydro stuff to come. I don't feel like I'm doing this blog justice when I talk about my non-hydro seedlings!

WOW!

So I checked the seeds this morning and was totally surprised by what I saw! The pictures I posted yesterday were taken about 2 hours before I posted it (I think...but it was pretty close) These pictures were taken about 20 minutes ago! Less than 24 hours!!

YAY! We got a sprout on the squash!

YAY! New sprout on the tomatoes!

I think this is the squash again...

And finally, the cukes!! Can you believe their growth!!??

I'm so excited!!

Will update again tomorrow! I exect to get more seeds on monday. Got the 'Tonda Di Parigi seeds yesterday! Got 200 of them, so I'll have lots ond lots of carrots!!! (and no, I'm not planting all of them LOL)

~~Cheri~~

First update

So I planted these on Monday, March 1st. It's 5 days into the germination process.

 

I planted these with the idea of possibly doing containers in the house. Yes, I believe it's a little early...I thought it was the right time. (and THIS is why I titled this as BEGINNER...) Oh well... it'll be ok ;) I used a 'Jiffy  Professional Greenhouse' that holds 72 peat pellets.  

Now for the record, these are NOT the best for hydroponics...at ALL. If you're doing hydroponics, you want to get rockwool (google it, there's tons of places that sell it). I bought mine off of Amazon, but I've seen them cheaper on ebay. But I'll tell you about all that when the time comes...

So anyway, Keeping in mind that I planned for these to be in soil, this is what I used. And frankly, I don't regret buying these because I can always reuse the greenhouses with the rockwool ;) (I'm all about recycling!). 

A list of what I have already planted so far in my peat pellets:

(bought at local stores)

~Poinsette 76 cucumbers (x6)

~Straight Neck Early Yellow Squash (x4)

~Dark Green Zucchini (x4) 

~California Wonder Bell Peppers (x6)

~Beefsteak Tomato (x8)

~Delicious Tomato (x8)

~Roma Tomatoes (x6)

~Red Cherry Large Fruited (x9) 

~Hales Best Cantaloupe (x9)

~Crimson Sweet Watermelon (x6)

~Sugar Baby Watermelon (x6)

 

...yeah... don't think I'm planting all of these...I'm giving a lot of them away LOL I just wanted to fill the tray! I DO plan on keeping a lot of tomato plants because I'm going to make salsa to jar.

Tray 2 is empty :/

 

I still have carrots peas and okra, along with herbs. Oh, and lettuce and spinach LOL And some seeds are still coming! Big task? YUP! But I'm going to make a community garden so people can come work mine and take stuff home with them! That's the plan anyway...

 

I made a little chart of what plants are placed where and how many were planted so I don't get confused (which, when you get to know me you will see, I do often...)  

This is my cantaloupe 5 days into germination.

These are my cukes same time.

SO my hydro stuff was ordered this morning, I SHOULD have everything by the 10th or 11th. I'm not starting anymore seeds until I get my hydro stuff so I can start them right and only what I need. That's going to be tough to choose! I bought all heirloom seeds for the hydro stuff so I can save the seeds to germ next year. And in a week or two I will go buy all the stuff to make hydro systems myself. I should be able to make quiet a few, once I find out where to buy everything. Down side of living in a small town... In theory I should be able to get everything I need in town...just in two or three different places LOL

~~Cheri~~

(ps, sorry about the weird underlined font thing...I copied and pasted it from word, so idk what's going on there. Posting pics and moving them was too hard, so I just wrte in word and went around the pics, and somehow it did that...deal with it... LOL)

In The Biginning...

So...my name is Cheri. I'm a 35 year old woman living in North East Oklahoma. I grew up in Orange County California, and my yard was about 10x10 growing up. Needless to say...we didnt garden. No one in my family did anything self sustaining...at ALL. We were the definition of consumer because that's all we did...consume comercial products.

I've always been one that has a hard time throwing things out. Some would say I'm borderline horder. Whatever. All I know is that when I know you can recycle something...I'll hold n to it until I get enough to take it down to the center and recycle it! Or better yet, give it to someone who does that to feed themselves. (we use to have a homeless guy come to our house and collect all the cans that I saved for him ;) )

So when I grew up and got my own house, I always would tinker in plants and try to grow plants and always wanted to start a garden. Well...lets just say that 10 years later I've only been successful with three plants. No joke. BUT...in my defense... I didnt know how to properly care for them! That was the missing key... knowing what they need and providing it or them!

So last year I decided I would buy some heirloom tomato plants from HSN. They looked good and the price seemes right...or so I thought...I feel pretty foolish now, but whatever... anyway, I ended up feeding them WAY too much, not polinating them (which I didnt know you have to do) and they ended up dying. $40 down the tube. (and they're still sitting in the pots from last summer looking sad... HAHAHA)

So this year I told my dad that I have friends helping me this time and that I'm excited to get my garden planted this year. No more container plants, these are going in the ground. We get on the subject of hydroponics (growing plants in nutrient rich water only, no soil) and he tells me he's going buy me the equipment for a couple containers and I can try them out. So I do serious research before I agreed to try it. It sounded good and seemed to yeild better crops, so I figured why not? 

My plans: I have two self contained containers coming (comercial ones) to get me started in learning, and we got a bunch of heirloom seeds. I am going to make at least 2 more larger containers, hopefully more, and do the bulk of my growing that way. I plan to do some under lights indoors and some outside in the sunlight and see which do better. 

I have I think 4  different varieties of tomatos, 3 bell peppers, sugar snap beans, 2 watermelons, 2 other melons, 3 carrots, 2 cucumbers, and 2 squash. ...I think that's it... and now that I wrte them down that seems like a LOT! lol But I have help like I said, and I plan to make it a comunity garden so people can come and work and help themselves! Since I live right outside of town it's perfect for that!

So all in all I'm pretty excited. I'm GOING to make it work this time. It's important to be to become self sustaining eventually, so this kind of is a MUST for that LOL if you can't grow your own food, you can't live!