Ann's Air Gardens

Oops, its 95F Again

Last week it cooled down so much here in the Tri-State Area (Arizona, Nevada, California) that we had to turn the A/C off and the heater on, so I though it would be safe to put a couple of flowering pepper plants outdoors.  They were just starting to fruit:

Not to worry, this one is safe.  It is still in the AeroGarden.  The other two are sitting in the bathtub where I am hand misting them from time to time and taking a wait and see attitude.  They both dropped a lot of leaves, but one of them looks like it might be going to make it.  The jury is still out on the other.  I guess I should have hardened them off.

The purple hot tomato plant in the Tide container that I blogged about below is doing fine so far, with new growth, including quite a few flower buds.  If the temperature goes up any higher, we won't be able to count on it surviving either, but November is almost here, so it should be OK. 

When comments are left here, I always click on the names and take a look at their blogs and the links found there, and so it was that a reader named  Red Icculus lead me to this page:

A Tutorial from Hydroponics Tuesday

I think that Ben and Jessica of Hydroponics Tuesday got interested in dirt-free gardening the same way I did, by growing wheatgrass indoors. 

First Forget-Me-Nots

We get some sun on our porch, but not enough for most flowering plants, so when searching for something that we could start in the AeroGarden and then put out on the porch after the summer heat died down, shade-tolerant Forget-Me-Nots came to mind.

Our Forget-Me-Nots began budding 2 months after planting and a week and a half later the blue blossoms started opening.  At that point we were ready to put them out on the porch in a passive hydroponic planter, but if you are thinking of transplanting them into dirt instead of nutrient solution, then they should be taken out of the AG much sooner,  because plants left a long time in liquid nutrients apparently develop a different kind of roots. 

We don't have that issue because we will be placing our Forget-Me-Nots in nested containers filled with hydrotron rocks and draining the solution off through holes in the bottom of the inner container from time to time to aerate the roots and help keep the solution fresh.

We had to consider that going from bright artificial light into muted sunlight might be somewhat of a shock, what has worked well with other plants is to just put the new container near the AeroGarden for a few days or weeks, moving it gradually further from the light. 

More about Beans

This is a refrigerator jug from K-mart:

        

It has a better spigot than the Tide container, but I may have to put something opaque around it to discourage the growth of algae.

I have absolutely no idea if this experiment is going to work, but the victims here are Anasazi beans, from the center of the photo in my previous post. 

Here is what they looked like right out of the supermarket bag:

Update on these beans:

The spigoted gallon container turned out not to be appropriate for these plants.  First of all, the roots did not need all that room.  Then, too, when the wind came up, the bean stems flailed against opening on top of the container, causing injury to the stems.  Finally, the planter was positioned in an area that got full sun for a while each morning and one day they got too much sun and heat.

So I move the strongest plants into a smaller container and put it on a shadier ledge. Thy seem much happier here:

Beans, Beans, and More Beans

A photo of how the beans looked in the EZ-Sprouters is here:

Legumes

Papilionaceous flowers!?

Say what?  According to the  Grain Legumes Portal , plants that have  "papilionaceous flowers and pods containing seeds" are grain legumes. That is where I first encountered the term "vetch" so naturally I had to go look that one up too, and this site helped:

Vetch Research

Although I was hitherto unfamiliar with their name, the purple-flowered vetch plants grow wild in the hills above our summer home in Northern California, and one of the most remarkable things I've noticed about them is the way the leaves fold up into cup-like circles that retain moisture well into mid-morning.  Once I was hiking without bottled water and was able to collect 1/4 cup of dew drops from the vetch.  The flowers were gorgeous, just like those pictured here:  Purple Vetch.

We had several bags of dried soup beans around, and reading about the vetch, and particularly its butterfly-shaped flowers made me decide to sprout several different varieties of pulse:

In the center are fast-growing Anasazi beans and clockwise around the circle are mung beans in the nine o'clock position, then Adzukis, lentils, pintos, and finally kidney beans.   PLEASE NOTE that although I show these in sprouters, certain bean sprouts are NOT advised to be eaten raw.  The kidney beans, for example, will produce common snap bean pods which are delicious and nutritious when eaten at a tender young stage, but the adult beans must be thoroughly cooked to avoid toxicity. 

Woe BeTide the Peppers

Here is my latest contraption:

Recognize that Tide laundry soap container with the lovely spigot?

I planted four pepper plants in the AeroGarden Deluxe, and three grew at just about the same rate, but this one, for some reason, shot up like the Empire State Building. 

I couldn't bear to cut it back any further, so I devised this custom habitat, by cutting out and removing a section of the soap container and then filling the base with grow rocks and nutrient solution.  Once a day I drain the solution out through the spigot and then pour it back over the top to aerate the roots, topping off it needed.

When I first took this purple hot pepper plant out of the AeroGarden it experienced some transplant shock.  Buds that were already on the plant to dried up, and the leaves darkened a bit and showed other clear signs of stunted development.  But after I put it outdoors in the Tide jug, it started perking up again and now, after just a few days, is showing new growth.

Here is my cutaway, showing the inside of the container:

The trunk is still encased by the original basket from the AG Seed Kit as well as the quart-sized food container that I kept the plant in while we were waiting for the weather to get cool enough to put this plant outside.

Meanwhile, back indoors, the sister plant has gotten huge and hand-pollination is going on daily.  In this photo you can clearly see the pistil in the center of a bloom, with the stigma on the end and pollen-laden anthers encircling it atop the filaments that hold them:

   Since pepper flowers are "perfect" (that means the stamens and the pistil are on the same flower), gently shaking the main stem of the plant will be sufficient to cause the pollen to fly off the anthers and onto the stigma.  The plant will do the rest:

Here are a couple of nice links that help make this wonderful process clearer for those who are new at this:

Greenwood Nursery's Land Steward

The above link describes some of the growing needs and habits of plants such as peppers, tomatoes, and squash, and a bit about how the weather influences their fecundity. 

Below you will find nicely illustrated tutorials and an interactive quiz of value for youngsters and adults alike:

The Great Plant Escape: Part of a Flowers

A New Resource for Specialty Seeds and More

As you know, I am a big fan of the AeoroGarden Growers Community Forum and one of the members there has an online business called Virtual Seeds.  She sells propagation supplies and many interesting specialty and miniature vegetable seeds, among her other products:

Virtual Seeds

She also maintains a gardening blogspot called Joyce's Garden Blog.  I like it!

Future Pickles?

Here it is a week later: 

A close up of its first tendril:    

The first bud followed the first tendril by 3 days and opened the following day:

   

Someone asked about my method of draining the liquid solution out using this set-up.   In the photo below you can see the water draining out of the okra container.  This is another reason I like to use square containers.  I make sure the holes are near the center of the one container, so that the water flows straight down into the other and doesn't make a mess:

Here is my parts list:

1. 2-pack set of square see-through containers with press-on lids.  Clear containers allow you to see the fill level and the condition of the roots and nutrient solution.

2. 1 slightly larger square opaque container.  The one pictured is a pop-open fabric closet organizer.  I have also found nice plastic planter boxes in this size at the dollar stores.  The reason for an opaque container is to discourage algae from growing on the inside of the clear containers and on the rocks and roots of the plants.

3.  Hydroton grow rocks.  These were not available locally, so I bought them from an internet seller.  Shipping cost more than the product, but they are rocks after all.  Since they are reusable, they were still well worth the price.  

4.  Liquid nutrient solution.  For this experiment I am using the nutrient tablets provided in AeroGrow's Master Gardener Kit, mixed with filtered water. 

5. One or more small plants  that have been grown from seeds or rooted from cuttings.  The plant I used in this illustration is a Sumter cucumber grown from a ten-cent sale seed packet.  I planted the seeds with the help of AeroGrow's Master Gardener Kit, which contained a little plastic snap-apart basket, a grow sponge, write-on label, and a small plastic dome, all used to germinate the seeds.

Instead of nesting two containers, I could have installed a spigot near the bottom of one of them to facilitate draining.  I'll post about that method soon.

I wanted to test the theory that when the period of daylight is over eleven hours these plants produce only male flowers.  It must be true, as this one which I kept next to the bright lamps of my AeroGarden Deluxe, which automatically cycle on for 18 hours a day has been continually making little boy flowers for almost a month now and not a single little girl flower. This did not upset me, because I've been eating the extra blossoms.  Mmmmm, good!

My next experiment is to see if the same plant, if placed in a setting where it is exposed to shorter "daylight" hours, will then begin producing female flowers or if it is "ruined."  Not to worry, I have another plant outside already and a few younger plants ready to take out of the AG's grow holes, in case this one is spoiled. 

I also want to know whether longer periods of light would keep parthenocarpic varieties from blooming and why or why not. 

Cucumbers and Okra

Here is a photo of my newest experiment, cucumbers and okra growing in liquid nutrient solution poured over Hydroton grow rocks:
3 days later:

The blue lid is intended to slow down evaporation.  Here is a detail of the cucumbers with the lid cutouts shown in the insert at the top right:

 

Here are some photos explaining how I made a tomato container using a 75 cent paper towel holder as a stake:
 

The inner container is a Ziplock container with the screw-on type lid and I used an awl to poke drainage holes in the bottom.  It nests inside a less expensive container that I got in 4-packs at the dollar store.  Just now the leggy tomato plants in the container do not need staking, but it would be difficult to attach the paper towel holder to the container later.

  

 Nested in the same direction this method allows the nutrients to fill the inner container.  But turned the other way it allows them to drain off the roots which gives them some air.  So I drain the solution a couple times a day in this manner, pouring it back over the top of the grow rocks each time. 

Yes, these are leggy tomatoes and that is OK because I'm not sure the weather has cooled down enough on the porch to try this.  The bushy ones indoors in the AeroGarden are doing great and have a profusion of flowers but so far only one fruit.   Ah, but it is gorgeous!