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Gardening for Geeks?
selan asks: "Spring has sprung, and this year I've decided to try gardening for the first time! I'm starting with a small container garden on my balcony and am planting oregano and parsley. I was wondering if any Slashdot readers enjoy this low-tech hobby and have any advice to share with a newbie."
More herbs the better, stick them near the back of your pc to remove dead air caused by staying in your room on pc too much :)
Slashdot - The one stop shop for procrastination
Gardens actually have usefull bugs, know them and let them be.
Herbs... some are like us Geeks, some like normals. Don't try to mix shade/partial light plants with full sun plants. You will find one or the other suffering. Keep partial shade plants in a seperate container, I have found that morning sun works for most food herbs, while flowers tend toward noon day sun best. Depends on each plant.
If you are growing temperate climate plants (thyme, oregano, etc) then watch the nightime temperature, they don't take well to cold nights (not even in Florida.)
If you have children over 5, plant mint, they can chew 1/2 leaf for a good fresh flavour and to help prevent tooth decay. (Be very careful about what you put on those plants!)
Avoid harsh chemicals and pest sprays. If it says non toxic, it can still make the plants taste like manure. Growing for food, organic takes more work but is well worth it. I love being able to grab a fresh bay leaf for soup right from the plant.
And always, always rinse under cool water before using.
I could go on all day, but that's a start for ya... yes, I do enjoy this archaic sport. Watching mints grow!
You can have it fast, accurate, or pretty. Pick any 2.
Riiiiiiiiight...
and down under at the same time.
Like under your house.
Get some grow lights, a hydroponics kit, and your in business.
Just don't get caught or they will take your house.
I have a basil plant growing in my kitchen. This is not intentional, I bought it for cooking a few months ago (very cheap) and surprisingly it didn't die. It's now about 4 times as big as it was when I bought it and still growing strong, although the roots are showing so it probably needs repotting.
As for gardening tips, if you remove the growing tip of the plant (just break off the very top of the plant with your fingernails) it will grow 2 more. Remove those to get 4, then 8, 16, 32... Of course, if you overdo it the plant dies.
I used to have a cactus but it wasn't getting enough light so now my sister is looking after it for me. It's about 2 years old, and is about 10 times the size of when I first got it. Cactus are easy to grow, just don't overwater them.
Advice: Never, ever, ever, attempt to dry your wacky weeds in a microwave. It smells. A lot.
Any herbs you cook with will be much, much better fresh, and you will save a ton. Since you're getting started try to find things at the end of their planting season, as the garden stores clearnance them, then you won't feel bad if you kill them. An easy starter garden is catus and other desert succulents, since they can go a week or two without watering, nice when you want to take a trip occasionally, and don't want to find someone to water for you. Tropicals are fun and neat to, but like water almost daily, and prefer fertilization year round. If you don't mind spending some cash, you can get some nice dwarf fruit trees that are designed for the smaller plots of land, or city dwellings. Aloe is another easy to care for plant that has an excellent second use, its great for burns, cuts, scrapes, and other minor injuries (some people drink the juice, but its pretty pungent. I don't know too many geeks that don't like some of the odder things like venus fly traps, pitcher plants, or orchids. They can be a little more difficult to care for, but are usually quite rewarding. I keep my office filled with plants, its a wonderful excuse to keep the window shade opened, and really brightens the place up.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Just kidding. Sort of. I always wanted to grow hydroponic watermellons in the college dorm lounge. Didint quite work out.
For some serious advice:
Dont get hybrid seed. Get regualr seed, and reuse the most succesful ones for next year. THat way yore more likely to wind up with plants that are more adopted for your particular climate conditons.
This is especially true for things like apple tress.
ANd actually, hydroponics might be an intersting way for you to go. Im planning to try ot do the exact same thng in my backyard. I actually have a small indoor turtle pond, and i want to work the filtration system for that by using the plants. Ive done that before on limited basis, and the plants love it. Plus, im sure the turtle appreciates the filtration.
And if thats not a geeky enough gardening idea for you, youre on your own.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
I plant canabis in my computer room.
%-)
Try to grow everything, tomatoes work well, corn if you have room for enough of it, herbs, vegitables.
You will get interesting friends at work trying to pawn off the vegitables you can't eat... bring those extra tomatoes in, let your non-enlightened friends share
It is a great life balancer, I love to sit on my ass all day at work and just think hard, go home and work my body all weekend long with my mind off.
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
As an experiment I've grown wheatgrass and catnip for my evil cat, as incentive for him to stay out of the other plants.
I've found that I had good results if I let the seeds do their initial sprouting and growth underneath a sheet of clear plastic wrap. The trick is not to get too eager and remove the plastic wrap to soon. The plastic wrap is a perfect way to even out the sporatic waterings that are inevitable when you're slashdotting.
Michael.
Treasure
Linux : Mac
Along with this, keep in mind that seeds will also have instructions on how to plant. Naturally, this is a little beyond simply dropping your seeds in dirt and doing the slashdot three-step (1 - plant and water, 2 - ???, 3 - profit!).
If you're concerned about mineral content of the soil, your local city office might have assay information. The books will also show you how to deal with this.
Rotate your soil bases, especially if you are doing this yearly. You know how production farms will let a field rest for a year after using it a few years? It's to prevent depleting the soil. Barring this, be prepared to replenish the soil with commercial fertilizers or cattle manure.
(To wit, cattle manure is not straight fecal matter from bovines, it's decomposed cattle waste. Broadly speaking, manure is anything that fertilizes the soil when worked in - including commercial fertilizers if you want to reach. Decomposed cattle waste is fairly common, though.)
Lastly (and speaking of manure), one thing my father did back in the early 80s was get some straight up manure-based soil (like what some people put on their lawns to fertilize). It smells horrible, but your crops will taste fine, and they will also be extremely healthy - but again, be prepared to replenish after a period or your crops will start losing .
This sig no verb.
Well, you've already beat me on step one: Don't live someplace where you're getting the third snowfall of the month on April 7th!
Since moving into a place with a garden, I've given it a try the last two summers. My newbie's experience -- growing from seeds is fun but difficult. Be careful with moving seedlings outdoors. Put them outside for a few hours during the day, keeping an eye on them, then overnight when you're absolutely sure they'll be OK and only then transplant them. And when you kill them anyway, go out and buy some seedlings.
A few herbs in a window box should be easy, and they're so much cheaper and better than store-bought. You can grow tomatoes easily in a box, as well.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I've started gardening recently and have a lot of yard waste. I'm curious about creating a compost pile. Any tips or bad composting experiences? I remember someone here on Slashdot mentioned a rodent-free, odor-free composting product (from the UK?).
How do you know when your pile is done? Some web sites I've read say "6 weeks to 2 years." Gee, that helps a lot..
cpeterso
I strongly recommend you plant some cabbage. It'll give you some idea of the consistency of your brains after 20 years of IT work.
Look into Companion Planting. In a nutshell, a companion plant is something you grown alongside your food plant to keep the bugs away. Some companions repel bugs altogether, some work to draw all the bugs to themselves and thus away from your herbs/veggies.
:-). Dump some water on every couple of days, partial-to-full sun, and you'll have happy flowers.
... a hernia makes everything taste like ass.
My fave is the Marigold. Its a pretty flower, easy to grow in a small pot, and fairly hard to kill (that's important for me
Also check out Container Gardening for many many more links on growing things on patios, small spaces, in containers, etc.
And finally, a safety tip. If you go for anything larger, like say a couple of tomato plants in one of those big terracotta pots, PLEASE get one of the wheeled bases for it. A 3' tall pot full of plants and wet soil is a biatch to move. I don't care how sweet the tomatoes are
It serves a whole range of people from a whole range of backgrounds, from neo-hippie bodybuilder-ish urban technoqueers like myself to rural born-again Christians to Nebraska farmers, and as such has a variety of different views to draw from. I had gardened before, but this magazine takes it to a whole new level. It introduces ways to become totally self-sufficient, including ways to generate your own power and build cheap and sustainable housing. It's a non-tech equivalent of Slashdot, rather like Alton Brown is for cooking.
But I digress.
i think you want to go here.
--Drunk as in Beer
Once you get the hang of it, you might try topsy-turvy gardening.
Well, if you had watered and fertilized your BSD, and planted it where it would get enough sunlight, it wouldn't be dying. Try replanting it on the south side of your house, and give it a little Miracle Grow fertilizer and plenty of water and it'll be fine.
The first thing you should do is start composting your poop as seen on Slashdot. No but seriously composting in the traditional sense is quite an important part of gardening. If you're talking about a window box then it isn't very practical, however.
must... come... up... with... binary... tree... joke... *ngggkk*
The geekiest garden approach is permaculture. This is a systems and pattern-oriented approach to producing food and other agricultural products and I keep wondering why it isn't growing [*groan*] more rapidly as a philosophy.
Reasons for geekiness:
Google 'permaculture' or try here for more info.
Damn those pesky terrorists
I heard tomato and tobacco seeds, plus a little uranium, leads to a very addictive treat. Just keep the farm animals away.
I'm starting to think this isn't the best place to promote my Anti-Sig Campaign.
I may not know much but I remember from my college days, the correct code word is "tomato plants."
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Yup. Grow up with a father who grew up farming to make money. Let that father have you grow several acres of okra, and an orchard with 400 trees. Tend that to get spending money. Learn that gardening is something that successful people would prefer to pay the help to do.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Anybody ever do something with automating the moisture control for plants?
What would you use for detecting the moisture content of the soil and deciding when to add more water? Perhaps measure the current flow through the soil (shock the little plant roots)?
What could you use to control the water supply?
Surely there's something plant-wise that I can use my computer for! Can I actually control my whole garden with a computer?
Maybe I can scare away pests with some motion detection on a camera and a loud set of speakers.
It was plutonium.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Tell that to all the snow on the ground. Here in Montreal the winter still rules. Although the forecast for later this week looks promising.
A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
I live on the 3rd floor. It's a great balcony but I used to war constantly with the squirrels. They'd top the basil and some flowers. Seems they daily would look for acorns like Iraqi's looking for banned weapons hidden during the first Gulf War (neither has a clue where they might be buried, IF they might be buried, but since neither has any command and control, there might as well be none).
Then I went to the local garden shop and they recommended a fertilizer made from organic pelletized chicken shit. It's called Cock a doodle doo (I call it Cock a doodle doo doo) and the squirrels avoid it.
And the plants love it. I get a double benefit. I don't have to risk arrest like the former governor of Rhode Island Bruce Sundlin shooting racoons from his kitchen window at night in my fight again the squirrels and I get to make a shitload more pesto!
Your two plants won't live the same amount of time. Odds are your oregano, a perennial will come back year after year. Parsley is a biennial, meaning it lives two years and dies. You may be able to trick it into staying alive by not letting it go dormant, but it's easy enough to grow that it's not really worth it.
How about a three-day version of gardening? :-) Put some seeds in a dish... Pour a little water... Add water every day, just enough to cover the seeds... Rinse and eat when sprouts look good enough. You can buy good grain in healthy food stores like Whole Foods.
You're missing out on half of the fun of being a geek.
Yep, I never spell check.
More incorrect spellings can be found he
I have a bunch of containers on my balcony. I really love them. Tomatoes and herbs are nice to have, but don't ignore flowers: petunias, marigolds and geraniums are good and are in flower for ages. Outside is good as nature will help with the watering. Make sure that your pots are big enough. Ones way bigger than you think you need will often turn out to be the right size.
Programming was my hobby until it became my profession. Now gardening is my hobby. Digging holes, mixing dirt, matching activities to the season: not at all like programming and therefore a good break from it. If you HAVE to get geeky, though, finding exactly the right soil for each plant is a very difficult problem: pH, organic content, trace minerals, etc. I'm currently working on getting azaleas exactly right in my shady yard. Very enjoyable!
Speaking from experience, try a strawberry plant. Keep it from getting frost, and if you're in a hot climate, keep it from getting direct afternoon sun. For a whole year, it's just a green plant. The next year, it'll bear fruit. The sweetest fruit you've ever tasted. There's nothing like a strawberry vine ripened and still warm from the sun.
My new problem, however, is that my wife won't eat strawberries from anyplace else now. Like oranges, when you've had fresh off the plant from the right plant, nothing else just can compare.
You asked specifically about two plants. Your number one enemy, from my experience, is severe spider infestation. Mist your plants if they're too delicate to handle direct hose water. Don't use pesticides, but try to keep as many nasties off as you can. There are some nice organic solutions, including using cedar. It seems to work pretty well to use cedar mulch on top of the soil. If you have the right window exposure, you can grow good plants indoors. My strawberry plant grew well in a Vermont window with a northwest exposure.
Also, stay away from plastic pots. They hold moisture too well, and even with the right drainage, it's tough to keep mold / mildew from growing in it. Same with heavily painted terra cotta. Stick with bare terra cotta and you won't go too far wrong in the drainage department. Of course, you will still have to monitor moisture (Wal-mart sells hydrometers for like $5 or less), but it's tough to overwater a terra cotta pot with a hole in the bottom.
I love Hot Peppers, and have been growing them on and off for a few years. They are hardy, cheap to buy and startout with, and if you love hot foods, you can learn that there's more then just Tabasco sauce and Habaneros out there. Check out a few links to see if it's for you
Pepper Joe's Seed Catalog (I buy all my seeds from him, they always give you FREE seeds with your order, great way to test and see if you like the flavor of a pepper you've never heard of before)
Pepper Joe's Gardening Tips
EXCELLENT hot pepper growing tips
Just remember the Top 10 things to do when starting pepper seeds:
1.) Never ever, ever, ever use peat pellets, peat pots, or potting soil that is mostly peat.
2.) Always give 80-85F daytime soil temp., and room temp. at night. Do not refrigerate!
3.) Always use a soil thermometer.
4.) Never use a non-organic fertilizer (i.e. Miracle-grow®, etc.) on seedlings.
5.) Never plant seeds more than 1/8 inch deep.
6.) Always let the soil surface dry slightly before re-watering.
7.) Always use the saltpetre solution on slower-germinating kinds, like the Tepin.
8.) Never use table salt.
9.) Never use bleach.
10.) Don't give up!--a lot of hot peppers take almost a month to germinate
Looking for hardware (Currently need: Large Etch-a-Sketch) Have one? See my journal!
How is it that I submit a story that's about current technology and it's effect on geek life that gets rejected, and stuff about planting fresh oregano gets posted?
- ~ First off, figure out what kind of exposure your chosen window has. (No, not
- that kind!) A south-facing window gets the most light, and is best for plants that like a lot of direct sun. North-facing windows have a more filtered light ("cooler" light, in art and photography terms.) Plants that like light, but not quite so much, will do well there. Partial-shade plants will do better in an east-facing window. I recommend sun-loving plants for western exposures, because they'll get lots of late-day sun as the summer wears on.
Just don't allow yourself to be talked into buying three dozen gaudy petunia plants, and you'll be fine.~ Don't plant anything that will outgrow its container. Save the zucchini for when you have a yard, and a fence that you want to hide.
~ Using potting soil relieves you of worries about soil Ph. By the same token, though, you should do some homework on what kind of soil your chosen plants like best.
~ Buy seedlings, and re-plant them. That way, the local wildlife will be less likely to think you're putting out a buffet for them.
~ If you can manage two windowboxes, plant one with cooking herbs and one with flowers. Also, until you learn what everything looks like, keep the little nametags on sticks. Parsley and cilantro look very similar to the novice.
~ Find a copy of Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew. (It's available through amazon.com.) He has a lot of good ideas that can be adapted for pot and windowbox gardens. And don't overlook what might be your best resource of all: the folks at the local garden center. Yes, I know that interacting with real, live people can be scary for /.ters (wink, grin), but they're the professionals. Think of them as tech support for dirtware.
Doing my level best to piss off the religious right wing...
Cooking for Geeks
Depending on where you live, I'd recommend talking to your count agricultural extension office. They usually can do soil testing for free/dirt cheap ;) and they can always give advice on planting in your region.
Where I live, they offer a "Master Gardener" program , which lasts about 9 weekends. The cost is basically buying the book for the class and helping tend some public gardens for 1 or 2 weekends.
Another good resource is a locally owned garden center or nursery. Don't expect the people at places like Lowe's/Home Depot to know anything.
Non tam praeclarum est scire Latine, quam turpe nescire
-- Cicero
Orchids are nice too; I'm growing an Oncidium hybrid (I think it's a Sherry Baby) in my bedroom where it gets light from a north-facing window. I water when the potting medium feels dry, and it's been blooming since I got it on Valentine's Day from my girlfriend.
IIRC, determinate tomato plants bear all their fruit in a short period of time--great if you have a big home canning operation set up, not so great if you want a tomato a day for a few months. If you plant indeterminate tomatoes, you can harvest them until frost kills the plants.
The other great thing about tomatoes is that you can buy actual plants of various sizes and varieties instead of starting seeds on your own. (They say, though, that you might as well buy smallish plants, because they'll catch up to the $6.99 behemoths pretty quickly.)
They're indestructable. Get a clump of chives and plant them in a sheltered spot that gets a decent amount of sun (I live in a cold climate, so I have my chives in a nook by the back porch, right near the foundation... seems to protect them somewhat from the -10F winters). Snip some off when you need it. Snip any flower buds--I hear you can eat chive flowers, tho I haven't tried it. Generally, herbs taste different if you let them flower, so don't.
I've had the same $1.59 clump of chives growing in my yard for four years now. Great for scrambled eggs and baked potatoes. They're the first thing to sprout in the spring and the last to die back when frost hits (I've grabbed usable chives from under six inches of snow).
this is pretty clear and handy. enjoy http://home.howstuffworks.com/composting.htm
Any slashdotters also into homebrewing might consider planting hops. They'll take a year to get established, but if they're planted in the right conditions, they'll really take off. Of course this means you need the vertical space to accomodate them.
I have 2 varieties (Cascade & Nugget) that have now grown about a foot each in the last 2 weeks (3 weeks ago they weren't even visible). If their performance last year was any indicator, they should be doing 1-2 feet a week shortly.
Now if I just had time to start brewing again, I'd actually be able to do something with them....
I couldn't tell exactly where rodolpho lives but if he's in Spain I think they legalized it.
I really envy him, the best I can do these days is annoy my father and brother (NY and Maine) with stories about how my tomatoes (San Jose, CA, USA) are still bearing fruit in March.
Cook the dirt first for an hour and let it cool befor using it to kill of fungi and bugs. It has been my experiance that this is very effective. then us miracle grow, but not to much. Spray with water periodically and leave in a sunny window. dont listen to old wives tales, ive lots many plants to this.
Tell us about that. Do you have any pictures?
Data is the lever, rigor the fulcrum, brains the force that drives it all.
Yep. Composting is wonderful. I've got a handy system right on my terrace.
Drop me a line and I'll forward you a DBF (or tab-delimited file) of my links DB which contains, among other things, something like two hundred garden/green links and quite a few for composting.
I'm working up to (probably) opensourcing the whole shebang but haven't gotten around to it yet.
Anybody know a good overview of all the open source licences?
Rustin
Data is the lever, rigor the fulcrum, brains the force that drives it all.
I've abused my plants terribly (no water for weeks, lots of sun, then almost none, etc.) and the hardiest survivors are onions, cilantro, and carrots (gotten by sticking the ends of carrots I've eaten into the soil instead of throwing them out).
This, btw, on a windy west-facing terrace in New York City.
The onions have become a staple in my cooking as I have long-since gotten in the habit of going out to the terrace while, say noodles are draining, ripping off some green shoots, and mixing them in. Yum!
Rustin
Data is the lever, rigor the fulcrum, brains the force that drives it all.
Another slash site told me all I need to know
Get a subscription to Organic Gardening magazine - even if you do plan on using pesticides and don't plan on keeping a compost pile ;) The magazine is full of tips, and it's always seasonal. They give you advice on what to plant when, even with region maps (North America is broken into several regions, each of which are good for growing different things at different times). And yes there are articles about bugs, natural methods of repelling them, organic fertilizer, etc. Everything you need to have a bountiful garden and still be nice to mother nature.
The best part is the seed trades. In the back of each issue is a classified-style listing of people who are willing to give away or trade seeds. Every vegetable, fruit (the ones can be grown from seed) and flower you can imagine is up for trade. It's free to place a listing, you just say what seeds you're looking for and what if anything you can offer to trade... Then the snail mail starts pouring in! I listed myself looking for hot peppers and was still getting seeds in the mail (often totally free, they didn't want anything in return) more than a year later. I went from growing one kind of pepper (scotch bonnets) to more than 20 varieties in one year, all from the seed trades. It's really neat.
Read a copy next time you're at the book store. If you like it grab the subscription card. It's a great help to people (like me) without a natural born green thumb.
For several years now, my friends have watched as I geek out over some house plants. I have had a great deal of fun watching several of my plants grow.
Amaryllis
About 7 years ago, I was given an Amaryllis. A flowering plant that has a bulb. When I received the bulb, it was already on the way to flowering. When it flowered, I took a q-tip and cross polinated the flowers against one another (not sure what the correct term is). I left the flowers on the plant until they dried out and fell off. After a few weeks, the stem on which the flowers grew turned into a small bulb that obviously contained seeds. I have since re-planted the seeds and given away about 10 small amaryllis plants to friends. Unfortunately, I have not been able to watch any of the small plants grow large enough to flower again, but hope to do so with my most recent bunch. I have also had the original large bulbs split into separate bulbs several times. I now have four large bulbs from the original (plus the many small plants that have grown from seed).
Ficus
When I finished school, I purchased a small ficus tree. It grew quite well sitting in the window. When it out-grew its pot, I trasferred it into an overly large Rubbermaid container. Once it was in the too-large container, the extra soil space allowed it to grow out of control. As I was living in a small, urban apartment, I decided to plant my own "lawn" in the pot. I was able to sustain a small patch of green grass along with the tree for an entire summer (all indoors). I learned a great deal about small ecosystems (clippings must be VERY small to not matt down new growth) and potting soil from bags (these bags contain bugs- if the plant is indoors, the bugs will be indoors too).
Worms
One of the things that I learned from the Ficus-lawn experiment (see above) was that a small potted-plant system does not break down organic matter very quickly. I spoke to several friends, gardeners and academics. They all said that the possibility of getting the lawn clippings to compost properly in the large container was fairly slim. However, they said that if I was interested, I should look into getting some worms to help out. They also said that the worms would help with small bugs. On several occasions, I gathered earthworms that appeared on the sidewalks after rains, but I am not sure that any of them survived for long in the soil system (I believe that worms require fairly loose soil and potted plants generally end up with fairly dense soil).
I have also played with various other herbs and flowering plants. I have 4 calla lillies that I have grown from the same cross polination "technique" that I used with the amaryllis described above. The callas live happily in my office windowsill with a cyclomen, hyacinth, and several pots of amaryllis (at various stages of maturity). They all seem happy enough living in a windowsill.
All that said, there is a wealth of information out there on how to grow plants of all varieties. As useful as the information is, I have always found it more interesting to experiment on my own and see how much I recall from high-school biology and geolgraphy courses. A bit of common sense can keep almost any plant alive; a bit of experimentation and work can grow a single plant into many or
Yes. Absolutely. You know you want it.
I am a pretty avid gardener, and my herb garden has evolved... I started by planting a few varieties, thinking it would be cool to have sage, oregano, thyme, etc... I also put basil in, and that did the best, by far. It also is the herb that I used the most. You can do all kinds of amazing things with basil, especially putting it together with tomatoes, mozzeralla, oil and balsamic vinegar!! Now, my herb garden has a big row of several basil plants, and some Italian Parsley (also very useful). Good luck and have fun. I used to work at Garden.com, and think that technology people have a special affinity to gardening.
It's fun, very tasty, come in a variety of colors (iSpuds?), and you don't even have to wash the dirt off this way.
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