Testing A Seed Starting Setup

For Christmas this year, I got a grow light setup. I'm planning on putting a timer on the light and planting some seeds next month before I go away on a 3 week trip. Hopefully they'll be sprouted and happily growing by the time I get back. The problem is how to make sure they stay watered while I'm gone. I'll be growing the stuff in seed trays which will be sitting inside a bigger tray (a flat). Underneath the flat I'll have a heating pad that should help keep it a bit warmer than it would otherwise be. It will look something like this:

There are a few things to note in the picture. First is that some of the trays look like they have dirt in them. They do. I planted some arugula because it is very fast growing and might actually be large enough to produce a bit of useful greens before I leave. I also planted a few onions just to try growing onions from seed rather from onion sets or transplants. Onions take a long time to grow from seed, so you need to start them in mid-winter if you want to grow them from seeds to onion bulbs. Another thing to note in the picture is that I put a bunch of empty trays in the flat. I did that to reduce the amount of evaporation and also heat loss. I also put some rags under the flat to insulate it and help keep the temperature up. The heating mat says it should raise the temperature 10-20 degrees above ambient depending on whether you insulate it or not. Since its in my somewhat chilly basement, I'd like it to be as warm as possible. Lastly, note the pop bottle in the picture. I said "pop" because I fall within the blue area on this map. The pop bottle is my attempt at a simple automated watering system.

I considered a couple more complicated watering system ideas that would probably work, but in the interest of saving my free time and money I decided to try the simplest idea and hope it works. If you take a full pop bottle (or any relatively stiff and airtight container), fill it up with water, flip it upside down, and quickly put the open end in water, you'll notice that the water doesn't all flow out. It wants to, but a vacuum forms in the bottle, and the keeps the water from flowing out. If you then raise the opening just above the water, some air will get it, which lets water out (equal to the amount of air that goes in). I'm pretty sure that is how the reservoir on our cat fountain works. When the water level gets low enough to let in a little air, the water comes out and raises the water level until the it is high enough to not let any air in anymore. I'm going for the same idea with my system. As you can see in the picture below, I modified the bottle a little bit.

I cut out a piece of plastic, drilled a hole slightly smaller than the opening in the bottle, and cut a channel from the edge of the plastic to the hole. I then caulked the plastic to the opening of the bottle. The plastic does two things. First, it stabilizes the bottle and helps to keep it from falling over. Second, it raises up the the opening of the bottle slightly. I tried to set it such that the bottle would be a height where it would keep the water level just high enough so that comes into the very bottom of the seed trays (they have little holes in the bottom of each). I'm thinking that the water should wick up into the soil and keep it wet. Its possible that this will either keep it way too way or not wet enough. That is why I am testing it out now. I'm going to try to not touch it for a while and see how well it works. Check back for an update!

Wine Progress

Last weekend I siphoned the wine off of the sediment (a second time). I tried a sample of it and was pleasantly surprised. The bitter, chemically flavor I tasted last time was mostly gone, though there was still a hint of it. I'm hoping that will keep going away.

Unfortunately, the wine still remains cloudy. It should have cleared up on its own, but since it hasn't, I put in a commercial clearing agent. That should theoretically gather particles together and make them large enough to precipitate out.

The next step is cold stabilization. Dropping the temperature down to around 32 will cause excess acid to precipitate out and also help kill off some or all of the yeast. Last year when I did cold stabilization, I just put the wine in the garage. That isn't really a well-controlled thermal environment, so I decided to try something that I had seen suggested online. Bury it in snow. If it is really cold for a long time, the temperature could drop too low, but its supposed to be semi-warmer for the next week or so. Its supposed to be above freezind during the daytime most of the week. The snow should keep the wine right around freezing and insulate it from any really cold temperatures overnight.

So I dug a hole in a snow pile on the side of the driveway and put the wine in it. Here is the wine in the hole.Here is what it looks like after piling the snow on. I packed it down firm enough to walk on. You can just see the airlock sticking up out of the top of the pile. I filled the airlock with vodka so that it won't freeze.
Speaking of warming temperatures, its almost time to plant the garden....well, kinda. Here is what the garden looks like 4 weeks before I am hoping to do the first plantings (the weekend of 3/13). I'm not too worried about there being snow on the ground, I'm just worried that the ground will still be frozen at this point. It wasn't last year, but I think last year was warmer than normal.

Garden Planning

I've done a bunch of work planning for the 2011 gardening season. First thing up is the garden map. There are some big changes from last year. I'm growing less cucurbits (squashes, zuchinni and the like) since they took up so much space in the garden last year. I wish there were ultra-compact cucurbits that only produced a small amount of vegetables, but even the supposedly smaller ones like the "Spacemaster" cucumber still took up at least 16 square feet and produced more cucumbers than we could use. So this year there is a focus on a broader array of smaller plants. I'm also going to try corn in a "three sisters" arrangement. That is basically corn with pole beans climbing up the corn stalks and cucurbits growing along the ground between the corn and beans.

I've also made a spreadsheet for tentative planting dates. Its clearly aggressive in terms of early plantings, but last year I could have planted things earlier than I did. I'm going to try to plant some very hardy stuff in mid-march right before I go away for vacation. If it doesn't survive, no big deal, I'll just replant it in early april. Remember also that the garden sits in a pretty mild micro-climate, so the growing season is longer here than it would be at a regular farm.

Lastly, the seeds have been purchased! It was about $40 worth of seeds, but the purchase of a heating mat for helping seed starts plus taxes and shipping brought the total up to almost $90.