• Category Archives Hydroponics

  • Plants I’ve Known From Seeds.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                       Waning Flower Moon

    The peas and turnips and beets and new onions are up and wriggling toward the sky.  I planted all of the hydroponic plants today with the exception of the cucumbers.  They go in tomorrow.

    This was satisfying, putting in plants I grew myself from heirloom seeds.  The next satisfaction will come as they grow, another when we harvest, but the best will be when I replant them next year grown from seed I harvest this year.

    I already have garlic growing from bulbs I planted two years ago.  Once the new beds are in we will plant the beans, all of which are from last year’s beans.

    Good to get all this done before I leave for Hilton Head.

    Now it’s in to MIA to pick up  the Sin and Salvation catalogue for the Pre-Raphaelite show I will tour through the remainder of the summer.


    Garden Great Work Hydroponics permaculture

  • In the Merry, Merry Month of May

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                      Waxing Flower Moon

    Beltane marks the beginning of the growing season so fertility is the essence of the celebration.  In a pre-refrigeration, pre-food preservative (except salt and drying) culture fertility during the growing season carried with it survival, for animals and humans.  Thus, anything to encourage the land and to safeguard the animals that could be done, would be done.

    This holiday, Beltane, used to separate the Celtic year into halves, the other half coming six months later at Samhain, or Summer’s End.  Later the Celts adopted the solstice and equinox celebrations of other peoples and added Imbolc and Lugnasa to make an 8 holiday year.

    Beltane, Lugnasa, Samhain and Imbolc are cross-quarter holidays.  They occur between the quarter year events of Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox–Imbolc,  between Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice–Beltane, between Summer Solstice and Fall Equinox–Lugnasa and between Fall Equinox and Winter Solstice–Samhain.  The cross quarter days were the occasion for markets, festivals/fairs and certain seasonally observed matters like short term weddings, labor contracts and preparation for winter.

    The fire jumping and making love in the fields at night preserved and magnified fertility.  The May pole which you may have gaily stomped around as a child in elementary school symbolizes the male aspect of fertility while the young maidens with May baskets symbolize the feminine.

    The choosing of a May queen carries over the honoring of the goddess in her maiden form, when she can become pregnant and bear children.    This tradition has almost died out in this country and I don’t know whether the selection of a mate for the May queen ever crossed the pond.  At certain points in Celtic history the May Queen’s mate was king for a year and a day.  Over the course of the year and a day the king received all the honors and trappings of royalty.  After the year finished, however, the king died at the hands of his people.  His blood fertilized the soil.

    Today we have much less feel, if any, for this holiday.  It has faint impressions on our culture with May Day celebrations, sometimes with construction paper baskets for paper flowers.

    As we have distanced ourselves from the land and the processes that bring us food, we have also distanced ourselves from the celebrations that mark seasonal change.  We can let Beltane pass by with no bonfires, no cattle purified, no holiday related love making in the fields.

    It may not seem like much, this cultural dementia, at worst a mild symptom.  It might, though,  reveal a more severe underlying affliction.  As we forget the world of fields and cattle, the oceans and their wild fish, cattle ranches and dairy farms, the subtle body may die of starvation or dehydration. Continue reading → Post ID 2680


    Art and Culture GeekWorld Humanities Hydroponics Weather +Climate 📎and tagged

  • A Green Miracle

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring              Waning Seed Moon

    The bee hives have a new coat of white sealer, a soothing color for them.  The raised bed on which I painted them has some tulips pushing up and the bed across from it have the garlic.  They’ve begun to wake up in force now so we’ll have the pleasure of garlic grown this year from garlic we grew last year.

    We had chard for lunch today.  I thought about it a moment.  I took one chard seed and put it in a small rockwool cube late last fall or early winter.  It got water and light from the fluorescent bulb until it sprouted.  After the first tiny roots began to appear outside the confines of the small cube, it went into the clay growing medium, small balls of clay that absorb nutrient solution.

    The seedling grew in the nutrient solution for several weeks as the roots spread out.  The nutrient solution comes in a bottle, concentrated and goes 3 tablespoons to two gallons of water.  What those roots and the chard plant leaves have to work with then is that nutrient solution and the light from a full spectrum second sun that glows above the plastic beds in which the liquid circulates.

    The wonder in this is the transformation of that small seed, not bigger than the head of a pin, into food with only the inputs of light and some concentrated chemicals diluted in water.  I’m not sure why  you need water into wine when you can turn water into food, better for you anyhow.

    Over the next month the outside work begins to grow and take up more time.  In our raised beds and the orchard this same miracle happens, changed only by the addition of soil.  Seeds into food.  Which in turn create more seeds so you can grow more food.  A green miracle.


    Bees Cooking Faith and Spirituality Garden Hydroponics 📎and tagged

  • Garage Sales

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring    Waning Seed Moon

    In spring mom’s across the land turn their minds to Garage Sales!  The mom in this house has.  That means I’ve spent most of this warm, almost early summer day cleaning out the garage, sorting junk from stuff to sell and trying to make the to keep pile as small as possible.

    I started though with planting 5 varieties of heirloom tomatoes, two of heirloom cucumbers and one heirloom tomatillo. They go in small soil + peat plugs, onto a warming mat and under the soothing light of a fluorescent lamp.

    Afterward I pushed a broom in the garage and moved items from one place to another, a favorite task in spring.  The intent is to keep some of the things moving right on off the property.  We have the stuff of George Carlin’s famous sketch and we need a place to put it.  Or to get rid of it.

    It is 71 right now.  71!


    Great Wheel Hydroponics 📎and tagged

  • Let Our Revels Now Begin

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring         Waning Seed Moon

    We are far enough into spring that its first full moon, the Seed Moon, has begun to wane.  The snow is gone and even though the land here is dry bulbs have begun to break the earth with the tips of their small green spears.  The daylilies, those hardy, reproductively agile flowers are already up six inches or so (hmmm, time for the cygon on the irises).

    I pulled up stakes but we’re not moving.  Nope, each year these stakes get taken up when the last snows of the season, at least any that will last, are behind us.  They are three feet high, sharpened on end and painted a fluorescent orange on the other.  Put in the ground after Halloween (for obvious, trick related reasons) they guide snow-plowing crews away from the edges of our yard.  This preserves lawn and sprinkler heads.  Out in Rocky Mountain National Park their equivalent is a seven foot or so sapling lashed to mile marker or outside lane marker.

    We have our peculiar seasonal rituals.  Next comes the removal of the snow blower to the machine shed and the draining of its gasoline tank.   In its place comes the riding mower, ready for another season of grass beheading.  Somewhere in here the cold weather plants get started outside, tomato plants inside.  Windows get washed and gutters cleaned. We like to give ourselves a fresh face for nature’s season of abundance.  We will put the spiritual asceticism of winter behind us, ready now to revel in green, fresh fruits and vegetables, warm breezes.


    Faith and Spirituality Great Wheel Hydroponics

  • Under the Lights

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring            Waning Moon of Winds

    The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem. – Walt Whitman

    Business meeting and plants this morning.  The business meeting went just fine, our financial management continues to work for us and not against us.  Wish I could say the same for the financial markets.  Sigh.  Decided to check.  Wish granted: Dow Leaps 497 Points on Treasury Plan.  Yeah.

    My seedlings, grown over the last couple of weeks, sprouted roots which is the time to move them to their next medium, in this case soil in peat and coconut fiber pots with the exception of four chard and one mustard green that I put in lava rock and in the hydroponics.  The broccoli, egg plants, onions, leeks, mustard and collard greens, cauliflower and huckelberry now have soil around their sprouting medium.  They are all under the lights still.   Moving to larger size containers strained my space, though with some jiggering I got them all in new places and still under the lights.

    Some of them have to move out soon to make way for the seedlings that need to get started on April 1st and April 15th.  Just when they were getting comfortable.  Hmmm.  I may have problems here.  Seems onions started by seed should not go outside until May.  This will definitely cramp the April batch of plants.


    Garden Great Work Health Hydroponics permaculture 📎and tagged

  • Art and Seeds

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring            Waning Moon of Winds

    A full day of art–WWII provenance research, the duties of a registrar and the example of the Tatra ending with a discussion of the book Loot.  Thought provoking, insider peaking and a pleasant way to spend part of a Saturday.

    Bought coca pots for my transplants, the seedlings need more room since they are growing roots.  That has to happen tomorrow.  Also, Sierra club work tomorrow, too.  A new desktop, bought cheap, needs to get set up either tomorrow or Monday.

    Lots of good stuff.


    Art and Culture Great Work Hydroponics

  • Traveling By Television

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    -6  steep fall 30.26  E1  windchill -8  Winter

    Waning Wolf Moon

    Boy do I feel good.  I recalled that some legislative meetings are webcast, broadcast, or taped.  Turns out the one I need to cover will be on Channel 17 at 3pm or I can watch it live on the web.  God, you gotta love technology.  Normally, I’d head into the capitol anyhow just to get the feel of the place, but the hassle of really cold weather and a long drive, capped with a return trip in rush hour makes the couch a much more sensible option.

    I finished the seed database today for all the new seeds.  Tomorrow I’ll enter our left over seeds from last year.  It shows the work ahead in getting transplants ready.  Some plants like the mustard greens and huckleberries will go under the lights in the middle of February.  In two week intervals until May 1st, I’ll be starting different plants inside.

    The weather today is what we usually get in the third week of January, really cold.  Paul Douglas, local weather guy, says this air was over Siberia two weeks ago.  And it’s still this cold?  Geez.


    Great Work Hydroponics permaculture Politics Weather +Climate 📎and tagged

  • A Prolegomena to All Future Gardens

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    17  bar rises 30.08  3mph NNW  windchill 13  Samhain

    Waxing Crescent Moon of Long Nights

    The black plastic has been laid down; the marsh hay rests on top of it in fluffy abundance.  A good snow right now would marry the two until early spring.  May it come soon.

    This was a long project.  I had to cut down weeds, trees, raspberry canes and shrubs, pull vines and dislodge a deadfall. All this was prolegomena.   The black plastic had to be rolled out, made to conform to the odd shapes created by various impediments, then cut and staked or held down with logs.  After a piece of plastic was cut and laid in place, then the marsh hay went over it.

    This process, too, is prolegomena for the next phase.  In that phase we will plant serviceberry, hawthorne, and other shrubs and small trees that produce food edible by and interesting to birds and varmints.  That phase ties in with the orchard as a distraction from the human edibles, in the hope that more–or enough–will end up for us.  It is this linkage of one piece with the other, all in the service of creating a sustainable enviornment for people and animals, that excites me about permaculture.

    I have also mulched all the bulbs I planted and/or transplanted at the end of August and the middle of September.  These are daffodils, tulips, hyacinths, snow drops, lilies of many kinds and iris.  I have both mulched and not mulched over the years and find that mulching the first year for all new plantings and after for those plants sensitive to cold increases the germination rate considerably.

    There are also many peppers now in the hydroponics.  Only one is large so far, but they keep sucking down nutrient fluid at a rapid pace so they are growing.  I have not yet convinced any eggplant blossoms to move on to fruiting but I imagine that’s only a matter of patience.


    Great Work Hydroponics permaculture 📎and tagged