Hydroponic Veggies

[whoisit]

Yes it is very nice to get fresh veggies in NW Ohio in the middle of winter during a pandemic when you are trying to isolate as much as reasonably possible to avoid spreading the virus in places like grocery stores, just in case you happen to catch it and not know it.

Mo at our age we have to be real careful.
Also with all the shortages going on now it is good to gain knowledge of sustainable living best we can.
Only one of our kids and none of our grands think ahead. My youngest daughter is learning to grow now but son and oldest daughter aren't.

 

[Mac-7]

Mac are you growing any root veggys like yams or sweet potatoes? I may end up going into the grocery and seeing if they have any organic yams or any sweet potatoes to stat now ,since it is a summer plant feed stores don't have them out yet.
I can buy grocery store yam and let it sprout and use it. If they didn't trat it thats why I say organic but may have to buy whatever I can find and hope for the best.

I only grow regular polatoes

and yes i get my seed potatoes from the grocery store

I use the Ruth stout method with hay

 

[Muhammed]

We will have to try the Thai basil ,never heard of it.

Now I'm not even sure which is the Thai basil and the other basil. They are all twisted together in a big green mess under the LED lights. And when I'm cooking I tend to just grab the nearest scissors and start chopping away at anything green with abandon.

Maybe that's how that chicken head got into a KFC nugget meal that there was a thread about recently.

Maybe there was a chicken hiding in someone's bushy hydroveggies.

 

[Muhammed]

Thats good isn't it nice to see results? Plus we enjoy the bounty.

It's great. I love veggies that are just fresh and ripe off the vine. They taste sooo yummy in a garden salad. A lot better than anything you can buy from any grocery store around here.

Right now, here in NW Ohio it is very cold and there is several inches of snow on the ground. Kids on snowmobiles have been having fun racing up and down the street all day. But because of indoor hydroponics, I have fresh vegetables to eat without having to travel to the grocery store to buy them.

 

[fncceo]

My thoughts on hydroponic gardening in a SHTF situation.

1. In my experience, the expensive outlay of hardware isn't worth any increase in yield. You can achieve the same result by intensive farming in containers with good soil as from hydroponics.

2. In a hydroponic setup, you have to regularly add nutrient solution during the growing seasons. With containers or raised beds, one good fertilizer when the seeds are sown and and one or two additional additions of potash to the soil each growing season is sufficient.

3. Container or bed soil can be rejuvenated each season with compost and manure. Hydroponics need commercially produced nutrient solutions to continue to produce. If you choose to make your own manure, you will need animals or a supply of soy, barley, or other green manure seeds to plant between seasons.

4. Hydroponics and containers both lend themselves well to artificial light for indoor growing BUT ... the amount of power required to make indoor growing worth doing is WAY beyond the capacity of home solar. Pot growers who grown commercially indoor have to bypass their meters because the 10 times power consumption above that of a normal home is a dead giveaway to police. Also, the massive amount of heat generated by all that lighting makes the house look like it's on fire for thermal imaging. The idea of SHTF farming is to not draw attention to your crops lest someone come and take them away.

5. A greenhouse is a more practical solution, the more ramshackle and disused it looks from the outside the better. It will extend the growing season and make the possibility of multicropping easier.

Any other thoughts?

 

[whoisit]

I only grow regular polatoes

and yes i get my seed potatoes from the grocery store

I use the Ruth stout method with hay

Another good way to grow. I'm basically using Ruth Stout on one of my raised beds now, started it a few months ago . We were just fertilizing it with compost before but that is just too much work for us now.

 

[Mac-7]

Another good way to grow. I'm basically using Ruth Stout on one of my raised beds now, started it a few months ago . We were just fertilizing it with compost before but that is just too much work for us now.

I dont think I will ever till new ground again

even an existing back yard with established grass can be turned into a garden just by laying down cardboard and covering with 6-8 inches of hay in the fall for spring planting

 

[whoisit]

My thoughts on hydroponic gardening in a SHTF situation.

1. In my experience, the expensive outlay of hardware isn't worth any increase in yield. You can achieve the same result by intensive farming in containers with good soil as from hydroponics.

2. In a hydroponic setup, you have to regularly add nutrient solution during the growing seasons. With containers or raised beds, one good fertilizer when the seeds are sown and and one or two additional additions of potash to the soil each growing season is sufficient.

3. Container or bed soil can be rejuvenated each season with compost and manure. Hydroponics need commercially produced nutrient solutions to continue to produce. If you choose to make your own manure, you will need animals or a supply of soy, barley, or other green manure seeds to plant between seasons.

4. Hydroponics and containers both lend themselves well to artificial light for indoor growing BUT ... the amount of power required to make indoor growing worth doing is WAY beyond the capacity of home solar. Pot growers who grown commercially indoor have to bypass their meters because the 10 times power consumption above that of a normal home is a dead giveaway to police. Also, the massive amount of heat generated by all that lighting makes the house look like it's on fire for thermal imaging. The idea of SHTF farming is to not draw attention to your crops lest someone come and take them away.

5. A greenhouse is a more practical solution, the more ramshackle and disused it looks from the outside the better. It will extend the growing season and make the possibility of multicropping easier.

Any other thoughts?

These are all good points to a certain degree, but most can be gone around.
I'll get back to this later but at time not able to get into too much discusssion.

 

[whoisit]

I dont think I will ever till new ground again

even an existing back yard with established grass can be turned into a garden just by laying down cardboard and covering with 6-8 inches of hay in the fall for spring planting

This too is true, Also may want to learn how to use a sickle and swing blade again.
I used a swiing blade as a child left the sickle up to the adults,haha.
My swing blade days are over.
I still use a shovel pitch fork loppers ok but that too is getting harder.

 

[Mac-7]

This too is true, Also may want to learn how to use a sickle and swing blade again.
I used a swiing blade as a child left the sickle up to the adults,haha.
My swing blade days are over.
I still use a shovel pitch fork loppers ok but that too is getting harder.

With a cardboard base seeds in the hay will not grow

so you wont have to worry about weeds

 

[whoisit]

With a cardboard base seeds in the hay will not grow

so you wont have to worry about weeds

Our hens molted last month so we had some extra eggs, We just threw them into the compost bin over leaves I'd raked up , then later turned it into a wheel barrel and added it all to raised bed. So that will hopefully be enough brown and green to do for awhile in that bed. I have lots of leaves to rake again but been too busy with vines destroying out fence and some trees.
I'm done with the vines get too many injurys have two very deep wounds from thorns last week ,done with that crapola.
If we can't eat it or use it ,forget it.

 

[toobfreak]

I'm a prepper so I was ready for the pandemic.

The one shortfall I had was that I had to hit the grocery store for fresh vegetables in the winter. That bothered me a little bit. What if this would have been a more serious pandemic (which will likely happen eventually)?

I tend to eat a fresh garden salad with most of my meals. So I'm going to try to grow them indoors at home hydroponically so I can have them all year around. I'm going to try tomatoes, bell peppers and lettuce at first.

Any tips for indoor hydroponic vegetable gardening would be greatly appreciated. I would also like to hear of any personal experiences you've had with indoor vegetable gardening.

You don't need hydroponics, you just need a greenhouse heated by any sun plus whatever other heat you might need on cloudy days. Tomatos and bell peppers have quite different needs than most salad greens. They are are looking at needing to provide HOT SUNNY conditions like summer! Concentrate on cool climate crops.

 

[whoisit]

You don't need hydroponics, you just need a greenhouse heated by any sun plus whatever other heat you might need on cloudy days. Tomatos and bell peppers have quite different needs than most salad greens. They are are looking at needing to provide HOT SUNNY conditions like summer! Concentrate on cool climate crops.

Tomatoes don't like it above 85 they will wilt peppers may survive it up to 90.Most plants don't like cold or hot temps, Only thing we can grow here after May is okra or sweet potatoes.

 

[whoisit]

My thoughts on hydroponic gardening in a SHTF situation.

1. In my experience, the expensive outlay of hardware isn't worth any increase in yield. You can achieve the same result by intensive farming in containers with good soil as from hydroponics.

2. In a hydroponic setup, you have to regularly add nutrient solution during the growing seasons. With containers or raised beds, one good fertilizer when the seeds are sown and and one or two additional additions of potash to the soil each growing season is sufficient.

3. Container or bed soil can be rejuvenated each season with compost and manure. Hydroponics need commercially produced nutrient solutions to continue to produce. If you choose to make your own manure, you will need animals or a supply of soy, barley, or other green manure seeds to plant between seasons.

4. Hydroponics and containers both lend themselves well to artificial light for indoor growing BUT ... the amount of power required to make indoor growing worth doing is WAY beyond the capacity of home solar. Pot growers who grown commercially indoor have to bypass their meters because the 10 times power consumption above that of a normal home is a dead giveaway to police. Also, the massive amount of heat generated by all that lighting makes the house look like it's on fire for thermal imaging. The idea of SHTF farming is to not draw attention to your crops lest someone come and take them away.

5. A greenhouse is a more practical solution, the more ramshackle and disused it looks from the outside the better. It will extend the growing season and make the possibility of multicropping easier.

Any other thoughts?

According to how much and how long you grow in greenhouse. It does use power so we stopped growing in early winter, now we start seeds indoors in mid to late December put them out in mid January to late Feb or early March.
All according to what we have going on.
We don't like to use chemicals but we only add nutrients the reservoir every couple months so no big deal. Keep adding water to keep it water flowing. Once you've added 30 gallons its time to make a new solution.
We also use containers for other plants liker cabbage ,beans, etc,.

 

[Muhammed]

good luck ----post up your victories and----defeats

One cool thing that really surprised me is that these little bell peppers grow tiny little bell peppers inside of them. I've occasionally seen a tiny pepper growing inside a pepper on my outdoor peppers, but nothing like this.

Every one of them had several little peppers growing inside that are about a half inch in diameter. I did some research and found out that they are known as "internal proliferations".

 

[irosie91]

This too is true, Also may want to learn how to use a sickle and swing blade again.
I used a swiing blade as a child left the sickle up to the adults,haha.
My swing blade days are over.
I still use a shovel pitch fork loppers ok but that too is getting harder.

from where does a city girl get HAY?

 

[Muhammed]

from where does a city girl get HAY?

From a country boy.

 

[Muhammed]

One bad thing about growing plants indoors is they make a bit of a mess. But a good thing about growing herbs and spices in your living room is that your vacuum cleaner smells like potpourri.

 

[Concerned American]

One bad thing about growing plants indoors is they make a bit of a mess. But a good thing about growing herbs and spices in your living room is that your vacuum cleaner smells like potpourri.

I don't know about the -pourri, but on occasion the house smells like pot.

 

[lg325]

Space botany: Astronauts grow peppers, lettuce, and more on space station I hope this link works it is an interesting subject