Starting a garden, what should I grow? (Favorite seeds, etc?)(

[Ian.M]

Even self-seeded 'trash' tomatoes that grow on the outskirts of the compost heap and are too late in the season to ripen properly can be useful and delicious.  A few years back, I noted there were a lot of tomatoes growing in the nearest flowerbed to where the kitchen drain had been overflowing.   They were slow to set fruit and most of them only cherry tomato size.   By the first frost, most were still green or only slightly ripe, though the birds had got a few that ripened earlier.   I picked over 5 lb of green tomatoes and made green tomato chutney to a traditional recipe, ensuring the sugar content and acidity were high enough for it to be shelf stable, then bottled it properly in canning jars for maximum shelf life.  The drains have since been re-lined, so no more 'trash' tomatoes but I'm still using up my shelf-full of green tomato chutney.

[SeanB]

Plant a few marigolds, and a few nasturtiums, which will both provide you with natural pest control, for the first, and the second provides a tart tasty salad green, plus the flowers are edible as well. Dandelion also works well, though it can be invasive, and it works well as a green in cooking, though best to remove the flower heads and not let them flower or go to seed, as they will be forever there.

[cdev]

So, a bit of an update. Now we have a bunch of seeds started, we're growing them in various plastic containers that let the sun in. As soon as it warms up a bit more they will go into the ground.

We have lettuce seedlings, radishes, broccoli, some thyme, basil.. I also went to Github to find what they had 9on gardening and downloaded a bunch of stuff, which I am looking through.

I am wonderng what kind of electrically activated valves to use. For watering. As it seems that is the first place to start as far as involving electronics. At least to keep seedlings from dying if we forget to water something.

One of the intriguing things on github are databases of plant species data.. Which I havent really looked at much. But which sound useful.

[cdev]

Just one word of caution...  Oregano grows like crazy and takes over the whole space killing off more fragile plants.  We always have a dedicated pot for this.

Thank you for that.. I would hate to see any herb go nuts like that.. Kind of like kudzu in the Southern states.. or Japanese knotweed in the UK. (which has medicinal properties that make it very useful) But its one of the most invasive plants known and one almost needs a nuke or something to get rid of it, it can become a pest..

Likewise, I kind of like bamboo and was thinking about growing some of that to give us more privacy.. Some varieties can be very pretty and sometimes some variants can grows very tall..But they also grow wild because of the rhizomes they put out, which damages foundations, and so on.. So they made it illegal for us here in NJ to do that!

Lemon balm grows like weed over here. Also thyme.

Do you mean "lemon grass" which makes a delicious tea?  One that I used to like drinking.

[cdev]

Tomatoes for sure, if you like them. We all know supermarket tomatoes are trash, mostly because they need to be hearty enough to withstand transit etc, which coincidentally makes them pretty bleh tasting. I bought a Sunkist tomato from....Michigan (!) the other day, and let's just say underwhelmed is an understatement.

The heirloom varieties like Cherokee Purple or Mortgage Lifter are incredible, if you've never had them.

My father really become an amazing tomato gardener over the years. I would say his biggest 'secret' is good soil. No food scraps go in the trash, everything goes in compost. Mix in some 'brown matter' into your food waste (dead leaves, etc.) and you'll have some great soil.

Yes, I used to do this composting thing when I lived in Northern California and it really works, suddenly almost without any real work I had a gorgeous, big garden. It was a great place for growing almost anything. I used coffee grounds, table scraps, also bought some chickenshit from Ukiah Real Goods (who also had everything for off grid power one could imagine) and that just made the garden go nuts. Wow..

That was an absolutely great place to be for this. We were housesitting a 50 acre "hippie parcel" in the hills above Redwood Valley. It was a real paradise.. The roads had very colorful names and the area had am amazing bunch of people living there.. Really a fun place to be..

[PlainName]

I am wonderng what kind of electrically activated valves to use. For watering. As it seems that is the first place to start as far as involving electronics. At least to keep seedlings from dying if we forget to water something.

I followed an Indiegogo campaign for an automatic plant water: http://daisy.si/

It worked well enough that my partner (who has the green fingers around here) actually asked me to get another one, despite the cost. (Although since I was paying I'm not sure her natural aversion to letting go of money kicked in.)

[cdev]

Green Fingers!  what a great expression..

This is Siouxsie and the Banshees, from a great 1980s album..






Here is a water-saving passive radar idea..

Just for future reference, one can determine how much water is in soil by comparing the reflected signal from GPS satellites by polarization. Reflection will reverse the polarization. Two good circular polarized directional antennas will allow you to ascertain  which earth in a fairly large area is damp, and which is dy by the ratio. One could use two conical log spirals of identical size on a tower to cover a fairly large plot. And possibly save a lot of water. Modern dromes can use RTKlib for precise drone positioning and carry a moisture sensor over a considerable area. The presence of precisely located GNSS signals lends itself to a system to conserve water 's automation. Clearly this is an idea whose time has come because of the maturing on several relevant technologies and their sudden low cost due to mass production.

Receiver could be stationary on a tower or carried by a drone. (would have to be designed to be light, I have an antenna that would work for this, it is made around a cheap styrofoam cone.

There is a marked difference between the ratio of LHCP and RHCP that depends utterly on the water in the soil.

One will need a well made dual polarization conical log spiral antenna such as the one described by Dyson. It should be made by wrapping a floral art cone with the right copper shapes as described by Dyson. One needs to overlay four windings two in the LHCP two in the RHCP direction. This makes a very useful antenna for a number of applications. Due to the phase center of both antennas being nearly identical. Such an antenna would be useful for ground penetrating radar as well, which this idea kind of is.. a poor mans ground penetrating passive radar based on the free GNSS signals.


Antenna looks like a pointy barber pole, a bit. Its fed from the front tip which is the area of directionality. It functions like an LPDA except its circular. Such an antenna was made once by the University of Illinois's famous ECE department.
Since one knows quite precisely where the GPS satellites are, (the signal source to be reflected) - A log spiral is an ideal GNSS antenna. In fact the GPS satellites own antennas are conical log spirals.

Reflections from well-hydrated soil will predominate more and more LHCP.  I will have to hunt the reference down, this was the subject of a paper in the GNSS literature from some years ago.

Could be useful in saving lots of water, I bet.

[PlainName]

I'm sure that would be fantastic on a farm, but perhaps just a little over the top for a vegetable patch

[mon2]

Brandywine tomatoes
Brandywine tomatoes
Brandywine tomatoes

Best tomatoes I have ever tasted. You should be able to source starter plants soon according to our pcb designer who got us hooked on these puppies.

[cdev]

My wife just got clay pebbles for growing stuff and everything she has grown using them (so far basil and radish) looks really healthy and big. They are porous and suck up nutrient-laden water through capillary action, it seems. They look ideal for tomatoes!   Mmmmm!

[cdev]

I'm sure that would be fantastic on a farm, but perhaps just a little over the top for a vegetable patch

It would but I am trying to think of ways farmers can grow food crops in high tech ways so they can get other jobs..too.

All kinds of companies are trying to figure out ways to get them dependent on them. To grow food. And get a cut. Not good.

[bd139]

If you're in the UK, I suggest you get your seeds here: https://realseeds.co.uk

They have no weird hybrids so you can actually collect the seeds and not get mutant plants afterwards. The "telephone peas" are pretty amazing. I mostly do tomatoes, herbs and peas and that's about it these days. Don't have the time, space or energy for anything else.

Also don't do it to save money - it's more expensive than buying stuff