It started with an idea to use hydroponic principles to grow vegetables outside for people who don’t have the space for a traditional garden  – outdoor hydroponic vegetable container gardens.  It almost immediately “expanded” to embrace an organic component……………and I’ve been trying to simplify it ever since.

First it was a matter of getting rid of the overly complicated mixing and balancing of nutrients that are an inherent flaw with traditional hydroponic systems.  At least they’re a flaw if you want to get regular consumers interested.  Then it was about ditching the reliance for electricity – and luckily both of the first two problems had the same solution.  I thought the gravity fed valves were my answer but now I’m not so sure.  I think they’re overpriced and I can’t seem to do anything to bring the prices down and they are still a mechanical element that is subject to a few hiccups.

If it doesn’t work flawlessly, it can’t be foolproof and I want foolproof.

The second season is starting and the new lettuce garden is still hydroponic, still small space, still organic – but this time it might also be foolproof, too.  You see, I’ve ditched the valve for now and I’m working on something that is sooooooo simple – if it works – it will take the container and balcony gardening world by storm.  On the other hand – maybe I’m about to find out why this technique hasn’t found broader adoption.

I’ll let you know.

I’m pressed for time today (as usual) and don’t have time to download the shots I took of the pathetic site I returned to after only three days away from the house.  As luck would have it, after a cool ( some would say cold) and perpetually wet July, the August long weekend was warm and sunny.  I was in heaven.  My vegetables in traditional containers were in hell.  I returned home to find my herbs, and peppers pitifully wilted and the leaves of  my cucumbers, acorn squash and tomatoes yellowed and crispy.  It was not pretty and one cuke and both squash have succumbed to their injuries.  Piss me off!

BUT – Everything and I mean everything that relied upon my hydroponic watering system including tomatoes, herbs, peppers and all the salad greens were in perfect condition.

I’m struggling with an affordable way to bring this system to market.  The problem being that I’m just too small to buy the volumes that will command a great price so the cost of goods will be ugly and unless I want to market these for free ( or worse yet at a loss- which I can promise you is deadly easy to do) they are going to cost about twice what I hoped to bring them to market for.  Still – They work.  And the relative benefits just keep stacking up so I’ll just have to wait and see what I can do.

Gotta run.  Late for work – again.

This is working better than I could have imagined in ways I didn’t expect.  To find a simple, low cost way for people who were otherwise unable to grow vegetables to actually grow some of their own food was all I set out to do.  I suppose you could say that was enough of a challenge since I started on the assumption that I’m planning for a small family or a working couple with a townhouse deck of condo terrace or balcony.  I’m allowing for the fact that they might travel on business which would leave their container garden possibly untended for up to a week – maybe more.

And of course the vegetables would need to be organically grown- to do anything else runs so far against the trend as to be a waste of time.

The first bonus was a cut and come again salad greens garden that not only grows well in its hydroponic garden but has produced a better yield than expected.  In fact that advantage continues to grow.

Even though the lettuce has bolted....

The oak leaf lettuce in the shot to my right has got leaves that have extended a long way up the stem.  if this lettuce had been planted in the ground it would be completely inedible, since once it starts to bolt salad greens are incredibly bitter.  This lettuce still tastes terrific.  It’s still tender and not bitter and a true delight.

I’ve concentrated the harvest lately on one half of the garden so I can pull it up and reseed for the second season – which should be good becuase it seems that summer does not really want to come to Toronto this year.

Still many salads left on the left

As you can see, the left hand side of the garden where I backed off a bit for the last three meals has tons of greens left, so while the right hand side re-sprouts, I’ll be dining on the left.

I’ve also been playing with the design for the tomatos and the real question is just how small can the pots be to produce a good yield.   I’ll let you know more about that soon because I’ve got a Brandywine heritage tomato and a beefsteak tomato in what are definitely undersized pots.  They got a later start than I would have liked, but they’re starting to take off now.

Looking over the numbers I’ll be able – I think- to bring different variations of this garden plan to market starting at about $60.00 . Still sorting out the line up and confirming what works.

Beefsteaks tomato

New Tomato Garden Test

Salad Greens

If you’re ever looking for a better way to relax go into a  garden.  Even now when I have my crazy junior bonsai nursery growing down the side and a wide collection of pots and bags with tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers, squash and herbs, its still the most peaceful place in my world.

And even though I’m trying to develop a product -  urban hydro gardens and bring them to market and I’m still fine tuning the prototypes and starting to juggle the numbers.  Sitting ( or standing) around plants that I’m growing is the most soul easing place in the world.  I sincerely believe that anyone who loves to grow plants gets the same feeling.  It can be stretched a little out of shape now and then, when the slugs are eating holes in my pepper leaves and the earwigs are treating my romaine lettuce like a high rise condo.

It makes me wonder if people with other passions get the same sense of peace or if maybe this is just something special that’s given to people who love to ( or is that need to? ) grow things.

The great summer experiment this year is coming along very well and I’m very close to finalizing a design for a balcony, patio, deck or terrace (whatever you want to call a small private space with no place to stick a shovel) hydroponic vegetable garden.  It’s very exciting because at this point I have a design that not only is dead simple to work with and  is recognizable to just about anyone as a garden but it can also be brought to market for a better price than anything else out there.

I can swear to you that the plants I have in the hydroponic gardens are growing better than my pampered little beauties in their pots of compost- and they are much easier to care for- probably because I don’t have to water them every day and don’t need to worry that they’re going to just about expire if we get a hot day and I’m not around to water them

This is what I was aiming for when I started this project.  High yield, organic and super low maintenance vegetable gardens in a small space.  It’s all coming together now, but there was one thing I had forgotten about – Earwigs!

In my 20’s I did battle with them, only to learn that it isn’t worth the trouble and now I have them again, hiding in the lettuce, dining on my basil and chewing great jeezly holes in my peppers.  Thirty years later and almost nothing has changed – except me.

So, we covered sunlight already – the only thing you can’t do too much about, unless you’re going to cut down a few trees or demolish the neighbours garage, which is probably not a great idea.

The next thing to think about is the question “Why?” as in’ Why do you want to grow your own vegetables?”

If you want access to favoured or hard to find treats like oriental eggplants or thai basil or snow peas that don’t have the texture of cardboard,  or heritage tomatoes- thats one possible reason.

Another is that you’d simply like to grow a few vegetables that you and your family like and ýou want to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are organic,  chemical free and as fresh as possible.  Another perfectly valid reason.

Another reason is that, even though you don’t have much room you want a vegetable garden that will make a solid contribution to your families consumption by  improving the quality of what you get and at the same time saving some money.  Value is good.

Or just maybe you’ve simply  been bitten by a desire to grow something, because it will make your soul happy.  Welcome.

Every reason is a good one.  Heck I don’t think there can possibly be a bad reason for growing a vegetable garden.  But if you’re going to be growing on a patio, balcony or deck , space will be at a premium.  If you want to be happy with the result, it won’t hurt to give a little thought to what result you’ll be happy with.

Every reason I’ve outlined will take you down a slightly different path when you plan your own garden- and anything is possible.

If you want to grow vegetables and you don’t have a lot of room, it doesn’t really matter if you have a balcony, a deck, a patio or simply a small unplantable space because what you’ll all have in common is the need to plant your vegetables in containers.

And everyone is working with the same simple equalizer- sunlight.  If you want to grow vegetables you need sunlight and lots of it and preferably you need sun morning – noon and afternoon.

The amount of sunlight you get is the number one factor you need to take into consideration if you want to grow vegetables in containers and it’s probably the only consideration that you won’t be able to find a work-around for.

I’d say as a rule of thumb your bare minimum to grow vegetables is 5 hours of direct light and I mean direct afternoon sun.  A spot that only gets morning sun simply will not cut it- sorry.  So think of sun from lunch to 5 and remember that’s the minimum.  You’ll get growth and a few things will grow reasonably well- but most of your plants will never hit their maximum potential unless they get the light all day.

This is especially true of tomatoes. They are -without a doubt -the numero uno vegetable choice, which you have to admit is a little ironic since technically, tomatoes are not a vegetable- they’re a fruit. sorry I couldn’t resist.

Acorn Squash

I guess that, in a way, gardens are like your children.  They grow a little bit every day, but you’re so close you don’t realize it, until something makes you stand up and take notice.  The garden that I’ve referred to as my summer project is absolutely taking off.  The hydroponic versions have pretty much outstripped the regular soil- in-container versions, with the exception of the Thai hot peppers and I realize that the soil versions are getting about 1 1/2 more hours of sun each day and it’s making a real difference.

If I start thinking now about all the new ways to use acorn squash I might be able to manage what is looking to be the start of a bumper crop.  The snow peas are starting to produce very tender and very tasy pods and I’ve recently added some beefstake and heritage “Brandywine” tomatoes in a newly configured garden that I’m hoping will create “The Tomato Solution” because I cannot possibly bring this to market without a tomato configuration.

But what has truly blown me away beyond my wildest expectations is the cut-and-come-again salad garden.  I’m a big salad eater and so far, from a 4 foot planting of mixed greens I’ve taken at least 6 salads for 3 people in a two week period and it just keeps getting fuller.  And the taste and texture of these greens is like nothing else I’ve ever had- which is I guess what happens when you’re not eating a commercially grown crop that must be a variety that travels well.

Here are some more shots!

Salad Greens

Snow Peas

Well, it’s too early to say for sure what works, but I’m getting a feeling for what doesn’t work and I’m sorry to say I need to go back to the drawing board for the larger plants.  The two tubs that I made to hold 3 – 6 large plants each have some challenges and so far, they’re not insurmountable, but I think I have a much better idea for the design.

I shouldn’t have put the aggregated clay at the bottom of the bags, not sure why my brain was dead that day but until the roots reach into it, the clay doesn’t allow the moisture to work it’s way higher up into the bag.  And the roots aren’t likely to reach the bottom when the top and the middle – where they’re living now doesn’t get the nutrient.  I made the same mistake with the pipe gardens, but I used very little aggregate so some of the coir still made contact with the moisture.  This is not to say that any of the plants are doing anything less than thriving- they’re growing like gangbusters!

Even though the hydroponic test plants were 1-2 weeks behind the plants I potted into traditional containers with compost and soil,  they have pretty much surpassed them in size and have started to flower sooner.

The pipe gardens so far are total winners ( a.k.a. nothing has gone wrong yet) I’ve had 3 salads so far from the container greens- very satisfying and once the cukes take off I’d better dig up the pickle recipe again.

I now just need to refine the pipe gardens and figure out the most economical way to produce them- and I need a stand for balconies and patios that don’t have a place to affix them vertically and for people who don’t have the time, tools or the desire or skills to do that kind of job.

This was a lot more work than I expected it to be, but things always are – however  I’m very excited to say that I have the pipe gardens up and working and the tub garden is just waiting for my tomatoes to arrive.

I have  some pictures of the current state of affairs in my crowded little backyard and only wish that I had the energy to haul some of the ugly stuff out of the background before I took the shots.

The pipe gardens might need a little more waterproofing. I’m not sure yet because it won’t stop raining long enough to tell if the outside is wet from rain, dew or leakage – I’m hoping for the first two.

Hydroponic beans in the pipe garden

On top of everything else – it’s been so bloody cold here that on the evening of May 30 ( if you can believe it) I almost lost my hot peppers from the cold – one of two degrees colder and it would have been a frosty death.

The Hydroponic Pipe gardens

I have set beans, and peas on the top shelf so that they can climb up the deck posts.  On the second level I have my cut and come again baby salad greens.  and on the bottom shelf is basil, Thai basil and some small Thai peppers – The valves seem to be working just find and so I’m ready now to start tracking the growth and comparing it to the plants I’ve set up on the deck that are planted in compost.