It's been forever! (But I actually have stuff to write about today)

Wow it's been a long time since I posted anything but with good reason I think. It's been a rough couple of years and I haven't been feeling very "bloggish" so to speak. Finally though I have motivation and things I want to blog about!

First things first, garden report. It's winter but here in Florida that just means it is time to plant Broccoli and  did! The plants have been out in the raised bed now since some time in November and they are now on their way to producing with little inch-wide florets showing on the healthy looking plants. I specify that because I had quite a few failed plants this time around. It could be because the soil has been poorly cared for over the past year or just bad luck with sprouting because some of the sprouts were pretty leggy. No worries, the blame lies on the less then prompt actions of the gardener in this situation but just growing this single crop has really renewed my gardening motivation and a full well cared for garden is in the works for late February which is the last day of frost around here. I'm feeing motivated and seeds are about to be ordered.

OK the second thing going on that I'm pretty excited about and incidently also the cause of the less attentive start to a winter garden is a project I have been thinking about for years, an automated mini-greenhouse.  I finally started the project way back in February of last year and last night was the official first planting of a crop of Spinach.

So what is a mini-greenhouse? Well in one sentence it's an electronically maintained greenhouse which can be maintained indoors and monitored from your web browser.

This is my mini-greenhouse which I am calling The Garden Droid (you know like garden gnome?)

So what you see up there is my Garden Droid which boasts a whopping 3 sq. ft. of well lit gardening space, soil moisture monitoring, temperature logging, LED grow lights and wireless transmission of data to my computer. Coming soon it will also be self watering, monitor humidity and ambient light as well as have an upgraded wireless protocol so it can transmit small pictures of the plant growth. And I mentioned the website where I can monitor everything going on? Below is a quick snap of the web application which is used to monitor not just the Garden Droid plants but your whole garden.

The whole project is open source and built on free software with open hardware that anyone can buy and build. I will be trickling out technical details and how to's in the following weeks for anyone interested and heck if my plants grow well I might even sell kits but first lets see if I can get spinach to grow well.

Part of my motivation for this project was to be able to grow salads year round but here in FL most of the summer is not kind to regular spinach and other leafy greens, its just too darn hot and all my efforts have been a failure. I figured that since I am keeping my house artificially cool all summer and the temps would be great for growing greens, why not give it  ago? I plan to eventually get this little box powered by a solar panel collecting dust int he garage as well then there will be a net gain of energy savings though just growing at home saves oil I would think.

Anyway I am really excited about version 1 coming together and I am looking forward to the next version with the enhanced capabilities. I'll also be producing technical details which I might post here or perhaps only on my technical blog, lees2bytes not sure yet on where it belongs.

Kinda figures I was an I...

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Flickr Garden Show

I was playing around with flickr apis and found this nifty little slideshow!

Home Grown Lunch

OK it's nearly a home grown lunch. The soup is curried Squash soup made from frozen garden squash but of course the spices are not home grown. The Salad has home grown greens with dried cherry tomatoes. Also present is home dried bananas, I dry them when they start to get too ripe and the are perfect and free of all the additives you get with store bought dried fruit!

Growing Soil

I've actually grown my soil! I started my garden just 2 years ago with some small mostly sandy, lifeless soil. I've added many layers of compost, mulch and a bit of organic components. And just the other day as I was planting cauliflower seedlings I found an earth work in my garden bed!

I'm pretty darn excited! I've managed in only two years to turn what would pass as beach sand into loamy, brown living soil. Did I say I'm excited? I just thought it would take more then two years. Can't wait to see how the cauliflower do!

Taking The Train

This summer we have decided to spend a little more time and a lot less money on our summer vacation by taking the train. It is partially the money, with the price of gas and hotels etc. we saved about 60% compared to taking a car or even a plane! Yup thats right, it really was that much cheeper!

In addition to the simple savings and perhaps just as important, we made our summer vacation low carbon! I'm really quite pleased with that as well, it's a bonus knowing that I didn't burn up 6 tanks of gas going to NC and back.

So my thoughts on train riding, in short it was fun and relaxing though a bit long. When I say long though don't get me wrong it was only a couple hours longer then driving and significantly less exhausting. I was able to read, write and relax with no need to worry about falling asleep at the whee! That made it worth it to me. One observation though, Amtrak hasn't been use to heavy traffic on their trains, but I would say that this is the summer of the train and Amtrak is very busy. They don't quite seem to be prepared for this heavy passenger load as the employees seemed a bit stressed from the really heavy load. Nearly every seat on every coach I walked through was full! I wouldn't be surprised if the last time Amtrak was that busy was the 70's! Despite this it was good trip and I expect Amtrak will get use to the good business as I seriously doubt gas will go down, ever again. Welcome to the second age of the train!

Reducing Food Miles

A few weeks ago we picked up an organic spaghetti squash to try out a new recipe and since my choices at the store were organic imported from Mexico and non-organic imported from Honduras, I opted for the organic. Well the food miles on something like that is pretty high but not much worse then coming from California I suppose. Well as I scooped out the seeds I decided that one way to cut some food miles on this squash was to save to seeds! Why not? They are organic and obviously able to grow in warm climates! I have saved probably 30 or more seeds, cleaned, dryed and stored nice and safe. Just to make sure that they were viable I planted four and now I have three healthy growing sprouts ready to go into the ground. So the next few spaghetti squash I eat will have zero food miles. That should cut down the mileage a bit!

Got Squash!

The squash is really growing! I've pulled about 4lbs of squash from the garden already and there is more out there then we'll ever be able to eat! I'll probably share some our to friends.

Check out this huge monster! This squash is well over a pound, not bad and totally grown organically! My soil has really improved from last year which makes me quite proud. I've added some organic improvements but, also lots of mulch and dark compost from the compost pile!

Fruit Cup

This morning I went out to toss some stuff into the compost bin and collect up the ripe blueberry! It's pretty cool to wander out the back door and gather up food while there is still a blanket of fog hanging over the yard. It was peaceful and cool with the light energy of the waking world as the birds provided a jovial, musical backdrop.

Yea, my fruit cup isn't really much, I only have to very young blueberry bushes and a hand full of strawberry plants, but they tend to produce a couple of bowls full of fruit each season. I'm often amazed at how many mature plants it can take to produce one bowl of berries. I think it takes a great deal more land to produce berries then other foods though I haven't checked the yield per sqft. What always amazes me more is when I'm at the fruit stand and there is a huge container of blueberries sitting right next to dozens of other containers and my mind instantly starts computing the number of bushes it takes to fill the containers, wow!

On the garden front, It shouldn't be more then another day or two before I start harvesting squash! I have a nearly ripe squash already out there and at least 6 more that are a week out! Fun time for some curried squash soup, or just curried squash, or maybe even little bruchetta squash? Humm so many options

Things Are On The Grow

So my vegi garden is growing great! Over 2/3 of my seedlings have been in the ground for over a month now and things are really starting to fill in. I love it when the plants start to really fit into their place, filling out and starting to show signs of flowers. It's reassuring to know that you did things right and all that optimism about a good harvest is looking possible.


I took some pictures of my hillside beds which measure in at about 192 sq. ft. of growing space. I also grow herbs and eatable flowers around the backyard amungst annual, non-eatables. This years vegi crop will consist of black beans, okra, cantaloupe, carrot, 2 types of onions, 2 types of tomatoes , cucumber, yellow squash and sunflowers! Yum!

My Nasturtiums are blooming! The lower bed is brand new, just built last week. I also have a shot of my black bean forest, fun huh?