Maybe we are making some progress!

The seeds...

I posted a picture of my overachieving pumpkin seedling on the 29th, here are a couple of pictures that I have snapped since then: 

May 1st at 9:25 AM

May 1st at 11:30 PM! Wow, what happened while I was at work!?

And May 2nd at 12:15 PM. WOW! What a difference 24 hours can make! I really feel like we are starting to make progress.

The plants...

We woke up to another wonderful present from the Rain Gods this morning. I am really disappointed in the Weatherman, it was supposed to be nice and dry overnight and we didn't take any sort of precautions to keep our buckets from flooding. Fortunately, it wasn't a lot of rain. Our strawberry plants must be starting to actually USE nutrients, the nutrient/water level was much lower in the buckets than I would have expected, given the rain. The net pots were about 1/4" submerged in the solution, but now the solution is barely covering the bottom of the pots.

Zack's solitary little strawberry is ALMOST all red now. He is chomping at the bit to eat it, I am afraid that he will pick it way before it is ready.

We haven't potted our watermelon vines or our Cherokee Purple tomato yet, we are scheduled to do it today, but it is still a little misty outside.

Our pretty little tomato precursor!

Hell Juice...

So, after creating the Hell Juice on April 30, I suffered from severely burning hands. The combination of jalapeno, habanero, and garlic juice was not kind to my skin! Of course, I Googled the problem, coming up with results ranging from milk, to automotive hand cleaner, to rubbing alcohol. Guess who doesn't have any milk or rubbing alcohol in the house?! I ended up washing my hands with automotive hand cleaner, alcoholic mouth wash, and Jose Cuervo Gold (I shudder to think about the cost of that hand washing session!). The pain in my hands subsided enough for me to sleep, only to revive after my shower the next morning. Finally, I found the solution: hand sanitizer! My hands are OK now, just a little tender, but I smell garlic CONSTANTLY! My coworkers assured me that it was all in my head, but I just KNOW that I walked around smelling like a vampire hunter last night.

Anyway, now that I am finished whining...

The Hell Juice actually worked! I gently misted it onto my strawberries and bell peppers and watched the little bugs scurry away in agony. I haven't seen one since!

Kudzu Bugs and Other Things!

This Morning...

The strawberries and bell peppers were looking great on the way to work this morning. The strawberries are showing some nice progress...

Of course, the bell peppers aren't really doing anything yet, but at least they were still alive!

Later...

This afternoon, I received the dreaded text from Zack: We have Kudzu Bugs on our strawberries! I was heartbroken! For those of you that don't know, Kudzu Bugs (Megacopta cribaria) are ugly, little, ladybug-looking, black bugs that SWARM all over kudzu vines. I didn't know what they were until last year, I ran into a swarm of them while cutting grass and I was COVERED in less than 10 seconds. It was awful. I hate to admit this, but I just plain DON'T like bugs.

We did a little bit of Googling to try to find out what to do about them, but our results were sparse at best. Even the Agricultural Gods at Clemson don't know how to get rid of them! I found a couple of results that suggested a garlic/jalapeno juice  mixture may or may not repel them.

....Time for another late night trip to Wal-Mart!

Hell Juice...

In a frenzy, I obtained my supplies. I really didn't have any idea how to actually MAKE garlic/jalapeno juice, but I was going to figure it out! I ended up leaving with a bag of jalapenos, one of habaneros, a huge thingy of elephant ear garlic, a garlic press, and a tomato plant. 

DISCLAIMER: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME! If you are stupid enough to do so, please wear gloves, long sleeves, goggles, and a respirator! I didn't think to use ANY of the above.

I began by squeezing the jalapenos and habaneros into a spray bottle with the garlic press, one miserable drop at a time. I quickly realized that: 1) I may have purchased a defective garlic press, or 2) Jalapenos and habaneros are not supposed to be squeezed with a garlic press! I switched to actual garlic, but it really didn't work well either. Garlic doesn't make JUICE in a garlic press, it makes little garlic pulp things! I finally just kind of scooped the smushed garlic into the spray bottle, along with two crushed habaneros and two crushed jalapenos. I added hot water, shook it, and set it to the side to marinate. 

Maybe it will work, maybe not! If not, I'm only out $6 and some severely burning hands.

The tomato plant...

Of course, we couldn't visit Wal-Mart without visiting the garden department! Somehow, we ended up with a Cherokee Purple tomato plant. Zack had watched a YouTube video by mhpgardener about the variety and he fell in love. I don't really get it, we don't eat tomatoes, but I'm game for anything!

I'll try to get the tomato into a bucket tomorrow, or maybe Thursday.

Our Seeds

On April 22, we started cayenne, habanero, pumpkin, Sugar Baby watermelon, and carrot seeds in two Jiffy Greenhouses. So far, the Sugar Babies and the pumpkins are the only seeds that are showing any progress.

Pumpkin, probably planted too shallow.

Sugar Baby.

Pumpkins that just aren't quite there yet.

Also, we started germinating some cucumber seeds in a cup of water today, just to see if it works a little quicker.

Bell Peppers

Alright, you can officially call us impatient. We quickly realized that it takes too long to grow things from seeds! So, a couple of days ago, I picked up a 4 pack of bell pepper plants and a couple of Crimson Sweet watermelon vines.

We are kind of iffy on growing the bell pepper plants hydroponically. They can grow to be pretty large and online sources all seem to point to the fact that you need a larger container, such as a 5 gallon bucket, for each plant. That is a lot of nutrients for something that grows great in my yard! We decided to grow three of the bell peppers in a square, 4 gallon icing bucket.

The bucket held approximately three and one half gallons of water. We added three teaspoons plus 1 mL of  Dyna-Gro Grow 7-9-5 and 13 mL of B'Cuzz Root. 

I potted the remaining bell pepper in a one gallon bucket in regular potting soil.

Ugh..Rain

Our Dyna-Gro Liquid Grow 7-9-5 arrived the day after our strawberries were potted. We added 1 tsp to each bucket. Well, we told ourselves that it was 1 tsp. We still didn't have any sort of reliable measuring device and we actually used a plastic spoon to measure. Close enough is good enough, right? The strawberries weren't really looking any worse, but they weren't looking any better either.

Two days after potting, it started raining cats and dogs. I couldn't decide what to do. Should we leave the plants outside to get rained on? Should we bring them inside? It was sort of an ethical dilemma for me. My intention was to grow the strawberries with as little interference as possible, but the buckets were starting to flood. We received about 0.39in of rain, with more in the forecast. Finally, we made the decision. We poured the excess water off of the plants and moved them under the awning for the next day and a half. 

The plants seem to be showing a little progress, with bud formation and some new leaves appearing.

Strawberry Prep and Planting

Strawberry Prep And Planting

We decided to plant the strawberries in one gallon icing buckets from the bakery at a local grocery store. To  start, we cut holes in the bucket lids:

Maybe our circles weren't very round...

But, it all worked out in the end!

The red lava rock is very dusty and had to be cleaned before we could use it.

Gross! Kind of looks like my Mom's spaghetti sauce!

After about two dozen rinses! Not finished yet...

I continued to rinse the red lava rock until it FINALLY came clean, then we were able to start potting the strawberries.

We removed the strawberries from the little nursery cups that they came in and carefully washed the roots to remove as much soil as possible. We placed a few lava rocks in the bottom of a net cup, guided a few of the roots through the holes, and topped the pot with lava rocks to stabilize the plant.

We added tap water to our icing buckets and prepared to add the B'Cuzz Root. The instructions on the B'Cuzz called for 1 mL per liter or 1 tsp per gallon. Dummy time again! We don't own a measuring spoon, or any other similar device! Is a capful closer to an mL or a tsp? Who knows? Screw it! We placed varying amounts of B'Cuzz in each bucket, then dropped our net pots into their holes.

Now, the next part was a little irritating. The basis of the Kratky method is that plants grow "oxygen roots" and "water roots." In order for the plants to survive, the roots need to be able to access oxygen and the water/nutrient mix. The net pots should be submerged about 1/4" into the solution, leaving an oxygen gap. We had a difficult time getting the water level just right, but we finally managed it.

Our first four babies!

The Beginning

The Beginning

Alright, so after some very thoughtful, somewhat impaired research, my husband and I decided to grow hydroponic watermelons. For some reason, watermelons just won't grow in our red, Carolina clay. I'm assuming that it is due to a drainage problem, they all just rot on the vine. 

We scoured eBay and Google for supplies and methodology, eventually settling on the Kratky Method of hydroponic growing. Simply put, the Kratky method seems to be the simplest, cheapest way of growing hydroponically. It really only requires a container (buckets, coffee cans, storage totes, anything!), a net pot (purchased or created), a growing medium (you can use almost anything: aquarium gravel, perlite, hydroton, lava rock, etc.), and nutrients. I am all about simplicity and cheapness, I couldn't imagine creating some of the expensive systems that are described online! 

We ordered nutrients, Dyna-Gro Liquid Grow Plant Food 7-9-5, and a lot of 3" net pots from eBay. I sent Zack to Wal-Mart for watermelon seeds and a Jiffy Greenhouse, he returned with TWO Jiffy Greenhouses, two varieties of watermelon seed, pumpkin seed, cayenne seed, habanero seed, and carrot seed. How in the heck did, "We are going to grow hydroponic watermelons," turn into all that!? We started the seeds in our Jiffy Greenhouses, then it happened. We got bit by the Hydroponic Bug. HARD. We couldn't wait to get started!

We toddled off to Wal-Mart again (you can find some really strange people at Wal-Mart at midnight!) and purchased four strawberry plants, two All Star and two Quinalt. Oops, our first boo-boo! All Star is a June-bearing strawberry plant and Quinalt is everbearing. June-bearing strawberry plants produce fruit for two to three weeks in spring. Everbearing strawberries produce fruit three times: spring, summer and fall. Oh well, you only live once!

We were still waiting on the supplies that we ordered on eBay to be shipped to us, but we wanted to get started immediately! Wal-Mart was unable to supply two of our other most immediate needs, a growing medium (we had decided on hydroton) and nutrients. After much more exhaustive Googling, we happened upon our local hydroponics shop, The Green Thumb. 

The Green Thumb was a hydroponic growers dream! They had all sorts of goodies that shocked our hydro-virgin brains. The array of nutrients that they stocked was dazzling! I didn't bother to read any of that dry stuff on nutrient percentages and contents. It just really didn't sound very fun! We ended up with a product called B'Cuzz Root, a product specifically for young plants, cuttings, or seedlings. It probably wasn't all that we needed to get started, but it seems to have worked. The Green Thumb carries hydroton, but it was a little pricey at $11.95 for a giant zipper bag. We picked up a few 3" net pots and continued on our quest.

We picked up a bag of red lava rock at Home Depot and sped home, eager to get started!