Welcome!

[logrus9]

Hi everyone, just found the site because of the discussion on Couve Tronchuda. What a great deal of information, I joined because I'm sure I'll learn more!

[cortona]

welcome on board Logrus9!lots of info here and lots of good people!

[casino]

Hi everyone, just joined today. Lots of information to sort through. I manage a community garden, have my own greenhouse (just for tomatoes) and have grown over 500 varieties and I cant believe that I just found this site today. When I figure out how to navigate then I will beging posting. See ya.

[trixtrax]

Would be interested to hear which varieties you grow, casino. Dang, that's a lot of toms!

[stratcat]

Welcome! Join right in.

By the way, are you the guy I met at the end of September up in mid-Michigan that told me of the Casino tomato and Casino Chips?

john T

[swanscross]

Thanks for the Welcome. I am a home gardener, 50+ closer to 60 years young. My pet project is creating gardens in my yard. I try to grow heirloom's as much as possible, I practice organic gardening, I try to garden sustainably. I was away from home for 2 yrs, when I wa finally able to return it was during the worst drought in 100 yrs in my area, yet some few things managed to hang on, but it was brutal looking at my beds and not having vegetables to harvest. In 2011 my pet project was started. I wanted to create a memory garden...in saying that...my objective was to obtain seeds not only special in my own memories from childhood, but to collect tidbits from others "shared" memories or stories about seeds they kindly donated to me. In 2012 I planted the donated seeds, kept track of the shared memories and harvested my crops. Seeds were accepted as they came in, it may not have been for this area, but was planted anyway. I still have a long way to go, a lot to learn and more beds to plant. The name of my project is "For Garden Seed" this past year from swaps, purchases, etc I now have about 250 varieties of seeds to plant. I have saved seeds from 2012 crops to trade and hopefully will continue to grow my gardens until I can open them to the public, invite children into the experience and share with my community (a town of 1000)

[circumspice]

Welcome to HG swanscross! We look forward to hearing from you about your gardening experiences.

What a lovely idea, a memory garden!

I have some seed I received at the winter wedding of a dear friend's daughter. There are about a dozen flower seed varieties & even a sunflower seed variety. I had planned to plant a circular memory garden in the bride's honor & name the garden for her. I can't wait for spring.

[hotwired]

The site was recommended by Nickyn from MyFolia, and I also see Circumspice is here. I'm a retired optical engineer and former VP-Engineering for an aerospace manufacturer. I've been gardening for 60 years and try to apply my engineering to gardening whenever possible. I grow in raised beds and have completely automated my irrigation with 16 zones, each with moisture sensors, so I can irrigate each zone individually based on the plant requirements and soil moisture at any given time. I grow 40 tomato plants in a 40' hoophouse, pruning to a single vine. I have a greenhouse where I start nearly 2 thousand plants. I have several hoop houses for hardening and greenhouse overflow. I belong to a group that sets up gardens for low income families, growing about 1200 tomato and pepper plants for distribution to hundreds of low-income at-risk families. Cornell greenhouses donated 6500 plants last year. I also raise strawberries with over 3500 plants. I have a webpage on my gardens called HotwiredGardens, and I love to talk gardening.

[wolfcub]

Welcome hotwired you sound very busy doing some very good work.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Hotwired: Welcome. For years, I've followed your postings about the spectral output of lamps and how they interact with plants. We had a thread on here the other week about what's the best inexpensive bulb to use for starting plants indoors. Any feedback on that?

[hotwired]

Jan 30, 2013 16:01:20 GMT -5 Joseph Lofthouse said:

Hotwired: Welcome. For years, I've followed your postings about the spectral output of lamps and how they interact with plants. We had a thread on here the other week about what's the best inexpensive bulb to use for starting plants indoors. Any feedback on that?

Thanks, Glad to be here.

Being a retired optical engineer, I ran spectral curves on all the major brands and types of growlights out there, and I've waster a lot of time and money on systems that perfomed poorly relative to the PAR curve (plant's requirements). I've concluded that a 6500K fluorescent is actually as good if not better than most systems out there. The daylight 6500K fluorescent of CFL bulbs have an ideal spectral curve relative to PAR. Plants require primarily Blue light for foliage and root growth, and Red wavelengths for flowering and fruiting. I'll try to do a post on lighting soon that deals with more specifics as well as lumen output relative to sunlight.

Hotwired

[MikeH]

Hey Doug,

Welcome aboard. You'll have fun here.

Mike

[Joseph Lofthouse]

The other profound influence that hotwired has had on my gardening is greatly simplifying the hardening off process. He recommended putting a layer of plastic (don't remember how thick) between the plants and the sunlight. Seems that it's the UV rays in sunlight that cause sunburn. A layer of plastic absorbs the UV rays, and after 4 days they are ready for transplant into the fields. Easiest hardening off I ever did... (Other than cooking a few flats of plants.) I finally worked out an arrangement where the plastic is open sided so that heat doesn't build up under it.

[hotwired]

Jan 30, 2013 21:13:10 GMT -5 Joseph Lofthouse said:

Easiest hardening off I ever did... (Other than cooking a few flats of plants.)

..... And I wrote in bold type MAKE SURE YOU HAVE GOOD VENTILATION. - lol. I'm surprised that anyone read my ramblings.
Working Mans Guide to Hardening off Plants

I'm just a Jury Rigger who made 60 years of mistakes over and over...

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

Seems that it's the UV rays in sunlight that cause sunburn. A layer of plastic absorbs the UV rays, and after 4 days they are ready for transplant into the fields. Easiest hardening off I ever did... (Other than cooking a few flats of plants.) I finally worked out an arrangement where the plastic is open sided so that heat doesn't build up under it.

I have some orange PVC that i bought for a dna transilluminator filter. It filters out UV and blue light. I have some extra left over, and i had considered using it to build a small coldframe. But i was worried that maybe it would filter out the blue light which is needed by the plants, and i wasn't sure if plants need UV. It makes sense that it's the UV that is harmful. But what would happen if you grew plants in an environment that filtered out UV light completely?

Being a retired optical engineer, I ran spectral curves on all the major brands and types of growlights out there, and I've waster a lot of time and money on systems that perfomed poorly relative to the PAR curve (plant's requirements). I've concluded that a 6500K fluorescent is actually as good if not better than most systems out there. The daylight 6500K fluorescent of CFL bulbs have an ideal spectral curve relative to PAR. Plants require primarily Blue light for foliage and root growth, and Red wavelengths for flowering and fruiting. I'll try to do a post on lighting soon that deals with more specifics as well as lumen output relative to sunlight.

I have read several times about the spectrum of blue and red that plants use to grow. I once read that to get both the best grow light (best meaning cheap/practical) was to combine a regular fluorescent bulb with a standard incandescent bulb, and that between the two of them you would get decent coverage of both blue and red. But since incandescents are a dying breed i don't know how much longer you will be able to buy those. LED bulbs are becoming more common, but i'm not certain as to their current prices or their spectrums.