Beany Beany where are YOU???

waterbaby12347waterbaby12347 Raw Newbie

Please tell me all about your winter basement garden including your planting medium, light source and watering system.... PLEASE?!?!?!?!

Can't wait to learn!!!

Comments

  • emtpdmomemtpdmom Raw Newbie

    Beany, I was hoping to gleen some valuable information from you on the subject of your winter basement garden. Your personal experiences always add so much depth to the information you share. Hope to hear from you soon.

    Brenda

  • beanybeeganbeanybeegan Raw Newbie

    Sorry, sorry, sorry!!!

    Winter garden.

    Shelves: Use what you have, but they have to have enough depth to hold two sets of lights, side by side, and room enough for plants to grow in height, they should not have a back, and not solid metal. Painting them and walls of room enamel white would be helpful. I now have wire shelves 8' long, 6' high.

    Lights: Regular 4' long shop lights.

    Bulbs: is the regular florescent tubes ( ea. shop light holds two light tubes, so one tube will be a cool light and the other a warm light.)

    Each shelf has to be big enough to hold two shop lights!! So then you will have 2 cool lights and 2 warm lights on each shelf. Making it one cool, one warm, one cool, one warm tube light.

    Temp.: Keep on the cool side, if you raise all greens. About 60-65 should do it. You can not raise tomatoes,

    peppers etc with cool veggies. If all my seeds are planted at once I start at 65 they when up, go down to 55. You can also start a tray or two in a warmer area, then when just up put in the cooler area. When my shelf area was smaller that is what I did.

    While on lights and temp.:. The expensive kind used for green houses are good for the warm veggies and the temp. has to be kept high for producing fruit. Tho I start my warm veggy plants in my dining room then when up put them under the light set up. When able I have two mini green houses-3'+2 1/2' +6' that I then put in the tomatoes, peppers, cucs, melons and squash. I also will have started early cabb., lettuce and other goodies to put into the mini green house. All are in 4" pots. When the green stuff is planted I will one more time pot up the tomatoes and peppers into larger containers but still in the mini green houses. I bought these houses on sale $28 ea. last winter. The boxes were rain damaged. Now is a good time to go nosing around the nursery areas.

    Watering system. lol gal. jug and a turkey baster. You don't want the shelves or floor to get wet, as you want to keep dampness down. For cool plants the water should be on the coolish side but not cold. To start the seed...hum....o.k. I'll say it....pea warm.

    Fertilizer: I feed the plants once or twice, and diluted at 4 tsp.. "seacom-PGR Seaweed Concentrate 0-4-4 ", in 1 gallon water.

    Soil. I use straight seed starting mix. If the seed is big enough I use potting soil. Whitneys, or Black Gold brand. Or any kind that is organic and sterilized. I have noticed Whitneys is not as good as it use to be, really not broke down enough.

    Trays: one day I will up grade to the heavy plastic type but right now I still use the trays that hold starting pots. One tray I have to put holes into for drainage, then I put the tray with holes in it in two staked solid trays. This gives good support. Check out Johnny's too.

    Seeds: Most of my seed is from www.johnnyseeds.com I see they are cutting back so I may be looking for a new supplier. You will find enough seed for planting indoors, under lights.

    What I like: Encore Lettuce Mix buy one oz.; Micro Mix Varieties I usually let grow to baby lettuce size 1/4 lb.; Shoots are sunflower, peas, popcorn. Johnny's has a tech sheet on growing the shoots. Mild mesclun Mix one oz.

    Johnny's has trays with and with out drainage holes and seedling mix. This is also where I get the plant food.

    Think that about covers it all. If you have any questions please ask. I will keep my nose to GR.

  • beanybeeganbeanybeegan Raw Newbie

    plants inside. .......How do we remove comment?

  • emtpdmomemtpdmom Raw Newbie

    Bluedolfin, please do step in. My toes are not sensitive. I sometimes worry that I might appear to be posting just to be posting. However, the teacher in me can't sit back and watch people flounder and be unhappy with the remake when I have information that has made it easier for me to use the site. I suggested once to Kandace and Ray that a "Help" tab or link on the homepage would be helpful (sorry, not good grammar . . . help and helpful together like this). With so many changes to the site and all the intricacies, I still think it would be a good idea. In the meantime, we just need to keep at it so people (newbies and oldies alike) can get comfortable with the new Gone Raw. The resource is too valuable and powerful to do otherwise.

  • BluedolfinBluedolfin Raw Newbie

    beany beegan~

    For right now there doesn't seem to be a way to delete a comment (hasn't been implemented yet). The "workaround" for the time being is to simply delete everything in the comment and then leave something in the comment like a period ("."), saying something like "comment deleted", or whatever message you want to leave...

    emtpdmom aka websitemom~ You have been doing such a great job and have an untiring effort at guiding people through the new site "features". Hope this isn't stepping on your toes. Just thought I would give you a breather, at least for one post. :)

  • beanybeeganbeanybeegan Raw Newbie

    waterbaby, Sorry I was late getting to your question. Did you get into winter gardening? I see on www.sproutpeople.com that there is more modern ways of winter gardening than I have done. I am very interested in trying them out. One growing medium is with a so called baby blanket and the other is vermiculite. Have you heard about using these for baby plants? I think they may be better than planting mix.

  • malchusmommalchusmom Raw Newbie

    are you beany from the Hallelujaj acres site????????

  • waterbaby12347waterbaby12347 Raw Newbie

    Wow beany thanks so much for all your great information!!! I will be checking out the sprout people site to see what you're excited about... smile

  • beanybeeganbeanybeegan Raw Newbie

    malchusmom, hey howdy. Thats me beany beegan here. Cant get onto H.A.. Yes? Oh well, we can meet up here. Good recipes too. Nice picture! There is a Christian sight here too. Just in case you didn't see it.

    Waterbaby. When one gets over 65 it doesn't take much for excitement.!!! I see they also have heavier trays.

  • malchusmommalchusmom Raw Newbie

    HI Beany!!!!i join this site because you told me about it one time at the HA site,it been down for a month or so, is the site going to come back??i miss it!!!

  • beanybeeganbeanybeegan Raw Newbie

    Malchusmom,,,,,, I keep phoning and sending e-mails but no reply as yet. Since it has been so long I would say ??????????? They could be off.

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