The Garden Room

[maskedsonnet]

I squeezed all my new farms in there!!! I haven't planted them yet, I go out of town tomorrow and won't be back until Friday, which is probably when I'll plant the new gardens and re-plant several others. The Habanero plant suddenly died without ever producing peppers. I'll re-plant that, I think I may have let that room get a little too hot and shocked it. Ended the roasting pepper after a good harvest. The peppers are very tasty, and have good-sized pods!! The flower garden only had 1 flower germinate, so will re-plant the pods that didn't come up. As for the rest - not sure yet!! I have some vague ideas that I'm going to write down and ponder while I'm gone. The cucumber is doing great, as are almost all of the tomato plants. The sweet pepper in the Farm 24 XL is very healthy, but the tomato plant doesn't look great, may end and replant that too. Haven't decided yet. I got a lot of work done yesterday and tonight, but still have a lot of work ahead of me!!

[tompepper7]

The only thing unimpressive is that the farms are not all on the ground with another farm stacked on top.

[maskedsonnet]

May 21, 2023 22:19:40 GMT -5 tompepper7 said:

The only thing unimpressive is that the farms are not all on the ground with another farm stacked on top.

I thought about doing that!! But it would have made the extra water reservoirs harder to set up for them.

[Shawn]

The room looks great!!!!

[scarfguy]

Nice pics!  Really nice grow room!

I see you have the necessary step ladder for reaching the farm controls.

How many electrical circuits do you have feeding these gardens?

You don't want to overload it and blow the breaker.

[maskedsonnet]

That whole room and part of my living room is on the same circuit, which does make me nervous sometimes because it’s the only wall of the living room that my entertainment center will fit against without blocking the front door or the windows. It’s supporting a lot of machines!! But frankly I don’t even know how to calculate how much load I’m putting on 1 circuit, much less how to tell how much it can handle before it trips.

[scarfguy]

The easiest way to tell if you are overloading your circuits is to wait til the breaker trips and you'll know that is too much.

If it helps, I can give you my limit:

I had 5 bounties, 2 harvest XLs, 2 harvests, 1 harvest slim, and a copy machine.

 

I was blowing the breaker when my wife turned on the copy machine.

I now have 2 circuits in each of my grow rooms.

Depending on how your house has been wired and whether there is room in the service box for additional

circuits, it may be quick and inexpensive to add a couple of circuits, OR it may be quite expensive.

[lynnee]

What a fabulous Garden Room! I particularly love the big 5-gallon automatic watering tanks (under the printed cloths). And the stepladder, of course!

Aerogardens don't pull a lot of electricity, though they pull enough to make a difference on my electric bill. (Electricity is VERY expensive in California.)

The pumps don't matter much--it is the lights you need to consider. Each of the Farm lights uses 60 watts, and each Bounty uses 45 watts. So you can do some Googling to find out how many lamps are supported by a normal 15-amp household circuit. (My living-room circuit handled a 150-watt lamp, a 60-inch QLED TV + peripherals, some printers, an Amazon Echo and Echo Show, a Farm Plus, an AG 45-watt grow lamp, and three Bounties. I didn't plug them all into the same outlet.)

Your circuit breaker box should give you information about how many amps each household circuit has.

You can also Google for information about how much load can be carried by one outlet, surge protector, or extension cord. The cords and appliances have labels that say how many watts they use or can handle, and you simply add up the watts of the appliances to make sure they don't exceed the total watt capacity of the cord, surge protector, or outlet.

[scarfguy]

SO... maskedsonnet,  Have you decided what you are going to grow first in your new farms?

[maskedsonnet]

May 23, 2023 10:02:44 GMT -5 scarfguy said:

SO... maskedsonnet,  Have you decided what you are going to grow first in your new farms?

Yes!! I’m trying again on strawberry crowns in 2 machines, from a different company that hopefully doesn’t send me infested plants like the last one. A bushing variety of sugar snaps in 1, the vining variety I tried before produced well but were a pain to take care of so thought I’d give a bushing one a shot. Dill and parsley in 1 machine. A new habanero plant to replace the one that died in 1 machine. One of my bigger tomato varieties in the last machine, I don’t have my seeds handy and don’t remember the name.

[scarfguy]

Looking forward to following your new farm plants.  Please post pics of your progress...

I had a dill fascination about a year ago.  I tried about half a dozen varieties.

The one I liked best was "teddy" dill.  Fernleaf dill came in second. 

Both are a lot fuller and "bushier" than the aerogarden variety.

[maskedsonnet]

I never used dill much, but I love the way it smells! The variety I bought was fern leaf I think. Tomorrow I’ll be back home and planting everything but the strawberries, since I won’t have those for a few more days. I’ll document as things come along! Gotta get back into the habit, been a weird few months for me but seems things are finally settling down for a bit!! (Knock on wood)

[lynnee]

May 23, 2023 18:03:52 GMT -5 maskedsonnet said:

May 23, 2023 10:02:44 GMT -5 scarfguy said:

SO... maskedsonnet,  Have you decided what you are going to grow first in your new farms?

Yes!! I’m trying again on strawberry crowns in 2 machines, from a different company that hopefully doesn’t send me infested plants like the last one.

Keep your strawberry crowns as clean as possible by trimming off lower leaves and stems that are turning brown and soft. My strawberry crowns weren't infested upon arrival, but they developed a gnat problem in the dead material after they began producing berries.

Also, don't plant them too close together. You can easily fit 12 crowns in a Farm, but then it's hard to keep track of the flowers and berries, and to prune out the dead stuff. That many plants also need a lot of R&Rs, because they're heavy feeders and the water gets dirty fast.

If I were to grow strawberries again, I think that I'd try 6 crowns in a 12-pod deck. Do keep us posted on your strawberry progress in particular!

[maskedsonnet]

That’s good to know!! The smallest bundle I could get was 25 plants. May plant some either outside or in other machines now that I know it’s best to space them out like that!

[scarfguy]

Speaking of strawberries, have you guys seen these climbing strawberry plants???

www.etsy.com/listing/1302221899

[lynnee]

Climbing strawberries look like they would be fun to grow, scarfguy! No more vines for me right now, though.

[lynnee]

maskedsonnet, 25 crowns is apparently the minimum bundle at all of the seed companies. It kind of broke my heart to only use half of them in a Farm (and even 12 was too many, as previously noted). I tried saving the surplus crowns in the garage for planting later, but they dried out and died.

[maskedsonnet]

It's too bad that 25 is the minimum everywhere. But I guess it makes sense if they think they're only selling to people who are gardening outdoors. Maybe I'll use the Farm 24 where only 1 flower pod sprouted for the overflow!! That'd use them all up, and I'm growing flowers in pots outdoors so it's not like I'll be totally without blooms!!

I'm also working on a plan to make filling water significantly easier, with this!! So I can run a hose from the bathroom right next to the garden room, with a spray nozzle attached to it to keep water from getting everywhere. No more hauling bottles to and from the kitchen!! That project will have to wait until this weekend though, I won't have it for a couple days and couldn't find anything like it locally to speed things up.

[lynnee]

The garden hose adapter is a great idea! I'm now thinking about how I might use one to cut down on carrying water to my garden room aka office AGs.

[maskedsonnet]

I held off until today to plant everything, got my adapter for the sink to garden hose!! Made filling the gardens and reservoirs WAY easier than lugging them all back and forth between there and the kitchen. Restarted a few gardens as well, and those did have to be hauled in order to wash them. I used a hand cart to roll them instead of carrying   SO!!!

The strawberry crowns still aren't here but the gardens are ready to be filled up and planted when they get here!!

Planted Jalapenos (Pot-a-peno variety) in the 2 Bounties:

Planted a Habanero and a Candy Cane Pepper in 2 of the new farms:

Planted 3 pods of Peas in another Farm and Dill and Rosemary in another (was originally going to do Dill and Parsley, but I'm out of Parsley seeds and didn't feel like going to the store, plus I've got Parsley outside right now anyways).

And replaced the Thyme with Oregano!!

I'll add nutrients to everything in 5 days when it's time to feed the other gardens!