A Gardening and Experimenting Record
Chris Wellington
December 21, 2002
Artificial Lighting:
Using full spectrum incandescent and standard florescent lighting for an ornamental pepper plant
Problem: The pepper plant, beginning in September, dropped its flowers and small peppers due to decreasing photoperiods.
With the plant already inside, I placed it under a standard florescent desk lamp and it began to develop new flower buds after about four weeks. Later, I placed it under a “show and grow” type incandescent bulb (supposed to provide full-spectrum lighting). This bulb was much hotter than the florescent tube and burned some of the leaves, so I now keep it about eight inches from foliage.
In mid to late November, the first two flowers bloomed. I pollinated them with a trimmed-down paintbrush, but one still died and fell off after blooming. From then on, it has been in near-constant bloom through now, December 21, 2002. There were six flowers open yesterday, the most this far. The earlier peppers are still green but getting closer to full size and developing well.
I have also been working some Pearlite into the top of the soil of the pot to keep it lighter. I have not repotted it, but would consider growing a plant from seeds in a static hydroponic system. The plant is on my windowsill where it receives little natural light, but it appears to be doing well. The new growth is hardening well, with only a couple of leaves lost due to excessive light early on. It may be necessary to decrease light intensity when the first flush of new growth appears to prevent burning the tender leaves.
December 21, 2002
December 5, 2002
I then spun this mixture down in a centrifuge for a little over ten minutes. Two out of the four large, narrow-ended plastic tubes broke under the stress, causing the loss of some of the sample material. The material separated into an upper and lower layer. It appears that the spores floated to the top while the other material spun down.
I sowed the material into three dishes:
Into dish A the floating plugs
Into dish B the sinking plugs
And into dish C the un-spun material
The containers were stacked dishes made to fit under potting containers. The shallow dish stacked securely into the deep dish. The medium was straight pearlite.
Friday, December 27, 2002
I cut back the jade plant pretty aggressively to encourage branching and treated the pieces as cuttings. This made quite a few stem and leaf cuttings that are in soil and perlite. I am hoping to encourage the jade plant to branch more since it is getting a bit long and leggy. The largest cutting involved the removal of a several inch long unbranched stem, but there were no active leaves below the point where I cut it. I am hoping that there are dormant buds where the leaves were and that they will grow, but I am not sure if they will. If the cuttings take, I will have many jade plant cuttings. I planted some of the leaf cuttings by wrapping them in a paper towel as an experiment to see if they would root that way.
Monday, December 30, 2002
Artificial Lighting: The Use of Full-Sized Fluorescent Fixtures
After having used the incandescent and small fluorescent lights for a couple of months now, this is my next major improvement in the use of artificial lighting.
I purchased three two-tube fluorescent fixtures from the Home Depot (shop-light type fixtures) and eight bulbs (four warm white and four cool white, all forty watts) for about $75. I have attached the fixtures to pieces of plywood at each end, which are then suspended by parachute chord from the underside of a table. White freezer paper hanging around the table (shiny side away from the plants) reflects some of the ambient light to the plants. The system is currently not on a timer, but I will probably install one eventually. For now, I am trying to keep it on about sixteen hours per day.
The growing area is approximately four feet long by two to three feet wide, with less light at the edges. I have placed pepper, morning glory seedlings, hydrangea, New Guinea Impatient, Peppermint, and Chocolate Mint under the light. I have also created a hydroponic garden (see entry) and placed horseradish, a black ivy cutting, chocolate mint, and some spider plant in it. Most of these plants are far more than six inches from the light, with the exception of the pepper plant, whose uppermost leaves are about six inches away. On January 1, several of the peppers that were full-sized are quickly starting to turn purple, probably the result of the much increased lighting. The plant has been dropping quite a few blossoms, but the increased light, more stable temperature, and better daytime/nighttime temperature changes may help it.
Hydroponic Gardens: Another Design
This is a slightly different design for a hydroponic garden from any that I have tried so far, and I think that it has a lot of potential. It is very simple, with the plant’s roots suspended in the nutrient solution. The difference is the support of the stems and crowns of the plants. They are planted in holes in foam building insulation that have been packed with perlite. This keeps the roots in the water and supports the plants.
I used the plastic container that I had earlier used for the hydroponic rooting garden, but I changed the aeration and plant suspension. For aeration I used the baffle system of spraying water, with two baffles instead of one. The assembly appears to work exceptionally well with no splashing but good bubbling. I used a piece of building foam that I had found when kayaking to suspend the plants. After drilling holes in it with a knife, I used hot glue to secure pieces of shower netting over the lower end of the holes. I could then put in the plants, with the crown level with the top of the foam, into the garden, and let the roots hang down below the netting into the solution. Perlite seemed the best medium since it would hold oxygen and keep the crown moist, but it may get waterlogged. If that is the case, it can be mixed with very coarse sand or small pebbles that will not exert such a strong capillary effect.
I have put horseradish, a black ivy cutting, chocolate mint, and spider plant into the garden. The horseradish was in winter dormancy, so it may take a few days to begin growth. The black ivy took a long time to root last time, but it did root in moving water, so I am hopeful of success. I have never been able to keep chocolate mint alive for long in hydroponic culture, but I am hoping that the problem before was lack of light and that it will do better this time. The spider plant that I put in the garden was not doing well in its pot and rotting in places. I cleaned it very well, removing all dead tissue that I could. It has no feeder roots and its actively growing center blade of grass has died and rotted back to the center, so I am not sure exactly how it will respond to that.
I am hopeful that this garden will prove useful for growing lettuce and herbs. In the summers, I will probably put it outside, since I am thinking that all of the gardens will probably do best out there when it is warm enough.
The reservoir holds six gallons of water and I put in four teaspoons each of nutrient solution and magnesium sulfate.
Artificial Lighting:
The plants under the lights all appear healthy.
The pepper is dropping many blossoms, but it looks like it might hold its latest round. There are five peppers that are full-sized and beginning to turn purple, and four more that are still small but forming well. There are two more that are extremely small and have only dropped their flowers recently. I am hoping for several more very small peppers in the next few days.
The morning glories still are showing no growth and some of them have whitening leaves, but most still appear relatively healthy. I am hoping that they, too, will perk up under lights.
Seed Sowing:
I have sowed quite a few seeds on paper towels in the sprouter for pre-germination. If they sprout, I will plant them under the lights. I am suspicious that all of the basil seeds I have may be empty since they form a gel coat around the seeds but never germinate. I opened up one such seed and it had nothing inside. I also sowed pepper and butterfly weed. I am not sure if I will be able to keep the butterfly weed short enough to live under the light or not, but I will try. I collected the seeds a bit before they were fully ripe, so they may not be viable anymore.
The Shade Garden:
I spent some time today working on clearing some of the small underbrush in the area of my shade garden. I am hoping to bring a little more light to the garden without exposing it too much to the houses. I cleared a large area of wild rose bushes going to the creek (which was swollen from recent rains) in hopes of extending part of the garden there. I am thinking that I may plant castor beans back there, leaving a small path to the creek and shielding out the neighbor’s house from view. I also may use the wild rose stocks there for grafting and budding. I did cut the roses back very heavily, but I am hoping that some of the ones I left will produce vigorous stalks. If not, there are always plenty of other plants around. I did order some Alyssum seed recently (a dark-blooming variety), so I am looking forward to planting that next year. I am also looking into purchasing several more seeds to round out the planting in that area, but I am not sure if I will or not. The species I am considering are Alyssum, California Bluebell, Chamelon Coleus, Digitalis (foxglove), and snapdragon. These should all do well back there and are annuals that would flower this year. I would like to cover a relatively large are with the alyssum and the coleus would provide some additional color. The others would provide more pronounced flowers for particular areas.
All plants from last summer appear to be doing well. The henabit has some new growth despite dying back in the winter, and the variegated ivy looks the same that it did before. I just identified the small plant with variegated leaves arranged in a whorl with a white flower from common land as Downy Rattlesnake-Plantain, a wild orchid.
Artificial Lighting:
All plants appear healthy under the lights. The pepper dropped another blossom, but several more look like they may stay on. The peppermint from South Carolina is greening up well after it sprouted in darkness. This morning before I turned on the light I noticed that the temperature of the water in the hydroponic garden was pretty warm, which might be good for encouraging rapid growth of the plants.
Boxwood Cuttings:
I also set up some more semi-ripewood boxwood cuttings. I prepared 104 cuttings from the larger boxwood and 8 cuttings from the smaller American Boxwood. The cuttings were generally between one and three inches long. I did use a very dilute chlorine rinse on them, putting only about half an ounce in a gallon of water and then rinsing them very well. I then stripped the lower leaves and dipped them in rooting hormone. I planted them in one gallon ice cream tubs, using a spiral pattern for placement. The medium consisted of a base layer of about half an inch of fine sand covered with about an inch of perlite. They fit into two tubs with some extra room in the second. In the fuller tub, I sprayed the leaves with a little dissolved baking soda and water to help prevent mold growth. I covered the tubs with Saran wrap, cutting a “T” slit in the top for ventilation. They will be sitting by the sliding glass door, where they will stay cool and receive some light.
In addition, I set up seventeen boxwood and ten American Boxwood cuttings in the sunroom to test the effect of lower temperatures on the rooting. With them I set out eleven low juniper and ten cuttings from the trees Tony planted.
Seeds:
All five of the Anise Hyssop and one of the Lamb’s Ear seeds sprouted and I moved them to pots with a 1:1 blend of sand and perlite.
I noticed a few tiny green dots in some of the perlite that I inoculated with giant puffball spores (container “C”). These were actually in some white perlite that I dropped in after pouring in the spores. There is no visible mold growing on the surface of the medium, which is interesting considering that I did not sterilize these spores. Since they are very delicate and could easily be killed by competition early in growth, I am wondering if the spores have some antibiotic properties that are killing the molds.
General:
Found the simple prime test (n-1)!/n from Owen Biesel and used it on Mathematica.
January 5, 2003
Seeds:
One more lamb’s ear seed sprouted. I put it right into the pot with the other seed. I have cut the plastic with which I covered the pots and peeled it almost completely away to dry out the top of the soil. Since the seeds were germinating on a wet medium in 100% humidity, I wanted to reduce their humidity relatively slowly so that they can harden off, but I do not want to cause damping off, so I am going to sprinkle a layer of sand over the mixture that will keep it drier on the top. The perlite should be sterile, but I am concerned that, with its capillary action, it will keep the surface too moist, causing damping off.
Saturday, January 11,
2003
Artificial Lighting
The plants under the lights all appear healthy. The Anise Hyssop and Lamb’s Ear seedlings are all doing well, and about six pepper seeds have peregrinated and I recently placed them in a perlite/sand mixture. I am finding it necessary to put a layer of pure sand on the top to prevent the perlite from wicking up too much water on the surface. One of the morning glory pots with straight perlite is becoming evenly bright green on the top from some sort of growth. There is no visible growth above the medium, but it is turning a very distinct green. I am concerned because it is turning the same green as one of the giant mushroom inoculations. That either means that the mushroom inoculation is contaminated with something or that the morning glory pot is contaminated with mushroom, which I doubt.
The hydrangea is forming a flower and looks like it will bloom relatively soon. It will be interesting to see how it comes out under total artificial light. The impatient has many immature blooms and looks like it will begin to bloom soon. The peppermint is growing well and appears healthy. It still does have the peculiar scent of freshly-rooted mints, thought, and I am hoping that it will go away even though I am leaving it in the perlite/sand medium.
