The first one was an eye sore.
Monday, March 12, 2012
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Progression of Gardens
Living in Asian cities means rooftop gardens and that means hydro.
The first garden was crude
The next was much better and took lots of time. I bought a drill press and did lots of machining. It looked and worked much better.
It was designed to be broken down, I took it apart and put it in the window during the winter.
Phillip
The first garden was crude
The next was much better and took lots of time. I bought a drill press and did lots of machining. It looked and worked much better.
It was designed to be broken down, I took it apart and put it in the window during the winter.
The next year I started with wood. I got this which I sell on Etsy.
And then the cloth model which was supposed to make the whole thing bigger and cheaper.
And a pic of the whole glorious mess would help...
Phillip
Friday, April 30, 2010
Excellent resource for fish farming
Thailand expat forum for fish farming Has lots of resources and great information.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Patric Blanc - State Of The Art Wall Garden
NY Times
This man does a good job. He uses low light perennial plants in hydroponic like way. He plants interior walls using a hard waterproof back, a soaking medium and and grid to hold the roots in place. The units last years but I'm not sure they are portable. Take a look.
This man does a good job. He uses low light perennial plants in hydroponic like way. He plants interior walls using a hard waterproof back, a soaking medium and and grid to hold the roots in place. The units last years but I'm not sure they are portable. Take a look.
ONE April afternoon in a rented bungalow in this small city on the outskirts of Paris, a Kelly green Madagascar lizard slithered across a plant-covered wall. In the next room, a blue-green Malaysian frog balanced on a Thai pandanus branch, still as a stone. Birds careered from room to room — in this house, the doors to the outside are closed to keep them in — dodging human heads as they went, and pausing only briefly to perch in the rhododendron leaves growing up the wall above the aquarium.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Beginnings
I started gardening about four years ago. It started with paper cups, then plastic flower pots, then flower boxes, then tables, then ugly hydro, then handsome hydro then plans for a 10,000 cucumber plant system.
Seoul is a city that is close to being paved over. Soil was impossible to get so I had to buy soil at Dongdaemun Market. I had a rooftop apartment with plenty of outside space so I started using the space. The building had an old soil trough but the soil was full of glass and debris so I had to clean it. It was enough dirt to fill two adult coffins. I added fertilizer and compost.
I made containers from plywood and I used junk for the first season's pots. I'd often go dumpster diving at 11 PM in Itaewon while others nightlife'd and I often took a backpack full of rocks and debris to dump at local constriction sites. the garden was ugly to start and then it was made worse by using the grey steel shelving seen often in Korea. It looks like Erector Set material. The dirt got too much to handle and decided to look into hydroponics.
Many things grew well that season. Corn was the best but the Koreans have a melon called Chamae that always does well, especially in Korea. We ate lots of chamae in Korea. Melons generally grow very poorly in boxes.
I made flower boxes that season. It had been a long while since I used tools and it bothered the neighbors but they were kind. I later donated the flower boxes to the neighborhood Ajummas.
I got to experience the monsoon rains close up that summer. The monsoons are beautiful. It rains for six weeks straight with only a few hours of clearing. The water really helps the plants and you can see the difference in the growth of the local flora. I'm certain the plants needed the water but I suspect most of the benefit had to do more with nutrient delivery by the excess water movement. Most people stay inside and take up cooking during the season. The humidity is killer.
Most information on the web about hydroponics is about growing marijuana in your closet. These closet growers do an excellent job and have plenty of good advice, it just may be unsavory. Closet growing is really involved in that you have to account for everything; heat, light, humidity, smell ... everything. These people are much like battle robot hobbyists, they just won't pass a drug screen.
I loaded up mail order hydro as the recreational hydro market in Korea does not exist. There is one rock wool distributer and a company that makes a a semi trailer to grow rows and rows of grass. I found a general garden store that sold fixtures and drippers but little else. The most valuable tool was my very wide drill bit that I used to puncture the stock to fit the net pots in.
The first season I made a giant mess from large diameter PVC. It was ugly but provided a very good learning experience.
The second season was better. My designs got more deft but still used PVC. Less material, more plants, less footprint. I started to study water flow; the dynamics, aesthetics and flow efficiency.
These systems require extensive racking. Space is tight in Asia so there is plentiful rack offerings. I found a clothes rack store and choose aluminum tubes for the rack. I think I have mentioned I had a rooftop apartment but I didn't mention it had a massive one piece south facing window. I need a good view for good mental health. I wondered if I had a stacking fixation. The plants above were grown in winter.
I feel I made my most important contribution to hydro during the second year. I developed a new dripper since I was not happy with market drippers. I'm quite proud of the development as I believe my dripper is in every way superior. Making something drip was always easy. Everything leaks. Making something not drip was the hard part. I decided to use friction as plastic injection moulds were out of my reach.
It took a month of testing but I finally found a combination that worked. It uses a soft lumen, a harder plastic tube and a tight hole in PVC or other similar stock. I found these materials largely by accident. I bought the lumen for testing and the tube as generic plastic tube.
My dripper is quite superior. Its dirt cheap. Competing drippers cost $.10, mine cost $.001. My dripper is flow adjustable, competing drippers are not. My dripper is adjustable by length, the competing drippers are not. This allows for vagaries in the water mainline and vagaries in plant growth. My dripper can recover from clogs, the competing drippers cannot. You have to throw them away. There is no similarity in related patents.
The third season went so well I started growing flowers in addition to vegetables. I cut up a lot of wood making new flower boxes and hydro units. The flowers did poorly but the hydro did better. I moved into bigger grander apartment with a more space and a better view. My carpentry skills are bad, I had little training outside of high school woodshop and I made many mistakes but everything looked better than the first year.
Seoul is a city that is close to being paved over. Soil was impossible to get so I had to buy soil at Dongdaemun Market. I had a rooftop apartment with plenty of outside space so I started using the space. The building had an old soil trough but the soil was full of glass and debris so I had to clean it. It was enough dirt to fill two adult coffins. I added fertilizer and compost.
I made containers from plywood and I used junk for the first season's pots. I'd often go dumpster diving at 11 PM in Itaewon while others nightlife'd and I often took a backpack full of rocks and debris to dump at local constriction sites. the garden was ugly to start and then it was made worse by using the grey steel shelving seen often in Korea. It looks like Erector Set material. The dirt got too much to handle and decided to look into hydroponics.
Many things grew well that season. Corn was the best but the Koreans have a melon called Chamae that always does well, especially in Korea. We ate lots of chamae in Korea. Melons generally grow very poorly in boxes.
I made flower boxes that season. It had been a long while since I used tools and it bothered the neighbors but they were kind. I later donated the flower boxes to the neighborhood Ajummas.
I got to experience the monsoon rains close up that summer. The monsoons are beautiful. It rains for six weeks straight with only a few hours of clearing. The water really helps the plants and you can see the difference in the growth of the local flora. I'm certain the plants needed the water but I suspect most of the benefit had to do more with nutrient delivery by the excess water movement. Most people stay inside and take up cooking during the season. The humidity is killer.
Most information on the web about hydroponics is about growing marijuana in your closet. These closet growers do an excellent job and have plenty of good advice, it just may be unsavory. Closet growing is really involved in that you have to account for everything; heat, light, humidity, smell ... everything. These people are much like battle robot hobbyists, they just won't pass a drug screen.
I loaded up mail order hydro as the recreational hydro market in Korea does not exist. There is one rock wool distributer and a company that makes a a semi trailer to grow rows and rows of grass. I found a general garden store that sold fixtures and drippers but little else. The most valuable tool was my very wide drill bit that I used to puncture the stock to fit the net pots in.
The first season I made a giant mess from large diameter PVC. It was ugly but provided a very good learning experience.
The second season was better. My designs got more deft but still used PVC. Less material, more plants, less footprint. I started to study water flow; the dynamics, aesthetics and flow efficiency.
These systems require extensive racking. Space is tight in Asia so there is plentiful rack offerings. I found a clothes rack store and choose aluminum tubes for the rack. I think I have mentioned I had a rooftop apartment but I didn't mention it had a massive one piece south facing window. I need a good view for good mental health. I wondered if I had a stacking fixation. The plants above were grown in winter.
I feel I made my most important contribution to hydro during the second year. I developed a new dripper since I was not happy with market drippers. I'm quite proud of the development as I believe my dripper is in every way superior. Making something drip was always easy. Everything leaks. Making something not drip was the hard part. I decided to use friction as plastic injection moulds were out of my reach.
It took a month of testing but I finally found a combination that worked. It uses a soft lumen, a harder plastic tube and a tight hole in PVC or other similar stock. I found these materials largely by accident. I bought the lumen for testing and the tube as generic plastic tube.
My dripper is quite superior. Its dirt cheap. Competing drippers cost $.10, mine cost $.001. My dripper is flow adjustable, competing drippers are not. My dripper is adjustable by length, the competing drippers are not. This allows for vagaries in the water mainline and vagaries in plant growth. My dripper can recover from clogs, the competing drippers cannot. You have to throw them away. There is no similarity in related patents.
The third season went so well I started growing flowers in addition to vegetables. I cut up a lot of wood making new flower boxes and hydro units. The flowers did poorly but the hydro did better. I moved into bigger grander apartment with a more space and a better view. My carpentry skills are bad, I had little training outside of high school woodshop and I made many mistakes but everything looked better than the first year.
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