Worldwide Beekeeping
Sustainable Living => Gardening => Topic started by: Chip Euliss on December 23, 2015, 10:53:25 pm
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Thought some of you might get a kick out of this. Last February, my wife asked me to build her a raised-bed planter to keep the rabbits from eating her plants. My concern was that a raised-bed would just make it easier for the deer to eat her plants. Instead, I built her a couple of planters and put them in the basement under special lights. We've been eating beets, lettuce, kohlrabi, chard, carrots plus various others like parsley, cilantro, etc. Here's cabbage for our New Years meal and she plans to have ripe tomatoes by Valentine. Who says you can't garden all year in North Dakota!! ;D
(https://worldwidebeekeeping.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fs13.postimg.cc%2Fb9i20o5hf%2FIMG_0167.jpg&hash=6079a695591f87c8f6a7b54a93a08149f9a547a0) (http://postimg.cc/image/b9i20o5hf/)
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Very nice Chip if you have the space already heated, the little in extra electricity it takes it is a good idea.
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Where there's a will (or a Chip), there's a way! ;D
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I keep hoping she'll plant something that requires a pollinator!! Merry Christmas!!
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Chip, careful what you wish for, i'm barred from the kitchen. ;D Jack
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He wants to take his bees into the basement for the winter. Honey bees wont work you will need to get bumble bees to do the job.
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No bees is a minus, but think of all the other insects (pests) that can't ruin your indoor crop. No need for spraying.
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Very true efmesch. Wife must have watered too much and one of the cabbage heads split open. No bugs to get in there to spoil the day. We had cabbage and beef soup today. Still plenty for Nee Years. My daughter keeps bumble bees so maybe I can work out a deal with her ;D
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I've got a farmer friend that buys bumble bees for his hot house.
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Bumble bees are the gentle giants of the pollinators and they are great practice for picking up bees without getting stung. I get an occasional orange-belted bumble bee to jump on the comb when I'm working my honey bees; they don't seem too amused! >:(
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Neat! I am doing an indoor greenhouse in an aquarium in my fish room, just barely getting it going. The outdoor greenhouse stays above freezing but doesn't produce much in winter. Hard to keep it warm enough
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very......C O O L chip!..............LOL.......... :P
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THIS A GREAT USE OF THAT SPACE. NOW YOU SHOULD TRY PARSNIPS! I HAVE HAD THEM MASHED AND THEN MY NANCY WOULD ROSTER THEM IN OIL IN THE OVEN CRISPY ON THE OUTSIDE SWEET ON THE IN.
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I don't think I've had a parsnip since I was a child at my Grandma's. Might be time to try to grow a couple
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Ty for not making fun of all my phones auto correcting. Looks like time to up the proof reading
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I like parsnips so maybe we'll give them a shot. Tomato plants are really growing and we even have a few small tomatoes on the vine. I'm holding out for a fresh BLT in early March!!
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At gypsi and et al, I don't think I have ever tasted a parsnip. AT chip, basements are unusual in our area, but the Ft. Worth police just arrested a couple for growing lots of marijuana in their basement. Maybe that a better cash crop that veggies. :):):)
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My wives grandmother grew parsnips where they dumped there wood ashes and had them all winter long? She knew how to fry them and i loved them, might have to give them a try next fall. Jack
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I'd guess you're right Lazy but I don't think they'd let me take my bees to jail :laugh:
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Brooks bees wood ash is great for amending in soils because it adds phosphorus but be mindfull of how much you add because it will alter you soil ph. It also contains small amounts of bio char that will hold nutrients and also release carbon for micro organisms
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Very true and for the macroorganims too. My son put some night crawlers in my wife's planters last summer so we now have a place to get "fresh bait" in North Dakota in winter! Tomatoes grew LOTS the 2 weeks we were in California tending our bees. We now have LOTS of flowers and a few small tomatoes are hanging on the vines!!
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I want to see pictures of you playing the bee and pollinating the flowers with a fine brush, feather, or what ever you use?
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I want to see pictures of you playing the bee and pollinating the flowers with a fine brush, feather, or what ever you use?
I keep kidding my wife that she needs to dress up like a bumblebee and pollinate the tomatoes but she looks at me kind of funny ??? and the conversation changes. I was thinking we'd need to pollinate with a q-tip or something but the plants are setting fruit. The plants are also getting very large but she planted an undeterminant variety; may have to try determinant plants next time. Tomatoes are about as big around as my little finger now. May not make Valentines Day but not too much later.
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What's a parsnip?
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A parsnip looks like a carrot but is white in color. Chip, i rarely find a bee on Tomato plants, they along with corn are wind pollinated. A good determinate tomato is Mountain Fresh, the only problem with determinate tomato plants is they only bare once not all season. Our favorite indeterminate tomato is the Pink Girl. i have ordered 200 of them this year of that variety, sells very good. Jack
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Thanks Jack. You're tight, tomatoes are self pollinating so wind does play a major role in them setting fruit. Problem (or nice thing, depending on your view) is that the basement has no wind so we didn't know we'd get them to fruit very easily in our basement experiment. Wife was thinking of putting a fan which would help lots; I'd guess the fruit set we've seen so far may be the result of us moving the plants around by hand since they've grown so long (I'll try to post a pic later today) just to keep them in the planter (and especially the light). I've heard that greenhouse growers of tomatoes like to use bumblebees to pollinate because they "buzz-pollinate" flowers. Somehow, and I think they are the only bee that can do this, bumblebees can detach the muscles from their wings and then use those muscles to vibrate their entire body at about the resonance of the musical C note. That may allow them to exploit pollen from small flowers that would otherwise be unavailable to them. Like you, we don't see much for pollinators on our tomatoes outside but we do see a few bumblebees now and then. Wind is probably the largest influence.
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Here are the pics from today. As you can see, the planter is overflowing with vines. I need to get a staking system asap!
(https://worldwidebeekeeping.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fs9.postimg.cc%2Fdzkee1bu3%2FIMG_0391.jpg&hash=ca88b490fa3098d3974de902a8e91c73cb6538a1) (http://postimg.cc/image/dzkee1bu3/)
(https://worldwidebeekeeping.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fs8.postimg.cc%2Ffkl77m7xt%2FIMG_0392.jpg&hash=f570e1ce731afed80061957e50a2977f6bc284cc) (http://postimg.cc/image/fkl77m7xt/)
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Hang twang down from the ceiling to the pot they will grab and hang on it. and they wont fall over because they are to top heavy.
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Good idea Apis. It's starting to look like a jungle downstairs!!
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You mentioned that you use "special lights". What kind are they and are they special enough? Usually, long stringy growth (etiolation) is an indication of inadequate light.
To keep the plants from turning into a jungle, commercial growers train the tomato vines to a single central strand and snap off the side (growth) branches that start to develop from the axils of most leaves. The plant continues to grow longer at its' apex and produces tomatoes on the flowers that develop from the central branch.
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Efmesch, they are high pressure sodium lights and she has a couple of different bulbs. One is for leafy growth and the other is to stimulate flowering. She switched from the growth to the flowering bulb when the plants were only a foot or so high. They were switched right before we left for 2 weeks to feed our bees in California. I think that you're onto something though because she has the other planter that has cabbage, chard, etc right beside it and that one is on a bulb for leafy growth; We've had to raise the lights so high that both planters are getting a dose of both types of light. May need to separate them but not much room down there right now. We're remodeling the house and much of what we had upstairs is now downstairs--we hired someone to do most of the work but we're doing the demo and also getting the floors ready for tile, etc. We're on schedule but time will be tight because once the bees get home, we're busy with them so the remodel will get less priority. It's fun most days..........
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I got my in aquarium house pepper to fruit by using a feather to pollinate it
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Tomatoes are starting to get ripe and people are still driving on the lakes here to fish through the ice 8)
(https://worldwidebeekeeping.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fs16.postimg.cc%2Fmfg7soysh%2Ftomato.jpg&hash=d580287b4eb9a55bbd2043d22c7fa373c628774c) (http://postimg.cc/image/mfg7soysh/)
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Nice work chip!
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Impressive !! :yes:
I wonder, could sliced fresh tomato be used as bait to improve the catch of fish under the ice? :D :laugh:
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Impressive !! :yes:
I wonder, could sliced fresh tomato be used as bait to improve the catch of fish under the ice? :D :laugh:
Don't know about that ef but having a BLT with a local grown tomato while ice fishing would likely be a first, around here at least!! ;D