Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Temperature monitoring

I've done the garden part and not the geek part.  We're all waiting to get out in the garden.  Peas can be planted, but most things need to wait for the last frost date.

When is it?  In New England, that's traditionally been Memorial Day.  That's way off.  Furthermore, global warming is moving that date up.  The USDA is working on new plant hardiness zones.  That's still too general.  I want to know the last frost day in my town and even my backyard.

If you don't have a log of temperatures, you can cheat a bit by going to Weather Underground.  You can search for Personal Weather Stations near your zip code.  Under the radar screen you should be able to find the icon on the right called Weather Stations.  You can click on them and see maps with the location.  Try to find one closest to your backyard.

You want a station with at least 1 years worth of data so you can find the last time in April-May when the temp went below 34 degrees.  It might take some doing but data is out there.

If you really want to know the weather in your backyard, I think Weather Underground should be able to point you in the right directions for a weather station setup.

That's what I did to estimate last year's frost.  For this year, I set up my own recording thermometer.

I'm a computer geek.  I have an old PC running Linux that's on 24x7 anyways.  I decided to use something called Dallas 1-wire.

I got the hardware from Hobby Boards.  A DS9490R-A plugs into a USB port ($28), an R11 to RJ45 cable (if you can't make your own) ($6), an RJ45 to RJ45 ($1.25) to connect a longer cable and a temperature sensor ($18).  Plus a standard cat 5/6 network cable.  For $54 you have all the hardware for a recording thermometer for less then the cost of a weather station. You can connect several temperature sensors along a wire.  I have one inside right next to my computer instead of the RJ-RJ.

For the software, I run Linux on the PC.  I'll use Fedora or Ubuntu which you can freely download and use.  I've setup a 1-wire thermometer on a cast off PC w/ 128 MB RAM and a 6 GB hard drive.

To talk to the 1-wire net, I use owfs and the owhttp driver.  To record and graph the temperatures of my sensors, I use Thermd.  If you're interested in temperature sensing, look around Dan's site.  He has a good list of different temperature sensing setups that may work better for you then my setup.

Digitemp is another set of software that can record and graph 1-wire temperatures.  I'm not sure it supports as many 1-wire devices as the owfs setup.

If you're going to put the temperature sensor in the garden (and that's the point isn't it?) you need to house it somehow.  The "proper" way is to use a pagoda to lessen the effects of direct sunlight.  I used a stack of plastic bowls with a hollow in the middle.  The sensor is inside the hollow.
The blue wire leads back into the house to my computer.  The construction of the pagoda from some cheap bowls is a whole post in itself and this post is way long already.


Last frost in Spring 2009

First frost in Fall 2009

I did this last year so I would have a recording of frost dates for last year.  Boy, that's lots of work just to get frost dates!

The 1-wire setup is easy to extend.  For $18 + a pagoda + a network wire, I get another temperature.  I'm thinking of something to measure soil temp, a cold frame/green house, etc....

Ann's 1st post

My husband is being modest when he describes the work that he does to make this garden so successful. For example, the trench he dug around the garden took him several weeks. He buried the chicken wire 18" under ground so that the woodchucks wouldn't dig far enough. We were heartbroken the year before when almost all of the zucchini had a woodchuck bite. I started the plants from seeds in the basement and took good care of them. They were my babies. We broke even that year- 50% of the food went to us; 50% to the woodchuck.

Through the off season, Tom spends time reading and researching techniques and other cool ways to geek out the garden. It makes the winter months pass more quickly. There is also so much excitement when the seed catalogs arrive. Tom develops lists after lists after lists of his wish list of vegetables. I know that he has ordered much more than could ever fit in our one acre yard. Of course, we also have play areas for our children so the entire acre isn't reserved for the garden. As we continue to grow the garden each year, I bet we will get closer and closer to using up all available space, but for now, the children can play (and eat along the way).

Our children are unusual (according to our friends with children)in that they love vegetables. They love the typical kid favorites of green beans and tomatoes, and they also love the not so typical veggies like :brussel sprouts- I remember our daughter crying because the last brussel sprout was eaten; beets, tomatillos.... you get the idea. We believe it is because they have been involved in the process and have watched these beautiful creatures emerge from mere seeds that we have cared for....

Pictures of the Yard

The main garden
 Last year I dug a 1 foot deep trench around it and put chicken wire in it.  I filled it in and put a 4 foot fence on it.  It's attached to the chicken wire with tywraps.  No woodchucks in here.  The rabbit liked the cucumbers though.

Clubhouse plot
The picket area is wider and shallower then the 1st year's garden.  In the pickets are garlic.  The pickets along the back are so I don't mow over the 2 rows of fava beans I planted a week ago.  The front right will probably be dill.  I'm hoping for lots of pickles.  To the left you can see the clubhouse my brother in law built for my son.  The woodchucks have made space under it.  I tried to pull the mint that had overrun the plot out.  I threw the roots near the entrances.  If it doesn't die, it might annoy the woodchucks into moving.
Garlic
The 1st garlic sprouts up.
Mystery plant
This came up in the square foot plot I had.  We had lettuce mixes planted that never headed.  And we didn't pick it because we were not quite sure it wasn't weed.  It went to seed, neglected.  And this came up.  Lettuce?  Something from the grass underneath?  I'm not sure if we could eat it.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Why?

I suppose there's a bit of it in my family.   My grandfather always had a large garden.  Bigger then what I have.  I always remember pulling a carrot, wiping it on my shirt, and eating it.  They were always my favorite.  Washing them in the sink seemed to ruin the taste.  And they tasted better then store carrots.

I grew up in NH and there were always blackberries growing wild in the woods.  Or raspberries.  Eating them always seemed like you were getting away with something.

My mom always had an herb garden.  I ate lots of chives.  Later she grew green beans, summer squash, potato, cabbage, asparagus.

My aunt has had a garden that dwarfs the one my grandfather had.  My uncle has a garden and another aunt has had sheep, goats, chickens and a llama.

So there's some family history there.

Now, I see my kids eating things.  Chives are ready (in small bits) right now n the back yard.  There's mint.  I can usually pull some celery off for them or the neighbor kids.  My daughter loves tomatos and helps pick them.  Well, she picks them from the basket after I put them there and then she eats them.  She's getting away with.. something.  And later in the season, we'll harvest her next favorite, Brussels Sprouts.

Garden vegetables taste better so its easier to like them.  I know how they're grown, what chemicals went into them (none!) and what's in the soil.

It's fun to see them appear, ready to be eaten.  With the zucchini, we can get 3-4 a day when they produce.  It's fun to give them to neighbors and friends.

We have deer, fox, birds, hawks, kites, woodpeckers, squirrels, woodchucks, fischer cats (but they don't eat woodchuck :-( ) and rabbits.  I've seen a few cucumbers with rabbit marks, lost a whole tree of peaches to the deer or woodchuck (I'm working on fixing that this year) but it's worth it to see them in the backyard.  Well, maybe not the peaches.  I've heard woodchuck is good eating.

There are some moral and philosophical reasons as well.  Organic, localvore, sustainability, back to nature, survivalist, generalist, maker, experimenter, naturalist kinda things.  I've always believed that everyone should be able to prepare a meal for themselves.  Cook it, grill it, even pour a bowl of cereal.  It's always good to learn how to make.  I've brewed my own beer, baked bread, gone fishing, eaten wild animals and wild plants, made things out of wood, metal and done crafty things.  Growing plants to eat is right up there with all of that.

Saving $$$ isn't one of my reasons.  I'm not sure it costs any less then buying "organic" at the store.  I've bought fencing, tools, watering equipment and whatnot.  I've got lights and heat to start seedlings.  That will probably break even compared to buying transplants.  Luckily my wife isn't overly concerned about landscaping or that would add more costs.


We enjoy the back yard more.  It's not a sterile lawn anymore.  We watch the kids, work on the garden project(s), and see the ecosystem at work.


The homebrewing (beer) movement has a saying: Relax, don't worry and have a homebrew.  I think gardening is like that.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Beginnings - everything has one

I've been thinking about this for a bit.  I want to have a kind of a journal of the Garden.  Let's start with what happened previously......

This marks my 4th year gardening.  I started out with my wife & I digging holes in the lawn and sticking transplants from the garden center with some Miracle Grow Organic Soil in.   We had way too many plants in there.  We didn't even mow before we dug the holes.

I heard about mulching so I dumped the grass clippings around all the plants.

Whaddaya know?  It worked!  We got some veggies, we didn't have weeds that we needed to worry about and it wasn't that much work.  Some things produced, some things we thought we knew were wrong.  But we learned.

Watering was a pain.  The garden was a long ways from the faucet.  Lugging the hose out and putting it away when it was time to mow wasn't much fun.

I ran 100' of hose in the chain link fence on the perimeter of our yard out to the garden.  A soaker hose went in the garden.  Every day we "needed to water"  and hook up the hose.

For next year, we had some ideas and plans.  We had been thinking more about where our food came from and its quality.  Year 2 in the next post.