Carrots are a bust.

It's official. You can't grow carrots from carrot tops. Although the greens grew prolifically...

 ...under the ground, there's nary a carrot. Here's what the best one looked like:

...and here's what the worst one looked like. Not pretty.

So, kids, what have we learned? You don't grow carrots from carrot tops.

Also, I think we've learned that the lights are not powerful enough, at least for this application. I don't think more light would've saved the carrots, but I think the greens would be less spindly.

So now it's just down to garlic. Wonder what's going on down there?

Second, More Bountiful, Harvest

The lettuce grew back nicely after the first harvest. And the middle patch is growing pretty well, and the third bit's not too bad...

 So, out come the scissors again. This time, I actually got a pretty decent salad.

2 oz. worth, in fact. Whole Foods spring mix goes for $5.99/lb, so that's about 75 cents worth of salad greens there. So, deduct that from the total bill for the setup, which was $239.15...that brings the bill for the whole setup down to...$238.40! Or, looked at another way, the cost per salad is now down below $120.

OK, ignoring the cost for a moment...it was really good. The mustard's really spicy. 

Plus, there's quite a bit left in the box. I could probably harvest another small salad's worth tomorrow.

This thing might actually work...

Bummer. No carrots.

The lettuce is working out OK, so I figured it was time to check on the carrots at home. The tops are growing pretty well. (The garlic, too -- note where I've had to bend the stems down so they don't flatten themselves against the lights.)
But it's impossible to tell whether, down under the dirt, they're actually making any carrots. In a previous post, I mentioned that Nancy Kreith with the University of Illinois extension service said she didn't think they would. I've been reluctant to check, because it seems like once I pull the carrot, that's the end of the experiment.

I pulled the carrot.

Bummer.

I'm not sure what I expected. But I think I figured it would just pick up where it left off. It didn't.

But wait! I went to post that picture and noticed those little bumps near the middle of the carrot stump. Might those be new taproots forming? Upon closer inspection...


...it's still pretty hard to say what's going on down there. So I threw it out. But then I figured, what the hell, this whole project is a lark, anyway. I plopped it back into the hole whence it came, with some water and my apologies. What's the worst that could happen?

First harvest!

After the endless days of toil, working the fields in the pelting rain, the howling wind, the biting cold -- harvest season has come at last!

As you can see, the lettuce has been growing fairly nicely. It's been under the lights 24-7 for what, about 4 weeks now? The leaves are big enough to make fairly respectable salad greens.

So I went at them with a pair of scissors.

OK, fine, I didn't get a whole lot.

I only went for the biggest ones. I want the smaller ones to keep growing so I can get another harvest out of it ASAP. So next harvest could possibly be bigger. Maybe. Or maybe not. It'll be another week at least before the second patch is ready.

Regardless, I think it was wildly optimistic to aim for being self-sufficient in salad greens in six months. Salad sufficiency may take a larger investment in infrastructure.


Still, it was pretty damn good lettuce. It doesn't get any fresher. And food miles? What food miles? We're talking food feet.

Dedicated readers will recall that I'm doing it wrong. I haven't put the shower cap on. I'm going to let it go for now and see how it works out. When this part has run its course, I'll try doing it right with the next crop. At least, that's what I'm saying for now.

Carrot's Progress

The carrots at home are definitely growing. They're getting taller and putting out more shoots. But some are bushier (left) and some are spindlier (right). Not sure what to make of it yet. Worst case: they're not getting enough light from the LEDs. I bought the cheapest one, which puts out the least power. A company rep recommends a brighter, and more expensive, light. But he would, wouldn't he?

This part of the project may be futile, anyway. The EarthBox folks connected me with Nancy Kreith, who's extension program coordinator with the University of Illinois. She doesn't think you can get carrots from carrot tops. I'm not sure what the plants are doing with all the energy they generate through photosynthesis, which would normally go into storage in the carrot.

Well, the garlic is going nuts, anyway. It's gotten so tall it's growing up against the lights.

I broke it.

Well, OK, I didn't exactly break it. But it turns out I'm not using the EarthBox in the way it was intended. Remember the black plastic covering from my first EarthBox post? Of course you do. Just in case, here it is again, in the photo to the right. You're supposed to cut holes in it and plant your seedlings through them.

Well, I didn't do that. Because I'm growing baby greens, I figured I'd leave the shower cap off and use the whole box as an open bed. It turns out that the shower cap is kind-of important.

"The cap is definitely necessary for the EarthBox to work any differently than any other container gardening system," says Amy McMillen, program officer with the Food and Agriculture Organization's "The Growing Connection," which uses the EarthBox to help people at schools, orphanages, hospitals, HIV/AIDS clinics, and other places all over the world get access to fresh food.

What's the big deal about the shower cap? There's a reservoir of water at the bottom of the EarthBox that delivers water by capillary action through the growing medium (a.k.a. soil). And there's a trench of fertilizer buried under the mound of soil running down the middle of the EarthBox. (You can see the mound in the photo, left.) "Because of the cover & the loose medium," Amy says, "the water is in constant motion and slowly draws the fertilizer down into the box. As the roots use the water and the fertilizer those pockets of space are replenished with more nutrients. Without the cap this circular water motion does not happen. The water evaporates out and the movement is just south to north….and you’ll use more water."

Oops.

That trench of fertilizer under the central mound is also what has created the dead zone down the middle of the box, clearly visible in this photo. Too much of a good thing killed the seeds that sprouted on the mound.

So, now what?

I could just let it go and see what happens. Or I could put the cap back on with some holes for the seedlings and use the EarthBox like it's supposed to be used. Any suggestions?

Signs of Lettuce

The first crop has developed signs of lettuce! So far, all the green you've seen has been seed leaves, or cotyledons. Remember sophomore biology? Monocots and dicots? No? OK, never mind. The point is, the cotyledons are just the first stage of development. The real leaves look different. At left you can see a recognizable lettuce leaf poking out from the sea of cotyledons.

Meanwhile, on the home front, there have been signs of life from the carrots and garlic, too. The carrot tops have grown and sprouted new shoots. Well, most of them, anyway. One of them had some kind of fur of white fungus on it and was dying a slow death. I'm not surprised, since the carrots had spent at least the last six months in a bag in my crisper drawer.

The carrot put up a valiant struggle. But in the end it was clear the fungus was getting the upper hand. So I had to euthanize it, lest the fungus spread and take down the others. Still, under the circumstances, one casualty out of eight is pretty respectable, I think.

And both the garlic cloves sprouted, too! That's the tip of a garlic plant growing to the right of the carrot top in the picture to the right, taken 11/27. They've all grown considerably since this, which I'll show in an upcoming post.

Lettuce, Act II

With the first crop of cubicle lettuce up and running, it was time to start the second. Keep in mind, the goal here is to have a revolving stock of lettuce. I'll harvest and eat the first crop, then the second, then the third, and hopefully by the time the third crop is eaten the first will be ready to harvest again.

The Tuesday before Thanksgiving I sprinkled the same mix of seeds -- mesclun, mustard, and Japanese mustard -- over the middle patch of the EarthBox. Note where the grow light is placed in this picture...and where it isn't.

When I came back to the cube on the Monday after Thanksgiving, the poor seedlings had started without me.



With no natural light available to speak of, the newly sprouted seedlings stretched desperately for the grow light hanging over the neighboring plot. I hung a light over the newcomers and switched it on, and in a few hours they'd straightened out and started pointing upward. But I'm afraid they'll have those long, white, spindly legs for life.

So by now, the reader is likely questioning my lettuce parenting skills. I'm attempting to redeem myself with the third crop, which has been sown and is sprouting -- with a grow light already placed above it.

At home: carrots and garlic

I wasn't sure what to do with the third LED grow light I bought. But I was making some soup a couple weeks ago and a project presented itself. I had a bag of carrots that had gone native in my crisper drawer. They had grown roots and were all tangled up with each other. There were a few stringy, sad-looking, pale orange sprouts coming off the tops, too. I wish I'd taken a picture. It was pretty pathetic.

I remembered from kindergarten that you can grow new carrots from carrot tops, so I thought, let's give this a shot. I chopped the tops off, leaving a bit of root still attached. I cut a few of them in half across the top, just out of curiosity, to see if they'd still grow. I stuck eight of them in two 8" pots, four in each pot. And I put a clove of garlic in the middle of each. Why not? I'm not sure if the garlic will sprout -- a couple other cloves from that head had gotten a bit dry and maybe even rotten. But, hey, what's the worst that could happen?

I've got them in my bedroom, stuck on a milk crate next to my bed. The light is hanging from the ceiling, and I turn it on when I get up and off when I go to sleep. So they're getting about 16 hours of light, which is pretty good.

Stuff is growing!

Wow, that was fast. It only took three days for the first crop to get going.

I got some mesclun, mustard, and Japanese mustard seeds from Arlington County (for free -- a pretty nice perk that I didn't know my taxpayer dollars were funding). I put the system together on a Monday night and sprinkled on some seeds. Not much to see on Tuesday. I was out of the office Wednesday. But on Thursday -- hey! Sprouts! If you look closely, you can see a little halo of rootlets surrounding each sprout.

I only planted on one-third of the box so far because I'm planning to plant three successive lettuce crops. I'll plant the second in a week and a third the following week. That way, I'll harvest the first and let it grow back, and once that's run out I'll harvest the second, then the third. Hopefully, once the third crop is harvested, the first will be ready to harvest again. We'll see.

the EarthBox

I'll be growing my lettuce in an EarthBox. It seemed like a good fit for this experiment because it's a compact, all-inclusive system; but also because there's some kind of tie-in with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, an organization I deal with frequently at work. The boxes are aimed at people in all sorts of situations that aren't conducive to growing nutritious food -- from city school kids living in "food deserts" with no access to fresh vegetables, to African farmers trying to scratch out a living on lousy soils, to people living in refugee camps. (Not sure where cubicle dwellers fall in that continuum.)

The EarthBox has a reservoir in the bottom, which is supposed to make it impossible to under- or over-water your plants (assuming you don't forget to put water in it from time to time). The plants take up the water they need through capillary action. The black screen you see in the picture above separates the reservoir from the dirt, except for two patches in the corners where the dirt wicks the water up to the rest of the box.

I came across these things when I was working on a story at a farm owned by the Baltimore public school system, which has a lot of kids living in those food deserts. Someday I'll get to finish that story and post the link... Sigh...

I did a kind-of dumb thing and ordered the whole package, which runs into some pretty serious money: $115.80. But that includes everything: the box with organic dirt and organic fertilizer (about $60), the staking system I'm hanging the grow lights from (about $35), and shipping. I probably could've saved a bundle on the shipping if I'd gotten the dirt and fertilizer myself. The box alone is only about $30.

So, for those of you playing at home, adding in the $122.35 for the grow lights, so far we're up to $239.15.

As I mentioned with the lights, I'm paying full price for everything. I could've gotten a reporter discount on the EarthBox but I decided not to. And nobody's paying me to write about this project.

the grow lights

I found an LED system that looks promising as a cubicle grow light. LEDs use very little power. The unit I bought, the GlowPanel, takes 14 watts. So they're eco-friendly and won't be a huge burden on my employer when I leave them on 24/7. The unit is about a foot square and, according to the manufacturer, will illuminate 1.5 sq. ft., more than enough for my skinny cubicle setup.

An interesting note about the grow light: it only uses red and blue LEDs. Plants are green because they're reflecting and not absorbing that part of the spectrum. So no need to waste energy on wavelengths your plants can't use. It'll give off a funny purple light, though, which could be annoying.

(Another virtue listed by the manufacturer: "DISCREET - No thermal footprint - undetectable." I assume that selling point is aimed at the indoor marijuana growers.)

Except for the electricity, I'll be keeping a running tally of the costs and benefits of cubicle farming. We'll see how long it takes to break even, if ever. The lights weren't terribly cheap: $54.99 each. I bought two. Plus $12.37 for shipping, that comes to $122.35. (Actually, I bought three -- one for home. But I'm not counting that as part of the bill here because at home I'm going to use leftover pots and dirt and stuff, which would make the accounting weird. I'll write about the extracurricular stuff, too, but it won't be part of the running bill.)

By the way, I'm paying full price for everything in this project. No reporter discounts or anything. And nobody's paying me to write about it.

Cubicle farming

OK, I'm returning to this blog to document an experiment: I'm going to attempt to grow vegetables in the confines of my cubicle. Every blog should have a purpose (shouldn't it?), so let's say the goal here is to be self-sufficient in salad greens in...oh, I dunno, let's say 6 months.

Why am I doing this? Well, for one thing, I'm food and agriculture reporter for Voice of America, so it seems appropriate. But that aside, I've been wanting to get back to growing vegetables for a while. I live in a small apartment outside Washington, DC, with no balcony. Not a lot of space for growing stuff.

Like most of modern man, I spend most of my day, and most of my week, and, sadly, most of my life, in a cubicle, pictured here. I eat lunch at my desk just about every day. Lunch almost invariably consists of some kind of bread, some form of chicken or tofu, and lettuce. Growing wheat in my cube (or raising chickens) seems impractical. Growing lettuce seems do-able.

Except for the obvious shortcoming that I'm indoors. I have no arable land. I'll need containers.

And I get about 10 minutes of direct sunlight. I'll need grow lights.

So, as Tobias Fünke said, "Let the great experiment begin!"