Flowers!

Can you freakin' believe it? These things are actually blooming! They're trying to make tomatoes!

Here's what they look like with the LEDs off -- under lighting you're more accustomed to.

Yep, those are undeniably tomato flowers.

So, now what? At the present time, there are no bees at VOA. I haven't brought it up with the General Services Administration yet, but I suspect they'd frown upon a swarm of bees flying through the Cohen building. So who's gonna pollinate these flowers?

Me. That's who. With an eyeshadow brush. I'm comfortable enough with my masculinity to peruse the cosmetics section looking for a brush that'll do the job. This was the smallest one I could find.

I kinda dabbed the flowers with the brush. And thus begins my career in artificial insemination.

Did it work? Who knows? Probably would be a good idea to get a primer on tomato flower anatomy to figure out where the boy bits and the girl bits are, and how to get the pollen where it needs to be. I guess I'll know in a few days, if the flowers shrivel up. Regardless, it's still going to be a long, long time before these things become tomatoes, if they ever do.

Buds! OMG!

Hey, check this out -- the cherry tomatoes are actually putting out the beginnings of flower buds!

It's gonna be a long, long time before they're tomatoes. But it's a start!

What if this thing actually works?

Back in the lettuce patch, I forgot to mention that last week I harvested a 1 1/8 oz. salad from the second box. That's 42 cents not spent on Whole Foods mixed greens. Woo hoo! At this pace...uh...never mind.

When I harvested the first salad, I carefully snipped the ripe-looking leaves and tried to avoid the tiny little baby leaves to give them a chance to grow back. For the second salad, I said screw it and just clear-cut the whole box.

This week, they've both grown back fine. So I'm clear-cutting from now on.

I snipped another 5/8 oz. of lettuce from the upper lettuce patch today. Yep, that's nearly one quarter of a sawback that remains in my pocket.

There's a mystery plant growing among my salad greens. It kinda looks like parsley, but I don't think it is.

Could be a weed. But it tastes OK, so I'll let it live.

The control plot

Every experiment needs controls. A cherry tomato plant that I started at the same time as the two in the cubicle farm currently is basking in the sun outside my apartment, in an Earthbox it shares with a regular tomato. How's it compare to the cubicle-farm tomatoes, you ask? I'd say growth in the cubicle farm is somewhat less vigorous.

The cherry tomato is on the right. Trust me.

Yes. A bit less vigorous, the cubicle farm is.

Food security solidarity

Another experiment from outside the cubicle farm: my food security crop, potatoes. International-development types promote potatoes for farmers in developing countries because you get a lot of calories and a fair amount of nutrition without needing much of land, water, or fertilizer. So, in the spirit of solidarity, I'm going to see how food-secure I can make myself growing potatoes in a couple 20-gallon trash cans.

The idea is, you drill some holes in the bottom of the trash can, put some dirt in there, and bury your starter potatoes. As the plants grow taller you bury them up to the top leaves with soil. Potatoes are tubers -- horizontal stems -- that branch off the vertical stem. So the more vertical stem you give them to grow tubers, the more potatoes you'll get. Or so I'm told. We'll see what I get come harvest time, whenever that is.

Postscript to a mission aborted

Loyal readers will recall that last December I aborted the first cubicle farm due to a gnat infestation. I took the Earthbox home and dumped the soil on the then-bare ground next to the front steps of my apartment. Well, there must have been some seeds left in that soil because this spring, among my landlord's lilies and whatnot, some red lettuce and mustard have popped up and thrived.

I'm not planning to eat them, though. It's an old building, and god knows what lurks in the ground there. Possibly lead.

Bigger. Limper.

These guys just don't stop growing. I was out for about a week, and when I came back the plants were...well, they were bigger. A lot bigger. I don't know what I expected, but they're really getting pretty sizeable. You don't need me to point out where they are in the picture anymore.

But the bigger they get, the crappier they look. Look at this pathetic specimen. The stem gives practically no vertical support. Its posture is so bad, it's slouching away from the light. And the leaves are limp as wet dishrags. 

The other one's no better.

There's absolutely no sign that these things plan to bear fruit. (Their sibling at home, in an Earthbox in the actual sun, is going nuts with flowers.) I've put in the webbing system (EarthBox calls it a staking system, but it's really more of a webbing) to which I'll strap these sad, flaccid specimens and hope for the best.

A couple possible fixes: 1) The obvious: more light. I'm tempted to throw a few compact fluorescents at them. Sinking big money into another high-power LED seems like overkill. 2) A bigger fan. Maybe that would help stiffen up the impotent foliage.

On the brighter side, the lettuce has gone completely bonkers in my absence.

Both containers are completely full. So, it's harvest time!

I got quite a decent salad out of this first trimming! And it was tasty...if kinda limp. There's that word again. I think those fans aren't cutting it.

Last time, I tried calculating when the cubicle farm would break even based on what I'm not spending on spring mix from Whole Foods at $5.99/lb. This particular salad weighed in at 7/8 oz. That means I saved...33 cents. Yep. One third of one Yankee greenback. Let's not talk about what this experiment has cost so far.

I take some solace from the fact that I can cut another one tomorrow, from the as-yet un-harvested second tray. And we'll see what's grown back by next week.

Growing? Definitely. Thriving? Well...

The cherry tomatoes have continued their remarkable growth. Here they are last Tuesday:

And today:

They're still leggy, though. Look at how much space there is between branches.

(Abid Aslam at the International Food Policy Research Institute pointed out that leggy tomatoes could be a good thing, but only if you're talking about women.)

The leaves are pretty limp, too, even though I've got the fan on them 24-7 in an attempt to toughen them up. Still, onward we go.

Across the cubicle, the lettuce is coming along, too. Here's the first batch, planted about three weeks ago, out from under the grow lights:

And here's the second batch, planted about two weeks ago:

Leggy: good for blondes, not tomatoes

The cherry tomatoes are growing pretty remarkably. You couldn't even really see them in the picture taken last Thursday:

But now...well...if you squint, you can kinda see them...they're those things in the corners. See?

Alright, they're not huge. But it's still pretty impressive, for a long weekend's worth of growth, don'tcha think? I was pretty amazed when I came in this morning.

I'm a bit worried, though, that even 90W of LED power isn't enough for them. This seedling's looking a bit leggy. 

Maybe I'm just being an overly attentive parent. Maybe it's just going through an awkward phase. But its sister doesn't look so lanky. Why can't you be more like your sister?

 

Across the cube, the lettuce has sprouted and is on its way. I took this picture right after watering. It's kinda pathetic what happens to seedlings at this stage. A gentle soaking will knock them over.

It's partly because they're inside. If they were outside and had to contend with breezes, they'd develop stronger stems. I've bought some fans to get some airflow on them, and the cherry tomatoes, too. Not sure it really matters for the lettuce, but weak stems on a tomato plant might have more severe consequences. Might the stems snap under the weight of the tomatoes? I don't really know, but it seems like a reasonable precaution to get a breeze on them.

Pimpin' the Cubicle Farm

Don't want to waste those precious photons that the American taxpayer is so graciously providing. (Can't thank you enough, America). So I put up some reflectors. Basically just taped some aluminum foil to some cardboard.

Some indoor growers use mylar for this. But mylar costs money. I'm sure there's a reason why aluminum foil is the wrong thing to use for this. But it's cheap. And I'm into cheap.

By the way, the mesclun appears to have started sprouting already. That was quick. I just sowed it Monday.

Episode V: The Cubicle Farm Strikes Back

Back in business! With the regular, outside-type garden in full swing and no gnat sightings in the office in recent memory, I thought it was time to take another crack at the cubicle farm. This time, I'll try growing some fancy mesclun salad greens in containers in a retrofitted government-issue bookshelf. Your tax dollars at work. Thank you, America. I sowed the first crop today, Monday, April 26, 2010.

I'm going to attach the LED lights to the inside of the bookshelf with some stick-on hooks.

I'm also taking the farm up a notch. Last time, I grew lettuce in an Earthbox. Pretty straightforward, except that I did it wrong. I didn't use the shower cap thingy -- the elastic-lined black plastic that goes over the top of the box. It worked fine -- i.e., the lettuce grew and was very tasty -- but the Earthbox authorities say I wasn't using the box to its fullest potential. 

This time, I'm going to use the technology appropriately -- with the shower cap. Maybe that'll help keep the gnats away. And I'm going to try to grow cherry tomatoes. If the gnats come back, hopefully I can bribe my cube neighbors into silence with fresh, delicious cherry tomatoes. 

Tomatoes are going to be a bit trickier than lettuce, I think, largely because as fruiting plants they'll need much more light. I'm attempting to deal with that while still keeping the electricity usage down (thanks again, America) by using a more powerful LED light. The type I got is called a UFO. I got it from a guy on EBay. It's 90 watts of blinding LED power. Seriously, these things are bright. I wouldn't recommend looking directly at it.

We'll see if it's bright enough to grow tomatoes in a cubicle.

Mission aborted!

The farm has been overrun by gnats! My houseplants had a few, but they really love the cubicle farm. They're harmless but annoying. And they've spread to my neighbors' cubes. My co-workers don't appreciate that. Gnats have even been sighted across the hall in my boss's office. That pretty much puts the kibosh on the cubicle farm.

So this weekend I went in and shut it down. I brought the EarthBox (and some infested houseplants) home. I got one last lettuce harvest (delicious) and then left the box outside for a couple hours in the sub-freezing night. Hopefully that'll kill the little bastards. It definitely killed the lettuce.

In other bad news, I did some reading last week, and it looks like even my garlic is not destined for success. People who know what they're doing grow it in much bigger containers. Apparently the roots like to go deep. My pots are only about 6" tall.

Despite the steady flow of bad news, I'm not done with this. Once the office is gnat-free I'll try again. In the meantime, I did some pretty major New Year's cleaning around the apartment to make room for more planters.

You win this time, gnats! But you haven't heard the last of me!