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!

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?