cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/15197450

This is another appreciation-post on how awesome semi-hydro/ LECA can be.

Today, I want to show you how my propagator dome works and how to build one for yourself very easily!

TL;DR

• It uses inorganic media like expanded clay pebbles, Seramis, pon, perlite, or whatever you choose.
• You fill small modified cups with the media and then place your seeds or cuttings in them.
• The media is completely inert and can be sterilized, so you don't have to worry about mold, fungus gnats, or whatever!
• You can't over- or underwater it, it's always moist, but very well aerated.
• This is my personal aerocloner-killer!

Why I build it (backstory)

I've always had trouble getting seeds started, especially for soil plants. They almost always got moldy and the success rate was low, especially due to waterlogging. And because I didn't want to mix soil with hydroponics, I had to search for an alternative.

Some people use rock wool for that, but I always found it too expensive and impractical.

Propagation via cuttings has also been hard for me. Like most people, I started with just a glass of water, but this very often caused rotting due to a lack of oxygen.

So, I built an aerocloner this year. This is basically an aeroponic cloning unit, where cuttings are placed in, which get sprayed with small droplets all the time. It worked really great, but my main issue with it was the noise. It needs an air pump running 24/7, which I found annoying.

I also needed a separate dome just for seeds, which feels redundant.

Many people also just place their cuttings into peat or coco, and they root very well too, as long as they get enough oxygen.

How it works

All semi-hydro substrates have some intrinsic wicking capabilities due to capillary action. This means, that if they stand in water, it gets drawn up all to the top, making the whole medium moist.

In between (and IN) the beads is a lot of empty space. Media like those can only store 30% water or so in their pores, and the rest is air. Air the roots need to breathe!

This means, that the LECA is always wet, but never water logged or compacted like coco, soil or other organic media can be!

Advantages

• Inorganic media are inert, they don't decompose or get eaten by mold or bugs
• As long as you refill the water in the tray once a week or so, you don't have to worry about too dry conditions, both the substrate and the air humidity. And even if you forget to water, it will stay moist for more than a few days after it has run dry.
• No waterlogging (anaerobic conditions due to overwatering) possible.
• Roots are already adapted for both soil AND hydro environments.
• No fungus gnats or other bugs, because they can't eat or live in the hostile substrate.
• Added stabillity for cuttings.
• No spillage, no mess.
• The LECA beads are very easy to remove without harming the roots.

How to build it yourself and use it

What you'll need

• A humidity dome/ seedling starter (available everywhere)
• A bright spot, e.g. your grow tent or windowsill
• (Optional: heating mat)
• A few small cups with lids, optimally made out of HDPE or PP
• A nail, lighter and something for holding
• Destilled water
• LECA or another medium. I like LECA with a small size (4-8 mm) the most for this use case, especially for cuttings.

Preparing the cups

• Separate the lid from the bottom
• Heat a nail and melt a few holes into the bottom. They can be very small, and 4 are sufficient. Try to make the edges as smooth as possible. Too many holes can make removing the roots harder. https://slrpnk.net/pictrs/image/72fc6f2a-56b0-4f69-afe2-368fb6abf0cc.jpeg
• Burn a hole into the lid and but a section off. Otherwise, it will be hard to remove.
• Fill it up with your medium
• Turn it around, take your cutting and push it into the hole while shaking lightly. That way, the stem will just slide into it without effort. Turn it again and give it another small shake. The medium is now locked up and the cutting can't move.

How to use

• Moisten the LECA with a spray bottle. If they are dry, the wicking won't work as great or will take longer.
• Try to water the tray, not the top of the substrate at first. Fine seeds might get washed out otherwise.
• You can just sow the seeds directly onto the substrate and put the lid on it. As soon as they germinate, the roots will "burrow" themselves very lightly into the pores of the hydroton and be fixed there.
• Some heating from below with a heating mat is beneficial

Here are some pictures of a cactus (right after germination) and some cuttings (Tradescantia, hops, Ctenanthe) I made just a few days before:

2 celsius outside, to my fellow americans thats about one refrigerator outside. hands are still freezing. glad i didn't wait until the snow started this year. about half the pile is carrots.

Pretty gutted, had just started to harvest this year's crop. Just the cherry on top of an already shit day. Even managed to snap the half inch metal stake I put there when I first planted it in February 2021.

[Image description: view of a row of five young fruit trees planted in half wine barrels in a home garden.]

Harder to stand up, but SO much easier to carve!

Previous post for reference: https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/d2589c9f-2181-4f5b-8c3e-7686dc4d3673.jpeg

Pretty sad. I have another one going, but this one was a good size and just about ready to harvest. I'm guessing it was a deer. To be honest, I kind of like the idea of a deer running around with a pineapple in it's mouth.

Curious to see if the community has some recommendations

EDIT: The picture didn't upload. Here's an external link: https://ibb.co/q0hmm3S

Harvesting today. It's been cold and shitty out the past few days so it's been wrapped up for a while. Unwrapped it today and started to cut it down when we noticed these weird little growths. Are these seed pods? Is the crop ruined?

Zone 7a, Kentucky USA. I read about over-wintering peppers and tried it out last year, but sadly none of them survived. I pruned them appropriately, and kept them in my garage with infrequent watering once temperatures started getting into the 40s at night. We had wild temperature fluctuations (high 60s F during the day and low 30s F at night) and I’m not sure if that hindered the process.

I would love to try again this year, but I’m wondering what others’ experiences are.

Pros:

• Massive quantities of flowers for about 3 months
• Bees love the blooms
• The plant doesn't need any care to thrive
• We've transplanted a few of the seedlings. They're true to their parent in terms of color, but the parents seems like a double bloom and the children seem like single bloom
• If you want a hedge, this seems like a good option

Cons:

• Seeds! So many seeds. Each of its hundreds (thousands?) of flowers will produce 10+ seeds. They all don't germinate, but it's a numbers game. If you want to avoid pulling volunteers up you're best off pulling the seed pods off the plant before they open on their own

I pulled ~2 gallons of seed pods off a week prior to this picture. My wife dumped them in the compost, so no epic 5+ gallon photo 😭

So I had to pull up some huge rosemary plants in the front yard to have some plumbing work done. I noticed that the rosemary I’ve bought to replace it has completely different leaves. The old plant was more like an evergreen with oily needle-like leaves. The new plant has soft flat leaves but still smells like rosemary.

Are these two plants actually related? Are they both edible? The “evergreen” One was fairly hearty and grew quickly. Will the other variety act the same?

Wrapping up its first season, I think we're supposed to get a harvest starting year three.

I planted a few here last year and I guess they like this spot

As far as I can tell they are over 9 feet tall... What the hell did they bury in their front yard?!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/20123777

All pots, there is paving under the plants.

Post image is spaghetti squash

This tomato held up surprisingly well.

Marigolds

Another angle of spaghetti squash and watermelon I think.

Beans!

Cucumbers

Tomato

And nasturtiums.

I've been having trouble with several of my plants the last couple of years. I've planted almost 4 blueberry bushes, grapevine and some winterberries that do well for several months then seem to start growing very slow and doing poorly.

Our soil is more of a silty soil that doesn't drain well so I did fill the holes in with good potting soil with compost and covered with a thin layer of the silty soil and try to water about once a week. The last year I had 3 blueberry bushes that I planted early spring that put out some new growth and then started to grow very slow and later died In early fall and didn't come back the next year. I've tried to fertilize and add gardening Sulphur to them to help acidity the soil but no matter what I do everything slowly starts to die. I've noticed this year the leaves on the grapevines and blueberries appears to have chlorosis and the winterberries' leaves are turning brown and curling up. It's still ~90 degrees out so I doubt anything should be going dormant yet (I live in zone 5b). I even tried to buy special blueberry fertilizer to make sure I wasn't missing anything important but I'm still having issues.

Here is the blueberry bush:

The raspberries:

And one of the winterberry bushes:

Does this look like iron defiency or potentially some other sort of issue? At this point I'm considering getting my soil tested but if anyone has any advice let me know.

Behold, after seven months, I have turned one Market Basket acorn squash into four.

Should be ready soon 🤞

I had a volunteer milkweed this year in my small raised bed/container garden.

Early into the season it developed a yellow aphid infestation. I was horrified! They were disgusting things (and far, far too many of them). While I was interested in an insect garden, I was worried spread to nearby plants, specifically my prized blackberries, affecting yields.

I researched and treated the aphid infestation with Neem Oil and basically killed the living population. Success!

Or so I thought…

After I traveled for about a month, I returned to see the aphids had rebounded in full force.

An interesting thing though, neither had they spread to other plants.

Even more interesting there were ladybugs, there were beetles, there were wasps, there was even a praying mantis.

I wouldn’t say the milkweed is super happy about the arrangement, but it is growing, and it was a volunteer into the garden.

Overall it’s been the best plant of the season by far teaching me a little bit about ecosystems.

TLDR: my aphid infestation totally allowed my predator insect population to boom