Zenbaas' General growing and Hydroponic thread

[Gerardo]

Munchkin ready to dive dive dive!

I can see the work on that balcony.

And Worth, most women would say we were put on this earth exactly for that and maybe to take out the trash and light the water heater, change a lightbulb, etc.

[Zenbaas]

Originally Posted by Worth1

I noticed a gas grill are you allowed to grill on the balcony?
I also bet you are driving your wife nuts.
Worth

Yes we are allowed to Worth. "braaing" (or barbeque) is a big thing for us South africans so we do it two or three times a week depending. I normally also put a fewBrikettes on top of the grill (there are two one on top of the other) to get some of the some into the taste of the meat. Not ideal but I can't start a fully fledged fire on the balcony unfortunately (Although some people do believe it or not).

As for the rest the wife is handling it pretty well but I promised to clean up everything tomorrow to try and restore some normality to the living area. Little one likes to be outside so I need to make it safe for him again as well.

[Zenbaas]

So this thread hasn't been updated in quite a while as I'm seemingly having a "horrible" growing year. Managed to badly burn some of my plants after mixing a 4 tsps copper sulphate to a gallon of water trying to manage the powdery mildew. Had to pull three and the rest look very baron after removing all the dead foliage.

My Container tomatoes are performing very average if I see how well others do here on the site. I can only assume my mix isn't quite right.

On a positive note at least the Malawi pepperdew plant I transplanted from the hydro setup into the garden is doing pretty well. It has finally established itself and is growing very well. uploadfromtaptalk1454076497292.jpg

[Zenbaas]

So it's been ages since I've had the time to update things and things have changed a lot in the last few years. About a year ago we finally moved into a bigger space(house instead of a flat/apartment) and I can finally start my veggie/tomatoes again.

Below I've attached some pictures of our progress over the last year or so. The house had an old garden space already dedicated but was quite rough and made from an old tennis court that had been taken down. It took forever but we disassembled it bit by bit and eventually had it all cleared up and had a structure put up with 40 percent grey shade netting.

I had decided that long term I want to be planting in raised beds and we considered many options. Building with bricks seemed like the best option but the costing ended up being prohibitively expensive so I ultimately decided against it. I will update in a later post what I ended up deciding on.

It's nice being back.

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[ddsack]

My gosh! You have a lot of room and some very nice planning going on there. It will be fun to read about your progress in the coming season.

[Zenbaas]

Originally Posted by ddsack

My gosh! You have a lot of room and some very nice planning going on there. It will be fun to read about your progress in the coming season.

Thanks. Yes I won't lie it's been a lot of hard work so far but when my body recovers in between its been a lot of fun. I've already ordered a few different varieties that I've been itching to grow again for a few years now.

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[Zenbaas]

So as I've been saying deciding on what to use as garden beds was a challenge. Building the beds from bricks would have been ideal but time, labour and logistics of it all just didn't pan out. Wood would have been great but the cost would have been prohibitive here by us.

So ultimately I decided on corrugated sheeting. I have a roofing company bend them for me and as things stand I'm still assembling them and I still have to reinforce the sides so that the soil pressure doesn't cause them to bulge.

In the interim I have started digging some trenches for the irrigation. Busy with getting costing on that but it's taking some time. So this is where I'm at now. After the pipes are in I can finish assembly of the beds and them start filling them.

We have a fair amount of garden "refuse" that we'll use but my plan is to fill the bed according to the hugelkultur method. Bottom half will be stumps and twigs etc and top half will be compost probably.

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[aclum]

Wow! That's amazing. Are you growing commercially or "just" a VERY avid home gardener? I'm looking forward to updates.

Anne

[Zenbaas]

Originally Posted by aclum

Wow! That's amazing. Are you growing commercially or "just" a VERY avid home gardener? I'm looking forward to updates.



Anne

Just for home.(and as my colleagues at work say, feeding the village :/) Will be trying many thing other than just tomatoes but tomatoes are obviously my favourite thing to grow.

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[ddsack]

So clean looking and a great idea with the corrugated sheeting.But I don't know if there are enough hours in the day to take care of your whole huge enterprise! Hope you have family members you can persuade to help out.
It all is really so very attractive looking!

[Zenbaas]

Originally Posted by ddsack

So clean looking and a great idea with the corrugated sheeting.But I don't know if there are enough hours in the day to take care of your whole huge enterprise! Hope you have family members you can persuade to help out.
It all is really so very attractive looking!

It will be work but anything is. What I have learnt though is as long as they water themselves (ie. it has to be automated)then I can handle the rest.

So instead of plodding along on my phone or watching something on TV I would rather spend the time in the garden

[Zenbaas]

So today I finally got around to reinforcing the beds. Had to cut 84 pieces of "water pipe" to length and then 84 pieces of 8mm Threaded bar. The threaded bar then goes inside the water pipe to protect it from the elements. I then used dome nuts on the outside of the beds to tie everything together. They should now be able to handle whatever I will be putting inside them.

Next up will probably be me cutting open about 110meters of 15mm pipe which I will be putting on the top edge of the beds to protect the little ones from possible cuts etc. The corrugated sheeting actually isn't all that sharp at all but I decided to do it this way in any case. I first looked at dedicated rubber edge trim but it ultimately costs way too much whereas the garden hose worked out much cheaper.

[Zenbaas]

Next up was laying most of the piping down as well as some conduit for lights etc in the garden space. Lots of cutting and fitting about 107 different sections of pipe to each other and heating them up with a flame to get them to seat. I'm relatively happy with the progress today now hopefully tomorrow we can cover most of it with soil again.

[Zenbaas]

Three loads of wood from a friends yard and basically filling the beds with all the garden refuse. I still have two or three small trees to cut down that have to be added in as well.

Not in the pictures but we also added almost 100 black bags full of leaves that we gathered from the neighborhood.


Then next up was some compost. Arranged for 18m3 to be delivered outside and then in one single day three of us we moved it all into the raised beds. There was about 3m3 left which we just put inside (Bargain as the lawn will benefit from it greatly when the first summer rains fall).


We have done some more in the meantime with regards to our rainwater harvesting tanks but I'll post that update when I have some energy to spare.

[Zenbaas]

Been a good season so far.

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