This year, I got a late start to starting the tomatoes. I was optimistic about the grafting, but poor germination with the rootstock and uneven stem sizes lead to failed grafts, and I had to start over a couple of times, eventually deciding to grow the traditional way, from seed, in July. Azoychka, which had…
Blue Beauty Tomatoes in San Francisco
I’m going to preface this by saying, this not so positive review is more than likely from the environment these tomatoes were grown in. The balcony where it continues to grow (yes, even in the middle of October) is full of sun, but there are frequent heavy winds bringing very chilly, moisture laden air. Some…
Soil Moisture Monitoring with Raspberry Pi
As described in previous posts, I have a self-watering setup with an extended reservoir. The only problem that has come up is that after some time the supply lines become blocked with a biofilm. When that happens, the larger plants can quickly dry out, and any fruiting going on is affected, either by reduced flowers,…
Diva Cucumber
I chose this as a parthenocarpic cucumber so I could grow it indoors without needing pollinators. It is gynoecious so all the flowers should be female. It is a perfect size cucumber for fresh eating, an english style cuke, seedless, averaging 8″x1″. The skin was reported to be thin and good for eating in the…
H19 Little Leaf Cucumber
This was one disappointing plant. Since the weather in San Francisco is not conducive to growing cucumbers, I am growing these indoors in an area that has direct sun most of the day with a fan to circulate air at a regular interval. Since I am growing cucumbers indoors, I chose parthenocarpic varieties so they…
6 Week Balcony Garden Timelapse
A couple months ago I posted about my timelapse project. Enough time has elapsed to have some quality content. After doing several videos, several ways, I found that making the video throughout the entire daylight hours, the movement of the sun and shadows is very distracting. I narrowed the time down to between 12h00 and…
Berkeley Tie-Dye Tomato
Earlier this year I ordered 5 varieties of seeds from Wild Boar Farms. I was blown away with the number of distinct, beautiful and unusual tomatoes available. I stumbled onto this breeder’s varieties after looking for a good mix between OSU’s Indigo Rose and a tomato with some more desirable traits. The tomato I found…
Long term, daytime only, timelapse on Android
I’ve had an old Galaxy Nexus repurposed for monitoring the garden while on vacation, but after a while I realized a better project with this setup would be timelapse of the entire season for the garden. Initially I tried the timelapse feature in the Android Camera app, but after viewing the footage, the long night…
Extended reservoir for self-watering plant containers
I have 6 Ikea Nektarin self watering pots that do great for most plants, but when it comes to growing tomatoes, cucumbers, or other water sucking plants that go through a gallon or more of water on a hot day, the included reservoir is insufficient. I tried the ceramic watering cones while on vacation, but sometimes…
Grafting Tomatoes
So far the hardest part of grafting tomatoes is getting germination predictably on time and estimating growth patterns so the stems of the scion and rootstock are roughly the same size. The actual graft and post-graft care are straightforward as long as you follow steps to ensure a gradual exposure to normal conditions. The two…