ShopTalk Sunday: Shop & Garden Notes, Tools

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Mood-setting and motivation:  Russian war in world’s ‘breadbasket’ threatens food supply | AP News

Let’s talk first about Design Creep.

Although we have yet to eat a single plant from our 20-foot by 10 add-on Garden Room off the recording studio, it has sure been a pleasure in terms of “build.”

Honestly, some of the best “maker education” there is springs from reading at least one or two books put out by former Disney Imagineers.  You see, imagineering is not so much about “Mickey Mouse” and theme parks.  It’s really a study in process evolution when you get into it.

“Dancing” and Tooling

We can kick back and see “the Dance” of the Veggie Room only in retrospect.

What I mean by dance is the purp0seful evolution of what it is you’re making.  Very right-brain stuff.  Here’s a high-level of the steps in this project:

  1. Project roots began as “Wanting to build a cover for the outside steps off Studio. First step.
  2. Project expansion came when I decided, to cover a bigger area.  Patio came to mind.  Nothing big.  Just a rain cover that would be 20 by 10.  Park a couple of lawn chairs for warm weather afternoon drinks.
  3.  Project innovation arrived with the insight “It would be nice to have dinner grow right here.” This is when the idea of the “grow room” materialized.
  4. Materials change showed up when I stumbled over ground screws as an alternative foundation.  The dance was underway.
  5. Stir in Art Design.  Elaine hated the redwood-stained look.  “Black to match the house trim or take the damn thing down!”  As in square dancing, we learned to listen to “the Caller.”  Besides, another step.
  6. Fine tune it:  Add gutters…water to waste?  Add rain barrels!
  7. Seek “the Weenie.”  The “Weenie” to Disney Imagineers is the “bait” – that visual, thing, or theme that screams to your prehensile brain “Hey!  Come check this out!”  The “weenie” in this project will be (when the plants pop up and begin to cooperate) the vertical trellising which will give the project height, structure, and a sense of permanence and grounding.  Another step in the happy dance.
  8. Then “One-up the Weenie.”  This is the stage our project is in this weekend.  Research on “super gardening” and “grow area automation.”

If there’s one thing that comes through in the study of Disney project evolution, it’s that there are “hard goals” (like money and design objectives” while at the same time there’s this “dance thing” that takes place.

If I had just one book on topic (of dance) it would be Rolly Crump’s book “It’s kind of a Cute Story…“

I figure by late summer we’ll be having a few people over or the Major will come visit.  We’ll all be sitting in the Veggie Room – maybe with the wood-fired pizza oven going and some freshly sliced veggies, cheese and wine.  And someone will ask “What a neat space!  How did you come up with the design?”

At which point, I’ll shamelessly rip-off Rolly Crump:  “Well, it’s kind of a cute story…It started as a rain canopy over the stairs there….”

The more serious design students will want to read both “The Imagineering Pyramid: Using Disney Theme Park Design Principles to Develop and Promote Your Creative Ideas” as well as “The Imagineering Process: Using the Disney Theme Park Design Process to Bring Your Creative Ideas to Life (The Imagineering Toolbox Series Book 2).”

Tooling (Attn Tool Sluts!)

As we trip along in our “project house” a couple of new tools were ordered this week.

Found an old, used Dremel 4″ micro table saw on eBay.  Since there are only four basic shop operations, any tool that can improve the accuracy and ease of a particular operation (measure, cut, join, finish) is on my gotta-have list.

The Dremel table saw (with a new carbide blade and spare drive belt coming, too) isn’t so much for me as it is for Elaine.

Her projects tend to be small (like a picture frame).  Yes, I could do it on the 12-inch compound miter saw, but wouldn’t you feel safer with someone doing small picture frames on a more appropriately sized saw?  Even the 8 1/2-inch table saw is too big.  The 10-inch is, for sure.  And the radial arm saw restoration project?  More on that as it comes along.

Point is a mini table saw these days seems to be a joke.  Most are 60 with a few 100-watt units.  The Dremel spec is 2.2 amps at 115 volts (which pencils to 2.2 X115 or 253 watts.  And since everyone knows one metric horsepower is about 740 watts. this tells us the Dremel is .339 (1/3rd) of a horsepower.

While we’re skeptical of this, it almost certainly will be an upgrade from the under-powered crap from Asia at much lower power ratings.  We shall see.

Trivia:  Dremel is a descendant of the (ancient) Emerson Electric.  Betcha didn’t know that one, huh?

Cheap Cable Raceways

Comes the time of year when you may want to set up power for something outdoors.  But being seasonal, you don’t want to tear the side of the house open to run wiring and put in boxes.  Right there with you, buddy.

To get power to the garden room (very low consumption) I put in a large gauge extension cord from an existing exterior outlet.

The hip shot?  Found a suitable plastic cable raceway kit (306 inches worth)  for $18-bucks.  Only took a half-hour to install.  A bit of caulking and a dash of matching paint and should be good to go.

Remember, there’s terrible risk with outdoor outlets and extensions.  UV light from the sun can wreck extension cords.  Breaks down insulation in short-order.  So, protecting the cord with a cable race reduces the risk of accident.

Impact Driver Extension

I thought we already had one of these, but a 12-inch impact driver extension bit is worth its weight in gold, sometimes.

Ran into it with the cable race install.  Hard to get it put in without moving the rain barrels. 8 pounds per gallon is the weight of water and since they are both full at 50-gallons, 73-year-old men don’t wrestle with 400-pound water barrels to run wiring covers.  Longer drill bits are the lazy answer.

Speaking of Garden Water!

You know about “structured water” right?  Gerald Pollack’s book “The Fourth Phase of Water: Beyond Solid, Liquid, and Vapor” got me onto this thinking.

Seems there is discussion (and claims) that grow yields can be incredibly increased by using only structured water.  A little research, though, offers that just putting an air stone (as in hydroponics) into the rain barrels may drive much of the same benefit.

Seems like the heavier your soil, the larger the payoff from oxygen enhanced water may be.  See Aerated subsurface irrigation water gives growth and yield benefits to zucchini, vegetable soybean and cotton in heavy clay soils – BHATTARAI – 2004 – Annals of Applied Biology – Wiley Online Library for ideas.  Or head over and read The importance of dissolved oxygen in irrigation water (hortidaily.com).

I haven’t got this one onto the Master To-Do list yet, but the idea is percolating its way along the pipeline, so to speak.  Seems to help with drip systems, too.  Adding Mazzei and Seair oxygation to your research list may be productive, as well.

Don’t get too worked up over this:  While adding an air stone to the rain barrel may be a modest improvement, an Australian study (2016) concluded “It was concluded that ‘oxygation’ was not a commercially feasible technology to adopt in the processing tomato industry.”  Modest increase at home?  We’ll see about that.

More promising are additional soil amendments like dosing with Cal-Mag or other micronutrient solutions.

Off to hit projects – have a grand what’s left of the weekend.  News-free and focused on fun a couple of days a week can’t hurt longevity.  Grew something or die?  Certain hope not, but a growling stomach is one hell of a motivator.

Write when you get rich,

George@Ure.net

34 thoughts on “ShopTalk Sunday: Shop & Garden Notes, Tools”

  2. I noticed that Shell Oil is now engaging in war profiteering:

    https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/06/shell-defends-decision-to-buy-discounted-oil-from-russia.html

    Shell employees are a major component of the Board of the pipeline company which has been running roughshod over local landowners, with the blessing of our Texas Confederate bureaucrats in Austin, who gave the outfit a green light to threaten land owners with condemnation, making a bogus claims as a common carrier pipeline. I guess that the Texas ban on Russian products only applies when it doesn’t involve sucking up to globalist corporate brown shirts and European monarchists. Money talks.

    • IMHO, oil is more important than a feud between two nations that we’re not part of. Oil is what our nation runs on and will for the foreseeable future. There’s no economic substitute, and on long trips, it’s essential to be able to get the refined product along the way. Stop the oil(as Biden has done) and it will stop the country if we allow it. Getting product by any means necessary is a good thing.

      Condemnation and the threat of it is bad to awful, but this is a different story. If I was 1000 miles from home, I would buy from anyone just to get to my destination.

      • I use to think big oil was calling the shots but, seeing that Shell is giving profits from buying Russian oil to (humanitarian aid) for Ukraine, I’m not sure who the “muscle” is these days. Somebody’s got a heavy hand.

      • First, when they pull into a gas station, consumers never really know where the crude oil the fuel was made from originated. Gulf coast refiners buy high-sulfur crude on the world market at heavy discounts, then ship refined products via pipeline all across the US.
        Second, you are making an argument for aerodynamic turbo-diesel econoboxes with dual 22 gallon diesel tanks (44 gal x 45 mpg = 1980 mile conservative range). Not that your local gas station is any holier than one half a continent away.

      • “Oil is what our nation runs on and will for the foreseeable future. There’s no economic substitute, and on long trips, it’s essential to be able to get the refined product along the way.”

        8.3 billion metric tons that has been produced, 6.3 billion metric tons has become plastic waste. Of that, only nine percent has been recycled.
        https://youtu.be/1STaZYZ-P1w
        https://youtu.be/FOTA1GBz9Z4
        https://youtu.be/8f81yn7yKLc
        Yet how much of that plastic waste do we reconvert back into oil.. in some countries they sell a small home unit that sits like a slow cooker on your counter.. to take your foam trays your plastic etc.. to processed back to oil. one I seen many years ago that was the size of a coffee pot that would process about a quart of oil.. I was going to try and buy one but they couldn’t sell them in the USA.. I seen it the same year I seen a smoker that used a light bulb as its heat source.. both were amazing.. the pyrolysis unit boasted a consumption of twenty watts of power similar to slow cooker with super insulation. similar to methane and wood smoke.. http://www.driveonwood.com/library/free-gasifier-plans/
        When I was a small boy I use to play at a friends farm.. in the shelter belt was an old farm tractor.. with this odd trash can on the front.. One day I asked the father what that was for.. he said back in the thirties gas was rationed.. so he bought that unit from sweeden and would take corn stalks and corn cobs and trash and that is how he ran his tractor.. Up unitl the administration of George Senior as president.. those plans were freely passed out by the civil defense in a booklet on how to rebuild local infrastructure.
        https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/browse?type=lcsubc&key=Civil%20defense%20%2D%2D%20Handbooks%2C%20manuals%2C%20etc%2E
        I still would like to get one of the light bulb smokers.. I was still in a wheel chair then and a professor picked me up for one of those going green shows.. where he was a speaker for TEDX the smoker was right next to us.. they had many different styles of them.. and was using all of them.. and they shared.. boy that was some of the best smoked meat I have ever had.. they had pork ribs roast beef ribs roast chicken turkey etc.. all of it was good.. unfortunately I have not been able to find them anywhere.. my guess is since it was a company from another country and it used so little energy to work that it to is not allowed to be sold in the USA..I do have a light bulb grill.. that is cool.. you have to wear sunglasses when you grill out.. but it is pretty cool.. I plan on making a solar grill.. visited with some kids a few years ago and they went back to their classes the next thing I heard was they were making them to be given away to remote villages.. which is pretty nice.. love that idea myself.. all of it is easy and everything is energy..

        https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/6054362

        I built one wood gas generator a few years ago .. it was a lot of fun and only cost me ten bucks to build.. all the materials I had already around the house.. After I made the one I had.. I did have an epiphany about making one our of a semi muffler.. it would work perfect slim line down the design and be more efficient..

      • there are many aspects to distilling.. usually we think of whiskey.. but then there are many other things that can be obtained through distilling.. all of the information on its process is abundantly available for conversion back into its essential ellements… it is the same way with Hydrogen fuel.. we hear it takes to much energy to convert.. yet the methods they use to convert it back to base elements is brutt force instead of lulling it back into its natural state… My next project will be making a solar grill.. I made a solar beer chiller.. that was fun to make and build.. a solar grill and smoker.. now we are talking kitchen gadgets.. LOL my Boss told me no more grills.. LOL I have three smokers.. my favorite is the Traeger my mini traeger and my monster.. a few different cold smokers.. and a wood fired oven.. gauranteed you would use this one the most.. great for cheese.
        https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FPQPWMK/?tag=fff0101-20

  3. Grown tomatoes and cukes using hydroponics for a few years using the technique Dr. Kratky teaches at his website. Check him out if you haven’t already. His is mainly static meaning just maintain nutrient levels without added oxygenation. I experimented with 2 tomatoes side by side, one aerated, one not and honestly could not tell the difference either in production or growth using Midnight Snack cherry tomatoes. Nutrient temperature is critical in higher temperature settings like enclosed greenhouses in the summer. During the bloom stage adding additional Phosphate P2O5 and potash K2O, Beastie Bloomz, to the hydroponic solution encourages increased bloom production. Fans are also needed to assist in polination.
    I’ll be limited to in ground gardening this spring. Last fall when I battled Covid the sides of the one remaining hoop house were left up. Lot of repair work to do in there.
    Enjoy your grow room.
    73
    Peace

  4. “the under-powered crap from Asia”

    LOL my daddy use to say.. you get what you pay for… the under power crap is just the cheaper version of what you want.. even the heavy duty equipment comes from Asia..
    Structured water… I have a water filter designed to do just that.. and a mineral chamber.. the ozone generator.. dam I have been using them since I was still only shaving once a month.. love it.. when I was head of maintenance.. one thing we had a great deal of repairs over was water fountain.. the six month cleaning.. dam crap growing in it.. and one of my hats was cleaning airplanes over night. on top of it.. at the medical facility we used them to sanitize equipment. ( we got to keep the food and beer etc from the fridge..) well we would ozone the planes after cleaning and sanitize medical instruments( which they still do to this day) .. and I would ozone the water before wipe down of the seats etc.. .. the thought had me thinking why not add an ozone generator to the water fountains.. it took some convincing but I talked the store manager into letting me do it with a timer for after hours.. to give the water enough time to degas. short story long we saved the cost of the ozone equipment in one year from reduced maintenance costs..
    https://www.amazon.com/O3-Pure-Professional-Laundry-Washer/dp/B00AUWTYN2/ref=sr_1_2_sspa?crid=2RHM2X4CX4DMC&keywords=laundry+ozone&qid=1646576198&s=home-garden&sprefix=laundry+ozone%2Cgarden%2C101&sr=1-2-spons&psc=1&smid=A3SI6K0ESD8QD5&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEyMFk5UjVDQzNDV0I3JmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwNTAwMjgzMVk3VFZDTkU2U1JTMiZlbmNyeXB0ZWRBZElkPUEwNzkwOTI3M0g1Wk40MFRRSUZXWSZ3aWRnZXROYW1lPXNwX2F0ZiZhY3Rpb249Y2xpY2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU=

    https://youtu.be/Ooh-yCGOomM
    https://youtu.be/bV4QvBKA2_Q
    https://www.ebay.com/itm/403331043555?hash=item5de86750e3:g:wu8AAOSwbiRhcdBx
    you still need detergent but a lot less ozone just purifies the water with O3..

    for precision miter cuts..
    and in my opinion you can never have enough woodworking clamps ..
    https://carsenclamp.com/?gc_id=16260548309&h_ad_id=582677313733&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIneamx82x9gIVAaCGCh33ywEeEAAYASAAEgLciPD_BwE

    https://youtu.be/cdyWGM9YYBQ

  5. “I figure by late summer we’ll be having a few people over or the Major will come visit. We’ll all be sitting in the Veggie Room – maybe with the wood-fired pizza oven going and some freshly sliced veggies, cheese and wine. ”

    If this shizt show doesn’t go hot and things stay reasonably normal.. I will have to send you a bottle of the mead from Tut’s tomb recipe and the Emperors wine recipe that is 8000 years old.. the dandelion wine is really interesting.. sort of citrusy.. I will send you one of those to.. I was tempted to get the pizza oven out to.. the other day.. dam I had a hankering for wood fired pizza.. and bread..

    • We promise consumption reports! Elaine still has some sips of the fruity rum…

      I keep thinking this spring we should do an STS special on home distilling…

      • “I keep thinking this spring we should do an STS special on home distilling…”

        Like my coffee pots.. I have a few to..from solar stills for ships life boats to essential oil stills..
        I adore my Turkish nomad still.. cute as hell.. meant to be hauled on cross-country journey in their packs..I have two different models..
        Oil press to..if you need to hand crank out cooking oil it’s the cats meow..
        The boss hates it if I see a new kitchen gadget lol.. the grand daughter was talking about us making pasta and home made ravioli.. my favorite is the Russian ravioli pan.. super easy to make little meat or cheese ravioli..

      • I loved having the kids making a solar still out of a two liter bottle.. simple easy.. cut the bottom off at the support ridge.. fold the bottom up into the bottle about two itches.. the take a jar or whatever with your dirty water place the two liter bottle over it.. water distilling will accumulate in the folded portion.. to consume take the lid off and drink..
        Of course we have made bigger solar stills in the past..

        • Not to ruin things for you, but all has been solved before.
          If your boat has a dodger (canvas canopy over the main hatch, down=ladder, lol_ then two panels go there.

          Look at the dodger (navy blue canopy) on our boat (https://youtu.be/IDlIEzFtqMs) and you will see 2 – 150 watt panels. Port stern tower has a 400 MarineAir generator, too – made some power – but usually only 50-100 watts under comfortable sailing conditions.

          Sea solar reflection is useless. Too much variability due to chop.

    • The tiny village up the road from me used to have a pizza joint that featured a wood fired dome pizza oven. Best damn pizza I’ve ever had. Sadly, the place was a pandemic casualty. Now I’m reduced to picking up several pizzas at the over-the-mountains warehouse store, zip bagging the slices and freezing them for quick snacks.

  6. While there’s no zone like the ozone, care should be taken not to breathe it:
    https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.epa.gov/indoor-air-quality-iaq/ozone-generators-are-sold-air-cleaners%23:~:text%3DWhen%2520inhaled%252C%2520ozone%2520can%2520damage,body%2520to%2520fight%2520respiratory%2520infections.&ved=2ahUKEwixjsfvh7L2AhUOjYkEHXbnBucQFnoECAQQBQ&usg=AOvVaw05yp6J46h2O0qMc2idbTtB
    My generator was the HV lead on my TV’s picture tube.

  7. Retreat Jedi . The dark side has won this time . The evil has won . Unimaginable evil , psyops and mind altering . Take no part in any evil or stories .they have control of all including yellow dog . Stay short . Stay quiet

  8. I’m assuming whatever was supposed to happen on March 6 didn’t. So what’s the next date on the gloom-n-doom calendar?

  9. Thought you folks who like to restore old tools and things would appreciate this.

    One man’s junk can become completely functional again.

    https://youtu.be/zTyZgOkWs4o

    There are several channels on YouTube that are relaxing to watch and inspirational for some of us.

    Enjoy

  10. Dates are meaningless . Dark side complete control . More Sith Lords than one could imagine . Programmed . And whoever said about dates . Be alert anytime any day. Short hard

  12. Comrades,

    Montreal’s “La Presse” published a March 2nd report of a former Canadian soldier with Afghanistan service who subsequently battled for the Kurds. Now he has answered a call to attend the conflict in the Ukraine against Russians.

    It seems a rather grey area in our black and white world. Then again, maybe it’s red and blue shades of deep purple with tincture of yellow for another shade of grey.

    https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/2022-03-02/wali-repond-a-l-appel-de-zelensky.php

  13. George,

    Further to the AP article about knockon effects from a Ukraine breadbasket interruption, the BBC posted a report this evening of their interview with the ceo of Norwegian nitrogen fertiliser giant Yara International. He figures with Russian raw materials blocked, his farmer customer crop yields will drop if a fertiliser shortage materializes.

    Speaking of shortages, I see “food rationing” mentions have entered the Hong Kong msm lexicon as the omicron variant continues along its path.

    • They know all about WHY there are fertilizer shortages, been going on, the run up, for over a year. The crescendo is coming.

  14. I had at one time many years ago an experience with growing plants in limited space under lights. I tried every way of growing that I could find. Dirt, spray hydro, flood, etc. but the best that I could find was the hempy bucket grow method. It is so superior to any other method I tried, there was no comparison. It’s simply a small bucket or any sort with a hole about two inches up in the side. I used large MCDonalds size cups. Search term “Hempy bucket grow”

    https://www.rollitup.org/t/an-idiots-guide-to-hempy.386008/

    You cut a hole in the side an inch in my case could be a couple inches in diameter for larger buckets. Cover the hole with silt fence. You can get this in any big box hardware store for controlling soil erosion. Buy one roll and you will have way too much.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silt_fence

    Now Hempy used perlite for his soil. I did not find this the best. It floats. Messy clean up, The absolute best and super reusable, forever as far as I could tell, soil was fired diatomaceous earth. You can get stuff by the pallet for big bucks or you can get it at NAPA parts store. It works SO GOOD. Napa Oil Dry part no.8822.

    https://www.napaonline.com/en/p/NFD8822

    It has tons of little air pockets in it and because it’s fired you can wash it off and use it forever. I found that after you harvest your plants you pour out any water left and then let it sit and dry. You pour it out as a plug, with the roots sticking it together, over a wire mesh screen on top of a tote bucket. When totally dry you break it up and rub it on the screen. The clay falls through the screen and the roots stay on top. It’s then ready for reuse. It’s so handy and quick.

    For fertilizer, I found the very best was from what used to be the J. Peters company. They were bought out by miracle grow and promptly ruined the product but Jack the guy who ran it built a new company. Here’s what you need. Jack’s Professional 5-12-26 Hydroponic and Jack’s Professional 15-0-0 Calcium Nitrate are the only 2 products you need. These guys sell to professional people who grow shrubs and stuff like that, so the price is reasonable compared to all the other hydro stuff. Buy it in the 25 lb. tubs.

    How I did this. I would mix my fertilizer in dechlorinated water. To dechlorinate the water I used a pinch of powdered vitamin C in a five gallon bucket, stir vigorously then let settle for a day . This would remove the chlorine and leave it combined in a little grain in the bottom of the bucket the size of a grain of sand where the bound chlorine was. I would pour off the top 4 gallons to use and dump the rest. A bit overboard. You could use more. I got this info from the California water board of San Francisco. Somewhere there’s a pdf on their report but I did find the link below.

    https://www.fs.fed.us/t-d/pubs/html/05231301/05231301.html

    For sprouting I used a cylindrical ice cube tray that made sticks of ice like this.

    https://www.amazon.com/Narrow-Sticks-Sports-Water-Bottles/dp/B06XR2XQTD/ref=sr_1_149?crid=RLVQ9TIY3N04&keywords=narrow+Ice+Cube+Tube+Tray&qid=1646705108&sprefix=narrow+ice+cube+tube+tray%2Caps%2C100&sr=8-149

    It wasn’t this though. It had a removable bottom like this and was about 2-1/2 to 3 inches high and each tube about 1/2 inch in diameter. Can’t find exactly what I used.

    https://www.amazon.com/Silicone-Easy-Release-Flexible-Honeycomb-Cocktail/dp/B08SLZX7RF/ref=sr_1_56_sspa?crid=RLVQ9TIY3N04&keywords=narrow%2BIce%2BCube%2BTube%2BTray&qid=1646704954&sprefix=narrow%2Bice%2Bcube%2Btube%2Btray%2Caps%2C100&sr=8-56-spons&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEzVFpSTTNZWjBMUTlDJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwNTQyNzk0VFQ4WFIzNkNVOE9SJmVuY3J5cHRlZEFkSWQ9QTAyNDM4MzkxRzdIR0FMWFlFRFhOJndpZGdldE5hbWU9c3BfYnRmJmFjdGlvbj1jbGlja1JlZGlyZWN0JmRvTm90TG9nQ2xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ&th=1

    Anyway, I would put vermiculite watered with water dechlorinated, very lite fertilizer and added H2O2 to control fungus. I placed it in a tray with an air stone running air into the water. What I was sprouting many times was very particular and difficult to sprout at times. When they filled the tube with roots I would then push it out from the bottom and place in the hempy.

    The Hempy method is sort of slow to start if you are growing from seed. There is a pool of water at the bottom of the bucket. I found when the roots hit the water reservoir, they would take off. After that you could fill with water til it came out the side or kind of do it by eye and experience. Which is what I mostly did but having the hole to keep from over watering is advantageous. Let the top of the bucket dry out before you water.

    I admit I never really was satisfied with the sprouting. It might be better to use a little vermiculite pocket in the hempy to sprout the seeds to stop transplant delay. The problem is it requires more care where as the ice cube tray I put in a pan of water with a aerator and could leave them alone until they needed transplanting. With them in the hempy you could have drying out problems and the seeds I was growing were not cheap. The ice cube tray was mostly fool proof.

    I mixed my fertilizer in a kitchen trash can. I used a large aquarium submerged pump to transfer it. I had a tube off the pump, a tee with one end going to a wand off of one of those pump up plastic chemical sprayers you buy at hardware stores. The other end of the tee would return to the garbage can. I plugged the end of the return with a plug with a small hole drilled to raise pressure. To water I would turn on the pump and spray the wand into the garbage can until it filled good then water the buckets. In the garbage can I kept an air stone pumping air into the water at all times to aerate the water.

    One thing I found was you could use very small cups, I used large McDonald’s size cups (30 to 32 ounces???) and could grow very large plants. I think this was because of the pool of water, the aeration of the diamotacious earth and the constant aeration of my water.

    Maybe this won’t work for you but I would be surprised if it didn’t. I spent well over a year trying everything I could to get the best process and this was the best. I bet you find this the absolute easiest most productive system you can come up with because I tried everything I could think of and nothing equaled the ease and productivity of this.

    Using soil is a non starter. They constantly have bugs, mites, fungus and other critters in them which are near impossible to kill off. If you get infested it can wipe you out immediately and if you are doing survival type farming you can not let this happen. With this fired earth it’s totally sanitary. If you look up all the stuff I mentioned you will see lots of people doing the same but the diamotacious earth addition really works much better. They use this fired earth on expensive golf courses and football fields, where they don’t mind spending the money to get the best. The diamotacious earth is not too expensive because they use it in shops to dry up oil spills and then throw it away, so it can’t go too high in price or they won’t sell any. Keeps the price down. Compare it to potting soil. I’m not in any way against organic and dirt but if it MUST not be ruined by uncontrollable variables then leave dirt out of it.

    And no I don’t and won’t grow anything indoors so I’m not worried about talking about it.

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