Remember Bears are scavengers

Remember bears are scavengers LOL
This is a shot of the creative space in the bear den

REMEMBER PLAY SAFELY

USE ALL APPLICABLE SAFETY MEASURES

PLEASE

This is an old digital thermostat salvaged years ago teamed it up with

an old relay scavenged from a AC. unit and now we have a more steady temp in the growing space

This is a shot of a peat pellet with a pair of pins stuck in it to act as a wetness probe

I used an old digital thermometer as an indicator( thingie on the left)and a decade resistor block (thingie on the right) to give a relative reading of the conductivity of the peat pellet and hopefully an indication of how dry the pellet is.

The actual reading is of little importance as it is only an indicator not an actual attempt to read the % of moisture.

I will at a later date replace the decade box with a fixed resister and place the entire unit in side the green house. I will also put all current caring devices in to a safety box and tidy up the conections.

plants doing good

well the plants are doing good. I think I am going to set up a water minder or some way to check the (wet) of the felt under the tray of pellets.
I have several old thermometers (electric) that are based on resistance so if I can figure out a way to bury an electrode in the felt and add a resister to give me a reading (all relative) I could use it to give an indication of the (wetness) of the thing.
I may try to use a unplanted peat pellet to insert a probe in to as well.
I am finding that the temp. is not stable and is running a bit cold so I will adding a heater soon as I can find the relays hiding around here LOL.
I will post Pict's. and plans as soon as I can figure out how to draw a print on here.

The Details

By now you should have an idea of how this thing is set up.




Now for the teckies!
Greenhouse is
27" wide (door side)
17" deep
61" high to the peak
41" to the top shelf

Seeds were planted on Mar 17 in the afternoon and the Auxiliary heat was applied keeping the pellets between 64 and 74 degrees F. Temp was dependent on the dimmer setting and ambient temp. Our cave stays a relative cool 58 to 68 this time of year. The top was put on and the peat pots kept watered with chlorine free drinking water. The top was removed 3 days ago to accommodate the growth of the squash plants.

Seed tray was placed in greenhouse and dimmer adjusted to give a pellet temp. of about 72 +/- 3 degrees.




Order of planting was:

top left 4 pellets/3 seeds to a pellet
tomato Spears Tennessee Green
next row down
Mortgage Lifter Pink
Cherokee Purple
Kentucky Beefsteak
Thia White Striped Eggplant
Amish Paste
top row pellets 5-8 and rows down
Morning Sun
White Queen
Brandywine
Sweet Banana Peppers
Yellow straight neck early squash
Okra
All seeds are from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, Mansfield MO. www.rareseeds.com with the exception of the last 3, peppers and squash are from wally world and the okra was courtesy our landlords garden! LOL

The Heirloom seeds came as a gift from Amy's Garden and she is a great friend!


I plan on adding a grow light to the top of the house next week (after pay day lol) and to start moving some of the plants to bigger pots as required.


DISCLAIMER
Please do NOT judge the seeds performance from this blog.
This is how they are doing for us. How a seed will do for you under your conditions may and probably will differ from how they do for us.

Bear Necessities

OK!!! I got my greenhouse today, set it up and moved in.

 This is the dimmer I use to keep the tray temp from cooking the plants. PLEASE keep the grounds connected and I would recomend using a ground fault detecter for safety sake.

This is the finished greenhouse. The starting tray is the on the second shelf. The top is some stray violets that snuck in as I was working and I didn't have the heart to put them out in to the cold cruel world! LOL

Showing the starter tray, the cord from the shut off switch is long enough to allow the tray to be turned and the blob on the left side is the thermometor used to monitor the soil temp. and internal temp. The plastic bag in the tray containes a remote reading device and  can check the temp from my bed! LOL  I will be doing some transplanting to bigger peat pots after the first of the month - "pay day"

I will also be adding a grow light at the same time and putting it on a timer to add a bit of supplemental light. I will be working on a watering system later.

The Bear Necessities

3 days later we had sprouts

6 days later off comes the top and we have plants

thay will get thinned later this week and when thay get bigger will get transplanted to bigger pots

view from my cave

well here goes
Please BEAR with me as i try to offer some bits of wisdom and hopefully some usefull advice.
I don't spell well so if you are interested in grammer and spelling Please move on to some other blog spot
I am going to start with some ideas on starting a "from seed" bucket garden.

We had several old dead heating pads laying around so I took one apart

taped it to the bottom of a starting tray covered it with the felt pad from the salvaged heating

pad and loaded the peat pellet tray





plugged the thing in and found that i had a verrrry hot house
added a dimmer in the system and was able to turn the temp down
DISCLAIMERS
This worked for me Please use some sense and unplug this thing when you work on it OK!

Good
expanded the peat with water added seeds put the top on and put it in the window