Modern Organic Farming Without Soil [Part3] - DIY Project

Building a DIY organic growing bed:
FEEL FREE TO USE THIS DESIGN AND PROCEDURE FOR NON COMMERCIAL USE

Part 1: Click here
Part 2: Click here

Tools needed:

Permanent marker
Scissors
Hacksaw blade

Hammer

Sand paper [ to rub off the PVC powder along the cut lines ]

Measuring Tape

Item List:

PVC Pipe: Big - 4 inch diameter | Small -2 inch diameter

9 pieces of 2 inch T joint

6 pieces of  4 inch to 2 inch reducer

Base Dimension:

48 in x 20 in

Grow Bed Height:

12 in including reducer 

click for larger picture

Working Principle:

The ideal growing bed height for most of the vegetables are 12 inches [ 1 foot ] so there are 6 six growing beds each of 12 inch height and 4 inch diameter. A 2 inch vertical pipe parallel to the growing beds help check the water level in the system.

I have not used PVC solvent for the joints keeping it as simple as possible to construct. If done properly there wont be any leak in the system even without the use of the solvent. What you see in the above snap as dried leaves and branches will form our growing medium.These are chopped of tomato bushes from my earlier batch....I thought this would be an ideal way to cycle the system and what you grow forms your growing bed. Minimum waste of resources.

Before you start cutting the PVC here are a few tips. Use the measuring tape to measure the required length. Mark the point to be cut with the permanent marker. Cut the PVC pipes and this will leave you with powdery PVC at the ends, rub this off with the sand paper.

Cut the 4 inch pipe to 6 pieces of 12 inches each for our growing bed. Press the 4 inch to 2 inch reducer on to the 4 inch pipe and hammer in.Next step is to join the T to the 2 inch side of the reducer ; for this cut a small piece of the 2 inch pipe and hammer it into the reducer. Take the T and hammer it in. Do this for all the six 12 x 4 [ht x dia] pipes.

Now proceed to measure, mark and cut pieces of 2 inch pipe to form the horizontal run. Here is how to do it. Lay two 12 inch pipes side by side with a gap of 2 inches between them, measure the inner distance between the two T's ; this is the size of the 2 inch that you should cut. If you don't do this step properly you will end up not having a proper gap between the 12 inch beds. Cut, push in and hammer as you go along.

Measure the height from the top of the 12 inch pipe to the top of the horizontal 2 inch pipe at the bottom. Cut a 2 inch pipe to this length. This will form the check pipe to view the water level in the system and also to pour the required nutrients from the OWL [ click for info on constructing the OWL ]. This completes the growing bed side of our project.

For the base do the same measuring, marking and cutting and hammer in and attach an end cap at either end. Please ensure that the end caps fit in securely. I have use a length of 20 inches, end cap to end cap. I have designed the base in such a way that, when we pour water in, it flows to the base of the stand and adds weight increasing stability. The entire lower half of the system will have water in it making the whole system stand upright with a more uniform weight distribution. 

I have used an oversized end cap at the top of the vertical 2 inch pipe to act as a lid that can easily be taken off for inspection. Our unit is now ready and the next step is to fill it with the growing medium.

In the first six beds I used chopped up bits of my dried tomato bushes. I compressed each bed with another PVC pipe to pack the pieces in as tight as possible. For the last one I am experimenting with polyurethane foam that I mixed up. The foam is very light and is easy to produce in large quantities and so thought I might as well try it out. I made some for this test, will cover this in another post. The foam was cut into small pieces and this forms the mass of the last bed. 

 Now pour water over any of the growing beds and watch the water rise in the check pipe. Stop when it is half full say to about 6 inches.The next stage is to let the system sit soaked for 3 days out in the bright sun.

After three days its time to add the top layers for planting the plant or directly putting the seed in for germination. One advantage of this system is that you don't need to germinate the seeds separately and replant it in here. The seeds can be directly sown into the growing bed. 

The majority of the growing area is our chopped up bush comprising of shredded leaves and stem. Over which I add a thin layer of home made calcium manure [<<click] and finally the top layer of coco peat. Keep it like this for another three days. 

On the third day pour or spray water on the top layer to make it wet and carefully plant your plant or seed without disturbing the layers drastically. Siphon out excess water from the check tube and bring the water level down to the level shown above. Check the top layer for dryness, if you find the top layer dry, wet the layer. The system will take a while to develop enough capillary action for the water from the bottom layer to reach the top, so initial wetting might be required for a few days depending on how you have packed the lower layer of the growing bed. A denser packing will yield better capillary action. Keep checking the check pipe for water level and maintain the correct level. We are all set now.....happy farming.

Organic manure from egg shells

I have read on-line that calcium is a very important part of the plants diet. Back in school I remember reading about how a major portion of the egg shell is made up of calcium, lime and protein. This is the part of the egg that we throw away and every house consumes a substantial portion of eggs on a weekly basis. This got me thinking and thought of options to put the egg shells to a more practical use. 

Calcium

Calcium is a very important part of a plants diet. It is the most important nutrient after potassium and nitrogen. Calcium helps to maintain the chemical balance of soil, increases metabolic rate and helps to neutralize cell acid. Egg shells are composed of about 95 percent calcium. Calcium is an essential plant nutrient which plays a fundamental part in cell manufacture and growth. Most roots must have some calcium at the growing tips. Plant growth removes large quantities of calcium from the soil, and calcium must be replenished

Lime

Aside from calcium, eggshells contain lime and protein. Lime is added to soil when it is too acidic (low pH level) to neutralize the acidity and raise the pH level. Lime adds magnesium to the soil and helps increase aeration and drainage. Most commercial fertilizers contain lime.

On with our project........

Preparing the manure:

I send word to the kitchen that the egg shells may be passed on to me. Kept two open containers in the back yard with direct sunlight falling on it but protected from the rain. Why two containers ? one might ask. The egg shells in one dries completely as the other fills up.

Once the shells are dry and crisp I put the shells into my blender [ no not the one used for food in the kitchen, I have one in my home lab for these kind of experiments ]. Running the blender for a few seconds turn the shells into fine powder. I empty the contents from the blender into a storage container and the cycle continues. I do this once in two to three weeks and this gives me quite a lot of pure manure without any chemical.

This I add to my organically grown veg patch and also into my aquaponic system. Sometimes I add a thin layer just below the top layer of my growing bed. Do try this out and you will be amazed at the positive change in your plant growth. 

Modern Organic Farming Without Soil [Part2]

Click here for part one of this article.


We will start off with the results. Here are some photographs of the result of my experiments. This particular batch of photos are from a fully automated system that I designed for growing my vegetables on the third story terrace, far away form the ground soil. The power required to drive the system is generated from solar panels.

Tomato

Mint

Spinach

Long Beans

Bitter Gourd

After running this system for two years and studying the plant behavior I decided to implement it on individual smaller systems, which might be more practical on balconies and the like. Here are some photos of the result.  I did not try to tame these but let it grow as wild as they pleased, but without soil. Have put down the growth medium used below each photo. The medium select is a neutral medium.

medium: 3/4 inch gravel

medium: machine waste cloth, gravel, cleaning sponge pieces

medium: cocoa peat , 3/4 inch gravel

Working Principle:

The plants use soil to build the root structure and absorb the nutrients required for its growth. The soil also provides support for the plant to stand upright. As the plants grow taller the main root goes deeper and the the branched roots spread further away. The minor roots tend to look for moisture and nutrients. Since too much water can rot the roots the plants prefer moist soil to wet soil.  Moist soil has enough air for the plant roots.

My experiment was based on these main attributes [ and some minor attributes would make this blog boring ] and I formulated a theory. It was my belief that plants are happy when:

• they have just enough moisture
• the right amount of nutrients
• right amount of aeration of the roots
• have a medium where they can spread their roots
• a medium that can support the weight of its steam and leaves

p.s: Most vegetables are happy in a medium that is 12 inches deep.

Selecting Growth Medium:

Based on what I mentioned, I found that the medium should essentially process three major qualities. Firstly it should have the ability to retain moisture and the nutrients we provide externally, secondly it should be able to hold the plant steady and thirdly it should be an inert medium. By inert I mean that it should be neutral by itself. Some of the mediums that I have tested are:

• cloth rags
• gravel
• charcoal
• broken clay tiles
• coco peat [ surface layer ]
• coconut shell
• coconut husk 

Different plants show different growth patterns and varying root structure. For example tomato has a main root area  going down and the rest spreading outward, while in the case of mint the roots run all over the place and so does the plant. So we could safely infer that we can use a shallower and more spread out growing bed for the mint and a deeper smaller surface area growing area for the tomato. So when selecting the pots or growing container choose accordingly.

Building a simple system:

I have designed a construction which uses readily available PVC pipe and joints to make a light weight soil less vegetable garden  for small spaces and balconies. I have done the calculations with 12+ inches of growing bed height.
This will be covered in part 3.

Life of an auto driver in Bangalore - by Xaver Xylophon

Xaver Xylophon, from Europe, visited Bangalore and rode rickshaws.He then made this amazing animation about them.

Link to his Vimeo page:

http://vimeo.com/xylophon

Link to his website:

http://xaverxylophon.de/

Panasonic Trimmer ER 230 - Battery Change

Battery time:

My trusty three year old Panasonic ER 230 rechargeable beard trimmer started pretending to be blunt. I presumed that it must be due to the blade wearing off. On closer examination I found the blade to be more than satisfactory.I was almost tempted to buy a new one but somehow liked this one a lot and was feeling sad to put it to rest, so did a full charge and left it on for a while and the culprit turned out to be the battery. This was a wonderful discovery.

The next challenge however was to open the unit to check what kind of battery it had. On the outside it read 1.2 volt. So i guessed it might have a rechargeable single cell inside much like a AA battery. I took off the front blade as I did after each trimming for cleaning. This revealed two tiny screws which I unscrewed. A careful pry without damaging the two clips on either side revealed the contents.  

There lay a 1.2 volt Ni-Cd battery inside. The battery had identical ends on both sides and had a slide in mechanism. I found the size similar to AA rechargeable batteries. So I popped in a 1000 mAh AA 1.2 Ni-Cd battery with some minor modifications to the battery carriage.Closed everything up connected it to the charger and did a full charge. The ER 230 sprung back to life and worked as new once again. I came out happy that I could breathe youth back to my trusty old friend.

Photos:

Reading Lamp Hack

The Reason:

I wanted a reading lamp that I could carry around my home lab when that extra bit of light was needed. This would also aid in making better mobile phone photographs for my blog.

Concerns:

• Should not be heavy
• Should have ample light
• Battery should last for 5~6 hours
• Battery should not have memory effect

Items used:

1 Watt Led 3.7 Volt + Heat sink + pcb 

1 Watt Led Driver

1 3.7 Volt Li-ion battery [2 batteries if you want twice the backup time]

Tools:

Soldering Iron

Screw Driver

Wire stripper

Insulation tape

Here is a quick video:

Instructions:

Choose an led driver that matches the output of your chosen led. The lithium ion batteries do not suffer from memory effect  so it can tolerate interrupted charging cycles. A 3.7 Volt Li-ion battery can be charged at a voltage of up to 4.2 volt. Led drive that I chose produces 3.8 volt and hence is within the safe limit and wont overcharge the battery. 

I had an old reading lamp stacked away in my store room which was just what I needed. This particular lamp had a 2 position switch for two brightness settings so I used a  100 ohm resister across one position. This is optional, so I didn't mention this in the items list. 

Putting the whole thing together is pretty straightforward and you can use your creativity here. Here is the general idea. I used the power chord and the switch that came along with the lamp because they were in perfect condition, removed the rest of the components including the AC bulb. Put in the led and wired it to the led driver through the switch. The lithium ion battery is connected in parallel to the output of the led driver. That is it....done...

Calculation:

1watt / 3.7 volt = .27 Amp

My Li-ion battery is rated at 1.8 AH [1800 mAh]

1.8 Ah / .27 Amp = 6.7 Hours

So one full charge should give me about 5~6 hours of light output at full brightness. With two Li-ion batteries you get up to 12 hours. The position through the 100 ohm resistor takes a fraction of this and should last the whole night even with one battery....a perfect night lamp :)

Here are some snaps: