Simple aeroponics via ultrasonic transducer yields 400+% tomato seedling growth increase compared to soil.

From the page:
Project Cost:22.00
Est Construction Time: .5 Hr
Required Skill Level: Basic Hand Tool Skills
Overview:
This simple low cost system provides amazing results in plant and root development. utilizing low cost and low power usage ultrasonic foggers we atomize a nutrient solution in a high oxygen high humidity environment that promotes rapid plant development. we were surprised at the effectiveness of this system and its ability to yield amazingly healthy plants ready to move onto the vegetative growth cycle with strength and vigor.

Via the Japanese NASA equivalent.

Another natural solution forms positive feedback loop. Crop yield increases, biodiversity improves, yields increase.

Just what we need here in New Mexico.
Texas: "it's like a whole 'nother country."
New Mexico: "it's like a whole 'nother third world country."

From the page: "Chapin Living Waters exists to help poor people in third world countries grow vegetables when there is insufficient rain. We offer simple, sustainable technologies like drip irrigation with the use of "Bucket Kits" for subsistence farming, bringing hope to the poorest people in over 150 countries and the opportunity to solve their own problems."

Factors influencing tomato yield: culture and variety.

It's time to get with the program. Cheap oil was just a blip in human evolution. Here's a hint: if you're not growing your own food in a sustainable manner, you're not part of the solution. I'm not self-sufficient yet, but I am rapidly getting there.

Brilliant modern interpretation of the classic wartime victory garden posters. Thanks, msiegel!

Organised by category. Links to those with a web site.

From the site: "Mail-Order Gardening Resources - The home gardener's one stop to find all the mail-order gardening catalogs in the US and Canada - over 2000 of them! Check here first to find the company and see its ratings for quality, service, price and breadth of varieties. Plus links to mail-order companies outside North America, and other gardening-related sites."

Very impressive home canning and preserving linklist.

From the page: "All About Home Canning*, Freezing and Making Jams and Jellies. Save money, eat healthier, with no additives or chemicals... and with much better taste! This page provides the links to our illustrated recipes and canning* directions - so easy ANYONE can do it, along with a multitude of other recipes, guides and canning instructions from the USDA and many universities. Whenever possible, instructions also are provided to allow you to choose the options that are important to you; such as types of cooking equipment or choices in sweeteners: honey, Splenda, Stevia, fruit juice or sugar."

My poor drought-stricken garden needs a dose of automation to ensure plants get the moisture they need when they need it. My idea is to provide plant communities with a drip irrigation based "water bus", from which soil moisture sensors will tell micro-valves/pumps to apply water as required.

Step 1: Distribute water via drip irrigation. Done. Was much more efficient than soaker hoses and localised sprinklers.
Step 2: Soil moisture sensors

This post reviews relevant DIY (and other low cost) technology published to the web. Online DIY soil moisture sensing documentation seems to have started Jan 2007 with the Botanicalls Twitter DIY, which uses two hot-dipped galvanised nails to bias the collector of a transistor which then provides a binary signal to an Arduino, which then posts a twitter. They offer a kit for $100. An array of these would be a bit steep for, my style of vegetable gardening. Though cool, a beowulf cluser of Arduinos across the garden is a bit over the top. Cool though, if you can afford it.

In March 2009, the Cheap Vegetable Gardener came out with his idea: embed a pair of nails into plaster of Paris to stabilise them. This was picked up on Hacked Gadgets. Improvements were made by a 3rd party and the Cheap Vegetable Gardener. Commercial grade soil moisture sensors start at $30 and rapidly climb.

So, now I need to get a box of hot-dipped galvanised nails and a box of plaster of Paris!

I am using increasing amounts of power in the garden. LED path lighting, soil moisture sensors, irrigation valves and control electronics need a small amount of power. Running power lines all about the acreage to feed the garden beds is impractical. Much better for the power to be generated and stored local to each garden bed where it will be used, and I have harvested nearly all the components needed from local e-waste streams.


From the page: "While this particular model is made from a 24 oz. water bottle larger models with blades cut from a 2 or 3 liter soda bottle and using a cardboard, plywood or sheet metal end pieces should be efficient enough to drive a generator based on a fan motor such as those found in old CPU cooling units.

A 12V .09A CPU cooling fan connected to this assembly could produce as much as 1W under the right wind conditions. This is more than sufficient to recharge NiCad batteries and other trivial energy needs, or fed into an existing inverter as a supplemental power source."

This Savonius style wind charger reportedly produces 10-30 ma @ 2.4 vdc from 6-13 mph wind speed, which should be sufficient to trip a pilot actuated irrigation valve on occasion, with sufficient battery capacity. Just the thing to adorn the top of my vertical garden trellis!


From the page: "Ever wanted to build a wind charger but not sure where to start ? Well now you can enter the world of wind power with this mini model wind charger that produces around 75milli watts of green recycled power. Easily constructed and made of lightweight materials so particularly suited to gusty locations. This little windmill would make a nice addition to a set of solar lights, boosting their power on overcast/rainy days, simply connect the output to the batteries in the solar light.

Heres what you need:

10 X Paper Coffee cups
An old CD
Small scrap of plywood anything above 6mm thickness will do.
A stepper motor from an old printer/fax/scanner/till etc (the older the machine the better usually)
8 X 1N4001 General purpose diodes.
General purpose glue, must adhere to metal.
Miscellaneous small wires
Battery holder to suit batteries
Electrical insulation tape

Note - Not all stepper motors will work well here you must experiment!

Solder
Soldering iron.
Scissors
Sharp knife.
Hole Saw
Pen

Multimeter or ammeter (optional)
Anemometer handy too but not at all necessary."

I've been looking at creating an on-demand garden irrigation system to ease the watering chores. Distributing power to each control point is a mess, I'd much prefer small solar/wind power generation local to the demand with LiFePo battery storage. Not sure how much power one of these will generate, but it looks like an idea I'd like to try.


From the page: "Have stacks of old computer equipment gather dust ? Now you can put some of it to use! This instructable shows you how to use PC fans as mini wind generators for recharging solar lights and ni-cads. You'll need some basic soldering skills, but this is otherwise a very easy project. My little wind generator makes around 1.5 - 2V in a 8mph wind, about 20ma into a ni-cad. This wasn't a huge success, I'd hoped to get a little more power out of it.

Materials needed:

Thick plastic bottle.
Old PC fan, bigger the better!
A few feet of small wire
A piece of wood about 1.5" square and around 20cm long
Two lengths of steel tubing that slide inside of each other, about 1/2"
6 Schottkey diodes, I used BAT85 but any will do
Epoxy
Super Glue.
Zip ties
An old CD"

Use parallel port pins to drive 8 irrigation valves (or up to 256 with a binary decoder) using Linux. With my acreage, it'd need to be wireless, using Zigbee for data/control, and a small solar panel (local to the solenoid/Zigbee) to keep a battery charged.

Alternatively, use local soil moisture sensors to detect a dry condition and supply water on demand.



More info on controlling devices with the parallel port under Linux:
Using the parallel port for output with Linux
Home Electrical Device Control HOWTO
Google search shows about 87 Linux + parallel port sites.
Parallel Port Complete
and Programming the parallel port: interfacing the PC for data acquisition and controlvia Google Books.
See also: The Computer Controller Cookbook and Electronic Computer Projects.

Grow your own food? The classic 1944 Victory Gardens Handbook can help.
Also from the same site: British Ministry of Agriculture Allotment & Garden Guides from WWII, and The War Garden Victorious from WWI.

I never suspected Cornell had such an amazingly useful home gardening resource! This garden reference database is tops in my garden bookmarks.

From the site: "Curious which vegetable varieties might grow best in your garden? Cornell researchers are, too. This site compiles information from your fellow gardeners to help you decide what to grow. Read more about this Citizen Science program. The information you supply can also influence breeding efforts and seed availability."

Yet another gem, thank you, Anneliese. From this year on, I'm growing lots of beans in the garden for two reasons: homegrown protein and nitrogen fixation. The traditional way to preserve beans was to thread them on a string and dry them. For reasons that seem to be lost in obscurity, these dried beans are known as "leather britches". I'll definitely give this a try this year.

From the page: "In winter, take your dried beans down—several strings for a large kettle—and remove the strings. Rinse well, then put on to cook. When they boil up once, pour off the first water so you know they're clean and to remove any bitter taste. Then pour in fresh water, toss in a ham bone and an onion to keep the beans company and salt and pepper to taste. Cook till tender.

"You'll come up with a mighty fine cold weather dish that'll stick to your ribs. These beans will remind you of long-ago years when folks had to preserve much of their food by drying."

Conservation Farming (CF) and Conservation Agriculture (CA) techniques developed for Zambia, now available for the rest of the Earth. Small scale, sustainable agriculture is responsive and efficient. Widespread practice of these techniques could eliminate hunger on the planet and restore biodiversity. Don't miss the publications on the site.

From the site: "The benefits of CF and CA are proven and offer farmers the opportunity to:
* Dramatically increase their yields, diversify their production base and engage in economic activity.
* Regenerate their soils and sustain adequate levels of production in all but the worst droughts.
* Liberate themselves from dependency on food aid and excessive use of costly external inputs.
* Practice sedentary agriculture on a sustainable basis.
* Regenerate rather than exploit the environments in which they live."

Hack the garden! Use simple DIY techniques to increase yields through technology.

I've started using tires to create raised garden beds, but this lady takes it to a whole new level. Learned a lot reading her post.

Raised bed gardens are easily made from discarded tires, but this lady refines it to a science with a fair bit of innovation. I'll have to try these methods next season!

I've gotta try this next year, those are some huge tomato plants!

These things really work well, they'll even digest moist cardboard in short order, turning it into lovely, rich garden compost. The guy that runs this site is taking it to a whole new level.

This brings integrated pest management and soil fertility to a whole new level...

From the page: "Among them are plants such as ornamental tobaccos, and some species of potatoes and tomatoes which have sticky hairs which trap aphids and other small invertebrates. It is thought that rather than devour the prey directly the dead bodies decay slowly and the nutrients fall to the ground where they are taken up by the roots."

How2: Germinate and grow apples from seed.

First, dry the seeds for 2-3 weeks after removing them from the apple core, flipping every day or so. As they dry, they lighten in color.

Next, stratify the seeds with moist sand for three months in the refrigerator. A zipper type bag works well, but don't let it dry out. Open the bag often to allow fresh air in. Moisten the soil if needed.

Plant out in individual containers approximately 1/2" deep in a cold frame. Apples seems to sprout best in cool temperatures. Expect less than 1/3 of the trees to germinate. When the seedlings have two leaves, they can be planted out in protected areas.

While not as space efficient as the cubic watermelon, the form to force the fruit into this shape would be much easier to make, it can be open ended to allow the fruit to expand to it's ultimate size, rather than forcing the grower to harvest the fruit when the fruit has expanded to fill the container. I'll have to try this on some pumpkins next year.

Plenty of discarded water heaters to be found in this hard water area. It't be trivial to install a float valve into one and run gravity drain from it to the garden, possibly with a timer or soil moisture meter controlling an outlet valve and vines obscuring the tank...

Linux is like an heirloom tomato plant, working with soil, sun, water and air to produce a delicious vine ripe fruit.

Sure, it's easier to just buy a tomato at the grocery store which probably has manipulated genes, grown with non-sustainable methods using pesticides and harsh fertilizers that destroy the topsoil and local ecosystem, has been picked green, gassed to turn red and shipped across the country (if not the globe), all for the profit of stockholders in monopolistic agricorps. Windows is a lot like that.

From the page: "Most of us cannot answer the question, 'what is natural food for the human animal'?"

Use recycled gutter material to make a vertical garden. I've got to try this!

Anneliese and I have started a blog dedicated to fostering crossings between organic gardenig/sustainable agriculture and free/open source computing. Follow along as we explore food ,computing and information freedom.

Every school should have rooftop and window box gardens!

Attempting to cross this with some highly productive and nicely colored indian corn selected from previous plantings this year.

A wonderful review of some delightfully unusual heirloom vegetable varieties.

Potatoes are the easiest homegrown source of calories. Here's how anybody can grow tons of them. Personally, I use discarded car tires

.

Wild plants, not weeds. The Global Compendium of Weeds has 28,000 names from over 1,000 references.

Quantity pricing on unique varieties. Unfortunately, varieties adapted to the Pacific Northwest are not likely to do well in this hot, dry environment. However, they may have a few varieties I can grow through the winter...

From the site: "Ecological Crop Improvement For and By Farmers
Welcome to our 2009 catalog and website!
We are an organic seed and vegetable farm in the Pacific Northwest. We produce farm-original varieties of many salad greens, vegetables, herbs and a few flowers."

Leading by example: doing it right! The First Lady creates a Victory Garden at the White House, replacing part of the resource hungry South Lawn.

From the page: "It just tells you that this country cares about people's good health and about the care of the land," she said. "To have this sort of 'victory' garden, this message goes out that everyone can grow a garden and have free food."

From the page: "Planting a vegetable garden in the White House will inspire millions of Americans to save money and their health by growing their own food."

Done!

ReviveTheVictoryGarden.Org is dedicated to helping people build their own sustainable vegetable garden with a wealth of well organized quality links on the topic.