Time for a little math.

Each shop light houses two 40 watt bulbs for a total of 80 watts. Running the light for an hour uses 80 watt hours of energy, or 0.080 kilowatt hours (kWh).

In Columbia our electricity rate is 9.44 – 10.88 cents per kWh depending on your total energy usage. This seems to be a fairly average energy cost. I’ll use the lower number for the calculation.

Generally it’s recommended that lights be left on seedlings for 14-16 hours. Let’s assume we leave them on for 16 hours. This gives us all the information we need for our energy calculation.

For one shop light with two 40 watt bulbs:

0.080 kWh/hr * $0.0944/kWh * 16 hr = $0.12

This means that for each day I run one shop light, the energy costs me $0.12. If I run the light for a month it costs $3.62.

Of course I don’t just have one light going; I have six. So running all six lights for a month costs $21.75.

I will probably run these lights for 2-3 months, depending on the plants I have growing. I also am not likely to have all six lights on from the very beginning, since I don’t start all my seeds at the same time. But let’s just assume for simplicity that all the lights stay on for a solid three months. That’s a grand total of $65.25 for running the lights for three months.

This isn’t a huge expense, but it’s not negligible, either. I’ve never seen numbers like this before, so it’s helpful to know that every time we install another light, we’re going to spend roughly an additional $3-4/month on energy.

(If the math is too much for you, you can also use an online energy calculator like this one.)

But let’s not forget the heat mats! They require energy, too.

I’ve got a 48×20″ mat which pulls 107 watts, and a 9×19.5″ mat which pulls 17 watts. Based on the same calculations above, running these two mats for 16 hours a day costs $0.19/day, or about $5.62/month. Over the course of 3 months, running these mats will cost around $16.85 total.

The whole getup together will cost around $82.10 to run for three solid months.

So. Starting seeds at home is way cheaper than buying seedlings when you’re growing on a large scale, and gives you the flexibility to grow the varieties you want with methods that you agree with. But just like buying seeds, there are some definite costs involved.

Who wants to build me a passive solar greenhouse?

This year I’m trying to learn from last year’s successes and failures and improve the efficiency of our growing system. For me this includes getting things started much earlier, using more heat mats to help the seedlings grow faster and stronger, and in general just starting more seeds, instead of direct sowing.

I threw a ton of carrot and beet seeds out into the garden last year, and because I didn’t do a very good job of making sure the surface of the soil stayed moist (the one thing our soaker hose watering system isn’t good at), relatively few came up. So this year I’m starting almost everything inside.

I’ve invested in a few new pieces of infrastructure this year to make this scaling-up possible.

1. A new, bigger heat mat. Last year I only had one heat mat, and it was only large enough for a single flat. So far this year I have 12 flats planted already, so clearly one mat isn’t going to cut it.

I invested in a larger heat mat that fits 4 flats. Between the big one and the small one I still don’t have enough mat space for all my flats, but because of the expense of the mats I decided to just get the one big mat. I searched around quite a bit and found the cheapest price for a new Hydrofarm 4-flat heat mat on eBay.

We house our grow op in our basement, which is cool but not freezing (especially not this winter). These mats raise the ambient temperature by 10-20 degrees, which is just fine for my purposes. There are fancier systems with temperature control dials, but the simple on/off mats work fine for me right now.

To make the best use of space, I rotate flats on and off the mats and preferentially give some plants that especially need the heat (like tomatoes) permanent real estate.

2. Capillary mats. I just learned about capillary mats a few weeks ago, and after reading the rave reviews I decided to jump in.

Capillary mats are essentially a big piece of fabric that wicks moisture along the length of the mat. You stick one end of the mat in a bucket of water, set your mesh-bottomed flats on the mat and the mat absorbs the water and feeds it to the seedlings. This avoids over- and under-watering seedlings by keeping them evenly moist (and allows you to be lazy and forget about them).

I ordered 6 yards from Gardener’s Supply. When it arrived I was somewhat surprised to find that it looked like a big roll of white felt. It took some experimentation to figure out how to make it work, but after a week or two of tweaking, I think we have it figured out. More on that soon.

3. More lights. Our “grow lights” are cheap shop lights from Lowe’s (about $10 for a 48″ fixture that holds two bulbs). We suspend them from the rafters in our basement with chains so I can move the lights up and down based on the height of the seedlings.

To avoid the confusion of trying to combine bulbs with different portions of the light spectrum, I just bought full spectrum bulbs. We bought them in a bulk box and they came out to around $3 a piece. This means that you can put together a perfectly sufficient grow light with two bulbs for around $16, rather than the hundreds of dollars grow light systems online would like you to pay.

This year we bought two more sets of lights and the chains and fixtures to go with them. This allows me to have 12 flats (up to 576 seedlings in 2″ seed blocks) under lights at one time.

4. Another table. Our seeds and mats live on top of plastic folding tables. I guess we could theoretically just put them on the floor, but we’d have to have really long chains for the lights, the floor would become a mess from the water and soil, and the floor would be colder. Having them on tables makes them easier to work with.

To accommodate our increased number of flats and lights, we needed to also get another table to put them on. These aren’t cheap, but they’re sturdy and not bothered by the constant moisture that seed-starting requires.

So that’s the scoop. I have about 500 seedlings started already, and they are looking really good. I’ll probably need to start only one more flat of seeds (mostly cucurbits: summer squash, winter squash, cantaloupe and watermelon) before summer. And then of course it will be time to start seeds for fall and winter growing. But for now, 2012 is off to a good start!

At a cooking class I attended in Paris we were each given a coupon to Dehillerin. I hadn’t heard of it before, but soon everyone was talking about how it was so worth the trip just to visit. On our last day in Paris, we did.

Dehillerin is a cooking equipment store in Paris that opened in 1820 and hasn’t changed since. Part of its appeal to foodie tourists is that it was Julia Child’s favourite cooking store. It even appears in Julie and Julia, in the scene where Julia Child is shopping and pulling copper pots down off the walls. That’s unmistakably Dehillerin.

The store is cramped, with wooden shelving from floor to ceiling, and pots, pans and anything you could ever want to cook with in stacks, bins and piles. Most items had no packaging at all.

Thankfully when we were there there weren’t many people in the store. The aisles are tiny, and it’s hard to get around other people. In the creaky, dusty basement there is equipment targeted at restauranteurs, complete with pots that I could fit in.

The staff speak multiple languages, which is very helpful. I knew enough French to ask how much something was, but when Emile figured out that his quick French reply was too quick for my French, he quickly switched to English.

I snagged a couple of nice bannetons, which I was so proud of and gingerly carried by hand for the next two weeks and through our entire trip back across the Atlantic so they wouldn’t get destroyed by the airport baggage handlers.

If you find yourself in Paris, visit Dehillerin. It’s worth the trip.

Through great mental fortitude and self-discipline, however, I succeeded in achieving my goal. Huzzah!

In 2012, though, it was all over. It was seed buying time!

I placed my order through Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. I am not an heirloom-only seed groupie, but all the varieties I wanted were available through Baker Creek. AND their prices were substantially lower than the other companies I was considering. Plus, admittedly, I was sucked in by their veggie porn catalogue, and excited about the interesting varieties that they have that you can’t find anywhere else. AND, when I received my seeds, I found that some of the packets I ordered came with 600-800 seeds each. I will never have to buy carrots again!

These are the seeds I ordered for 2012. My reasons for buying these particular varieties include:

• Considered a “gourmet” variety or otherwise well-respected for its taste
• High yielding variety
• High amount of usable product compared to amount of seeds required to be removed
• Long storage life
• Will stand up to hot summers or cold winters
• Best variety for our climate

FYI – you may want to review your seed selections each year and decide if the varieties you have chosen still fit your needs. When I looked back over the varieties that I ordered 3 years ago, I found that decisions I made then no longer fit our current situation. For example, I bought a small space butternut squash with a low yield. Now I don’t care as much about space as I do about yield. I would rather give up a little more space and have a much larger yield.

Also, I found that the sauce-style tomato I grew last year was considered a mini-Roma-style tomato. Why would I grow a mini tomato for canning?? No wonder I was annoyed at the small size of the tomatoes and the amount of time required to blanch and skin each one. This year I’m going for big fruit to minimize the amount of time required to remove the skins.

Another lesson learned.

Here’s what I’ve found so far:

Pros:

• Can prevent damping off
• Provides nutrients to the seedlings

Cons:

• SEEDS. One of the unfortunate things about vermicomposting is that the worms don’t do anything to deactivate any seeds that you might put in your compost. All the seeds you put in the compost will return out of it, unchanged. This means that if you add the castings directly to your garden bed, you’re introducing “weed” seeds into you garden  (they may be tomatoes, but if they’re unwanted tomatoes, they’re weeds). And if you add the compost to your seed-starting mix, you’re introducing weed seeds into what you want to be a seed-free environment, except for the seeds you are actively planting. This is a problem.
• Dries out more easily. I use a standard Jiffy-style organic peat-based seed-starting mix. The peat holds water really well, which is wonderful because I often forget to check on and water the seedlings. (Sidenote: I recently discovered capillary mats, and am excited to try out this lazy man’s efficient form of seedling irrigation.) Using the worm castings, though, the soil blocks have dried out much faster. This can be a problem with seed-starting, because you’re trying to provide the most favourable environment possible so the seedlings can get off to a strong, healthy start. I used about half a tray of worm castings to about ~15 quarts of seed-starting mix. I have no idea if this is a proper ratio. It’s possible that I used way too much, and that’s why the blocks dried out. Either way, though, this is a good thing to know: worm compost doesn’t hold water like peat does.

To me, the seeds that have popped up are the most challenging aspect of this. I can control the water, but I can’t control the germination of weed seeds. Plus, the weed seeds can potentially a) get in the way with or interfere with the germination of the seed you actually wanted to plant, b) when you pull the unwanted seedling out, there’s a possibility that you could damage the desired seedling and c) if you let the weed seeds get too big, they could potentially steal nutrients away from the seed you’re trying to grow.

I’m not anti-worm compost for starting seeds at this point, but I think I’ll need to be much more careful about what goes into our compost. I’ve tried to keep seeds out of the compost, but there have been a few moments of weakness in the middle of a canning session when I’ve dumped a bunch of tomato seeds into the bucket. Lesson learned.

In the future, if I want to use worm castings in my seed-starting mix, I think I’ll need to put the castings under lights for a few days to let any existing seeds germinate. At that point they will be easy to remove, and then I can add the (mostly) weed-free compost to the rest of my seed-starting mix.

I was really excited about the worm compost study, but as it turns out, it’s slightly more complicated than you would hope. Oh, science.

If you’re not familiar with the process, this is a really good summary. Basically, you plant the seeds, grow the greens (but don’t eat them), pull up the roots in the fall, stuff them in a bucket with soggy sand or soil, put a black garbage bag over the whole thing and wait. Eventually the little chicons will pop their heads up (in the DARK!!!), and voila, gourmet vegetable. Weird, weird, weird.

We grew the greens/roots in the garden this past season, and now we have a 5 gallon bucket in our basement that chicons are growing out of. (Not chickens. That would be even weirder.) Overall I consider it a success, but I’m still trying to figure out what to do with them.

I’ve tried a few recipes for Belgian endive. One was so incredibly bitter even I couldn’t force myself to finish the dish (after all that work!). In the last dish I tried, I was more careful to cut off the lower portions of the stems to help prevent bitterness. I julienned the leaves and added them to pasta with a lemon and nutmeg cream sauce, and it was lovely. I’m not sure I could really taste the endive, though, so I’m not sure I’m really getting the gourmet experience I should be getting.

Does anyone have recommendations for growing or preparing Belgian endive?

I planted the seeds for these leeks inside, in our basement, on January 30, 2011. It’s now January 2012 and we still have leeks out in the garden, happily hibernating under a layer of snow until we pull them up for dinner.

The leeks took a really long time to grow in our cold basement (I need to provide additional heat next time), so when I finally gave up on them getting any bigger and set them outside, they were tiny. Teeny tiny little specks of green that got lost in the garden. But a year later, they are massive, nicely formed leeks.

Leeks take up space in the garden for a long time (obviously), which is kind of annoying, but I appreciate their usefulness for providing a fresh vegetable in the middle of the winter. I’ll be growing these again this year.

By the way, I discovered how to keep most of the dirt from just-pulled leeks outside in the garden instead of in our kitchen. After you pull them up, peel off a layer or two like you would with an onion. The leafy green tops come off in layers all the way to the root, so if you start with the lowest green leaf and pull it off, all the dirt on the white part below will come off with it. One or two layers off and voila, you’ve got a (mostly) clean leek.

And the total is…..

 254 pounds!

This is really exciting to me. Last year’s total was 112 pounds, so we more than doubled our production this year compared to last. Doubling our production was one of my goals for 2011, so WHOHOO! We made it!

Our biggest yielding crops were:

These seven foods accounted for 83% of our production.

Based on a fairly rough estimate using USDA values of organic retail prices, I estimate that our total yield was worth about $600. We’ve put more than that into the garden over the last couple years, so it’s nice to start to see some return on investment. If you want the rest of the nitty gritty, you can see my spreadsheet here. Yes, I have a spreadsheet.

We don’t plan to put in more garden beds this year (because of our bigger goal of paying off our house!), so instead of focusing on increasing space I’m going to focus on increasing efficiency within our existing space. We made huge headway this year compared to last, but there were still quite a few cases of frustrating inefficiencies. Example: the huge space I dedicated to growing brassicas, and then the broccoli and cauliflower got totally wiped out by cabbage worms. So much space taken up for so long, and then NOTHING. No production. Zip. I chopped those suckers down and tossed them on the compost heap. Ugh. Waste. So this year I’m going to try to make sure that there is always something growing and producing, and as soon as one thing comes out, another goes in.

Speaking of which, it’s about time to get busy starting seeds.

This single mama sweet potato, though, just wouldn’t give up. After we pulled off the initial slips, I was going to toss her on the compost pile. Charlie developed a fondness for her, though, so he stuck her in an unused planter with soil. This sweet potato kept producing more and more slips that we would pluck off and plant in our sweet potato bed. I think only the earliest planting produced anything substantial, but that’s most likely due to the longer growing time they had.

The mother sweet potato kept growing vines all season. When it finally came time to pull up the sweet potatoes and clean up the garden, I pulled up mama sweet potato, too. Guess what? She’d produced ANOTHER sweet potato in the little planter where she was growing.

Thank you, mama sweet potato. You served us well.

I set seedlings out early this spring, and they fed us well as spring greens. When I cut them, they grew back. I left them in the garden, and they lived through the whole summer with no protection. Record 109 degree day? Doing just fine here, thanks.

Then fall came. They lived through frosts. Then they lived through a freeze. I harvested the biggest leaves and left the rest of the plants, and now they’ve lived through snow. We’ll see if they survive the winter and start growing again in the spring.

The leaves I harvested a few weeks ago were the nicest leaves I’ve ever seen. No sun damage, no bug holes. Just pretty pretty leaves.