Monday, May 6, 2013

Our Family Garden: Part 1 of 3

I am so excited to have an aeroponic garden this year!  I cannot wait for fresh tomato and basil salad.  No worrying about GMO's or pesticides.  Yay!

Last year our backyard garden was nearly a complete failure.  The heat and the drought were just too much for our daily watering, and then there was a fungus that attacked some of our tomato plants.  It was deflating.  And then there is the month of June.  Every June I am away at church camp with my little ones for one to two weeks.  And when I'm away, I always lose about 1/3 of my garden due to heat and lack of attention.  Even when I hire someone to water.  I need a garden that required less maintenance, could stand up to the heat of a Kansas summer, and didn't require a gazillion gallons of water to maintain.  What I found was the Tower Garden.

We ordered ours in April and promptly set it up.  Set up was so easy that my little ones tackled it while I was still fumbling with my camera and the instructions.  (Please excuse the mess.  I still had moving boxes in the living room when we set this up back in early spring.)  This fall I will be picking up a grow lamp and setting up the garden in the basement to keep us supplied with kale, lettuces and herbs all winter.  So excited about that.  I will be journaling our experience here at My Blue Daisy.

Unpacking and organizing.  Can't you tell it's organized?

Installing the pump and connecting it to the base of the tower.

All assembled!


Preparing the rock wool for the seeds.  They aren't always so thrilled about having a camera following them around... 
This is what we planted.  So far all the seeds came up beautifully except the canteloupe.  None of the canteloupe seeds germinated.  Sad, sad.

Inserting seeds into the center of each rock wool section.  
All carefully planted and labeled the seeds.  Just waiting to be covered with a teeny bit of vermiculite to hold in the moisture.  My 10 year old made a nice diagram and write up for her science notebook.
All done!  The basic Tower Garden can hold 20 plants.  We started 18 seedlings and I ordered several tomato starts from an organic heirloom seedling store that we will transplant into those last two spots.  
And here is the warm, sunny spot for our seedlings to germinate.  Next week I will show you our current status of beautiful seedlings transplanted into the Tower Garden!  Anyone else using an aeroponic garden?  Or are you planting traditional style?  What grows at your home?
You can find out more about the Tower Garden here.  In part two I'll show you where we set our aeroponic in the back yard, how we transplanted our seedlings, and the result of Kansas snow in MAY.  Argh!

6 comments:

  1. Love the tower! Wish I had room for one! I will have to check out their smaller planters!

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    1. It's going out into our backyard as soon as spring actually arrives. You don't need to set it up inside at all, you just need a small space to start your seeds inside. So sorry my post was so confusing. That's what happens when I multi-task. Lol

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  2. Gah I love this! I have so little space for growing vegetables. I will be curious how your squash and cucumber does in this. If so I may be purchasing one as well. Oh and peppers but I see you didn't plant those, they haven't done well in the past.

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    1. I will be posting here about it all summer. Our cucumber and squash have already grown so nicely since I moved it back outside. I need to replant my broccoli, though. The broccoli seedlings did not survive the May snow-sleet we had. On my to-do list...

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