| Questions about gardening? Ask QMR!
Q: How many lights do I need to grow 12 plants?
A: How big of a space do you want to grow the plants in? Much depends on how big you want to get the plants, and that is where the first question comes into play. If you are growing in soil, in containers like Smart Pots, the diameter of the pot will designate the amount of space you need. Generally speaking, one light hood covers a 4 foot by 4 foot area. If you want to jam 12 plants into that 16 square foot space, you need one light. If you want to spread them out, you will need more.
Q: I've seen a powdery white covering on some of the leaves of my plants. What's going on?
A: The past two outdoor seasons in California have created a monster in the form of powdery mildew. Combine the cool, damp spring weather with the fact that most gardeners are using cloned cuttings, and we've gotten an epidemic of powdery mildew. This stuff sinks a tap into your plant's stomata (an opening the plant uses for exchanging CO2 and absorbing nutrients) and sucks out the vigor of your plants. Plants infected with PM never fulfil their full potential in size or yields. Product infected with PM is practically worthless. Preventing PM is the key to controlling it. As mentioned, cloning a plant contributes to the spread of PM. Once established on a particular plant, PM will become systemic, and any cuttings trimmed from the original will also be infected. If you want to guarantee no PM at least for awhile, start your garden from seeds. PM also spreads from plant to plant, so an infected plant should be removed from any plants you want to keep clean. Nearly every gardener who has detected PM on their plants fight a constant battle particularly when conditions (damp, cold) occur that encourages spread of PM. Products meant to prevent and sometimes control PM include Serenade (a bacterial solution with a living organism that feeds on PM), and fungacides like Green Cure and Zero Tolerance. Once available over the counter, sulphur burners and fungacide bombs are now restricted from sale in California. Both do a great job in cleansing indoor growing areas that have had diseased plants. One final note on PM... it's a naturally occuring fungus that contributes in nature to the final demise of many plants. You are likely to encounter it on squash plants late in the season when the weather turns cold and humidity is high. As a result, the spores are constantly around, and can gain a foothold on your plants whenever you give them a chance. The most common way to control PM is through spraying the above mentioned products directly on the plants. Nearly every spray (even water) can be phytotoxic to plants (burning the leaves), so be sure to only spray during low light hours or when the lights are off. Since PM thrives in humid conditions, spraying a couple hours before the lights come on (or early in the morning) is best because the plant gets a chance to completely dry out after the sun comes up/lights come on.
Rules for controlling PM:
Purchase only plants from "clean" sources. Get a guarantee against PM infection when you buy plants.
Remove infected plants immediately from the immediate area of your clean plants. If you must keep them, isolate them. The spores will quickly infect the other plants nearby.
Never take cuttings from infected plants. That is like deliberately breeding defects in an animal. Never give away infected plants you don't want to try to keep. You're just adding to the epidemic.
Spray every three to four days with a fungacide like Green Cure.
Q: I've noticed webs and small creatures crawling on my indoor plants. I've heard of spider mites, and these sound like them. What can I do?
A: Seems like spider mites are the biggest problem pest for many indoor plants. Prevention is best, and there are several products that have proved useful for indoor garden pests. If you're seeing webs, you don't have a few bugs, you have an infestation. You probably have also noticed "stipling" on your leaves, small yellow spots where the mites have been feeding on your plants. In a severe case, plants can be killed, and mites can often slow growth as the plant is sapped of vital juices. First thing on your list of things to do is run to the nearest indoor gardening shop and by a pyrethrum bomb. Made from naturally occurring pesticides drawn from other plants, these bombs will whack all the living mites in your room. Most are designed to span about 3,000 cubic feet, suitable for most rooms. Rumor has it that the mites will immediately start purging eggs when they first sense pyrethrum in the air, and in three to four days, these eggs will hatch. Now you need to apply an organic bug inhibitor like Azamax or Azatrol. Highly concentrted, both are OMRI listed (organic). These concentrates can be added to a reservoir, and sprayed directly on foliage. Nearly all such sprays are phototoxic to plants, so apply a couple hours before your lights come on, or right before you turn off your lights. Use these sprays to discourage mites through the lifetime of your plant. Finally, you can help keep mites in check by allowing your room to cool down for a few hours each day. Mites thrive in hot and dry environments, so cool temps and high humidity can keep them down. Combined with Azamax or Azatrol, this environmental control is very effective. Interesting note... people who have problems with powdery mildew rarely have mites and visa versa. That's because PM thrives in cool, damp environs, so be careful not to overdo the chilling effect.
Q: I've heard that hydroton is reusable if it's properly cleaned. How do you clean it?
A: Remember that hydroton- expanded clay aggregate - is absorbent. While you can use a bleach solution to clean it, you stand the chance of having residue from the bleach affect your plants later. Your best bet is to use Ona Bleech, a two part cleaner that is designed for hydroponics uses, is non-toxic and doesn't harm plants, nor dry out your hands. These clay pellets are really quite inexpensive, and we prefer to not reuse them in hydroponics. Instead, we use the pellets for mulch in our soil garden and start out fresh to keep pests from transferring to our new hydro projects.
Q: Can I use blood meal and bat guano in a hydroponic system?
A: Yes, but you'll need to prepare a "compost tea" to keep the solids in these organic amendments from clogging up your pump, tubing and medium, etc. Instead of adding the amendments to your nutrient solution, try using a tea bag made from a coffee filter or other permeable fabric and leech liquid from the bag. Add the resulting tea. A better question would be "should I add blood meal and bat guano..." and the answer is probably not. If you are using a complete nutrient solution like Flora Series, all your plant's needs will be met. Amendments like blood, bone and fish meals or bat guano are best used in soil. Odors and bacterial development might cause more trouble than the benefit of these amendments in hydroponics.
Q: Will the Sunsystem HPS 150 light work during vegetative stage growth?
A: Short answer, yes. Long answer, you should add some flourescents to help out. We had to try out this economically priced light when it came available through our wholesale supplier. The HPS 150 is the answer to all those of us who don't want to use complicated component systems, hard wiring fixtures, and then pay extra for things that really should come with a light. Like the lamp. This light is 150 watt high pressure sodium, lamp included, that plugs into a conventional 120 watt outlet, and has a handy rocker switch on the housing. It doesn't heat up excessively as long as there is some ventilation. HPS lighting is best liked for flowering stages of plant life. Our experiment showed that dense busy growth resulted when only the HPS system was used. Nothing wrong with that, but if you want a little more leg on your plants, something that can help with flowering and fruiting spacing, you can always add some fluorescent lighting.
Q: What size net cups should I use for growing bell peppers?
A: Trick question? Much depends on your hydroponic system you are planning to use. For example, if you are planning a drip system, you can get by with a 6-inch bucket lid net pot that fits on the lid of a bucket. But if you are planning to use an aeroponic system, you can easily grow several plants in 3- to 3.75-inch net cups. There are a couple considerations... one, how much space does the plant's roots need. In Aeroponics, the roots are constantly soaked with nutrient rich droplets or vapor, so the growing medium is relatively unimportant. However, in an ebb and flow system, the medium needs to hold some moisture for the plants between wet cycles. In a drip system, same principle applies, but you can increase the length of time the pumps run. Less time means more medium, more time, less medium. Bigger net cup, more medium... smaller net cup, less medium.
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Quail Mountain Ranch Blog
May 28,2011
By Bud Neville
Trialcam fun
Outdoor enthusiasts must by nature also be good trackers. If you don't consider the marks and impacts of events while you are enjoying a hike or ride in the outdoors, you are probably more in love with the idea of being an outdoor enthusiast rather than the real thing. Here's why.
The first thing we learn about finding our way once we step off human paths is how to find our way back. A rule of thumb is to glance back to see how landmarks look, because you'll want to be able to recognize them on the way back to the trailhead. Noticing, for example, that skeleton white dead pine snag on the opposing hillside will offer you a point of reference when you are finding your way back. Studying the variances in the trail also helps: here is a downed log that makes a convenient rest, there a small spring that makes for a few slippery steps. As you notice these things, you naturally notice things like a pile of bear droppings, or the scattered feathers where some predator made a meal out of a quail. These details are the footnotes in a tracker's journal.
As you enjoy the small stories from the tracks you find, your imagination can fill in the blanks of just what plot unfolded. Like a Sherlock Holmes story, you can find the clues that shows the bear has been feeding on manzanita berries, and the quail was killed by a hawk. You know this because the hawk leaves a circular scattering of feathers versus the larger predator's semi-circle. It's kind of like a little black and white newsletter of what's been happening.
Tracking is great fun, but as you prowl your own back 40, the tracks don't tell every story. You easily miss 80 percent of the activity that occurs when you're not around. During the summer and winter at our place, the tracks tell us much more thanks to soft dust during the former, and muddy conditions of the latter. One small bottleneck of our gravel driveway becomes a storybook with a surfacing of light dust revealing every animal that passes. Still, the other acres offer no such stories... unless you employ a nifty little gadget called a trailcam.
Often used by hunters to help them determine where their target animals are spending their time during certain hours of the day, trailcams have a much broader use for the landowner who wants to see what happens when he or she is not around.
Most trailcams are triggered by motion, and so only take pictures when something moves in front of the lens. We happen to have a Moultrie that offers a choice of single photos, a three-click series of photos. Some even offer a video option, and a few will call the owners cell phone with pictures! At one time, 35 mm film was the norm in trailcams, but of course, the digital photo revolution has changed that. Now, trailcams mostly use digital formats, and the once bright flash of a conventional camera bulb has been replaced with infrared technology. Supposedly, the infrared is not as noticable by the subject, but I know the animals sense the flash and or camera, I've seen it in the photos we've taken.
Placing one of these trailcams at a spot where you know animals to frequent is like turning your little tracking "newsletters" into a full color glossy magazine. You get to see just who is coming around, and sometimes you even get to see what they're doing.
When we first got our trailcam, we put it up at the water trough we provide for wildlife near my vegetable garden. What great stories! Bears, deer, squirrels and rabbits were caught in the act of living their lives. While great fun, the trailcam was pressed into even more fascinating service that proved these contraptions can be much more than a hunter's scouting tool. When a piece of fencing on the gate that protects our livestock feed from the animals got peeled back, muddy prints left on the barn wall, and grain raided, I was sure the culprit was a bear. Idea! The trailcam had a new home for a few nights, and this is what we found out:
You can click on the picture for a closer look. Through a series of about 12 pictures, three bears were caught on camera plundering our goat grain. Ironically, the bears were spooked by the first series of pics taken at just before 8 p.m. One investigated the camera, shifting the camera view in later pics.
Sure makes one think about all the different security uses of these cameras! When not pressed into security service, we'll be moving the QMR trailcam around to gather more interesting pictures. Be sure to check back to see who's been visiting!
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Comments? Send to conrad@quailmountainranch.net
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