Gardening in September?

September is a great time to start a garden.... right?

While most gardeners start thinking about planting in February or March, I am going to start my journey in September. To prove that I'm not insane, I started an indoor garden in January 2012 and have had one in some form or other since then.

I started with tomatoes and green onions on the windowsill, and have since moved on to a small metal shelf lined with reflective material and two CFL lightbulbs, where I have grown bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, radishes, spinach, and peas.

So where am I going with this? As you can see in the pictures, I was using milk jugs as my pots, which worked pretty good for most plants, but the peppers and tomatoes were always small because the plant wasn't able to spread its roots and grow to full height.

This time I am going to reconfigure my indoor garden and start almost from scratch. I want to have at least 2 full sized plants which means larger pots and more height in the garden shelf. I will also have to stack my growing spaces on top of each other to stay close to my 5 square foot goal.

I experimented with an indoor garden for about a year and had some really good results. We moved recently and most of it has since died, but I plan on restarting it soon. The indoor garden was made from a metal shelf that we mounted two 100w CFL lightbulbs in. We lined the shelf with solar curtains that we mounted on cardboard to make them less likely to tear.

With this setup we successfully grew all of the following: Green Onions, tomatoes, radishes, bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, peas, green beans, spinach, carrots, and strawberries.

The biggest thing that I learned from this experience is how important it is to give plants enough space! I was growing everything in about 5 square feet, but the containers for each plant were not the size they needed to be. As a result the peppers were not as large as they could have been, and the peas and tomatoes kept snaking their way around the other plants, causing problems. When I restart this garden I plan on making full square foot boxes for the larger plants, and I will build a shelf for the milk jug pots to sit around the side so we still have 5 square feet of growing space.

Cookies in the Solar Oven

Made some chocolate chip cookies in the solar oven last week, and they were fantastic! Our second batch didn't cook as well because we had some cloud cover move in. But we still maintained between 150 and 200 degrees F. Each batch took about 2 hours to bake.

With a solar oven you need to adjust the direction it is facing about every 15 minutes to maintain your maximum heat.

Tuna Can Alcohol Stove

He uses Heet in the video, but you can also use rubbing alcohol as long as it is higher than 50%, but it will make the bottom of your pot black. Obviously the higher the percentage of alcohol, the more efficient the stove is and the less black will get on your pots.

Original "Cat Stove" Design:
http://jwbasecamp.com/Articles/SuperCat/index.html

Terra Cotta Pot Space Heater

These work really well to heat a small room and they don't cost much to put together, just make sure you have a safe container/surface for the candles. I have seen people put the candles in a pie tin to contain them a little better.

Lee Hite Biomass Briquette Press

Neat idea to conserve wood, or if you don't have a lot of wood at your disposal, you can use shredded paper, leaves, etc. to build up your fuel supply. Combined with a high efficiency stove, like the rocket stove mentioned in the previous post, you could cook and heat for a long time and never need wood. On their website there are diagrams for different shaped molds, including sticks which would be ideal for most rocket stoves.

Clay Rocket Stove

I have known about rocket stoves for quite sometime, but this was the first time I saw one made out of native clay:

Here is the rocket stove I built: