All plants are welcome, the community does not judge species. For us plants are just plants, we want to become "a melting pot of photosynthesis enthusiasts", as per the bucket manifesto. There are many cannabis growers but that is because it is a very popular plant around the world (and very expensive too).
I've grown a lot of different plants in my buckets, including thyme, dill, basil, hot peppers, cherry tomatoes, strawberry and chives :)
I've been thinking about doing something like this, since I'd have to fence my yard to have an ordinary garden if I don't want deer to eat all my plants.
Are there any concerns about levels of non-growth-limiting (or color-affecting) nutrients in container-grown veggies? Has anyone even looked into that?
It is expensive because of its legal situation. Cannabis is essentially weed and is very easy to grow, thus if not for the law, it is actually very cheap.
Yeah, this site used to be 100% about growing cannabis. Not sure when it transitioned into showing tomatoes and peppers on the front page. Ask yourself why these buckets have lids and air filters? It's not to keep the sweet aroma of your tomato plants out of your apartment =)
But, does it matter? Still some really nice DIY designs here even if you aren't growing weed.
IIRC it started mainly as a cannabis community but it's "branching" out to include other veggies - the growing method works for any plant, it's down to the individual as to what they grow. Feel free to experiment with different plants from different climates!
Well, I hope this one doesn't. Something on my bucket list (no pun intended), is to do something like this on a scale of 10-20 units (buckets?), except maybe in cubes with better climate control with a rolling schedule for a variety of veggies - fresh veggies year round, yum.
Quick example - lettuce can go from planting to harvest in roughly 7-8 weeks. So 7-8 buckets could provide you with fresh lettuce every week.
Edit: Apparently it's possible to manipulate the light cycles to get lettuce to mature in just 22 days! That's only 3-4 buckets :)
I've done this with bell peppers and its a lot of fun. Ask your local deli or bakery for free food grade five gallon buckets. Mine smelled like frosting which was not necessarily a problem. You probably don't want to reuse a bucket that held paint thinner or weed killer in its previous life.
Peppers not being illegal, I didn't need all the indoor lighting or air filters or automation, I just grew them outside in the back yard where anyone could see them.
One year I tried drip irrigation mostly to discover I need to weed and harvest daily and automatic watering means I'd skip that to my detriment also rodents like the taste of drip irrigation tube, the effort to keep it running exceeded the effort saved over simply hand watering.
You can buy "container gardening dirt" that contains weird mysterious substances that hold water so you supposedly don't have to water as often, I found they grow a crop of mold and moss which lowers or eliminates production. Of course if you live in a desert maybe humidity isn't a problem.
It is not rocket surgery for even a noob wood-butcher to turn some 8 foot long cedar planks and some posts into attractive looking planters holding IIRC 7 buckets per planter with plenty of drainage. Cheaper wood is too expensive to use because it rots quickly. My cedar planters are like a decade old and still look new(ish).
The problem with indoor lighting is I ran the numbers on an "Aerogarden" product and it works financially for basil (and apparently weed) but not crops like lettuce. The problem then becomes what do I do with an infinite supply of normally expensive fresh basil? Its possible to get tired of pesto although initially it sounds impossible.
Even for things like basil, I don't want to break even, I want to feel like my work was worth something.
I live in a townhouse and have a very small garden, about a 3x9 foot patch. I grew about a 3x3 area of basil and was able to make enough pesto for about 15 meals thoughout the summer, since I usually pay about $3 per bundle of basil I felt I got about $45 out of my basil patch. Of that $45, I spent $3 on basil seeds, and probably another couple dollars on fertilizer. Of course, there is additional value in having fresh basil on demand.
By the way, basil can root from cuttings purchased at the grocery store. Its easier and more effective to just buy seeds, but some people have trouble with them. I put some store bought basil in water and it rooted just fine, then continued to grow into a nice plant.
How many plants could you fit in a bucket? Perhaps you put 3-4 different herbs in each bucket, so you have a good chance of using something in your cooking before having to replant the bucket.
There's no thin veil here, that's how these things started and why they're called space buckets. Indoor gardening w/ grow lights generally isn't economically viable for most readily available varieties of produce.
I know when I posted on there about my peas/tomatoes I had some people surprised that I was actually growing those plants and not using it as a euphemism. They helped me with my plants and setup nonetheless
i used to grow weed with old sodium and halide fixtures, and as i grew older i had a nice rig and filled it with cukes, tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, peas, string beans, herbs, lettuce. even at the time with the larger power cost i thought it was totally worth it to be able to go down into the basement and make myself a fresh salad or have ripe strawberries without leaving the house.
my only issue is that once you move off the easy plants (that dont mind alot of water), it basically stops working. it isn't worth it to try to deal with moving and keeping soil in good shape in a closet.
The only bad thing is the socially unacceptable shadow that it casts on high tech gardening.
High profit crops are needed to push the state of the art environmental control designs forward and costs down for other crops; which will become increasingly common as systems mature and costs decline below that of traditional production methods.
Since pot is legal to grow (either freely or with a medical license) in California, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, New Mexico, Nevada, Alaska, Arizona, Massachusetts, Michigan, Maine, Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, Montana, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, Florida, D.C., and Hawaii, I'm not sure it's so "unacceptable" anymore.
I get really tired of the voluntary blind spot people adopt about this. Legalization is happening for medicinal reasons, and for economic/justice reasons. Not because people everywhere decided it's good for you recreationally. It's not this binary thing where all of a sudden it's the same as, like, knitting as a hobby. Growing it also doesn't inhabit the same moral space as growing wine grapes in your back yard, or even brewing beer in your garage.
> Growing it also doesn't inhabit the same moral space as growing wine grapes in your back yard, or even brewing beer in your garage.
Says you. I fail to see any reason see why wine making is morally better than growing cannabis, or why alcohol use would be morally better than cannabis use.
One might be more common, but it's certainly not more moral to do.
All I know, and what I think he's saying is that if I were to tell my friends and family that I grew that (which I don't) they would all redicule and/ore disown me.
And a lot of people I know would be in the same boat. Is everyone like that no of course not, but I'd venture to say a significant portion of people are(not necessarily majority, but a lot)
Maybe. The problem here is, unfortunately, in several incidents, merely shopping at a hydroponics shop has been enough for police to put you on a "suspicion of growing marijuana" list. (Example here: http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/pinellas-hydroponi...)
In the states that have legalized marijuana to some extent, this may be less of a problem these days. That still leaves a large amount of states where this may still be an issue, and potentially create hassles. Kansas is not on your list, for instance, and it was pretty easy to Google a similar incident there: http://www.kctv5.com/story/23951053/leawood-family-seeks-7-m...
This is unfortunate, because high tech gardening absolutely has applications beyond weed. Even if it's more niche / luxury (for instance, restaurants having indoor gardens to ensure a supply of super-fresh veggies and herbs) or hobbyist (like the African violet grower comment below... even largely idiot-proof versions like the Aerogardens exist for this market) due to the economics... these applications do exist.
Right, I should have said frowned upon as the legislative tides are slowly changing. Only 8 / 50 states are recreationally legal and even in these states employers still use drug testing as a pre employment filter indicating some level of social stigma still exists.
The rate of growth is something else to consider. From two states (Colorado and Washington) last year to at least three more this year (MA, ME and CA). And I didn't even notice that DC, NV and OR crept in as well.
Yes, some social stigma exists, but it's on its way out. But I agree with you as far as: It may never reach full U.S.-Wide legalization. And employers may never get over it.
Note though, that medical as > 50% adoption by state in the U.S.
Including CBD only medical states, > 85% have some form of medicinal; only Texas, Idaho, South Dakota, and Kansas have no form of legalization if you include hemp.
The profitability being high it promotes bad engineering "who cares how much it costs, who cares about the electric bill, you can buy a thousand heads of organic lettuce with profits after selling the weed". Then people try to grow lettuce directly instead of using weed as an intermediary and its not nearly as successful therefore the whole idea must suck or something. Although with better engineering, perhaps indoor lettuce growing could be technically and economically successful if the entire marketplace of weed wasn't stacked up against it.
Sort of a bad money pushes out good money scenario. If it weren't for profitable indoor weed farmers, you'd have higher technology level indoor successful lettuce farmers, and eating is more important to the world than getting high.
Its a scalability argument... when used restaurant fryer oil is free, turning it into free biodiesel is a win, until restaurants start selling used oil and making exclusive deals until its cheaper for everyone to burn diesel instead of making biodiesel, at which point the schemes collapse and used oil again becomes worthless trash. You can feed "A" hippie by selling indoor grown weed and buying produce at the store but you can't feed a planet by having everyone grow indoor weed and buy produce (from who?) at the store. Eventually everyone into weed is going to grow their own and the market will collapse until no one can grow indoor weed and the cycle might repeat.
>Sort of a bad money pushes out good money scenario. If it weren't for profitable indoor weed farmers, you'd have higher technology level indoor successful lettuce farmers, and eating is more important to the world than getting high.
I think you've got it completely backwards, if it weren't for the indoor weed farmers making the market, there would be little development in indoor farming at all.
Yep. My other half grows and hybridizes African violets in an indoor setup which, because we're in Scotland, includes some pretty bright grow-lights on a timer. We keep joking about him potentially getting raided due to his shopping list and browser history.
I remember reading at least one case in the US where a home grow operation was discovered by the amount of power it was using, too -- the electric company noticed.
I saw a picture of a raid the other day in the area I live, where they found a growop because it was the only house in the row whose roof didn't have 10cm of snow on it. Quite a funny sight.
As part of my law degree I spend some time in courtrooms, just watching cases being heard, many of them about small time growers. Many people caught growing at home are punished twice: first through criminal law, and then through civil claims like from energy companies and banks or landlords. Very often these people have no other option then to start growing again, pushing them into a vicious circle. (They made the initial choice themselves, not spinning a sob story here - just saying that the stories behind these cases are quite interesting from a human interest point of view).
> Many people caught growing at home are punished twice: first through criminal law, and then through civil claims like from energy companies and banks or landlords.
Why would the energy company sue you if you paid your electricity bill? Same for landlords or banks, if you paid your rent, who cares?
On phone yesterday so I couldn't put all those details in.
Essentially yes if you pay your energy bill, there's no problem, but almost always the electricity is taken illegally (by bypassing the meter, or otherwise tampering with it) because otherwise the energy provider will notice straight away that your usage is abnormally high (this is the relation to the GP that prompted me to write this). Also, for a proper growup you need (much) more power than a residential supply line provides. The energy supplier then starts a civil procedure to get their money back, sometimes going after the landlord if that landlord could/should have known something was up (some case law includes that neighbors complained about abnormal heat in the house; the landlord should have followed up and is therefore liable for damages, as well as criminally (!) liable for aiding and abetting.
Land lords: they will cancel rental agreements the moment they find out you're growing weed, whether you pay rent or not. Banks will cancel mortgage agreements when a plantation is found. Furthermore, mayors can close a house for (IIRC) 6 months; meaning nobody can live there, but if the land lord doesn't cancel your rental agreement, you're still liable for the rent. Plus you have to live somewhere, because generally you won't be in jail that long. And if you have a family or live in your parent's house - let's just say that there are some heartbreaking cases arising from this.
(also, I should have specified probably, this is in the Netherlands. People think that NL is an anything goes area when it comes to marijuana, but it's really not - if you're caught with a sizeable (i.e., not just for personal use) grow op, you're royally fucked, especially if you don't have much money to begin with - which is generally why people do it at all, because it's not like you'll be a millionaire from stuffing your attic or basement with a couple dozen/hundreds of plants).
thats the worst part. i've seen lots of sketchy meter bypasses. and while it hides you for a while and makes the electricity cost disappear, its often a massive hazard. not just tapping off the initial drop (if you kind of know what you are doing, it can be ... not so bad?), but some of the wiring jobs i've seen defy belief.
There are many cases of this - but typically the ones I've seen reported have been easily distinguishable from any reasonable personal usage. Entire (rental) houses given over to dense growing in every available space. Having a few (or a dozen or 30) pots/pods/whathaveyou in your own home wouldn't look anything like it.
Heck, I remember cases where they've used thermal imaging from helicopter to identify such buildings.
I believe it's pretty common practice; not just the amount of power being used as a red flag, but obvious patterns too - for cannabis you normally have it going for 16+ hrs of light for it's vegetative cycle, then switch to 12 hr of light for flowering, so they can use that pattern too.
Presumably this stuff is only checked post-suspicion, and not automated and parallel construction stuff done.
ha! this is exactly my fear. I really want to start an indoor rose collection, but I'm almost positive that the shopping cart i have on amazon is going to put me on a list... I think i'm going to find a local shop and take uber :)
I've grown a lot of different plants in my buckets, including thyme, dill, basil, hot peppers, cherry tomatoes, strawberry and chives :)
Hope you give it a try, it is a very fun hobby.