# Spring is here! What garden plans do you have?



## AquaNeko (Jul 26, 2009)

Well still a touch chilly but I like it that way. Still pissed we did not really have a winter. Been wanting 2 feet of snow all winter.  

Anyways, just wondering what's going on with everyone elses gardens be it indoor, balcony, backyard, and frontyards?


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## AquaNeko (Jul 26, 2009)

*Got seed?*










Also anyone here know where in T.O I can find this desktop greenhouse?




























I remember getting it at Home Depot about 5 odd years ago. Since then Home D stopped carrying it. It's an awesome desktop unit with durable plastic but I don't want to order and have it shipped via the web for change the hood could crack. If you find that desktop unit please let me know. I'd love to get a couple of them.


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## Ciddian (Mar 15, 2006)

Did you try Canadian tire by any chance? I do have a plant I take care of!

When I moved in to the new apt there was this sad plant in one of the hallways that noone watered. So.. every saturday I started to poor a bit of water in when bob went out for a smoke.

Its grown in really nicely and it has lots of new fleshy leaves!  I am so happy with it since I've never really had any indoor plants b/c of the cats. ^^

Kinda looks like this.. But the leaves or more round
http://files.myopera.com/ALLY_G/albums/510863/1_succulent_plant.jpg


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## carmenh (Dec 20, 2009)

I wouldn't say it's quite spring yet. I had the furnace turned off yesterday to crack the windows and get some fresh air and forgot to turn it back when I closed up. So I'm sitting here freezing my a** off and surfing cuz I can't bear the thought of getting in the shower :-/

Anyhow...garden...when I was in the US in January, I picked up a bunch of packets of pepper seeds, cuz I can never find any good stuff here (that and seeds are still closer to a buck there). Nothing too exotic, but different anyhow. I planted them last week and they are already 2-3" tall, so I NEED an early spring to save me from my own impatience  Hopefully there will be so gooooood salsa and hot sauce this year!

BTW, if anyone else here loves peppers, I may have some extra seedlings in time for spring planting, if everything survives...


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## hojimoe (Mar 7, 2008)

as I live at home still, I will be doing some stuff which my parents will pay for, I just supply free labour  I will be re-finishing our basement this spring/summer, got to get rid of the old 60's wood paneling that came with this house!

also I have bricks from my grandmothers house after it was demolished after we sold it to a builder last year. I am making an outdoor BBQ or fireplace with them (my mom hasn't decided which she wants) 

garden wise, my mom does all that! lol she loves it

at my girlfriends place, I will be helping her parents lay a new cement step to their front door - it has sunk and created a weird step. also I think they want to put new stone down out in their back patio

I will be busy it seems, working full time mon-fri as well


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## 50seven (Feb 14, 2010)

Gardens? Sorry, too much dirt and soil and plants and stuff for me, lol. The only plants that I have any success with are the ones that are dead and cut into boards...

Hope to install new kitchen cabinets this summer, though!


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## AquaNeko (Jul 26, 2009)

Ciddian said:


> Did you try Canadian tire by any chance? I do have a plant I take care of!
> 
> When I moved in to the new apt there was this sad plant in one of the hallways that noone watered. So.. every saturday I started to poor a bit of water in when bob went out for a smoke.
> 
> ...


Cid,

Hope you're reusing that water change water.  Nice that it perked up again. Might seed if everyone in the building likes that plant and chip in to re-pot the into a self watering pot or get one of those aquaglobe auto water feeder things or DIY it with a spare air pump, 2 air hoses, regulator/bleeder, a timer, and a jug and time it on the smllest setting so it'll turn on and auto water it. Works well if you don't have any punk kids that would mess with it where you live. The regulator is just bleed off as much air as you need so you can tweak it so that the air filling up the pressure in the jug to water coming out can be regulated to how much water you want to water the plant in the smallest timer cycle (likely 15-30mins is the cycle on the cheap timers) so you don't drown the plant and that the plant is always moist.


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## SparrowHawk (Oct 8, 2009)

*Gardens*

We just moved into our house in October, so I have no idea what the gardens have in them, but I do have a few house plants I enjoy one bing a date palm that I started from seed four years ago. In my science club, we started some banana seeds, apple seeds, and avacado. I am looking forward to seeing what some of the students bring in to grow.


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## characinfan (Dec 24, 2008)

SparrowHawk said:


> we started some banana seeds, apple seeds, and avacado.


Banana seeds? Where did you get them? (Bananas are infertile triploids that reproduce by suckers).

Citrus trees are really nice to grow from seeds. If you damage a leaf, it will release its essential oils (= smell nice). Years ago, one of my grapefruit trees bloomed, and the flower had an incredibly powerful and beautiful scent.

I've grown many tropical and subtropical plants from the seeds of fruit I've eaten over the years, including sweetsop (the leaves smell like cat urine  ), soursop (blooms reliably every year), durian (my favourite, though unfortunately very vulnerable to scale insect infestations), milk apple, tamarind and starfruit (both fun -- the leaves move according to the light level in the room, folding up if it is dark), mulberry, persimmon, carob, nispero, lychee, longan, papaya, dragonfruit and pitahaya (both sprawling and somewhat ugly cacti).

Maybe you could have the students plant all of the seeds from whatever fruit they have in their lunches!


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## SparrowHawk (Oct 8, 2009)

I purchased the banana seeds (non-edible) at wal-mart. The apple seeds were from my lunch and yes that was the idea, they bring in seeds from the lunches, but they came up short on the follow through. Hopefully they will come around on that. 

I hope someone brings in some citrus seeds, the clementines I have been eating are seedless. 

I want to get a mangrove going, but that is a future purchase.


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## Fishfinder (Feb 17, 2008)

im planning on transplanting some strawberry plants from my dads place and starting a little strawberry patch at my moms, his are all multiplying like crazy and produce nice juicy strawberries( hurray for Jams and icecream!)


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## SparrowHawk (Oct 8, 2009)

*hmmm... strawberries*

I want to put in a strawberry patch this year as well.


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## Fishfinder (Feb 17, 2008)

yeah, they are soo tasty freshly picked! I think il need to put chicken wire over them though, since there are lots of squirrels in the city... my dad lives out in missisauga and there are almsot none there.... probably has something to do with foxes living in the area....


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## Cory (May 2, 2008)

Hopefully if my parents give me the go ahead I will be building a pond in the back yard here. Ive always wanted one and it would also be nice to have one personally I could show potential customers as an example of my work without having to disturb other customers. 

I also bought a pop up aquarium/pond which is a nifty little plastic 30 gallon thing... It folds up for the winter then you unfold it and it becomes a standing, round, transparent pond that sits on your deck. It comes with a little fountain pump and some hosing to run the water. I'm going to set it up with some plants and maybe a filter and then put some of my tropicals out there in mid-may and let them spawn au naturale. It's not really a better system or anything, just something I've wanted to try. It will also look nice! 

The last project is some sort of way to use my tank waste water to grow food for the house. I watched the documentary 2100 and Im pretty sure that this is something we all should be doing. It's terrifying how much energy is used to transport the food we eat from its source to our plates. I want to start outdoors but hopefully be able to have an indoor setup as well to grow veggies through the winter. 

I also plan to spend lots of time on the island at the cottage studying what Im pretty sure is an undiscovered species of fish that glows in the light... Im not even joking on this one.. They're super cool and live in a little seasonal pond next to our property.. they flash red and yellow lights and swim around in little schools. Haven't tried to catch any yet to see for sure if they are fish or larva of some sort. The rest of the time up there will be spent fishing!


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## AquaNeko (Jul 26, 2009)

Cory said:


> Hopefully if my parents give me the go ahead I will be building a pond in the back yard here. Ive always wanted one and it would also be nice to have one personally I could show potential customers as an example of my work without having to disturb other customers.
> 
> I also bought a pop up aquarium/pond which is a nifty little plastic 30 gallon thing... It folds up for the winter then you unfold it and it becomes a standing, round, transparent pond that sits on your deck. It comes with a little fountain pump and some hosing to run the water. I'm going to set it up with some plants and maybe a filter and then put some of my tropicals out there in mid-may and let them spawn au naturale. It's not really a better system or anything, just something I've wanted to try. It will also look nice!
> 
> ...


At HOme D @ Ellesmere & Warden they have a huge I think 200-300gal plastic moulded pond for ~$120ish IIRC. Only problem is how the hell to get it home but from eyeballing it, it looks liek you're getting more gallons per money spent.

Also go on http://www.btjunkie.org and search for 'Gardening Australia' and download that torrent. It takes you from food production to pond, to eggs, composting, to front planting all in that video. Love the way it was presenting and I always end up watching it again.

www.utorrent.com is a good client for downloading torrents with.


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## AquaNeko (Jul 26, 2009)

If you're making that pond you could also have this on the side as an external biofiter to grow all your veg/fruit soilless with pea gravel then returning the water backt ot he pond cleaned as the gravel in the growbeds build up the good bacteria for removing ammonia/nitrite and the plants uptake the nitrates.


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## Cory (May 2, 2008)

Im hoping to dig out a custom pond actually and go in the range of about 1000 gallons maybe more. I want to have a narrow point with a little wooden bridge you can walk over and then landscape the perimeter with shrubs, flowers and then some food plants. I want to make use of our entirely unused garden. Half of it is a deck that gets used for a bbq maybe once a summer and the other half is my dog's poopin grounds.. lol. I want something nice and deep the fish can over-winter in comfortably. 

As for the pop up aquarium, it was on sale for $13 at cdn tire lol. It's cool cuz the sides are transparent too so you can look in from all around as well. If I wanted to do a more serious outdoor tropical breeding thing that'd be what I'd go for. Most likely it'll be some guppies or something . One of my customers actually offered me something just like that for free after I dug out a bigger, two-pronged pond for him and at the time I stupidly refused. 

Aquaneko could you go into more detail on that idea? All I can envision is a wooden box with the gravel in it. The water would flow into the box from the pond via a pump then flow out a hole of a wider diameter than the inflow pipe into another pipe that would return to the pond? Is that the basic idea?


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## AquaNeko (Jul 26, 2009)

But this thread here watch the lession 1 & 2. http://gtaaquaria.com/forum/showpost.php?p=67443&postcount=3

You can design it anyway you want you you'll have another pump in the pond or use the same pump and design the piping to go where you want it to go. You have the pump that is pumping water to the growbed about 4-5 times a day on a timer then the water floods the barrels/growbeds (which have a overflow pipe drilled in) thne drains back into the fish tank. The draining also causes a rush of water thus aerating the takn as well.

If you got some stryofoam sheets from Home D you can cut holes in them and get net pots or those plastic green small pots at Can.T and drill some holes in them and put some gravel in each of them and put basil, lettuce in there as those plants work well in being constant floating with roots hanging down to feed off the water. Also that raft will shade the fish in the hot sun as well. You could make a simply PVC hoop house over a part of the pond and put the raft crops there so that if they need to be shielded by hot sun or something you can have that there.

U of BC 




View of the raft system.


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