Andy Goodwin

Three weeks of great progress.

2008-04-11T23:24:03Z

These are the tomato plants now after 3 weeks or so. They've developed quite a bit since the simple seedlings that popped out of the rockwool. With watering everyday and plenty of light, they have really grown strong. The roots have completely enveloped the rockwool and they are ready for a bigger place.

I have to transplant/move them into bigger pots - and I have already done so.

I will be stating another seedling run soon as well.

I have already used my camera to completely document all the steps I have taken, which I will be posting this weekend.

So far - I am very excited with the rapid rate of progress that I have in my garden, and I really can't wait to have tomatoes hanging off these plants.

Check back this weekend - for the full photo/instructionals/comments from a beginner. Also - feel free to ask me questions, or leave comments on your thoughts!

Indoor Gardening (hydroponics)

2008-03-23T19:43:31Z

While it may appear to the people that know me that I'm always into gadgets/computers/electronic stuff, I'm also fascinated by many other things outside of computers. Last year I started getting more into cooking, watching the Food Network and trying things I watched on TV. I've made some pretty great stuff (details I'll save for another blog post).

One of the things I learned is the tomatoes in the grocery stores are un-ripe, and given a chemical to treat them and make them red. I feel ~~cheated~~ ~~robbed~~ like I'm missing out on the true taste of tomatoes. I've also always wanted to grow my own tomatoes (after growing a bunch of stuff in my window), so I went nuts at a local hydroponic supply store.

I have a 400W grow light, reflector, hydroponic grow buckets, rockwool seed starting cubes, and I have started with tomato seeds. I have 3 kinds of tomato seeds - beefsteak, roma, and a yellow one.

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And this is the setup in my guest bedroom - I used a wire shelf unit to hang the light from (so I can easily adjust the height). This picture was taken at night, and let me say - its the sun in a bulb.

The rockwool sits in this plastic tray that allows the liquid to drain into the bottom tray:

And after 3 days, you can see the seeds beginning to sprout:

After I took that picture - the next day the seedlings broke free:

So I am pretty excited - this project should really pay off nicely, and while pictures really can't show the difference in taste (between store bought and home-grown), I would like to document the progress and the methods/techniques for others to try their hand at growing yummie yummie right here tomatoes.

New Blog

2008-03-14T01:15:46Z

So, I have decided to go back to a blog (instead of the couch picture of me). I've been wanting a better platform to post/share things, and while I'm a bit fanatical about wanting to code it all myself, it seems some things are better left to others.

I have chosen Movable Type over Wordpress (booooo, perl over PHP!?), but while I code PHP all day and really detest Perl (reasons belonging in another post), I rather like how Movable Type uses the database to publish static files. Plus, the back-end interface is really snazzy!

As for this blog, I have a bunch of PHP code snippets, some lessons/things I've learned over the years, and just general geek info I want to share with the world. Everybody has big goals for their little blog to be read by many - I just want to have a nice repository for all these snippets/things I've learned/hacked up in the past.

Stay tuned!