[November 2020]
Background & planting seeds!
At first, we planted the seeds in small plastic containers kept indoors, but wanted to transfer them outside for more growing space. Since it’s winter, I decided to build a quick mini greenhouse.
The tiny sprouts are starting to peek out, and they’re super cute 🙂
Building!
I bought a couple of polycarbonate panels from Home Depot, and gathered some scrap materials from my garage (cardboard, a plastic snack container, wood planks). An unexpected situation arose when I couldn’t find my screwdriver today (😅) and consequently couldn’t use screws of any sort, so instead assembled everything with only hot-glue and tape.
After generous portions of both, the greenhouse was done. It is actually quite stable, and works nicely; it can be put on a patch of ground to insulate small plants outside in cold weather. Half of the top can swing out for watering and air circulation.
In the first test, I used just one of our seedling batches to confirm it works. I cut off the bottom of the container so the roots can grow deeper and out, keeping the sides to easily distinguish where the plants are.
Right now, the greenhouse doesn’t have electronic parts. It’s also a pretty small model (10′ x 10′ x 15′). When the plants are bigger, it could be interesting to automate some aspects, like watering with a transduction atomizer or monitoring soil conditions, heat, and humidity with Arduino components. For now, the simple greenhouse is sufficient for practical purposes.
Update: 1 week later
I planted more batches, which have grown pretty satisfactorily.
Ponderings from a making enthusiast 