fingers crossed

I’m waiting on an exciting delivery this morning! I’ll post pictures of it after it’s here…

on a wing and a prayer

So. I have this dream of turning my kitchen-grown heirloom tomatoes into a small business in the next 6-12 months.  And I have all these adorable seedlings, getting bigger every day.  But they’re all starting to fluff out their first real leaves at me expectantly, like, “okay Mom, what now?”

And the answer is, I need a real hydroponic rig to put them in.
I’ll admit: I’ve been putting off the expenditure for weeks (okay, months, since I didn’t just start thinking about this the day I planted the seedlings) because of more important things, like paying rent, COBRA, and buying groceries.  I figured I’d have a little time to save and purchase hydroponic system elements as I went along, so with faith in my heart, I planted those seeds to get the ball rolling.  But life comes at you fast,  and our thinly-stretched dollars always seem to be needed for something else.
The crisis du jour is that my husband and I are currently undergoing what shall henceforth be known as “TotalVehicle!FAIL 2010″, where both our old motorcycles went kaput in succession, and then our 16-year-old  station wagon died a terrible death, leaving us effectively strapped and stranded.  I mean, we could fix it. If we wanted to replace the motor AND transmission.

So yeah. That money I was gonna spend on the rig this month now looks like it will have to go to replacing the car.

And I will keep watering my seedlings by hand.

Because I just know all 2 of you out there reading are super-curious, here’s a description my current ghetto-fabulous method of “hydroponic gardening” (I warn you, it’s so laughable I’d almost cry, except for those cute green leafy things that are staring me in the face every day):

I’ve got a cheap plastic seedling tray which sits in a fitted plastic reservoir tray beneath.  The seedlings are planted in hydroponic starter-pucks in the top tray.
Instead of having a timer and a water pump to flood-and-drain the seedling tray, I’ve just been putting the nutrient solution in the bottom reservoir tray, and setting the puck-tray inside it, allowing the solution to come up through the bottom holes and “soak” the pucks. I let it sit for a while and absorb. Then I lift the seedling tray out of the reservoir and turn it catty-corner to balance on top of the reservoir tray, so the pucks can “drain” back into the reservoir.
I do this a couple of times a day, just like I would if I had a timer and pump ebb-and-flow system. For a grow light I’m using…natural sunlight.
( …I did warn you it was ghetto-fabulous.)

Now, growth would be optimized if I had a dedicated grow light, and the nutrient solution on a timed pump, and an oxygenated bubbler-stone would be ideal for helping aerate and keep fungus and microbial growth down in the solution.  But I figure for the early seedling stage, they’re growing fine with my by-hand method.  It just isn’t acceptable  or adequate for an entire growth cycle.

A couple of things keep me from losing hope:

1) I have no delusions that I will be making serious money off this first crop of 12 plants.  I can only grow so many tomatoes in my kitchen. I expect them more to be marketing tools, something tangible I can photograph,  and hand to chefs and buyers to say, this is my product, would you like to put in an order for next crop? And… I expect me and my husband will eat the rest.

2) I know I have to scale this operation up, write a business plan, find some seed money (no pun intended),  apply for all licenses, etc., to make this a viable operation.  There’s a lot of work I have to do, and I’m able and willing to do it, even excited about doing it. This first crop? It’s just the practice crop I’m growing to familiarize myself with the mechanics of hydroponics as it relates to heirloom tomatoes. While I practice, watch and wait, I’m also using this time to educate myself about the commercial growing business and lay the administrative groundwork to get things really going.

Yes, I may be too broke to get this rig built at the moment, and that doesn’t bode well for my business model, I guess.  Yes, I may be crazy to try this.  I’m the kind of girl who is in love with the wide world and it’s endless possibilities; I’m a dreamer, I’m quirky, I’m overly-trusting and unafraid to the point of being stupid sometimes.  But if there’s one thing I know about the chaos inside me,  it’s that when I actually decide to do something– when one of those rare ideas comes along that makes me  really, really get serious, when I dedicate myself to a challenge? Nothing can stop me.

I’m a stubborn little tree when I dig my roots in.

Hello world!

Hi, I’m Roo. This is my first post here at wordpress. ^_^

I’m a crazy girl with a crazy dream: to grow fresh veggies in the Las Vegas desert and sell them to a populace starving for local flavor.

How do I intend to do this, you ask?

Well, I’ve got this little hydroponic setup in my kitchen.  As of tonight, I’ve got about 12 heirloom tomato plants and 3 heirloom basil plants, just growing their little hearts out in a seedling flat.

And I also have…uhm, determination.  An oddly supportive husband.  And just enough insanity to think this might actually work.

Wish me luck!