Living Car Free - Basement gardening

I'm thinking about using some of the space in my basement for growing vegetables in the winter. Has anyone done this and if so, I'm interested in what's involved and what I can grow.

Part of this is an interest in saving money; part of it is about having control over the quality of at least some of my food and part of it is about not wanting to buy foods that have been grown far away.

The basement in my townhouse is rather low and doesn't get much light. But it also stays warm in winter.

I haven't yet decided if I'm going to go this route. Right now, this is just a fact-finding mission, so to speak.

Hydroponic gardening is the most reasonable option. The plants will grow faster because their nutrients, water and oxygen are readily accessible. This is the more expensive part, you'll have to buy reservoirs, pumps, hoses, timers, hydroponic substrates, measuring devices, and possibly hydroponic nutrients (depending on which way you choose to take it). This is the less time consuming option since the system runs on it's own, you only need to check on it daily and refill the reservoirs with water/nutrient solutions weekly or so.

Whether you plan to grow your plants in soil or hydroponically, you'll need very high powered lights if you intend to have enough vegetables to feed a family. Florescent, LEDs or CFLs will not cut it. To grow about a dozen tomato plants, I would use 600w-1000w High Pressure Sodium lights. These will cost you to purchase and operate monthly, maybe more than a large box of tomatoes at a farmer's market. If you don't like to buy vegetables at Walmart, Publix, e.t.c, try to find small flea markets and farmers markets in your area. Our farmers market meets in the middle of the city very early in the morning. Also there are little "Pick for yourself" farms in some areas, you might be lucky enough to have one not too far away.

I love gardening but I think you should look at how much this could cost you compared to how much you spend on the vegetables that you plan to grow. If you could grow outdoors I'd say go for it all the way because no matter how great the fruit you can buy at a market tastes, the one you grow will always leave the best impression on you. But if the plants you grow affect your electricity bill, is the energy that is being used to power those lights offset by the amount of oxygen your plants produce?

If you want to have a small indoor garden, you can grow a single plant or small herbs with a low wattage HPS, Metal Halide or CFL light system. One good gardening forum I know is gardenweb.com. Also browse through the growing sections of cannabis enthusiast forums; it's ok if you don't like pot, but many of those guys have super green thumbs and everything that works well with Cannabis will show awesome results with tomatoes.

I'm thinking about using some of the space in my basement for growing vegetables in the winter....The basement in my townhouse is rather low and doesn't get much light.
Yeah, vegetables need loads of light to produce anything worth eating. We have a fluorescent grow light in our garage that we used to start seedlings in the dead of winter. When the weather warmed up enough we transplanted them outside. That gave us a head start on the growing season.

If I had a comfortable basement in a townhouse, I'd be more inclined to use it for a craft or shop type urban homesteading activity. I've spent the last two weeks learning how to spin used plastic grocery bags into a crude yarn. But I guess that's something for another thread, lol.

Thanks for the information.

It's easy enough to get locally grown fruits and vegetables except in winter. For the amount of food I need, going to high pressure sodium lights becomes an expensive solution, both in terms of the initial cost and the ongoing costs to run the lights.

Platy, your suggestion of using the basement for another urban homesteading activity has some merit and I'm looking at a couple of options. I've gone through a major clean-up job downstairs a few months ago and I now have a lot of extra room there. The person who lived here before I bought the place made his own fishing ties and had a basement shop to do the work.

Many, many, many moons ago we grew tomatoes and lettuce in the spare bedroom on the 17th floor of a high-rise. We did it successfully with only standard four-foot grow light tubes in standard shop light fixtures.

The trick is to have lots of fixtures, adjusted very close to the plants--inches not feet from the leaves. We put two fixtures over each window box tray of lettuce, and stood three fixtures on end surrounding the tomato cages. The reason we stood them on end was that otherwise the tomatoes grew very tall and leggy. This also gave light to the lower leaves.

Yield surprisingly good.

We also started plants at two week intervals in order to manage the harvest.

Many, many, many moons ago we grew tomatoes and lettuce in the spare bedroom on the 17th floor of a high-rise. We did it successfully with only standard four-foot grow light tubes in standard shop light fixtures.


Many moons ago, one of my sons put together a bunch of light fixtures and grew some tomatoes hydroponically. Perhaps there wasn't enough light or too much nitrogen in the fertilizer. We got lots and lots of leaves, but very little fruit.

Another problem was that I used the basement as my Internet hovel. The tomatoes corner was just a bit too radiant for my taste,

Despite this, I think it is do-able. One suggestion might be to develop it so that you could sit around it as though you were sitting in a summer garden. This might reduce some of the winter blues, especially if you chose the bulbs carefully.

There was an amazin article in the New York times a few weeks ago that detailed that practice of simultaneous hydroponic gardening/aquaculture.

Basically, the fish poop in the system feeds the plants, the plants filter the fish tank water.]

Brilliant.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/garden/18aqua.html

I've started seeds with shop lites for gro-lights. Mostly everything died of the dreaded "damping-off."

There were doing some basement hydroponics in house a few blocks from me. They aren't now.

What about taking up canning instead? Sure, it wont be the same as fresh, but it will allow you to eat locally grow produce year round.

We got lots and lots of leaves, but very little fruit.

Unless you have bees in the house :eek: then you have to pollinate by hand. No pollination, no fruit.

There were doing some basement hydroponics in house a few blocks from me. They aren't now.

Grow-op, eh?

Grow-op, eh?Oh yeah? Why don't you grow up...er, never mind.




:)

There was an amazin article in the New York times a few weeks ago that detailed that practice of simultaneous hydroponic gardening/aquaculture.

Basically, the fish poop in the system feeds the plants, the plants filter the fish tank water.]

Brilliant.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/garden/18aqua.html

There's a book published recently that's right up that alley. From our library catalog:

Author: Kellogg, Scott T.
Title: Toolbox for sustainable city living (a do-it-ourselves guide) / Scott Kellogg and Stacy Pettigrew ; illustrations by Juan Martinez.
Publisher: Cambridge, Mass. : South End Press, c2008.
Paging: xviii, 241 p. : ill. ; 21 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 216-225) and index.

"Most of the systems described are ones that we have built and experimented with over the past eight years at the Rhizome Collective (http://www.rhizomecollective.org/) [formed in 2000] in Austin, Texas"--Introd.

Contents: Food -- Water -- Waste -- Energy -- Bioremediation -- Conclusion.

If you see helicopters hovering over your house, get ready for a raid.

What about taking up canning instead? Sure, it wont be the same as fresh, but it will allow you to eat locally grow produce year round.
That's not a bad idea, and it's probably an easier method than the basement garden.

I already do my own canning and I make my own jams, peach salsa, tomato sauce and antipasto. I also can tomatoes and green beans, and I'm looking to do more. (Perhaps a pressure canner is in my future so I can do more vegetables.) I've tried drying peppers, apples, peaches and plums. And I've done some blanching and freezing of vegetables in the past.

When I was growing up, we had canned peaches and other fruits in winter, but I'm now living in an area where we grow fruit and the taste of fresh fruit, even a local apple in winter, beats anything that comes out of a jar.

The thought of taking preserving and food storage one step further has some appeal. I may start reading up on it this summer.

There's a book published recently that's right up that alley. From our library catalog:

Author: Kellogg, Scott T.
Title: Toolbox for sustainable city living (a do-it-ourselves guide) / Scott Kellogg and Stacy Pettigrew ; illustrations by Juan Martinez.
Publisher: Cambridge, Mass. : South End Press, c2008.
Paging: xviii, 241 p. : ill. ; 21 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 216-225) and index.

"Most of the systems described are ones that we have built and experimented with over the past eight years at the Rhizome Collective (http://www.rhizomecollective.org/) [formed in 2000] in Austin, Texas"--Introd.

Contents: Food -- Water -- Waste -- Energy -- Bioremediation -- Conclusion.

Thanks for this. I see our library also has a copy... although someone has it checked out. It's on my list.

I'm reading a great book on cycling, which you've all probably read....

The Art of Cycling: A Guide to Bicycling in 21st-Century America by Robert Hurst. Great book on staying alive on the streets.

[QUOTE=Standalone;10710292]There was an amazin article in the New York times a few weeks ago that detailed that practice of simultaneous hydroponic gardening/aquaculture.

Basically, the fish poop in the system feeds the plants, the plants filter the fish tank water.]

Brilliant.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/garden/18aqua.html




http://www.growingpower.org/

Our local guru