From seed to harvest only in 3 weeks using a small aquaponics system. No pesticides, no hormones, no soil, runs on solar and uses 1 gallon of water every 45 days.
These guys are making a difference! I am going to go in the direction of setting up a system for apartment dwellers.
There has been a lot going on since I last posted. Need to gather my thoughts and get you up-to-date. Stay tuned.
YOU WILL GET EXCEPTIONAL TASTE AND FRESHNESS.
Local food is fresher and tastes better than food shipped long distances from other states or countries. Local farmers can offer produce varieties bred for taste and freshness rather than for shipping and long shelf life.
YOU’LL STRENGTHEN YOUR LOCAL ECONOMY.
Buying local food keeps your dollars circulating in your community. Getting to know the farmers who grow your food builds relationships based on understanding and trust, the foundation of strong communities.
YOU’LL SUPPORT ENDANGERED FAMILY FARMS.
There’s never been a more critical time to support your farming neighbors. With each local food purchase, you ensure that more of your money spent on food goes to the farmer.
YOU’LL SAFEGUARD YOUR FAMILY’S HEALTH.
Knowing where your food comes from and how it is grown or raised enables you to choose safe food from farmers who avoid or reduce their use of chemicals, pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, and genetically modified seed in their operations. Buy food from local farmers you trust.
YOU’LL PROTECT THE ENVIRONMENT.
Local food doesn’t have to travel far. This reduces carbon dioxide emissions and packing materials. Buying local food also helps to make farming more profitable and selling farmland for development less attractive. When you buy local food, you vote with your food dollar. This ensures that family farms in your community will continue to thrive and that healthy, flavorful, plentiful food will be available for future generations.
TASTE THE DIFFERENCE!
Produce picked and eaten at the height of ripeness has exceptional flavor and, when handled properly, is packed with nutrients. Buying locally means you pay for taste, not transportation and packaging. Local farmers often grow a large assortment of unique varieties of products to provide the most flavorful choices throughout the season.
It’s been a hectic few months! Trying to grow enough product for TommyV’s Salsa is next to impossible to do on my own! Especially when you don’t have the space to grow. Luckily I have local farmers around me that can provide the produce that I need day in and day out. I go through about 150lbs-200lbs of tomatoes a week!
I am going to fast forward to present time. It is now the end of June and the produce that I started back in October-November 2009 are still growing. They are not producing much fruit but I think it is amazing that they survived this long. Outside on the balcony I’ve been picking the tomatoes and using them in TommyV’s Salsa and making my specialty Chicken Bone Leroy BBQ Juice. The jalapeno and habanero plants are growing very well and are producing many flowers.
Now it’s late April and the dangers of frost are long gone. Lets get these plants outside. Space is very limited where I live and run my business. I need to use as much space as tastefully as possible to grow my produce. I use half of my balcony to grow the transplanted tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, habanero peppers, bell peppers and cilantro. Remember, I started my plants from seed and now have them in their final growing pots. The plants get about 8 hours of south east sun a day and get watered about once a week dependent upon how much rain we get. 
Since my plants were started in the middle of fall, I allowed the plants to bask under the grow lights for about 14 hours a day. For watering, I allowed the soil to become dry then gave the plants a good soaking. Allowing the soil to completely dry kept the fungus gnats in check. They needed transplanting a couple of times because of how fast they were growing. After about 30-40 days I needed to once again rearrange my living area to accommodate the fast growing plants. My peppers also started getting flowers on them. To keep my pepper plants a little longer I plucked of the flowers to keep them from fruiting. The plants thrived over the winter so in my next post I am going to fast forward a couple of months to spring and summer.
Every since I started my food business, the ultimate goal was to grow my own produce for my salsa, TommyV’s Salsa. The one obstacle I had to overcome was where to grow my produce. I have a certified kitchen in my home to make my delicious salsa but I live in a 900 square foot space on the 10th floor with a balcony. Looking around my place for available space I decided to turn the dining room into the area where I will grow my produce. Rearranging the dining room was not too bad, but finding space to store what was in the dining room was a bit challenging. After spending hours coming up with creative ways to store things, I finally have space to start growing. To put it all in perspective, it was mid October of 2009 when I started my urban indoor garden. I planted from seed, tomatoes and bell peppers to see if it was all possible.
I started the seeds in the paper type egg cartons. I place the egg cartons into vented plastic bins and placed it on top of a heating pad. Within a week I had seedlings sprouting. I then place all the seedlings into a large plastic tub and constructed a structure to hang my grow lights.