Growing some early tomatoes 2020

[SarrissUK]

Wow Quanglewangle, the geek in me is rejoicing at your heat charts! What are you using to monitor?

[quanglewangle]

Wow Quanglewangle, the geek in me is rejoicing at your heat charts! What are you using to monitor?

Kind of you to say so.
I use mrtg https://oss.oetiker.ch/mrtg/for the graphs. It is free software meant for graphing network traffic, errors and so on. But it only really graphs *numbers* and as I have said before I use a little computer to control heating cables and lights so that computer knows the temperature numbers. It's just a case of stitching to two together.

If you are interested in the details (hardware, programming language etc) I plan to write it all up for an article at some stage. Let me know and I will send you a draft when it's ready.

[annie8]

Have weakened and popped a seed of black icicle, sungold, gardeners delight and shirley in the propogator with my chillies. Well I had a little space. Think I can handle keeping a small number of plants indoors for a few months. As long as I dont end up like last year when it was about 90. That was quite ridiculous.

[londonvegpatch]

Newbie and first post alert!

Hello all!

New to the forum and this is my first season of growing!

I'm only growing 2 types of toms this year as my garden is borrowed and we can only use a small it of it, thankfully, it's the bit that gets the most sun.

I sowed 4 seeds each of Stupice and Millefleur about 4 days ago, put them in my boiler and hot water tank cupboard. The Stupice have now germinated and are living on my window sill which gets a lot of light all day! Very excited!

[quanglewangle]

Hello all!

New to the forum and this is my first season of growing!

I'm only growing 2 types of toms this year as my garden is borrowed and we can only use a small it of it, thankfully, it's the bit that gets the most sun.

I sowed 4 seeds each of Stupice and Millefleur about 4 days ago, put them in my boiler and hot water tank cupboard. The Stupice have now germinated and are living on my window sill which gets a lot of light all day! Very excited!

Two types is fine. Welcome.

[Scarlet]

Have weakened and popped a seed of black icicle, sungold, gardeners delight and shirley in the propogator with my chillies. Well I had a little space. Think I can handle keeping a small number of plants indoors for a few months. As long as I dont end up like last year when it was about 90. That was quite ridiculous.

If you started with bush tomato you wouldn't have to worry so much about the plant getting leggy....carrying tall plants to and fro the greenhouse in Spring can be a delicate operation.

[Scarlet]

Very excited!

Seems you have the bug you'll be checking several times a day to check for any changes

[londonvegpatch]

Seems you have the bug you'll be checking several times a day to check for any changes

Every time I come back in the house...

[veggiechicken]

Every time I come back in the house...

Welcome - don't forget to talk to them too. They need to know you care.

[londonvegpatch]

Welcome - don't forget to talk to them too. They need to know you care.

Dang, I've been rumbled. They like a song or two too :

[SarrissUK]

Kind of you to say so.
I use mrtg https://oss.oetiker.ch/mrtg/for the graphs. It is free software meant for graphing network traffic, errors and so on. But it only really graphs *numbers* and as I have said before I use a little computer to control heating cables and lights so that computer knows the temperature numbers. It's just a case of stitching to two together.

If you are interested in the details (hardware, programming language etc) I plan to write it all up for an article at some stage. Let me know and I will send you a draft when it's ready.

I love the idea of doing that myself, as I love to see how things changes, but if I'm honest with myself, I don't think it would go any further than planning. Having said that though, you sound keen to write it down and I welcome that!

[Urban]

I love the idea of doing that myself, as I love to see how things changes, but if I'm honest with myself, I don't think it would go any further than planning. Having said that though, you sound keen to write it down and I welcome that!

as cool as that project sounds, I think it would be pretty easy to achieve the same kind of thing, with for example a netatmo weather station, and some smart plugs if you wanted something a bit easier

[quanglewangle]

as cool as that project sounds, I think it would be pretty easy to achieve the same kind of thing, with for example a netatmo weather station, and some smart plugs if you wanted something a bit easier

Maybe, but my background makes the approach I have taken quite easy for me. Also it is very inexpensive: the sensors (temperature, light intensity, soil moisture and so on) are around £5 a piece or less; and I am awash with Raspberry Pi computers, left over from a professional consultancy assignment. And this way I can do *exactly* what I want.

[Urban]

Maybe, but my background makes the approach I have taken quite easy for me. Also it is very inexpensive: the sensors (temperature, light intensity, soil moisture and so on) are around £5 a piece or less; and I am awash with Raspberry Pi computers, left over from a professional consultancy assignment. And this way I can do *exactly* what I want.

Not knocking what you are doing, love my tech myself, my greenhouse is pretty much fully automated, and my house is overloaded with smart tech, I'm just trying to explain to sarriss that similar can be achieved very easily using off the shelf items

for example I used to have plug in timers for my grow lights, now I just plug them into a smart plug, and set them up on my phone, its loads easier

[veggiechicken]

I thought I was high-tech with a Lidl indoor/outdoor "weather station".