Mother Node PCB and the Garden

Well,  Mother Node Rev 0C(the gateway for all of the other nodes in the garden) is completed and functional. We are chasing a few bugs but they appear to be minor coding issues.  The picture below shows Rev 0B(breadboard with RTC) on the left and Rev 0C(PCB board) on the right. Next up is the case for the Mother Node.

Figure 1: Mother Node comparison

We are working on getting the Mother Node to talk to Thingspeak to post the gathered garden node data. See www.thingspeak.com for more info about Thingspeak IoT open data platform. 

In the garden the randomized watermelon cultivar trial is going well.  3 varieties were planted:

• Crimson Sweet
• Moon & Stars
• Navajo Winter

Through just simple limited observational data, the Navajo Winter is growing superior to both the Crimson Sweet and Moon & Stars.  The Navajo Winter emerges earlier and is more prolific. 

Figure 2: Navajo Winter

However, there are other factors that go into the overall evaluation. We'll see how the disease resistance and tastes is of the final product. I will do a final write up of the watermelon trial at the end of the season.

On the pepper front. Things are going great for Anaheim, Hungarian Hot Wax, Scottish Bonnet, C5 Purple Lilac, & California Wonder. However, things are not doing well for the Peach Habenero and Ghost Pepper. Those two peppers have minimal flowering and no viable peppers....... so far.  I am still trying to diagnose what is causing the lack of peppers with those cultivars

Figure 3: Anaheim pepper

Some random Anaheim, Hungarian Hot Wax and C5 peppers

The 50ft row of peas did wonderful this year. Over 40lbs of Sugar Snap peas were harvested and consumed. I am definitely going to plant multiple succession rows next year. I will change the trellis system from Jute twine to simple panel fencing next year. The jute twine simply took too long to setup and gave marginal results as a trellis(relaxed more than expected and higher maintenance).

Figure 5: Picking peas

The garlic went well. We had a input to output ratio of 1:6. Meaning for every 1lbf of garlic planted we got 6lbf at the end of harvest. Next, I need to grade(fancy talk for sizing) the garlic. I am wondering if the distribution of sizes will be Gaussian? We will see.

Figure 6: Duganski garlic dried and ready for grading

Well, that is it for now.