The Indoor Gardener Magazine Volume 4—# 4 (Jan./Feb. 2009)

TheGardenerAngVol4No4.indd 2 12/17/08 11:40:06 AM


P S By Fred Leduc

D Y B Y By Sylvie Laberge

50

TECHNIQUES 8 pH of a Nutritive Solution: Measuring and Calibrating Advice By Claude Blanc, Bill Sutherland & Christopher Sheppard

18 Pest Control: Harmful Insects Are Attacking? Wage an Efficient War on Them By André Malépart

40 My New Solar Greenhouse By Fred Leduc

INTERVIEW44 Plants in space Interview with Professor Mike Dixon By Fred Leduc

BOTANY16 Anthuriums By Daniel Fortin

32 & 42 In A Nutshell: Herbs and Their Virtues By Bruno Bredoux

50 Dinosaurs in Your Back Yard By Sylvie Laberge

54 Beautiful But Short-Lived: Amaryllis By Daniel Fortin

PLANT HEALTH28 Fertilizers Chemical or Organic: What’s Your Creed? By Gerald “J.R.” Hannafin

36 Incoming and Outgoing Ventilation Control By Gerald “J.R.” Hannafin

A Notes & News 14-15 Industry News 13-19-26-30-34-57-60-62 Q&A 64-66

N.B. Should you need to refer to our conversion table, you’ll find it on our website: www.tigmag.com

Published by: Green Publications • Directors of Publication: Roxanne Lekakis ([email protected]) and Stan Daimon • Managing editor: Bruno Bredoux [email protected] • Director of Sales and Marketing: William Fitzmaurice [email protected] • Contributing editor: Helene Jutras • Art Director: A.K. • Editorial

coordinator: Bruno Bredoux • Collaborators in this issue: C.A., B&B Hydroponic Gardens, Edward Berna, Bruno Bredoux, Pierre Bonnard, Jessy Caron, Stan Daimon, Colle Davis, Daniel Fortin, Gerald “JR” Hannafi n, Paul Henderson, V. Green, Helene Jutras, Susan L., Roxanne Labelle, Sylvie Laberge, Patrick Laberge, Rose Laforêt, Fred Leduc, Lise Lévesque, André Malépart, Market Wire, Jean-Félix Savard, Sentier Urbain, Christopher Shepperd, Soma, Bill Sutherland, University of Guelph, CESRF, Robert Varkony, vieux bandit, Vicky Williams, Ethan Young. • Distribution: See the list of our distributors on our website. • Translation/Copy editing: Helene Jutras, trad. a. • Cover design: A.K., after a photomontage of pictures by Ektor Zoler • Illustrations: A.K. (see also the credits on page 66). • Administration: R. LaBelle [email protected] • Information: [email protected].

THE INDOOR GARDENER MAGAZINE P.O. Box 52046, Laval, Quebec, H7P 5S1, CANADA Phone: 450-628-5325 Fax: 450-628-7758 www.tigmag.com © 2009, Green Publications Vertes, Laval, Qc, Canada Articles, iconographic representations and photographs contained in this magazine cannot be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written consent of the publisher. Legal deposit: Second Quarter 2005. National Library of Canada. Bibliothèque nationale du Québec. ISSN: 1715-0949Printed in Canada by Litho Mille-Iles Ltée, Terrebonne, Québec, J6Y 1N9

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Credits & Table of Contents | THE INDOOR GARDENER

4 | VOLUME 4 – ISSUE 4

16

40

54

Green Publications VertesGreen Publications VertesGPv



Do you also have nostalgia for the 1970s? Everything then seemed to indicate that nothing could equal the progress made during the decade. Th e fi rst hydroponic experiments in Europe allow for the wildest hopes. In the Netherlands, people are gaining agricultural ground over the sea by creating the infamous polders (which are now in peril due to the current global warming). During the same years, experts are competing with NASA in the fi eld of soil-less cultivation.In the 1970s, however, the Beatles are already split up, and John Lennon won’t survive the decade. Th e Rolling Stones, however, are in top shape. Punks decided to do away with long-haired groups of dinosaurs and clean the slate… for at least three years, until the dinosaurs got their revenge in the 1980s, with even more extravagant hairstyles (ah, the permanent wave!). So, is it an eternal return?Th e early 1970s also off ered the possibility of having a ball using chemical products in horticulture. Nothing was yet regulated and it was a chemical free-for-all, with everyone spraying malathion on all crops. As a result, we ate fruits and vegetables treated with and covered with various toxic fumigators and insecticides. Some still say that malathion only carries low risks. Yet people who have consumed it have experienced memory loss, nausea, diarrhea, cramps, ocular and skin irritations, excessive sweating, heart attacks, and even death! Once in the human body, malathion is metabolized into malaoxon, a product which is 60 times more toxic! So if you don’t swallow any, it’s not very dangerous; but if per chance you eat some, all at once it becomes 60 times as dangerous! Th e equation is frightening.Once again, welcome to our 1970s-nostalgia circus ring! In spite of all, we survived. Chemical or not? Dangerous or not? Should we eat it or not? It was endlessly discussed. Th en came legislation, for which all stories were made to agree and a single voice was to edict what was allowed and considered danger-free, or not, in the goal of having a single rule for all. Welcome then into the international of horticultural regulation.Yet as soon as something is deemed “international,” it becomes somewhat of a

utopia. Th ere’s always a country to go the other way, to smear the pretty image of agreement between the (United?) Nations. Look at what is happening in China in 2009, and welcome back to the 1970s. China recklessly sprays products forbidden elsewhere since 1980, 1989, 1995, etc. You want some Sudan Red, a synthetic, nitrogen-rich colouring agent and also a category-3 carcinogen on your bell peppers? All you have to do is ask! In China, anyway, since it has been banned everywhere else since 1995...We have always been told that legislation entailed an improved protection of consumers. Th at’s hard to believe, since a recent report proved that in Canada, for example, only 2 to 5% of all imported fresh produce are monitored each year. How many toxic chemicals, illegal here, slip through the net undetected?In developing countries, however, hydroponics and aeroponics have jumped ahead – for the moment mainly for subsistence agriculture. What will happen when these countries have self-produced enough to feed their populations? Th ey’ll turn to export. What illegal (here) toxic chemicals will we then be exposed to? In the 1980s, we saw a net improvement in the quality of the produce we eat, and the improvements have kept up for two decades. Will we lose that benefi t?And what should we conclude? Th e 1970s’ spirit of freedom aff ected rather low-end products on which the worst toxic treatments were applied. If legislation hadn’t been enacted to forbid some chemicals, would we have seen such a growth in the environmentally friendly and organic hydroponic industry as we’ve seen over the past 20 years? An eternal return... We now look to our plate with suspicion. We look at our vegetables in a funny way. My mother, who watches those alarmist TV shows, calls me from time to time to tell me not to eat any more of such and such product, from this or that country. She means it. She watches all the studies and follows their advice to the letter. Yet I remember that in the 1970s, she never looked twice before digging her fork into her food! Was it better before? You bet! We now live with fear of our own food, and that’s not about to come to an end. Unless we start growing everything we eat ourselves.


Editorial | THE INDOOR GARDENER

1970’s: Was It Better Before?

[email protected]

“We ate fruits and

vegetables treated with and covered in various

toxic products.”




Introduction | THE INDOOR GARDENER

pH of a Nutritive Solution:Measuring and Calibrating Advice

Electrodes (fig. 1)A pH-metre is a thermodynamic sensor. Measuring the pH of a solution is measuring the cologarithm of its hydrogen-ion (H+) concentration. To do so, we use two types of electrodes: one glass electrode for the measure, and one calomel electrode acting as a reference. The glass electrode has a very thin membrane (0.2 mm) and allows us to observe the diffusion of H+ ions in one direction or the other, depending on whether the solution is mostly acidic or alkaline. The signal sent is measured following the activity of hydrogen ions on the glass cell wall, in millivolt. For more detail, see our article in Volume 3, Issue 2, at pages 20-21. It contains a detailed description of each electrode.

Mv/pH Ratio (fig. 2)When the pH-metre’s electrode is submerged in a solution, the pH-measuring cell emits a signal, measured in millivolt, which reflects the activity of the hydrogen ions within the tested solution. The pH-metre emits a tension that is proportional to the pH (mV = a X pH + b). To ensure that the proportion is correct in function of the pH, two points must be set (pH, mV) and a single straight line, as on the graph here.

Fig. 1

Fig. 2


Temperature Variations and Effect of Temperature on the Electrode’s Response (fig. 3)

As mentioned in point 1, the electrode’s glass wall is sensitive to the temperature of tested solutions. The older the pH-metre, the less reliable its electrode’s response will be. Chemical damage appears little by little on its inside surface, partially caused by the chemical substances contained in the tested solutions. Temperatures above 35°C are particularly damaging. Regularly replacing the pH-metre is thus important when frequently testing high-temperature solutions.

Comparing the pH of Two Solutions: One With a Weak H+ Ion Content, One With a Strong H+ Ion Content (fig. 4) As shown on this graph, when measuring the pH of a solution with a weak hydrogen-ion (H+) concentration, the voltage difference between both electrodes is negligible. When measuring the pH of a solution with a strong hydrogen-ion (H+) concentration, however, the voltage difference between the pH-meter’s two electrodes is significantly higher.

THE INDOOR GARDENER | Introduction

Fig. 3

Fig. 4


Two-Point Calibration of a pH-Meter (fig. 5) Depending on the pH-meter, the gardener can have a device that is automatically calibrated with one or two points and with three pH values in memory (generally pH 4.0, pH 7.01 and pH 10.01). Th ere are also manual- and automatic-calibration devices using only two points with three pH values in memory. Finally, more sophisticated models, such as pH-mV-ion meters (Hanna Instruments, models HI 4221 and HI 4222) make it possible to calibrate the pH using fi ve points and fi ve specifi c buff ers. Th ese models also provide automatic electrode testing with an instant diagnosis of its aging rate (which makes them interesting when

faced with the problem raison at point 2 above).

How to Plug-In a pH-Metre (fig. 6) It may sound stupid, but properly plugging in a pH-metre is not always obvious. Before plugging in your

pH-meter, you need to understand how the electrodes are linked to the sensor. On most pH-meters sold nowadays, the electric connection for CA/CC current is (facing the back of the meter) found at the left and the connection for electrodes is at the right. If your model is equipped with automatic temperature control (ATC), you’ll fi nd in between an outlet for the ATC sensor and

perhaps a second outlet to record the references obtained with your successive calibrations. It looks like the sound jack behind a PC computer (where you plug in the speakers). Users who do not pay attention to the connections behind their pH-meter often make a mistake and plug in an independent ATC sensor, even though the electrode is already equipped with ATC-compatibility.

Two Types of Electrode Connections (fig. 7)Finally, you must know that a pH-meter’s electrodes can use two diff erent types of connections: ASC (American Standard Connector) or BNC (Bayonet Neill Concelman). On the ASC type, the electrode seems to be already fi tted with an internal ATC sensor, but it’s only an impression given by the electrode-connector’s design. Before choosing and plugging in any electrode, make sure to check

the back of the pH-meter to see which type, ASC or BNC, should be used. When the electrodes are connected, determine the level of their junction (the plastic casing covering the electrode sometimes makes it diffi cult to detect the precise level of junction), because it must always be submerged in the solution you wish to test to obtain a reliable reading.You’re now ready to use your new pH-meter to keep your nutritive solution at an acidic/alkaline ratio that is perfect for the type of plants you grow! – C.A. (with B.S.’s collaboration) – Illustrations by Chris Sheppard


Introduction | THE INDOOR GARDENER

After the success of its fi rst exhibit on medicinal plants, held July 23 to September 1, 2008, La Clef des Champs is ready to welcome you into its new multi-level gardens. Come and share the gardeners’ passion for organic agriculture! Be guided from fl ower to leaf by one of the passionate herbalists who provide guided tours. Come and learn more on the cultivation, use and transformation of the medicinal herbs founds in a corner of every garden. La Clef des Champs offers guided tours from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., Wednesday to Sunday (none on Mondays and Tuesdays). Admittance is $10 for adults, free for children. The gardens are located at 2205 chemin de la Rivière, in Val-David, in the Laurentians. For information and reservations: 1-819-322-7333email: [email protected]: www.clefdeschamps.net

Visit La Clef des Champs’ Gardens

Multi-level gardens

Left, BNC connector; right, ASC connector

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Left: CA/CC connection; Right: ATC sensor connection

Fig. 5

Fig. 6

Fig. 7


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pH Controland

Monitoringwith GHFloraKleen®: Salt-Clearing SolutionDissolves accumulated fertilizer salts. Reduces plant stress caused by excess and imbalanced nutrients. Releases nutrient bonds between plants and systems, also correcting nutrient lock-out. Use it as a final flush a few days before harvest to promote maturation and sugaring. Safe for all systems and media while plants are growing. FloraKleen removes fertilizer residue that can accumulate over time in hydroponic systems, growing

media, and potting soils. Use FloraKleen monthly to purge your hydroponic system or potted plants of excess salts that can accumulate as a result of regular fertilizer application. FloraKleen is an excellent final flush, and can be used at any time to dissolve mineral and salt build-up. Its high concentration and low price make FloraKleen the economical choice for maintaining your plants in both hydroponic and soil-based environments. FloraKleen is available in 1 quart, 1 gallon, 2.5 gallon and 6 gallon sizes.

FloraShield®: Plant and System RinseMaintain healthy roots without resorting to harsh, toxic chemicals. FloraSheild’s unique combination of compounds can thoroughly rinse systems and plants during all phases of the life cycle. Its mode of action makes General Hydroponics’ FloraShield safe to use on and around actively growing plants at all stages of growth. Growers across the

globe have attested to FloraShield’s ability to solve root-rot problems. FloraShield is available in 1 pint, 1 quart and 1 gallon.

pH Up and Down: pH Adjusting SolutionsTo maximize plant growth, the pH content of your nutrients should be slightly acidic. Experienced growers consider the ideal pH for most crops to fall between 5.5 and 6.5. Users of General Hydroponics’ nutrient products generally do not have problems maintaining the proper pH range because our formulas are pH-buffered. However, some important exceptions do exist. Acid content can reach unacceptable levels when nutrient solutions are mixed with poor-quality water, or pH-unstable media – such as rock-wool and gravel products – are used, and when high plant-growth rates destabilize the nutrient mix due to rapid nutrient absorption by the crop.• pH Up: Base-formulated using potassium

hydroxide and potassium carbonate. Add a little at a time if your nutrient pH is too low in order to raise the pH to the proper level.

• pH Down: Acid-formulated using food-grade phosphoric acid. Just add a little at a time if your nutrient pH is too high in order to lower the pH to the proper level.

Dry pH Up and Down are available in 1.5 lb, 4 lb and 16 lb. Liquid pH Up and Down are available in 4 oz, 1 quart and 1 gallon.

pH Test Indicator: Solution pH TesterGeneral Hydroponics’ pH Test Kits make pH testing easy. Simply fill a test-tube halfway with nutrient, add a few drops of pH Test Indicator, and observe the coloration of the liquid in the test vial. Many experienced growers prefer our pH Test Kit to expensive electronic meters because of its reliability and ease of use, which are important factors when the health of a valuable crop is at stake. pH Test Indicator is available in 8 oz.

Standard Reference Solutions: Electronic-Meter Calibration SolutionGeneral Hydroponics uses the highest-quality reference solutions. Growers can use our reference solutions widely among many popular brands of meters using the NaCl scale. General Hydroponics technicians check each batch to ensure that our solutions are exactly calibrated each time they are used. Standard Reference Solutions are available in 8-oz and 1-quart formats.

The GH ControllerThe Controller is very simple: a container with a float valve is connected to the line of units. A master reservoir filled with fresh water and nutrients is located on top of the float-valve Controller. As the plants draw water from their individual reservoirs, the liquid levels drop, causing the float valve in the Controller to open and draw fresh nutrient from the master reservoir. This automatically maintains the ideal nutrient level in all the interconnected units. It’s simple, elegant, reliable and inexpensive. Controller dimensions: 30.5 cm W X 30.5 cm L X 110 cm H (12"W X 12"L X 3'6"H). Controller includes:• 13-gallon reservoir with grommet;• Fittings;• Blue ½" tubing;• 8-gallon controller with float valve;• Seven ½" barbed tees;• Two ½" elbows.

Texas ControllerTexas Controller dimensions: 61 cm W x 61 cm L x 110 cm H (2'W X 2'L X 3'6"H). Texas Controller includes:• 20-gallon reservoir with grommet;• Fittings;• Blue ½" tubing;• 20 gallon controller with float valve;• Fifteen ½" barbed tees;• Two ½" elbows.


Shopping | THE INDOOR GARDENER


VOLUME 4 – ISSUE 4 | 13

THE INDOOR GARDENER | Industry News

Keep the Green in Winter Foliage While Putting the Freeze on Backyard Deer and Rabbit DamageJust like winter, the perennial moan goes out: “It’s so cold out. The deer must be starving – why else would they be looking for food? If I feed them, maybe they’ll stay away from my plants.” How many times have you heard the cry for a solution to the winter deer and rabbit damage wreaked on our valued ornamental bushes, trees and winter garden plants? Now, The Liquid Fence Company has answered the plea with its all-season Deer and Rabbit Repellent. Safe for children, pets and plants, this all-natural product is the solution to costly backyard damage.

As winter rushes in, chilly temperatures permeate the air, and ice and snow blanket the ground, we must resolve to not feed the deer. Contrary to how it may seem to the soft-hearted, feeding deer is not good for them. They will stay near an easy source of food, even if it’s inadequate, rather than look in their natural environment. If deer ingest a food type that is not part of their natural diet, they can become sick and even die. Typically, they will compete for handouts, leaving more submissive deer underfed and promoting overly aggressive behaviour. And they won’t stop at what they’re offered – expensive plantings will become tasty treats, too.

A liberal application of proven-effective, all-season Liquid Fence Deer & Rabbit Repellent on and around landscaped-garden areas will help stop deer from making a meal of your cherished shrubs, vines, plants and trees. It’s especially important in winter, when greenery is scarce, yet prime fodder for these animals.

Liquid Fence works on scent, so the deer don’t even have to take a bite – unlike many other repellents that require them to “munch away” to be effective. The process should be repeated weekly for three weeks depending on deer presence, then approximately once a month thereafter. In the case of heavy snowfall, it’s a good idea to extend application coverage because deer will dig below the snow’s surface and reach higher up in search of edibles.

Regardless of the season, today’s consumer wants products that are both effective and environmentally friendly. Like all Liquid Fence products, Deer & Rabbit Repellent is safe for plants, pets and kids. It’s available in several sizes, including ready-to-use 1-quart and 1-gallon sprayers and more economical concentrates. It’s backed by a 100%-satisfaction guarantee and available at garden centers and hardware stores everywhere.

Find a local store near you by calling toll-free 800-923-3623. Liquid Fence Deer & Rabbit Repellent can also be purchased on the web at www.liquidfence.com.

– Jim Della Croce

Green Gold’s Atomic 4-1-1Atomic 4-1-1 is a natural concentrated liquid nutrient. It is made from natural plant byproducts, including pine-oil extract. Its biological formulation contains a high-nitrogen concentration, which reduces the proliferation of algae caused by nutrients that contain too much phosphorus. It also acts as a repulsive, since its composition (unfortunately not described in detail on the label) prevents pathogenic insects from feeding while remaining harmless for bees and other pollinating insects. Used as a supplement within a regular nutrition program, it penetrates the root system to encourage a healthy vigorous growth, keeping at bay microscopic predators that feed on roots, as well as organisms responsible for fungal diseases such as powdery mildew, downy mildew, botrytis, leaf spot, pythium, rust, etc. 100% organic, this nutrient is biodegradable, non-toxic and very concentrated. In foliar applications, it can be vaporized after being diluted in water, 1 to 3 ml of Atomic per liter of water. In the hydroponic reservoir, add 1 ml of product per liter of water every 5 to 10 days.

Sure-To-Growmd

American company 6062 Holdings, LLC, under the brand name Sure-To-Grow, offers us a revolutionary cultivation substrate taking the form of pads or growth rolls made of PETP (polyethylene terephtalate) and PE (polyethylene) fibers. Plant-nutrition experts recommend this type of fiber, as it is considered the safest available on the market now for the wrapping of food products. The fibers’ composition does not hinder plant growth, and they remain neutral against nutritive elements. Thanks to MegaWatt Hydroculture, these futuristic substrates are now offered in Québec. Sure-To-Grow rolls and pads are ideal to germinate seeds. Moisten the roll and plant the seeds: it’s as simple as that. Sure-To-Grow growing substrates are compatible with drip-irrigation hydroponic systems, flood tables, floating systems, nutritive-film technique, wick systems and aeroponic systems. The benefits of these PETP- and PE-fiber substrates are that they remain inert, that they are sterile and that their pH remains neutral. What’s more, nutritive salts do not accumulate in them, and rehydrating the substrate during cultivation is very simple. It’s very easy to successfully grow short-term domestic crops (under 21 days) such as fine herbs, greens, shoots (such as alfalfa, etc.) and grains. Leave the stone age behind, and enter into a new era!

Call 1 800 575-2515 or visit www.megawatthydro.com.

New From

New From


iPot from Megasii LtdTh e new and innovative plastic-houseware products from Megasii Ltd include a cat-shaped lamp and an iPot, a plant pot that doubles as a mood-lighting lamp. No longer immediately associated only with being cheap, plastic-houseware products have come a long way in terms of functionality, quality and appearance. Th ey off er a multifunction fl exibility. Popular over the world for their practicality and durability, aff ordable plastic-houseware products now display such additional qualities as heat-resistance and environmental friendliness. It is even fair to claim that plastic pervades every room in the house. Megasii Ltd manufacturers have decades of experience in the plastic sector, which is clear to see in both the depth and scope of the plastic houseware products they off er. Th ey really believe that their iPot will seduce the indoor gardeners over the world with its simple design and double functionality! Visit: shop.megasii.com.

– Vicki Williams


Notes & News | THE INDOOR GARDENER

Wine: Grands Bourgognes

E-Commerce and Online Store

According to the saying, October fogs and November rains make

for a good December. If the grape gathering was good this year,

vintage wines should be good too!Grands Bourgognes is a reference online store for professionals and

wine-lovers, off ering exclusively the products from 25 domains. It off ers

many wines and champagnes at proprietary prices. E-commerce is

defi nitely growing and has become a true asset for websites that include

online stores. Th at’s why Grands Bourgognes has requested the

services of interactive agency i-com and its partner, Photographic,

to create its e-commerce site. i-com took care of designing the

e-store and making it reality, using a template from Photographic.

You can search for wine using a vineyard or a category, allowing

you to browse across the site. Each win and champagne sold is

represented by its label. Th e labels have all been photographed by

Photographic; i-com integrated them onto the site it hosts. Websites can be beautiful, but will only be worth their

price if they are referenced properly. To allow grandsbourgognes.com to reach its public, referencing experts

have optimized its positioning on search engines. You can now order

nicely priced wines and champagnes on Grands Bourgognes’s website.

– As per Double-Clic newsletter

Grand-mother’s apron served fi rst to protect her dress underneath, but also:• It was used as a glove to take a burning

pan out of the stove. It was also marvelous to wipe children’s tears and, sometimes, to clean their dirty faces.

• It was used to carry eggs from the henhouse, chicks that needed reanimation, and sometimes cracked eggs that ended in the oven.

• When visitors came by, the apron served as a haven for timid children.

• When the temperature decreased, grand-mother could use it to wrap her arms.

• Waved over a wood fi re, the apron replaced bellows. It was used to carry potatoes and dry wood to the kitchen.

• In the garden, it served as a basket for many vegetables; after

green peas were harvested, it was time for cabbages. At the end of the season, it held the apples that had fallen from the tree.

• When visitors came unannounced, it was surprising to see how quickly the old apron could do away with dust.

• At meal time, grand-mother would go on the porch and wave her apron, letting the men in the fi elds know they should come to the table.

• Grand-mother also used it to put her freshly-baked apple pie on the window sill to let it cool; nowadays, her grand-daughter

puts it there to thaw. It’ll be many a tear before someone invents an object that can replace the good old, multifunction apron. In memory of our grand-mothers, remind those who know of this story, and tell it to those who can appreciate it: the story of grand-mother’s apron.

– Lise Lévesque

The Apron Story: Do You Remember

Your Grand-Mother s̓ Apron?


THE INDOOR GARDENER | Notes & News

Bill M. owns a company that manufactures and installs car-wash systems. Bill’s company installed a car-wash system in Frederick, MD. Now, understand that these are complete systems, including the money changer and money-taking machines. Th e problem started when the new owner complained to Bill that he was losing signifi cant amounts of money from his coin machines each week. He went as far as to accuse Bill’s employees of having a key to the boxes and ripping him off . Bill just couldn’t believe that his people would do that, so they setup a camera to catch the thief in action. Well, they did catch him on fi lm!Th at’s a bird sitting on the change slot of the

machine (photo 1). Th e bird had to go down into the machine, and back up inside to get to the money (photo 2)! He knows how to count: that’s three quarters he has in his beak (photo 3)! Another amazing thing is that it was not just one bird – there were several working together (photo 4). Once they identifi ed the thieves, the coin machine’s owners found over $4,000 in quarters on the roof of the car wash, and more under a nearby tree. And

you thought you’d heard everything by now! And to think the phrase “bird brain” is associated with being dumb. Not these birds from Maryland.

– Susan L. (after AP)

Eucalyptus Vapours at Studio Beauté du MondeMontreal’s authentic spa and hammam, Studio Beauté du Monde, off ers brand-new eucalyptus-vapour body-care treatments. Access to the eucalyptus-perfumed hammam is associated to the treatment of your choice: traditional, with black eucalyptus soap, or invigorating, with salt, lavender and eucalyptus. Treatments last approximately 50 minutes and are followed by relaxation in a rest area, with mint tea and delicacies. “Head-to-toe” treatments are also off ered, including the purifying face care and the 30-minute hydrating Phytomer treatment in a private cabin, followed by an express foot-care beauty treatment with exfoliation and toe and toenails beautifi cation. If you opt for the one-hour “back care and massage” package, you will receive a free back exfoliation with sea salts, which improves blood circulation and leaves you even more relaxed. If you reserve the “hammam ritual” package for two people or more, a 20-minute private massage will be off ered to each participant. Reserve by calling 514-841-1210 or by sending an email to: [email protected].

A Bird Brain Knows How to Count


Among all Araceae (Spathyphyllum, Diffenbachia, monStera, etc.), some species of anthurium set themselves apart by their very colourful inflorescences. Another particular trait: these inflorescences remain on the plant for weeks without withering. This makes them precious as cut flowers.The Anthurium genus is a group of over 600 species of plants native to the tropical regions of Central America and South America. Not

all Anthurium bear a colourful inflorescence. Such is the case of the A. crystallinum species, grown for its pretty cordiform (heart-shaped) leaves, approximately 40 to 50 cm in length and 30 cm in diameter, in a dark green with pale silvery green veins. Hybrids developed from the A. andraeanum species characteristically bear a large spathe (transformed flowers surrounding the inflorescence) that is coloured—white, pink, red, salmon or lilac—and waxy, surrounding an elongated 5 to 8

cm spadix, sometimes curved. The leathery cordiform-lanceolate leaves are dark green and measure 20 to 25 cm in length and 10 to 15 cm in diameter. They are borne on long petioles. The A. scherzerianum species sets itself apart from the A. andraeanum hybrids with its longer, less cordiform leaves measuring 15 to 20 cm in length and 6 to 8 cm in width. Its spathes are also coloured: red, red-orange, pink, white or violet. There are many cultivars of this last species, and they bear the scientific name Anthurium


Botanical Glossary | THE INDOOR GARDENER

Anthuriums

By Daniel Fortin


THE INDOOR GARDENER | Botanical Glossary

x hortulanum. They are excellent green plants and offer inflorescences regularly.The etymology of the scientific name “Anthurium” comes from the Greek “anthos” (flower) and “oura” (tail). It refers to the shape of the spadix. The A. andreanum species was introduced to Europe in 1876; it is mostly grown in tropical regions for the production of cut flowers, since it is quite popular in tropical-flower bouquets.

CultivationThe many cultivars enjoy a bright light, but no direct sunlight: do not

place them in the sun around the summer solstice. They can handle a long period of dim light, but their flowering will then be less abundant. During flowering, the plant grows best with constant temperatures between 18 and 21°C; water them regularly and abundantly. Do not allow the growing

medium to dry out too much between waterings. To make the plant flower, lower the temperature to between 10 and 12°C for six weeks, and reduce the water input by letting the substrate dry over a few centimetres. Then, put the plant back into a more humid and warm atmosphere. Give it a balanced liquid nutrient every 15 days during its growth stage.

Choose a potting mix that is rich in well-decomposed organic matter, such as a peat and shrimp compost. Adding perlite or vermiculite will improve the potting soil’s drainage.

Anthuriums

By Daniel Fortin


A Few Precautions to Prevent an Invasion of Harmful Insects in Your GreenhouseFirst, control the growing space’s temperature so it is not turned into an insect nursery. Climactic conditions in the greenhouse play a role in the speed at which insects will reproduce. Too high temperatures foster a

rapid reproduction of some types of insect pests. It’s important for the greenhouse to be well ventilated, with a fresh-air entry and an exit for polluted air. Your plant’s health also greatly depends on the quality of the air you provide. Using fans to move the plant foliage is necessary to ensure that the plants get a constant input of fresh air.

Pathogenic insects also do not like this kind of air movement. Use small fans in strategic places in the garden.A healthy plant will resist insects much better. Pathogenic insects attack weak plants or the wilted parts of plants, such as dead leaves. It is imperative to care for the plants regularly, to inspect them and cut now-useless leaves. Regularly cleaning your plants prevents them from becoming insect “nests.”Beware of other possible enemy-introduction sources. They could be air entries that are no longer protected with a filter, pets, clothes that could have been in contact with other types of plants, etc. Don’t allow yourself to be a contamination vector. Ban all animals from your garden. Make sure


Plant Health | THE INDOOR GARDENER

Pest ControlHarmful Insects Are Attacking? Wage an Efficient War on ThemBy A. M.

In the early 1970s, Eugene E. Jennings wrote about the “mobicentric manager,” and it generated a lot of articles and debates about how to improve careers in all sectors of the industry. Jennings is currently professor emeritus

at Michigan State University and is the founding father of business psychology. In his books, he often used a quasi-novelist style and allegorical accounts in order to illustrate the necessary psychological manoeuvres to advance in the corporate world. His ideas are still up-to-date and very interesting for those who want to be as mobile as possible in our ever-changing world. The “mobicentric manager” still tries to improve his own career, in the gardening industry as in other branches. The mobile manager is always on the move and his eyes are wide open! He is a kind of predator, but executives are another kind of big game. Here is a “bright” excerpt of Jennings’ book (from pages 99 & 100):

“Mobility Brightness. To properly direct his mobility drive, the manager must have a second quality; he must be mobility bright. By this we

mean that he must be knowledgeable about the ways of mobility. There are managers who are mobility directed but not mobility bright. They seek to acquire and enhance their mobility, but lack the necessary wisdom. Of course, a necessary condition of mobility brightness is to be mobility directed. But unless the manager has had rapid mobility in general and compression experience in particular, the manager cannot be truly knowledgeable about the mobile world. Then, too, some managers learn better than others. They experience more efficiently and draw useful principles and generalizations from their experiences. They have learned how to learn. Of all the things that they could see, they tend to see precisely those things that give maximum expression to their mobility drive. They screen out the kind of information that men less wise in the

ManagementGardening Center Management: Are You a Mobile Manager (according to E. Jennings)?By A. M.


to treat any and all new plants before you introduce them into the space.If these precautions do not suffice to prevent the presence of insects, you can choose to use insecticides to eliminate or control the invaders.

Three Rules to Follow For Good Results With Pesticides in Your Greenhousea) Maintain conditions that are favourable to plantsThe precautions listed above are primordial for an efficient action. If you neglect some elements, no insecticide will be able to eradicate an insect problem for good.

b) Use efficient and varied products, and rotate their associationSeveral types of insecticides are offered on the market. It’s important to know that none of these products can work miracles, and that they each have their own characteristics. Their main differences reside in their active component (the type of poison), their base (alcohol, oil or water base), and the type of application (spray, fumigation, concentrate to dilute and spray).You can, for example, use the following in association:• Neem oil by Dyna-GroNeem oil is a substance that must be diluted in tepid water before it is sprayed. The oil is obtained by cold-pressing the fruit of the neem tree. Its active component attacks insects’ reproductive system by paralyzing its functions.• Don’t Bug Me Home and Garden Spray by Fox Farm or Bug Kill by Garden KingThe spray insecticide Don’t Bug Me Home and Garden can be used indoors or out to control common garden parasites that appear in and around the house. It contains pyrethrum, an active component derived from chrysanthemum flowers and gives an efficient and rapid result by killing on contact. It can be used on fruit and vegetables, and on all ornamental plants. It can even be

Pest ControlHarmful Insects Are Attacking? Wage an Efficient War on ThemBy A. M.

ways of mobility tend to accept. In short, the mobility drive serves as a gyroscope that keeps the managers on a steady course, but first the course must be set by his mobility brightness.”

“The mobility-bright manager knows that movement up the corporate ladder brings gradual changes in the expectations of the people with whom he must work. These changes may amount to shifts in priorities of what is valued or believed or these changes may represent entirely new beliefs and attitudes. The differences among expectations and beliefs between

two adjoining levels of managers are not as noticeable as between two levels of managers separated by one or two levels. As the manager moves through the layers of the corporation, he attempts to notice the subtle, incremental changes in his environment. In the language of the mobile manager, he reads his environment. He draws a mental picture, a map, of the exact nature of his terrain. His facility to read and to map must be keenly developed in order for the manager to make the necessary adjustments. He

Tried and true Plant Oasis™ Pump Protector Bag is now available in two sizes, the original small and new X-large. Sporting a new look, all black, it is ideal for ponds and fountains as well as hydroponic reservoirs. It’s so easy to use: just insert your pump, pull the drawstring and toggle the lock closure. Pump Protector Filter Bags trap dirt and particles before they

clog the impellers and burn out your pump. Made of microfiber lining and triple-layered mesh

construction, it provides strength and durability while preserving your pump’s flow-volume and

water-circulation performance. Easy to use, easy to clean: simply rinse the bag

under clear running water. The Plant Oasis Pump Protector Bag protects

fish, aquatic and hydroponic plants from damage due

to pump failure, while prolonging the lifespan of your submersible pump. It is now available

in two formats, small (31 cm X 25 cm) or large (43 cm X 33 cm), to hold most standard- and large-sized pond and garden pumps.

For more information about the product above and where to buy it anywhere in North America, call 1-800-489-2215 or visit optimum-hydroponix.com.

New From

Plant Oasis Pump Protector: Two Sizes Now Available + New Colour

THE INDOOR GARDENER | Plant Health


applied on vegetables up until the day of harvest.Bug Kill insecticide is water-based, so it does not damage the plant. It can be diluted and used. You can also directly submerge the plants in the insecticidal solution. Its active ingredient attacks the insect’s neurological system. It is a wide-spectrum systemic insecticide, effi cient to control fruit fl ies, aphids and other sucking insects. Since it is systemic, it kills hidden insects that do not come into direct contact with the spray. It can be used on fruit-bearing trees, on vegetables and on ornamentals. Its spray format makes it convenient and easy to use. It can be used on any and all indoor plants. Its active components include bioallethrin (3.7 g/kg) and bioresmethrin (0.7 g/kg).• Konk FumigatorAmong other products, Konk off ers an insecticidal fumigator. Th is type of insecticide can easily treat an entire

room without a huge eff ort. It kills insects on contact, without leaving an oily residue.For an effi cient treatment, we recommend you combine these three types of products in a single

insecticidal-treatment program. It’s what we call integrated management. Indeed, alternating between the products creates an eff ective war against insects while avoiding their adaptation or the development of resistance.

c) Perform quality treatments at regular intervalsWhen spraying foliage, ensure you treat all parts of the plants, from the collar to the top, and put some emphasis on the underside of leaves.

Th e reproduction cycle of pathogenic insects is usually very short. For spider mites, for example, it is only a few days long. A single treatment will usually not suffi ce to eliminate all eggs, larvae and adult specimens. You have to devise an attack plan. If an infestation occurs, you’ll need a shock treatment. Plan for three diff erent treatments over nine days, as such:• Day 1: treatment with Don’t Bug

Me (or Bug Kill);• Days 2, 3 and 4: rest;

• Day 5: neem-oil treatment with Dyna-Gro’s product;

• Days 6, 7 and 8: rest;• Day 9: fumigation treatment with

Konk.Later on, when you’re back in control, you’ll only need to repeat treatments weekly as a preventative means. Treat once a week, alternating between three diff erent insecticides in turn. Say farewell to spider mites.By keeping control on insects throughout the growth period and during early fl owering, you will see your plants mature insect-free. Good luck!

Source: Website of the Pest Management Regulatory Agency (www.hc-sc.gc.ca/pmra-arla).


must also read and map in order to determine how best to apply his efforts to gain the greatest payoffs. Let the reader not be misled; the mobility bright manager is not a conformist. He behaves according to the requirements of assuming initiative and becoming recognized for his results. If he conforms, it is for the purpose and to the extent

of gaining the opportunities and resources to initiate and innovate.”

“The point is that the mobility bright manager can see differences emerge from one level to another that miss the eye of the less sensitive manager. A careful analysis of these differences reveals that the upper management (or executive) department is different from lower management

(or managerial) department in the following ways. Executives are men in the arrival stage at the top of the corporation, and managers are below them in the developmental stages of middle management. Executives have more established identities than managers. They know better who they are and feel more confi dent of where they are going. Another way to say this is that they are more self-involved in their careers and carry their responsibilities more into both their successes and failures. They have less of the employee mentality and more of the professional.”

“Executives see themselves as professional people who sell their services to a particular corporation and who are prepared to leave when given a greater professional opportunity in another corporation. They interact with each other in a spirit of rapport, realizing that the concept

of face is important to all. Because authority differences among levels of executives tend to be minimal, they tend to infl uence each other by means of conventional, informal suggestions. What may appear to the mobility dull manager to be voices of trivial opposition, are in fact the voices of constrained and subtle rebutting of crucial differences, couched in an impersonal way in order to help save face for their colleagues. Successes and failures are also presented in an impersonal way for the same reason of saving face. In all organizations and at all levels, people fi nd a target when things go wrong.”

So now, you must place yourself in the best position. Are you willing to be a “mobicentric manager” and how will you deal with executives in your own company? Find out more in Mr. Jennings’ books.

(Ref.: The Mobile Manager: a Study of the New Generation of Top Executives, McGraw/Hill, Paperback, June 1971, 120 p., ISBN: 978-0070324503, Reedition)



Light is the Key to Plant PerformanceWhen it comes to plant performance, light is a key factor. Under the same weather conditions, watering regimes and feeding schedules, the same types of plants will perform quite differently under different light conditions.

Before buying your outdoor plants, determine the sun exposure in all areas of your garden so that you can effectively choose appropriately labelled plants (you know what I’m talking about: those little sunlight icons on plant labels). Making a quick sketch of your planting areas and marking them as sunny or shady spots will help you make the best decisions. With the right light, you can achieve a beautiful and vibrant garden with ease and satisfaction.

Light perceived by plants is part of the electromagnetic radiation. At a range estimated between 400 to 700 nm, plants get their photosynthetically active radiation (or PAR). All plants use within 5% of the same quantity and quality of PAR radiation.

Buying the right indoor plant light for your garden and trying to choose between so many indoor plant-light options can be a challenge. To determine how much light a plant will require, consider where and how it grows best in its natural environment. Most vegetables, for instance, grow best in full sunlight, which means that to grow vegetables indoors, as much light as possible must be supplied.


Technology | THE INDOOR GARDENER

Horticultural Lighting:

(A Look at Different Lighting Devices’ Emission Spectrum)

The Bright Side of the Light


The Lighting-Emission SpectrumsFrom the sunlight spectrum to the LED-lamp spectrum, we will experience lighting for plants from all different spectrums and/or points of view that offer as many possibilities as there are ways to grow plants.

1) SunlightSunlight is the best source of light available. Use it to grow whenever possible. Exotic plants grow in various conditions depending on the species. Some grow in deep shade in the jungle, while others grow in bright sunlight. The lighting level required for growth indoors depends on the characteristics of the particular plant being grown. With today’s technology, however, it is definitely possible to achieve superior crops with artificial light. There will be no artificial taste to your garden. Remember that plants also need dark periods. Light (called photo-periods) and dark periods and their relative lengths have an effect on plant maturity. Natural sunlight is a reference source having a CRI (Colour Rendering Index) of 100 and average colour temperatures around 5,500°Kelvin.

2) Plant-Sensitivity ChartCompare the chart on sunlight (1) to the plant-sensitivity chart (below). The plant-sensitivity chart shows that most of the colour spectrum is not available to the plants. Remember that light is like vitamins to a plant. Provide what the plant needs, and the plant will provide you with bigger, heavier yields. Any gardener that has used metal-halide lamps in conjunction with high-pressure sodium lamps during flowering will attest to the fact that the best, healthiest, most vigorous plants are right in the middle of the overlap between the two colour spectrums (MH spectrum – see charts #7 to 10 – HPS spectrum – see charts #11 and 12 – below).

THE INDOOR GARDENER | Technology

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3) Eye SensitivityThe human eye uses far less light energy than a plant. Compare the plant-sensitivity spectrum above with the human eye’s chart below.

4) PAR RadiationBetween 400 and 700 nm, plants get their photosynthetically active radiation (or PAR). In general, plants use within 5% of PAR radiation. Without a gardener providing them sufficient nutrition, plants cannot combine PAR radiation (between 400 and 700 nm), carbon dioxide and water (H2O) with a nutrient solution containing mineral elements such as N, P, K, Ca, Mg, S, Fe, B, Cu, Mn, Zn, Mo, Cl, and Ni. These mineral elements will all be combined to create sugar and oxygen. Chlorophyll, the most abundant plant pigment, is most efficient in capturing infrared and blue light (ultraviolet).

5) Electromagnetic SpectrumElectromagnetic radiation is described as a stream of photons that moves at the speed of light. Every photon has a certain amount of energy. It’s very

important to give plants a balanced electromagnetic-radiation spectrum of light, as too little blue will cause stem elongation and possibly yellowing leaves. A shortage of red light prevents stem growth. Red light will heal a sick plant faster than blue light.

6) Colour-Temperature ChartIn scientific terms, Kelvin temperature is a measure of the colour of a light source relative to a black body at a particular temperature expressed in degrees Kelvin (°K). The higher the degree K, the bluer, or “cooler” the lamp appears. The lower the degree K, the “warmer”, or redder the light appears.

7) Metal HalideMetal-halide lamps are available in a few different spectrums, and can be mixed and matched to achieve that perfect sun. Metal-halide clear lamps are the most popular. They are cheap to buy and provide a great spectrum of

light for your plants. Use them during the growth cycle of your garden or to keep your favourite plant in vegetative stage for cuttings. Use them during flowering to provide the much needed ultraviolet and blue spectrum.

8) Metal-Halide Phosphor-CoatedMetal-halide phosphor-coated lamps produce more red light than the regular metal halides. By coating the inside of the MH glass bulb with phosphor, we achieve a more reddish light but we give up some of the light output (approximately 8,000 lumens).

9) Metal-Halide 4,000°KA metal-halide 4,000°K lamp provides more red and blue light with a greater balance of all colour spectrums. Compare the plant-sensitivity curve (2) with the chart below.

10) Metal-Halide 5,000°KA metal-halide 5,000°K lamp still provides more of the colour spectrum that plants require. By providing plants with the best overall efficiency,



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3

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light will provide the healthiest, fastest growth.

11) High-Pressure SodiumHigh-pressure sodium lamps are strongest in the yellow/orange colour spectrum, with a shift towards the red spectrum. During flowering, most gardeners only use a HPS lamp. This increases the red section of the spectrum, stimulating flower production. Most gardeners do not supplement their HPS with metal-halide lighting and, as the charts #7 to 10 show, plants could really use their colour spectrum.

12) High-Pressure Sodium, Phosphor-CoatedThe intensity of a HPS lamp with a phosphor-coating on the inside is slightly lower, but it offers more red than a regular HPS bulb. When growing with high-intensity discharge (HID) lamps, plants should never be placed closer than 15 centimetres from the lamp’s outer glass.

13) Cool-White Fluorescent TubeA cool-white fluorescent lamp utilizes a particular two-component phosphor combination exhibiting a narrow

“blue” emission spectrum and a broad “yellow” emission spectrum to achieve improved luminous efficacy. A cool-white fluorescent has a colour temperature of 4,100°K, and a CRI (Colour Rendering Index) of at least 90. This is a very good CRI, 0 being darkness and 100 being direct sunlight.

14) Warm Fluorescent TubeWarm fluorescent lamps typically need some warm-up time before reaching their full brightness, essentially

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because sufficient mercury-vapour pressure needs to be built up. The warm-up time can be as short as a few seconds, but up to a full minute in other cases. In winter, for operation outside buildings, a warm fluorescent lamp may not reach its optimum temperature, and will thus have a reduced brightness. The spectrum is culminating at the green/yellow emission junction with a second (but lowest) occurrence near the center of the blue emission spectrum.

15) LED LampA LED (light-emitting diode) fluorescent tube has wide-angle through-hole LEDs in a glass tube. The tube often comes in lengths of 600 mm (174 LEDs), 1,200 mm (276 or 342 LEDs) or 1,500 mm (372

LEDs). The LEDs emit white or warm-white light. The device has an operating voltage of 120V and 240V AC, IP54 rating and an operating temperature of less than 40°C. Resulting from this very low operating temperature, the highest-emission spectrum level for LEDs culminates on the far end of the blue-emission spectrum.

The Right Distance From LampsWhen growing with high-intensity discharge (HID) lamps, plants should

never be placed closer than 15 centimetres from the lamp’s outer glass. The farthest a lamp should be placed from the plant is around 1.5 metres. A 1,000-watt

lamp can be placed farther than a 600 watt, and a 400 watt will need to be even closer.

The intensity of fluorescent lamps is only sufficient to grow short plants. Keep the fluorescent tube about eight centimetres from the growing tip. As the growing tips grow near the fluorescent, raise the light eight to thirteen centimetres higher above the growing tips. Once the plants are taller than 40 centimetres, the light radiating from the tube will not be able to illuminate the lower leaves or fruit, and the plants will cease to produce.Visit the Future Garden Website (www.futuregarden.com/lighting/choosing_lamps.html) for a complete overview of the different models of lamps and their spectrums.

– B.S. (graphics by B&B Hydroponic)


AeroGrow International, Inc., maker of the AeroGarden® line of indoor-gardening products, announced that it has achieved its goal of doubling storefronts in 2008. By September 30, AeroGardens had shipped to over 9,000 storefronts of North America’s leading retail chains, up from 4,300 storefronts as of December 31, 2007.

In recent weeks, the Company has begun to sell-in to thousands of new retail storefronts, including expansion into more than 1,600 Target stores, more than 900 Kohl’s stores, more than 450 Canadian Tire stores (Canada’s “most shopped” retailer) and several hundred warehouse clubs. In addition, AeroGrow’s existing retail customers have begun accepting fall shipments of the Company’s new product lines, with most carrying multiple garden models at varying price points. Existing customers include Bed Bath & Beyond, Linens ‘n Things, Sears, JCPenney, Macy’s and hundreds of leading independent retailers.

“It’s exciting to roll out to this many stores, this quickly, and with so many new products, said

Jerry Perkins, CEO of AeroGrow. In a 90-day window we’re launching a chain-wide sell-in to major new retailers and rolling our new, broader product line into existing major retail customers. We’re also expanding with differentiated products into new markets through nationwide rollouts into the lawn and garden channel and warehouse club stores, while holding our retail price points. This year’s expansion gives us very broad retail coverage in the heart of where America shops, and will dramatically increase our visibility and category awareness, setting the stage for further expansion in years to come.”“As a result of our very strong performance at retail last year, we’ve been able to open up a wide range of new accounts that capitalize on the breadth of our

product offerings and price points, said Jeff Brainard, AeroGrow’s vice president of sales. As we look forward, we see the opportunity to continue to leverage new products to expand into new channels, including grocery, drug, toy, office and home centers, among others. […]. (Our) campaign uses four new short-form TV commercials targeting gardeners, cooks and families to continue to build category and brand awareness and help sustain and increase our sale velocity at retail.” (Source: Market Wire)

About AeroGrow International, Inc. Founded in 2002 in Boulder, Colorado, AeroGrow International, Inc. is dedicated to the research, development and marketing of the AeroGarden line of indoor-gardening products. AeroGardens feature dirt-free technology, allowing anyone to grow farmer’s market-fresh herbs, salad greens, tomatoes, Chili peppers, flowers and more, indoors, year-round, so simply and easily that no green thumb is required. See www.aerogrow.com.

AeroGrow Doubles Storefronts and Adds Major New Retail Customers

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product offerings and price points, said Jeff Brainard, AeroGrow’s vice president of sales. As we look forward, we see the opportunity to continue to leverage new products to expand into new channels, including grocery, drug, toy, office and home centers, among others. […]. (Our) campaign uses four new short-form TV commercials targeting gardeners, cooks and families to continue to build category and brand awareness and help sustain and increase our sale velocity at retail.” (Source: Market Wire)

About AeroGrow International, Inc. Founded in 2002 in Boulder, Colorado, AeroGrow International, Inc. is dedicated to the research, development and marketing of the AeroGarden line of indoor-gardening products. AeroGardens feature dirt-free technology, allowing anyone to grow farmer’s market-fresh herbs, salad greens, tomatoes, Chili peppers, flowers and more, indoors, year-round, so simply and easily that no green thumb is required. See www.aerogrow.com.


A retired construction worker, Roger Jolin is also an experienced gardener who lives in Saint-Bruno (Montérégie) who has developed a propagation technique that makes him a virtuoso, a genuine artist of reproduction and seedling. Roger is now an active sixty-something, but his passion for gardening goes back to the 1970s, when he discovered his love of horticulture. Outside his construction work, he devoted most of his free time to experiments, playing with cuttings, grafts and seedlings. Long winter nights have never caused him any boredom. No reason to regret long days in the garden when he can, in his garage, make the pleasure last by caring for his favourite plants. “Yet I live in the city and I don’t have much land. But even in winter, I make cuttings of vines and shrubs, as well as alpine-plant seedlings”, he told journalist Jean-Paul Soulié in 2006 for publication in the monthly magazine Virage. Propagation techniques can be learned. The technique is refined by making mistakes – which are from then on avoided. Little by little, for example, Roger Jolin noticed that vines and shrubs in dormancy allowed him to nurture cuttings in trays containing equal parts of sand (50%) and peat moss (50%) by keeping them in darkness. “I keep all of them in my slightly heated garage, in the dark. The temperature should go over 10°C, but the plants shouldn’t freeze.

It’s also very important to maintain a constant humidity in the soil and on the branches. So I spray them regularly. To prevent fungi, I use sulphur or any other commercial fungicide, which I mix with the sprayed water,” he added, speaking to Virage. From his vines and shrubs, he gets perfectly clones plants that give the same fruit as the original plant.For rose bushes, the technique is more complex and risky, and success is not as assured. “It’s more difficult than with other plants. Rose bushes are fickle, and to succeed with cuttings, oftentimes many attempts are needed, at different dates.” Roger also propagates his daylilies and his hostas by dividing them. It has ended up causing him space and storage problems. “Luckily, I have two sons. One lives in Montreal and only has a small yard, but the other lives in Saint-Colomban, near Mirabel, and has lots of land. Then there are friends, club members. We trade and that way, we get plants that aren’t even offered on the market”. Roger has specialized in cacti and gives conferences on the subject through the Société d’horticulture et d’écologie de Saint-Bruno and the Association des petits jardins du Québec (Montérégie and Montreal section), two associations of which he is an active member. Following his latest passion for alpine plants, he is also a member of the Association des plantes alpines du Québec. “They are plants, like the columbine, that require a dry and cold climate, similar to ours”.

Finally, after cuttings, he is also refining seedling techniques. To attain a maximum success and germination rate, Roger built himself a small foldable and heated greenhouse, three metres square, where he experiments on and cares for his young shoots. First, he harvests the seeds himself. He cleans them and dries them. He then preserves them in dormancy in his refrigerator. “I start some seeds in December. It’s early, but in the case of climbing spinach, I have to give the plants their shape. It’s a plant that climbs quite high, with red and purple foliage and the nicest black fruit. For most seedlings, however, March, just before spring, is the ideal time to start”. Right now he is passionate about alpine-plant seedlings. Adapting the columbine, which flowers from May to August, is one of his greatest successes. These Renonculaceae always looks extraordinary in a garden with their large flowers with truncated petals and large, slightly arched spurs, their green leaves sometimes tinged in turquoise, and their height, which can reach one metre. Elegant and original, the columbine bears all colours of flowers: white, pale yellow, wine red, pink, brown, pale blue and richer blue...Sources: Virage, vol. 15, issue 3, spring 2006 and Wikipédia.

Successful Cuttings Part 5A Retired Quebecer and Propagation: “Grow and Multiply!”By J.-F. Savard

THE INDOOR GARDENER | Growing Experiment


Fertilizers and Plantlets I recently received a call from my friend Stéphane. It seems Stéphane had heard about my new job here, in a remote corner of the North, and had decided to get information from me. “You must help me,” he frantically said. “I just planted seeds and I want to do everything right, and very quickly, because the plantlets are already sprouting. Tell me how to fertilize the shoots as soon as

they are capable of accepting a nutritive program.”

“Sit down,” I said, and over the next three hours, I proceeded to tell him everything he wanted to know, in great detail, about the fertilization of indoor plants. The problem with fertilizing a plantlet is that young shoots absorb nutriments so quickly that you get the impression you’re never feeding them enough. Plantlets absorb more fertilizer than

any other plant. Most gardeners know it, and they tend to go beyond the limits. An overly abundant fertilization will destroy your plants faster than anything else, while insufficient fertilization will make your plants stunted. How can you determine which quantity to use? Observe the plant.Several factors can impact the quantity of nutrients absorbed by the plant. Genetically, each plant is different, and nutrient absorption will vary from one plant to the other. Lighting plays an important role. A plant that benefits from a lot of light and which grows quickly will absorb fertilizers very quickly, while a plant with a slower growth will not absorb food as quickly, putting it at risk of over-fertilization if the gardener doesn’t take the necessary steps.

You may need to determine the quantity of fertilizer

to use. A soil-analysis method, whether chemical or electronic, can be a good investment. Analysing a soil sample at a few days’ interval during the growth cycle will allow you to keep a strict record of the appropriate fertilizer input for your plant, without risk of over-fertilization. If you live in a rural area, some institutions can analyze your samples for you.

The Nature of FertilizersWhether organic or chemical, the type of nutriments used have little impact on the plant. Some experts swear by using only organic fertilizers, calling chemical ones “poison” that can be toxic for your plants. In reality, there is no difference between organic and chemical fertilizers, and the effect they have on plants is only efficient if all the nutrients required for growth are present. As long as the plants get all those



FertilizersChemical or Organic: What’s Your Creed?

I’ve been gardening indoors in the North for many years. Throughout the many wonderful adventures that I’ve experienced at each moment of my wonderful indoor plants’ development, I was able to learn that it is useless to judge anything in terms of black and white, chemical versus organic... Below are my reflections on choosing nutrients and balancing the pH of a Nutritive Solution.


nutrients, a nutrient is a nutrient is a nutrient... Like all plants, yours need nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium in large quantities. Plants also need magnesium and calcium in small quantities, and very small quantities of iron, copper, boron, sulphur, manganese, molybdenum, and zinc. If you want healthy vigorous plants, all their nutritional needs must be fulfilled. Regarding the more

complex questions to come, the nutrient proportions your plants require will need to be modified throughout the growth cycle, and they must be well balanced. Whether organic or chemical, almost all fertilizers on the market bear a label which offers three numbers relating to the N-P-K system. N is for nitrogen, P for phosphorus and K for potassium. A fertilizer identified as 30-10-10 contains a proportion of 30% nitrogen, 10% phosphorus, 10% potassium and 50% inert matter. It will be adequate for the vegetative growth phase, when your plants need more nitrogen than during quick and early growth. At the onset of flowering, a mixture of 10-30-20 will be more appropriate, since plants require a higher proportion of phosphorus and potassium to produce flowers or fruit. The mix provides these three nutritive substances, but the other nutrients must also be supplied. Mixing dolomitic lime into the soil before planting will supply calcium and magnesium. A teaspoon of dolomitic lime per gallon of soil should give your plants enough magnesium and calcium to ensure their growth for several months. Organic fertilizers, such as fish emulsions, will provide the rest of the nutrients. Chemical fertilizers sometimes contain micronutrients. If you use them, make sure they contain micronutrients. Quantities for other nutrients are listed on the label. Don’t worry too much about their proportions, but do ensure they are all present.

A Balanced pH Matters More Than The Organic or Chemical Nature of the NutrientBalancing pH is a whole other issue. A plant in a soil that is too acidic or alkaline will not absorb nutrients

THE INDOOR GARDENER | Plant Health


as efficiently as a plant growing in a soil with an optimal pH – which also varies from one plant to the next. The pH should be tested (at a few days’ interval), because pH can go up or down while the plant seems stable. An unbalanced pH will cause other problems. I once had a plant that seemed to have a magnesium deficiency. It was whitening between veins and looked like a classic case, straight out of a plant guide. I put some Epsom salts in the water, which is a good way of supplying magnesium, but the plant didn’t recover. The next day, the end of the leaves at the bottom started to yellow, a classic sign of nitrogen dificency. I added a high-nitrogen fertilizer, thinking it would work. In time, I discovered that the pH was in fact way too high, causing my plants to be quite stunted. Learn

from my mistake: before you try and solve a problem that seems to come from nutrients, check the pH. Well-fertilized plants are so obviously healthy that you won’t forget them when you’ve seen them. An adequately fertilized plant grows extremely quickly, with new shoots appearing daily. The ends of leaves will sometimes seem slightly burnt: it’s a sign that the plant is absorbing slightly more nutrients than it should, which is considered optimal. With experience, you’ll know the precise needs of your plants. You’ll learn to recognize each nutrient’s deficiency symptoms by making mistakes and observing their effect on plants. In no time, you’ll become such an expert that Stéphane will call you in the middle of the night to ask for advice. Tell him I said hi!



Last November, Paradigm Gardens™ launched their new website, www.paradigmgardens.com. Through hundreds of new progressive gardening products, customers can now search through categories including horticultural lighting, fully automated growing systems, complete lines of hydroponic equipment, greenhouse supplies, environmental controls, nutrients, supplements, and organics. Paradigm Gardens’ website offers monthly product specials, special shipping offers, same-day shipping, lists of best sellers, and educational information to help make the best buying decisions. Additionally, customers can register to receive e-mails featuring monthly special offers and other valuable information.

Paradigm Gardens was established as a family-owned retail store committed to providing quality progressive gardening products. Their first store, located in Omaha, Nebraska, was opened in 1999 and the second store, in Madison, Wisconsin, opened its doors in 2000. Paradigm Gardens pride themselves on their knowledgeable sales staff and friendly service. They are dedicated to providing a healthy work environment for their workers, paying a fair wage and ensuring a safe and exciting shopping experience for their customers. They are also professional members of the Progressive Gardening Trade Association (PGTA).

The future health of our Earth and communities is important to Paradigm Gardens. They promote earth-friendly, water-wise and organic-gardening practices. Paradigm Gardens are continuously evolving to provide customer service second to none, great product selection and industry education to set the standard in the 21st century! If you would like more information on their new website, www.paradigmgardens.com, please contact Tom Luke at 1-402-339-4949 (ext. 308).

– Edward Berna

Paradigm Gardens, in Omaha (NE),

Launches its New Website Herbs and THeir VirTues

OreganoOregano-leaf tea is good against colds and the flu, indigestion and menstrual pains.

BoxwoodCatholics also use boxwood (like laurel) for Palm Sunday. Boxwood is dense and hard, and is used for sculpture and wood turning. It is used to make music instruments and chess pieces. A boxwood hedge will ensure your garden stays cool and nicely humid.

AloeAloe is famous for its use in cosmetology, and considered a religious symbol by Muslims.


Paradigm Gardens, in Omaha (NE),

Launches its New Website


THE INDOOR GARDENER | In A Nutshell

To find out moreTo discover all the properties and benefits of the main herbs, browse through Richters Herb Catalog Directory (www.richters.com). For millennia, herbs have played an important role in our daily lives. Discover their multiple culinary, medicinal, cosmetic, decorative and domestic uses. Tips and tricks will help you get a bountiful personal herb garden. A detailed description gives you all the traits and properties of each herb. Super colour photographs faithfully reproduce the herbs to help you identify them. You’ll quickly realize how these natural treasures can be beneficial. There are many, many reasons to peruse Richters Herb Catalog Directory.You can learn so much:• Complete herbal directory: Discover fascinating information on each herb, its description, fragrance, benefits;• Decorating with herbs: Make wreaths, bouquets and garlands that beautify your home.• Healing with herbs: The curative virtues of medicinal herbs are explained. With them, you can improve your physical condition.• Cultivating herbs: Learn how to grow herbs, following step-by-step instructions. You’ll have fresh herbs all year round.• Cooking with herbs: From salty hors-d’oeuvres to delicious deserts, follow the recipes!• Herbs in the house: Herbs can be very useful throughout the house, as perfumes or to create an atmosphere. Discover new trends and ancient traditions.• Beauty with herbs: Make your own natural beauty products! Create your own perfumes, hydrating lotions, eau de toilette, creams and much more...See: www.richters.com.

-B.B.

Herbs and THeir VirTues

Lavender and MarjoramDried lavender and marjoram in your closets will keep mites at bay!

OreganoOregano-leaf tea is good against colds and the flu, indigestion and menstrual pains.

LaurelLaurel branches in your house will refresh the atmosphere! In Brittany, on Palm Sunday, a week before Easter, tradition is to hang a laurel palm indoors next to the crucifix. The next year’s Ash Wednesday, first day of lent, they are burnt to turn them to ashes and perfume the house.

BoxwoodCatholics also use boxwood (like laurel) for Palm Sunday. Boxwood is dense and hard, and is used for sculpture and wood turning. It is used to make music instruments and chess pieces. A boxwood hedge will ensure your garden stays cool and nicely humid.

AloeAloe is famous for its use in cosmetology, and considered a religious symbol by Muslims.



Growing Experiment | THE INDOOR GARDENER

Grow Your Own Food for Your Own GoodBy Soma

In a day and age when so much value is put on money, growing a crop of vegetables for your own use without giving a thought to money has become a rarity. I am now working on a crop for which money is not the goal: nutritive quality is the prize I seek. You see, I eat what I grow. I have had tongue cancer since 1984, from way back when I smoked tobacco. I have to exercise great control over my nutrition and use care in choosing what I eat on a regular basis. I still like to grow my own vegetables though – that way I know they’re organic to my specifications. I also know it’s my own genetics I am working with, not some commercial project.

I have another goal with this crop. I only grow organically, using 2-15-2 guano, neem oil for insect control, seaweed for foliar feeding, and citric acid for pH regulation. I don’t like the taste that most bottled nutrients give to vegetable crops. It’s true much of it will give you a bigger yield, but for me it is all about taste. I want to truly enjoy the food I am eating, right down to the last mouthful. To really achieve organic quality, there are a few key factors and I will go over them.

When growing vegetables indoors, enemy insects are everywhere and must be dealt with in some successful way. Most growers use pesticides. That is not how you grow food – cash crops, yes – but not your own food. Neem oil is a safe, organic, effective product that does the same as pesticides, but without their negative side effects.

Don’t overkill your plants with food. Just like humans, plants can only consume food to a certain degree. If you give your plants too much food, it turns into poison, so go lightly. My favourite additive is guano. Nothing makes vegetables taste and work better than guano. I have tried every known food out there, and have found nothing that is more organic or effective than guano. The one I like is Guano-Kalong 2-15-2 high-phosphorus powdered guano. I make a tea with 100 grams in 2 liters of water. I then add half a liter of the tea to 10 liters of pH-adjusted water. This gives me all the good food I need.

When it comes to watering, I like to pretend I am the plant: I stick my finger in the soil to see how moist it is and think to myself, “Is this wet enough, or is this too dry?” Once you are used to working in a specific garden and know exactly how long it takes your soil to dry out, it is easy to figure out

You Are What You Eat,You Eat What You SowBy Soma, as told

to Red Dragon*

I have lived in the Netherlands since 1995, and I have had time to observe, here and throughout Europe, the debate and the politics surrounding the need to turn ourselves toward a 100% organic agriculture. In these times of mad cow disease, foot-and-mouth disease, Hong Kong bird flu, SARS, tsunamis and now MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), when pollution, global warming and the unstoppable use of pesticides have become the extreme sports of our modern societies, the most “aware” persons are looking very closely indeed at what they consume.Here, in picturesque old Amsterdam, in the heart of the quiet Netherlands (the most peaceful place I know these days), paying attention to what we eat has taken another turn. I was one of the first indoor gardeners to underline the importance of organically-produced products and plants. Since the mid-1990s, high quality organic agricultural products have become sought-after goods. Always preoccupied with quality, producers have evolved to become experts in environmentally-friendly high quality.

Between 2000 and 2001, foot-and-mouth disease has ravaged a great part of Europe. Since then, everyone has been giving more

thought to what we eat, drink and... grow. A recent study by the European Directorate general for Health and Consumer

Protection has shown, through random testing, that 3% of the 41,000 sampled fruit and vegetables from the member states and the Netherlands bore pesticide residue above and beyond the Maximum Residue Limit (MRL). In total, pesticide residue were detected in 40% of samples, although they were under the MRL, which is a proportion

equivalent to that found in commercial supermarket tomatoes. Right now, these statistics are not so bad if you take



THE INDOOR GARDENER | Growing Experiment

a schedule for watering allowing you to keep your plants in a happy medium, not drowning in water and not drying out either.

Knowing exactly when to harvest is truly an art. So many growers pick their plants too early, missing the best. It takes patience to grow good vegetables: you can’t push the river. I don’t go by calendars; I always look to the plants for answers. There are certain instances when your plants can be stunted by things like over-watering, over-fertilizing, cold or hot temperatures, and insect damage that can throw your calendar date off. Always study your plants closely at the time of harvest to make sure they are truly ripe, because only then will you get the full benefits of organic food.

Getting back to this beautiful garden I am working on... I have four different kinds growing together. I have made a study of which plants make the greatest food because most do not. Yes, this is a crop for learning, and making my own food with my organic-grown vegetables. It is a crop for teaching and healing. It is a crop for sharing, but this is one crop that wasn’t grown for money. Try it: you’ll like it.

X-Tra Guano: Trust Bat ShitThe word “guano” originated from Peru and means “the droppings of sea birds.” As the word is used today, guano describes both bat and sea-bird manure. Our interest here lies solely in bat guano.

To harvest this expensive fertilizer, workers basically vacuum the guano from the floor of ancient caves, home to millions of bats. Bat guano is considered by many to be the best fertilizer for the cultivation of organic food. Guano supplies fast- and slow-release nutrients. Growers – both in hydroponics and soil – are finding that guano is a natural alternative to chemical solutions.

Guano is aged and is sold ready-to-use. Two types of bat guano are available: one is harvested from a species that thrives on insects, while the other comes from fruit-loving bats. What is important for the grower to know is that the first type is high in nitrogen while the second is high in phosphorus.

Use nitrogen guano for growth and/or phosphorus guano for flowering.

Typical composition (may vary significantly):Bat guano – high nitrogen• Nitrogen: 10%• Phosphorus: 3%• Potassium: 1%Bat guano – high phosphorus• Nitrogen: 0%• Phosphorus: 18%• Potassium: 0%

a look at the global production of commercialized food products.The European Union Organization has also undertaken a parallel study: it controlled the presence of seven commonly-used pesticides (acephate, chlorpyrifos, chlorpyrifos-methyl, methamidophos, iprodione, procymidone and chlorothalonil) and of two pesticide groups (benomyl and dithiocarbamates) on five fruit and vegetable families (apples, strawberries, grapes, lettuce and tomatoes). In this case, lettuce contained the most residue. It was followed by grapes, strawberries, apples and tomatoes. Here, in the Netherlands, we see more and more fines being given for cultures done using forbidden pesticides. This encourages small producers who follow good trade practices and grow with respect, as opposed to those without scruples who grow products only for money, which in turns opens a

door to criminality. For retailers, the goal is to establish long-term relationships with small private producers who agree to use only organic nutritive elements. They offer producers advice and support to develop their products. In return, growers must manage their employees and agree to regular verifications to conform to the imposed norms. They thus hope to offer a selection of the best high-quality organic fruits and vegetables, for an honest price, to the clients who visit specialty stores and recognized organic fruit stores. All organically-grown products bear the “Organic Farming” label or, on products destined to be exported to the US, the “EOVP – European Organic Verification Program” label. “A recent Eurobarometer study has shown that the absence of pesticides in a product is the main safety criterion for European consumers”, said Ms. Bonino, European commissioner responsible for consumer policy. “Member states must thus ensure that the Maximum Residue Limits (MRL) are respected.”In the Netherlands, a very particular system is in use. There are usually three reasons to set the rates of pesticide residue in food products:• Minimize consumer exposure to useless or harmful pesticide intake;• Control the proper use of pesticides;• Allow the free circulation of pesticide-treated products in the single market.Right now, over 800 pesticides are used int he European Union. Of these, 73 have MRLs common to all EU countries. When there is no harmonized MRL, member states can set national MRLs.

You Are What You Eat,You Eat What You Sow



Growing Experiment | THE INDOOR GARDENER

Over the past few years, various plant, aviary and agricultural epidemics have shaken a large part of Europe. As already mentioned, people are more sensitized to what they eat and drink, as well as to what they grow. Since 1996, each EU country has participated in a pesticide control program and submits an annual report. The seven pesticides and two pesticide

groups used as calibration are analysed in the chosen sample produce (apples, tomatoes, lettuce, strawberries and grapes.) An average of 9,700 samples is analysed for each phytosanitary product mentioned. There are alternatives, prior to a crop treatment, allowing for the chemical-free production of fruit and vegetables.In Morocco, experiments have been done on the organic graft of tomato plants, without any use or reinforcement with chemicals. That is what Professor Mohamed Besri reported during the Twelfth Annual International Research Conference on Methyl Bromide Alternatives and Emissions Reduction held in San Diego in November 2005. Dr. Besri’s published results are beyond conclusive. The potential and possibilities exist. It is now up to the Dutch government and the European Union to partake in this kind of organic experimentation. I hope, for logic’s sake, that they make judicious decisions regarding the many existing alternatives to chemical products.Plants can be grown in many ways, and I also mean “with different vibrations”, which has an impact on the final product. In the Netherlands, plants grown for human consumption are cultivated in all manners imaginable. Even with the European Union’s regulations, a few of those have turned out to be not so beneficial. Growing plants is a sacred art and it should be treated as such. A plant with the power to sustain us does not exist only for the money it can bring. Of course, money is an important aspect of modern life, and there are inherent costs in any production or cultivation endeavour. Some producers, obviously, use pesticides. In my opinion, in that case, the “vibration” is missing. I can guarantee you that this type of culture is not suited to human consumption. The product’s flavour is insignificant or adulterated, and consuming it brings forth no benefit.

Also, verify the origin of the seeds when contemplating the start of a garden. Choose seeds grown exclusively on organic soil and with organic nutritive elements. Of course, you’ll want them pesticide-free. The replacement method used should be integrated pest management against parasites, with only neem oil and parasites used throughout production. Many small businesses produce this kind of 100% organic seeds, and they supply European and international retailers. These seeds are more expensive, but they are sought-after these days, as we question our food’s origins. Do

not hesitate: ask your retailer about the origins of the seeds you purchase. If you used seeds that have been treated, even very lightly, with some chemical at one point or other, you stand no chance in your organic production. Have more than a quick look before you make a purchase. For more information, see: http://ec.europa.eu. * Soma’s thoughts were gathered by Red Dragon during a recent trip to Amsterdam.

In less than five minutes a day, you can grow your own organic vegetables, herbs, and home-grown fish. Imagine growing 100 pounds of home-grown fish and more than 400 heads of organic lettuce (or other vegetables) per year in a small 6 X 8 foot space with your own Portable-Farms kit! All the food tastes rich and garden-fresh like it did at your grandparents’ farm. Portable Farms LLC has received interest from 110 countries since its official launch on June 17, 2008.

Become self-sufficient and self-reliant by raising fresh organic vegetables and home-grown fish to help feed your family, year round, by owning your own Portable Farm. The plants grow large and healthy because they have optimal growing conditions with their roots in warm, nutrient-laden water from the heated fish tanks. A Portable Farm is scalable for family, community, organizational or institutional installations, and can also be scaled for commercial growing. The fish and vegetables can be eaten or sold locally to stores or restaurants.

A Portable Farm is a very simple system: A specially designed pump moves the water from the fish tanks and then through a settling tank to remove all the solid wastes from the fish tanks in order to keep the fish healthy. From there, the water flows through shallow trays containing gravel where vegetables are planted, and then the water flows back to the fish tanks. The pump keeps the fish tanks free of sediment while it sends the nutrients to the plants without ever draining the fish tanks dry. It’s a perfectly efficient system.

A Portable Farm quickly pays for itself. Instead of buying groceries that have been shipped and stored in your local store, simply walk to your

own Portable Farm with a bowl, select your own organic vegetables and home-grown fish to serve your family for dinner. And not only is it fresh, but it’s only steps away from your kitchen. The Portable Farm is affordable, requires only minimal upkeep (three to five minutes a day), and is a family project that everyone of all ages can enjoy as they learn the values of living green, the beauty of nature, and the security of being self-reliant from growing and harvesting from the cycle of life.

The Portable Farm is fully automated:• No need to water your plants because a Portable Farm

uses a one hour, twice-a-day cycle to circulate the water throughout the system so the plants constantly receive a fresh supply of nutrient-laden water.

• No soil is necessary. Your plants grow in trays or beds filled with gravel or river rocks.

• No weeding is necessary.• There’s no need to hand-feed your fish either because a

Portable Farms Kit contains two automatic fish feeders. • No pesticides or fertilizers are necessary. • Plus, your entire system can be solar powered and

completely automated.

Call 1 760-751-4156 today for more information, or visit www.portablefarms.com.

Portable Farm™: Feed Your Family, Feed a

Village, and Feed the WorldBy The Happy Portable Farmer, Colle Davis,

Inventor, CEO, Portable Farms LLC

Here is a picture of Colle Davis, the inventor of the Portable Farm, holding a single head of lettuce.



THE INDOOR GARDENER | Interlude

It took a strong and imposing Welsh baritone to remind us that the classic “Scarborough Fair”, popularized in 1966 by Simon and Garfunkel, is a traditional song going back to the 13th century. The actual Scarborough fair was held in the little port town on the North Sea in North Yorkshire during the reign of English King Henry the third, who authorized it in a decree dated January 22, 1253. The ballad however is far more recent. The version we know is not the original. Historians agree that its melody comes from a lost Scottish ballad entitled “The Elfin Knight” or “Child Ballad #2”, probably created around 1670. Contemporary lyrics and the famous “parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme” refrain only appeared during the 19th century. Some even say that this refrain and the general story told in the song are copied on another children’s ballad, “Riddles Wisely Expounded” or “Child Ballad #1”, the first version of which dates back at least to the middle of the 15th century.But let’s leave the debate on the origins of the song to musicologists and instead, let’s turn our ear to the new interpretation of it by baritone opera singer Bryn Terfel, who has made “Scarborough Fair” the central piece of his new album, on classical label Deutsche Grammophon. Born in 1965, Bryn Terfel has spent his entire career on the world’s opera stages, interpreting

the most famous roles and songs from the international repertoire. Yet he also enjoys releasing more “popular” music albums such as “B.T. Sings Favourites” or “Simple Gifts.” This one is his fourth, entitled “Scarborough Fair, Songs from the British Isles.” In the accompanying booklet, he says: “I’ve always wanted to record an album with a strong Celtic element. In the end, we decided to do it on the British Isles and have assembled English, Scottish, Irish—and of course, Welch songs.” Whether Simon and Garfunkel like it or not, according to tradition, “Scarborough Fair” should be interpreted by a man and a woman, in the purest style of yesteryear’s round singing. That is why Bryn Terfel sings it with Kate Royal. She offers an entrancing counterweight to the baritone’s strength. We are brought back five centuries, for our greatest pleasure! The purity and elegance of London’s Symphonic Orchestra’s arrangements are a bonus.In the song, an abandoned lover asks the listener to give his ex-lover a long series of practically impossible tasks that she must fulfill to gain his love back. In the duo, parts sung by the woman return the challenge to the deserted lover, proposing another series of impossible tasks. For the longest time, artists have speculated upon the hidden meaning of the refrain. The language of flowers and herbs can help us understand its meaning. Indeed,

according to this language, references can be interpreted as follows:• Parsley: “I would like you to bear my children” (parsley is an aphrodisiac because of the highly concentrated apiol found in its leaves and roots);• Sage: “you can count on me” (memory and immortality);• Rosemary: “remember me” (constancy, faithfulness, loyalty, “I am happy when I see you”);• Thyme: “I am yours” (sincere emotion).Four botanical references that say everything: love, faithfulness, fertility, eternity... Herbs speak of love. At the feelings fair, choose carefully among parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.To conclude, I find there is an undeniable resemblance between Bryn Terfel and Meat Loaf, the lyrical and symphonic heavy-metal singer. So, Mr. Terfel, for your next project, why not attempt a baritone version of “Bat Out of Hell”? I think we’d like to hear that…

– B.B.


IN THE HEART OF LAST WINTER, ONE OF MY HORTICULTURIST FRIENDS CALLED ME UP IN A PANIC. THE ODOURS FROM HIS GARDEN WERE NO LONGER LIMITED TO HIS APARTMENT, BUT INVADED EVEN THE COMMON

SPACES OF HIS BUILDING. “Th e entire complex stinks! I can almost smell the humid, chemical and soil odour from my garden when I walk off the bus at night... What can I do to control the smell? I’m really worried that my neighbours will complain!” I ANSWERED SOMETHING LIKE: “Calm down! You’d already told me you haven’t installed any air-evacuation system and I’d told you you’d soon have a huge problem with humidity and odours, so this is no surprise! You have to fi x the situation as soon as possible. Th ere are no miracles. A closed space requires adequate ventilation.”

Air EvacuationTh ere are many options to consider to reduce odours and polluted air, but some carry consequences. Make sure that your solution reservoir does not hold rotten roots, foliage waste or

any other matter that comes off the plants as they grow. Th e fi rst step for a healthy garden room without any smelly or unhealthy residue (for your plants but also for you, and for what you’ll consume later if your crop is edible) is to do proper maintenance and rinsing of your hydroponic system.For example, you can buy a HEPA fi lter with a deionizer and place it in your garden. Th e fi lter will eliminate many of the odour-causing particles, as will the deionizer. Some people who were growing aromatic plants such as fi ne herbs have found that using this method made them lose their plants’ fl avour as well. You can get rid of odours without getting rid of fl avour, but that requires more work. Th e way to proceed is to evacuate the air from the garden through the

Techniques | THE INDOOR GARDENER

Aufs Arnolds Heimat... (From Arnold’s Land)

Guten Tag!Austria, land of Empress Sissi, Franz Schubert, Freud, Klimt, Beethoven, Strauss and ultra-famous Arnold Schwarzenegger... I know, after all these prestigious names, it makes for a strange ending. No, the Terminator does not have a statue in his likeness here, but a few sport centers and public stadiums do bear his name. Let’s take a closer look at the country that gave us the man who has become California’s Governator. Austria is also the strange country where a little girl was held captive for eight years in a window-less basement by a sadistic man, where she managed to escape and become a TV host with her own scandal-fi lled talk-show. Th e sordid story is still much discussed on the streets of Vienna.

Let’s Start With FoodYou should be starting to know me by now, and it won’t surprise you if I turn my attention to food fi rst. And food here is excellent, although slightly on the rich side and quite salty:• Vegetable strudel; • Various fricassées;• Onctuous and uplifting soups; • Plenty of mushrooms of all kinds; • Bratwurst und sauerkraut; • Schinken, brot und kaise; • Very good wines and good beers.And that’s leaving desserts aside... I could discuss them over pages and pages. I can’t leave out strudels, the famous Sachertorte and the history of viennoiseries. Let’s start with the strudel, a little puff turnover traditionally fi lled with apples and raisins (Apfelstrudel). Sublime cold or warm, it is a remedy against melancholy and manages to make us forget the cold and bland days of Viennese autumn. Th e strudel’s most ferocious adversary is without a doubt the famous

Sachertorte, offi cial dessert of the imperial family. Th e Sachertorte is a chocolate cake containing a layer of apricot jam, covered in a rich chocolate icing, and was invented in 1832 by a baker named Franz Sacher. Franz was an apprentice in the kitchens of His Majesty Prince Metternich and had to make the dessert in a hurry because the head baker was sick. According to the story, His Majesty was so impressed by the cake that he decided to make it an imperial dessert.Viennese pastries (or viennoiseries) also come with their own creation story. According to legend, after Austria managed to drive back the second attack of the Turks and that relations between the two empires regained a

Incoming and Outgoing Ventilation Control

continued on page 38…


THE INDOOR GARDENER | Techniques

roof of your house. Th e air inside the garden is evacuated outdoors, and that is why you can smell your plants in the neighbourhood. Considering that the air inside your garden is warmer than the air outdoors, the warmer air will rise when it comes out of your home. So if the air is evacuated at a certain height, the odours will dissipate without being perceived at ground level.

Calculating the Air Volume

Depending on the volume of air to be treated, you can get a ventilation system at a hardware store for $20 to $50. To determine the volume of air that should be treated, measure the length, width and height of your garden space. Multiply these three fi gures. Th e result will be the dimension,

in cubic metres (assuming you measured in metres) of your garden. You then have to determine the frequency at which the air should be purifi ed in your garden. For optimal growth, it is recommended to purify the air at least twice each minute. Decide on a frequency, and multiply this number by the room’s total in square metres. Make sure the fan you buy is strong enough to ventilate your garden space.

Incoming and Outgoing Ventilation Control




Installing a Ventilation SystemInstall the fan on your roof, or as high as possible. Whatever its strength, make sure it is at least three

metres from the ground outside your home. Th en, install

fl exible ventilation ducts (also found in hardware stores) to link the fan to your garden. When you evacuate a large air volume from the garden, the air from outside will infi ltrate everywhere. Make sure there are enough air entries to balance out the evacuated air. If the volume of air inside the garden is less than the volume evacuated, a vacuum will

occur and disturb the fan’s function, making it pump less air than it should. Installing a ventilation system not only serves to purify the air: it also facilitates an adequate air circulation, which is necessary for rapid and vigorous plant growth. Still, you should be watchful for odours in your garden space.

– G.H.

semblance of diplomacy, a reception was held in Vienna with guests who were Turkish diplomats. Since the crescent is a symbol of the Turkish fl ags, crescent-shaped pastries were served with the meal. Th e bittersweet gesture was a Viennese joke, a viennoiserie... And thus crescent-shaped and other similar pastries have been called viennoiseries since.

Musical and... Fragrant (!) TourismIf you like unconventional strolls and want to see something other than museums, I recommend you go for a walk at the Wiener Zentralfriedhof. It is the second largest cemetery in Europe. Opened in 1874, it covers approximately 2.5 hectares and has since welcomed the bodies of almost two million people, from all walks of life, ideologies and religions. More than a cemetery, this green expanse is a peaceful haven with wonderful pathways, majestic trees and even some four-legged friends, small rodents and young deer. If you don’t have time for the complete tour, visit the old Jewish cemetery, to see both its old tombstones and its forest which, respectfully, slowly, is covering the space that was previously taken from it. After this mystical visit, become a voyeur and discover the many celebrity tombs, those of Ludwig von Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Johannes Brahms, and don’t forget Falco – yes, the one who sang Rock me Amadeus. Unfortunately, Falco doesn’t rest near his buddy Mozart, since the latter allegedly rests in peace in St-Marc cemetery. What could be funnier than a Quebecer lost in Vienna who attempts

to speak German? A Quebecer lost in Vienna who attempts to speak German with a Taiwanese woman from Taipei who is also attempting to speak German, to explain to the Taipei Taiwanese, in a Pekinese restaurant in Vienna, that she left all her Euros in her other wallet, in her hotel room... Th e story ended well. It’s important to know that life is costly in Vienna and that the smell of horse poop is found pretty much everywhere. Many, many caleches circulate in the streets of Vienna... Yup, worse than in Old Montreal, because the horses don’t wear poop bags. Th ere are road apples here and there. You need to look at where you’re setting foot!

Apfelstrudel RecipeTh e Apfelstrudel (apple strudel) is the most famous Viennese recipe. It is a little diffi cult to make, since the dough must be split in three sheets, baked one after the other, to fi nally make the “rolled” cookie. For eight people, you will need (for the fi lling): 12 Granny Smith apples, 200 g walnut meat, 200 g blond raisins, 100 g powdered sugar, 1 jam jar, 20 g of butter, 1 table spoon of nut oil, the juice of a fresh lemon and powdered cinnamon (1 teaspoon). For the dough, you will need 250 g fl our, 125 g butter, 10 cl water and a pinch of salt.Prepare the fi lling fi rst. Core the apples without pealing them and grate them to small curls. Brown the nut meat in butter, then add apples, raisins and jam. Sprinkle with cinnamon and allow to simmer. Add lemon juice and mix well. Leave on the stovetop until the juice thickens.

Th en turn to making the dough. Work with your hands on a fl at surface to mix fl our, salt and butter (cut in small pieces), until you obtain an elastic dough. Make a hole in the center and pour water into it. Keep on mixing with your fi ngertips, then mix well until you obtain a nice ball of homogenous dough. Let it rest for approximately 30 minutes, then split it in three.Prepare the three rolled-out sheets of dough. Th e fi rst two need to take the shape and size of the rectangular dish you will use; the third should be larger on all sides, because it will be used to seal the cake. Once they are rolled out, dock all three with a fork. Bake the fi rst sheet of dough in the dish for 20 minutes at 210°C. Take it out of the dish and put in the second sheet of dough. Cook this one for 15 minutes at the same temperature. After you’ve removed it from the oven, put half of the cooked apple-fi lling mixture on the baked sheet of dough. Put the fi rst baked sheet on top, and cover with the rest of the fi lling mixture. Place the third sheet of dough on top to close hermetically all sides: use oil to seal the sides of the top sheet with the sides of the bottom one. Apply nut oil on the entire surface of the cake and sprinkle some crystallized sugar on top. Bake for 20 minutes at 210°C. Cool for 30 minutes and serve it warm, with fresh cream and a sparkly Alsatian wine.

Enjoy! And as our dear friend Terminator Arnold used to say: “Hasta la vista baby, I’ ll be back!” Peace!

– Rose L.

MOVIES: 2001 a Space Odyssey Turns 4040 years, not one wrinkle


Leaving behind humanoid robots and made up fl ying saucers, in 1968 Stanley Kubrick signed the fi rst high-tech space opera and introduced adults to science-fi ction. Inspired from an Arthur C. Clarke novel, the fi lm is divided into four parts and evokes mankind’s quest for its origins. If three of those parts are announced by a title screen, the passage from the fi rst to the second gives rise to the most stunning ellipsis in cinematographic history.

Th e dawn of mankind: a few prehistoric men vegetate faced with their natural environment’s aridity and hostility. Th eir sole preoccupation is to feed themselves and to defend their water source. Th e outlandish appearance of a black monolith, with perfectly straight edges and a polished surface, emitting strident sounds, disconcerts and then directs the intellect of one of the clan leaders. He grabs a gigantic bone and, shocked yet possessed by an uncontrollable murder impulse, massacres an adversary. He then throws his improvised mace towards the sky...

... where it becomes a satellite in Earth’s orbit. We are in the early 21st century, and in two shots, Stanley Kubrick makes mankind’s history jump forward. Scientists are busy on the Moon, where a similar monolith has just been uncovered: it looks just like the one from prehistoric times, and emits the same sounds.

On the way to Jupiter: 18 months later, an extremely high-tech spaceship brings two astronauts, four scientists and supercomputer HAL—a genuine nervous system for the ship—to Jupiter, searching for the monolith which has moved towards this area of space. Omnipotent, HAL sabotages the mission, kills the scientists and one of the astronauts before being put offl ine by the survivor, Dave Bowman, who then nears the black monolith alone.

Beyond the stars: Dave Bowman, or his metaphysical double, wanders through limbo-like psychedelic-colored space times up until the fi nal image of the fetus going back towards Earth.

Assisted by Douglas Trumbull for special eff ects, Stanley Kubrick deploys his setup around sumptuous models and perfectly-credible never-seen-before decors. Th e refi nement of spaceship-ballet sequences on Strauss waltzes is a source of pure rapture, and makes this an atypical movie, one that’s more focused on seduction through technical mastery than on telling a story. Due to its length (nearly 3 hours), the fi lm has never lost its very contemplative bias. It led to a wave of special-eff ect movies, the success of the Star Wars trilogy (1977, 1980, 1983) allowing George Lucas to found Industrial Light

MOVIES: 2001 a Space Odyssey Turns 4040 years, not one wrinkle By Bruno Bredoux

and Magic, the largest special eff ect and computer-generated image research studio ever designed.

It wasn’t until Ridley Scott’s Alien in 1979 that the organic made a brutal return to the overly-smooth world of anticipation—in it, the monster’s blood and acidic secretions alter bodies and machines. And no one has since equalled the purity of the future seen otherwise as on the ruins of our civilization.


After last year’s greenhouse disaster, I put a lot of thought into the next greenhouse project. What do I need a greenhouse to do for me?1. To stay where I put it and NOT BLOW AWAY!2. To never freeze and always stay above 5°C.3. To be energy efficient. No outside power would be ideal.4. Room to GROW!

What I came up with after a year of research and planning is… a solar greenhouse!

The first time I saw the words “solar greenhouse” I thought, is that a joke? Of course a greenhouse is solar. But a solar greenhouse is exactly what I was looking for. Basically, a solar greenhouse is a building with a super-insulated roof and three sides, with a full southern exposure and a thermal mass.

Here are some of the basic principles of a solar greenhouse:1. Use thermal mass to collect and store solar heat.2. Have large amounts of insulation on every surface without glazing.3. For maximum solar heat in the winter, the glazing must be at a correct angle and oriented due south.4. Insulate glazing to minimize heat loss.5. Natural venting in summer.The thermal mass is the heart of a solar greenhouse: it regulates the temperature inside. On a clear day, a greenhouse without venting or thermal mass will reach temperatures of up to 50 to 60°C in a couple of hours. I have a small greenhouse in the city. It’s 5’ X 10’ and 8’ tall. Its interior will often reach 40°C when it is -20°C outside. All that extra heat is wasted and not good for plants – and when the sun goes down,



By Fred LeducMy New Solar Greenhouse

Winter Promotion on Frigor Inc. Wall-Mounted Heat-Pumps


My New Solar Greenhouseall that heat is gone. A thermal mass will collect solar energy and prevent the greenhouse from overheating in the daytime. At night, when heat is most valuable, the thermal mass will release its stored energy, keep the greenhouse warm and prevent freezing. The thermal-mass calculation for a solar greenhouse in zone 5 is 3 gallons of water for every square foot of glazing. For a solar greenhouse with 300 square feet of glazing, that will be 900 gallons of water. I will use sixteen 55-gallon barrels, painted black.The biggest difference between a regular greenhouse and a solar greenhouse is that sunlight goes straight through a greenhouse, right out the northern side. In a solar greenhouse, there are three full walls and a roof that are insulated to trap the heat and reflect sunlight back to the plants and thermal mass. The roof of a solar greenhouse will usually have a steep angle to reflect even more winter light to the plants. A solar greenhouse is insulated like a house: the more, the better. Every crack must be filled and sealed, every draft must be stopped. Check the local building code for home insulation to get an idea of what is needed in your area. An R25 is recommended by the City of

Mercier, Québec – it’s the minimum in my area. I achieved R30 to R35 in the walls, roof and floor.To maximize solar-heat collection in the winter, the glazing must be oriented to true south. If true south is not possible, the greenhouse can be oriented a little to the east to start warming the greenhouse as early in the day as possible. The correct angle of the glazed panels is the latitude plus 15 to 20 degrees. At northern latitudes, that is going to be 40 to 60°.Insulated glazing is usually made of two pieces of glass with a layer of air or gas sandwiched in between. It can be made of any transparent material that can hold an air space. A very popular material these days is multiwall polycarbonate-glazing panels.Last year, I built a hoop greenhouse that looked a lot like a small commercial greenhouse; a solar greenhouse looks more like a shed. In my design, I worked a hoop system into it that I think is going to work very well. The solar greenhouse I am building is 12' X 24' and 10' tall. The base was made of 2" X 8' pre-treated lumber for ground contact and ¾" plywood. I also painted the 2" X 8’s with a

waterproof-rubber membrane for some added protection. In the bottom of the base I put 1" Styrofoam sealed with polyurethane spray foam and 6" of pink insulation, for a total of about R35.The walls and the roof are made of 2" X 6" spruce. The ½" plywood for the roof and the walls are ⅝" particle board. All the gaps, cracks and seams were first sealed with spray foam from the inside (using the small cans) and insulated with 6” pink insulation. The interior is wrapped with white 6-mil plastic. On the outside, all the wood is covered with a polyurethane-spray foam (600-square foot kit, 1" thick) for a total of R30. The roof is covered with tar paper and steel, again for a total of R30.The glazing is two pieces of 6-mil plastic greenhouse covering on a PVC frame. A third sheet of 4-mil bubble plastic on the inside of the greenhouse will create an air space – or thermal barrier – providing insulation for the glazing. The thermal mass for my solar greenhouse with 300 square feet of glazing is 900 gallons, a row of eight barrels stacked two high will provide most if not all the heat the solar greenhouse will need over the winter. I did install an 8’ electric heater as a back-up for cloudy days.Construction is almost finished, but I will be adding things for a long time.

The cold season is upon us. Is a wall-mounted heat-pump an appropriate choice? One thing’s for sure: temperature can be unpredictable. This winter, Frigor Inc. is offering an advantageous end-of-season liquidation (you can save $500 to $800 compared to the high season). Frigor’s wall-mounted heat-pumps are multi-functional:

- Air conditioning;- Heating;- De-humidification.

The 12,000-BTU model with Sanyo compressor, for example, comes with a three-year warranty at a revised price of $1,295. The 18,000-BTU model with Toshiba compressor comes with a five-year warranty at a revised price of $1,749. These pricesinclude everything but taxes. Contact Harold Lebel, sales director, at 1-450-441-1235, by email at [email protected], or visit Frigor Inc.’s website, at www.frigor.ca.

Winter Promotion on Frigor Inc. Wall-Mounted Heat-Pumps


To find out moreThe first part of this article is found at page 31 of this issue. Remember this:• Fighting against small

everyday ailments can often be done using the herbs you have at your disposal, and using them well.

• Fighting a pain, a hardship—physical as well as moral—is possible using herbs. You only need to develop the right reflexes and to have the proper information to find relief.

• Your metabolism reacts to herbal effects. Try to better understand your metabolism, its function and its balance, to find the right remedy for you in your own garden.

• Stimulating your natural defences is often easier than you think: the trick is to use plants and herbs properly. You need to be the master of your health capital, using what’s at hand.

• How many times have you seen a doctor too early or for naught? With some herbs, little everyday sores vanish as if by magic.

• Health solutions offered by herbs are often simple and quite cheap.

• Most herbal-based remedies are pejoratively called folk remedies. Yet most of them are scientifically tested and proven—even though researchers and the pharmaceutical industry are far from making it known!

See: www.richters.com. -B.B.

Herbs and THeir VirTues


In A Nutshell | THE INDOOR GARDENER

Part 2

BananaIts amino acids favour serotonin production in the brain, bringing about calm and well-being. Very efficient, even if very different from the traditional honey-flavoured glass

of warm milk or the very boring book that slips out of your fingers... Zzzzz...

ClovesYou bite into one of your favourite dishes and... bang! Here comes that

old pain in your tooth. To neutralize this toothache, nothing beats an old wife’s remedy: chew on a clove.

TeaStop mouth ulcers! To get rid of small ulcers on the mucous membranes of your mouth and gums, put them in contact with a moist tea pouch for five minutes. What a relief!

ParsleyTo reduce skin inflammation, fresh parsley (ground parsley leaves) applied on a bruise is an excellent complement to the use of arnica, which is very potent in homeopathic lozenges. Onion

Onion juice... You’re already making a face! But if you have laryngitis, nothing will soothe it better. Be brave and swallow onion juice. It will relieve your larynx quickly.

MustardYou have a headache? Is it bad? Prepare yourself a foot bath and add mustard to the water. You’ll be surprised to see your headache vanish easily.

Argan treeArgan oil, obtained from the Moroccan argan tree, is a precious and pure organic oil used to revitalize dry skin. Containing vitamin E, Omega-3 and Omega-6, the oil is applied during body massages. Beware of forgeries: argan oil is a rare and expensive product, and many retailers sell a counterfeit product.


To find out moreThe first part of this article is found at page 31 of this issue. Remember this:• Fighting against small

everyday ailments can often be done using the herbs you have at your disposal, and using them well.

• Fighting a pain, a hardship—physical as well as moral—is possible using herbs. You only need to develop the right reflexes and to have the proper information to find relief.

• Your metabolism reacts to herbal effects. Try to better understand your metabolism, its function and its balance, to find the right remedy for you in your own garden.

• Stimulating your natural defences is often easier than you think: the trick is to use plants and herbs properly. You need to be the master of your health capital, using what’s at hand.

• How many times have you seen a doctor too early or for naught? With some herbs, little everyday sores vanish as if by magic.

• Health solutions offered by herbs are often simple and quite cheap.

• Most herbal-based remedies are pejoratively called folk remedies. Yet most of them are scientifically tested and proven—even though researchers and the pharmaceutical industry are far from making it known!

See: www.richters.com. -B.B.

Herbs and THeir VirTuesPart 2


Fred: Did you start as a gardener or as a scientist?Mike: As a scientist.

Fred: When did you become interested in growing plants in space, and how did that start?Mike: About 15 years ago, I guess. It’s a rather convoluted story. Just by chance, really.

Fred: What was your field before that?Mike: I was trained as a plant physiologist. I actually did my PhD in the forestry department at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. I came from Mount Allison in plant biology basically.

Fred: What is “Advanced Life-Support Agriculture”? Mike: It’s one of the more recent names given to systems required for human life support in space. It includes biological systems as well as conventional physical, chemical systems that we currently use on the space station and on the shuttle.

Fred: Are you talking about replacing these chemical systems?Mike: In the long term, yes. Not in the short term, and by that I mean the next thirty or forty years.

Fred: Can you give me an example of a system?Mike: The system that scrubs carbon dioxide out of the air or the system that takes bottled oxygen and releases it into the atmosphere of the space station.

Fred: Can you tell us what a grow chamber on a spaceship is going to be like?Mike: In the near term our research does not look at putting plant-production systems other than small-scale experimental and so called “salad machines” on spaceships because long-term life support on a space ship is not required yet. It only takes three days to get to the Moon and six months to get Mars and we can carry enough food to handle that without having to grow it. Besides, the mass and energy cost of a food-production system are too high.

Fred: These grow chambers will be just experiments and won’t be used as biofilters? Mike: We’re using them as test beds to test systems and figure out how to do it on the Moon and on Mars. What size of plant-production area do we need for a crew of six? What kinds of crops and how would we grow them? The horticultural

management strategies for growing wheat, soy beans, beans, peas and corn on the Moon are quite different than they are here. We have to redo all of human agricultural practices under different environmental conditions.

Fred: Is there a short list of plants that are probably going to be the first ones grown? Mike: In terms of food for 100% of life-support requirements for the crew, the list is up to about forty now. However we won’t be at 100%, certainly not in our short lifetime. We’ll still have to rely on conventional physical chemical systems as plants get more and more developed as a life-support system. Early on, it will be mostly short-term vegetative crops



Plants in SpaceBy Fred Leduc

I recently read an article in the Montreal Gazette about space farming. I found it very interesting when professor Mike Dixon, director of CESRF at the University of Guelph was quoted as saying, “In the future

all astronauts will be vegetarians.” I’ve thought for a long time that the ultimate in indoor gardens was going to be in outer space! Professor Dixon is one of world’s leading authorities on space and advanced life

support agriculture. I gave professor Dixon a call and asked him a few questions.

INTERVIEW WITH PROFESSOR MIKE DIXON, DIRECTOR OF THE CONTROLLED-ENVIRONMENT SYSTEMS RESEARCH FACILITY AND OF THE SPACE AND ADVANCED LIFE SUPPORT AGRICULTURE

PROGRAM AT THE ONTARIO AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF GUELPH.




like lettuce, radishes, and so-called salad crops, spring onions.

Fred: Tomatoes?Mike: Tomatoes would be the next class of crops. They would be the crops that bear fruit, like tomatoes and peppers; potatoes, which

don’t bear fruit but grow tubers and soy beans, wheat, rice.

Fred: What sort of growth mediums could be used in space and what will probably be used?Mike: You have to differentiate what the average person thinks of as space. The average person thinks conventionally like the International Space Station and microgravity applications, but all of our research is aimed at a planetary-base level, where there’s going be some gravity, there will be an up and a down, so that broadens the scope of potential production systems that you could use. You could use a simple nutrient-film technique, which is just water re-circulating with the appropriate recipe of nutrients: nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus and all the micronutrients that plants require in a specified diet, circulating indefinitely. Or we could start to use things like the substrate from the Moon or Mars, the actual so-called, “regolith”, which is just a term for the dirt on the surface, and use that as a hydroponic substrate, an inert structural contribution to the root system.

Fred: How does gravity or lack of gravity affect plant growth?Mike: So far, experiments that have been done on space stations since the Russians were working on MIR, and I’ve participated on some wheat experiments on the International Space Station with NASA, and

plants typically replace “up” with light and “down” with water, so where the water is is down and where the light is is up and they sort of grow their roots in the “down” direction, towards the water, and their photosynthetic architecture, their green parts, “up” towards the light. You can have that in microgravity, you can have that anywhere. You can have it completely upside down. The plants will behave more or less normally if they have enough light, the right temperature and the right nutrients. They behave

more or less normally, so they’re not that confused by up and down.

Fred: When do you think there’ll be a greenhouse on the Moon?Mike: We’re just at this moment proposing the initial Canadian participation in a plant-growth system on the Moon. It won’t necessarily be what we conventionally think of as a greenhouse. It’ll be a chamber about the size of a breadbox, really, that will grow just small seedlings of a guinea-

pig test crop, probably Arabidopsis, which is the guinea pig of the plant world. The genome has been mapped completely and we use it to fiddle with environmental conditions and stress factures and see how plants respond genetically. We’ll probably do that in collaboration with NASA and the European Space Agency and grow the first plant on the Moon.

Fred: Production greenhouses on the Moon! Will they be in rows like greenhouses on the Earth or would they be underground, in tunnels? Mike: One of the big issues that we’re dealing with here at Guelph is pressure. As you know, the Moon is virtually a vacuum and there’s no atmosphere. That means your structural system will have to have full earth atmosphere and full earth pressure. The mass of the greenhouse would be enormous to sustain that pressure differential between the inside and the outside. So we’re asking how low can you take the pressure and still have plants perform all the functions of human life support, meaning food

Tomatosphere By Fred Leduc

Tomatosphere is an educational outreach project involving over 10,000 classrooms across Canada, the United States and a few other countries, but focused mostly in Canada. Each spring since 2001, classrooms from grades 2 to 10 have been given two sets of tomato seeds and a protocol to conduct experiments on the effects of space and space travel on the growth of plants and seeds.

In the lower grades, the experiments last only a few weeks, long enough for the seeds to germinate and grow into seedlings. In the higher grades, the experiments can go further and involve more science. Kids are excited at the prospect of being involved, first hand, in space experiments!

To learn more, visit www.tomatosphere.org.

Tomatosphere is sponsored by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, the Canadian Space Agency, Heinz Canada, H.J. Heinz Company Foundation, the Ontario Centres of Excellence, Stokes Seeds and the University of Guelph.


production, atmosphere revitalization with oxygen and CO2 update, and recycling of fresh water as well as a little waste management. So far, plants don’t seem to mind pressures down as low as one tenth of Earth’s atmospheric pressure as long as the temperatures and light levels are adequate for them to perform photosynthetic chemistry and just grow normally, and they do. We found virtually no differences until the oxygen becomes limiting. So oxygen is the key, the critical environmental atmospheric element: maintaining a minimal threshold of oxygen. In Earth’s atmosphere, we have almost 21% of oxygen and that’s the environment that plants have grown to expect. If we’re working at one tenth of Earth’s atmosphere, even if it was all oxygen, you’re already at less than half of the oxygen there is in the atmosphere here on Earth. It turns out plants don’t mind that, as long as there the critical threshold of oxygen is met, which turns out to be about 6 or 7 kilopascals out of 100. If we’re down to a total of 10 kilopascals, your oxygen atmosphere is about 60-70%.

Fred: So they are probably going to be completely underground chambers?

Mike: Well, the underground part is quite likely. But there are a lot of things we don’t know yet, including the radiation environment on the Moon. How will plants be affected by that? That will be among the first questions we’ll ask when we start growing the first plants on the Moon. We’ll do it in a non radiation-protected system so that we can ask that question and get the plants to tell us.

Fred: How different is the greenhouse on Mars going to be from the one on the Moon?Mike: Not much, actually, because it will have the same kinds of pressures. Mars is virtually a vacuum. It is only 0.6 kilopascals in total and it’s almost all carbon dioxide, which is a good thing because you need carbon dioxide to grow plants, so we could use that in-situ resource, so to speak. Happily, the Phoenix mission confirmed that there’s plenty of water on Mars, frozen, just under the surface. The prospect of going to Mars… there will be different technologies associated with the greenhouse on Mars than on the Moon. But in many respects it will be identical. The Moon will be a handy proving ground for

a lot of the technologies that we will ultimately deploy on Mars.

Fred: Will the space farms use artificial lighting or sunshine? Mike: Both, I would think. Sunshine is obviously free, but in order to get it you have to expose yourself to cosmic radiation and once again those will be among the science questions that we ask of plant physiology and genomics when we get on the Moon and Mars. Do you mind being out here in the cosmic radiation while we steal a little sunlight for photosynthesis? If the answer is they do mind, in other words, if it starts to mess up their genetic coding and create the tomato that ate Mars kind of thing, we’ll have to look at radiation shielding, which of course prohibits free access to solar radiation since its all part of the package. Then we’ll have to come up with supplementary lighting options, like light-emitting diodes which have advanced in their technology recently to quite a high level.

Fred: But they don’t produce UV radiation.Mike: That’s true.

Fred: Isn’t that’s essential for a lot of plant action?Mike: Blue light is. Not necessarily ultraviolet, but certainly blue light at various wavelengths is required for flowering plants, many for reproductive activity but not all. You only need about 7 to 10% of the total light quantity given to a plant. There are definitely diodes in the blue part of the spectrum, they’ve got red and even white diodes. You’ve seen them in the flashlights that you buy at Canadian Tire. The technology of light-emitting diodes and the florescent chemistry or whatever it is creates the light from that has become very sophisticated and very high powered, which is desirable because you need quite a lot of light for photosynthesis.

Fred: Can you tell us about any of the spin-offs from your research?




Mike: Certainly. For everything we do in the controlled-environment systems research facility here at Guelph, wanting to go to the Moon or Mars and grow plants for human life support is the pull. But the driving force is the technology transfer to terrestrial applications. We started looking at atmosphere management; oxygen and CO2, obviously, but also all the trace volatile organics that typically contaminate sealed spaces in the atmosphere, off gases from both plants and materials that you would have in a space-station type structure. Dealing with those biologically, we’ve developed what we call biological filters (or biofilters for short) and that has spun off into a company called Air Quality Solutions populated by some of my colleagues and ex-gradate students. They’ve commercialized biological filtration of indoor air to combat “sick building syndrome” in institutional buildings and large office towers. They’re coming up with

domestic applications and industrial applications for paint shops and car shops and things like that. So it’s expanded quite a bit. This year, actually, the company was purchased by a bigger company, which is the way of things, and they’re going on to bigger and better things. More power to them!

Fred: I know about the world’s largest biofilter, the one that’s four stories tall in the auditorium at the Guelph-Humber building in Toronto. Are these biofilters going to be much smaller?Mike: They’re definitely making them much smaller, down to office-size spaces to literally the size of a breadbox.

Fred: At that size, are they going to be effective?Mike: Absolutely. Another issue is that when you go to space, you can’t throw anything away. There’s no such thing as garbage. That being

the case, you must recycle everything and recycling technologies are still relatively crude, actually, when you come down to consider that you must recycle absolutely every molecule of everything you take onto the Moon or Mars because it’s a question of survival now, it’s not a question of being environmentally friendly. For recycling

Agri-LITE™: A recyclable plant-

growth medium

The recyclable plant-growth medium mentioned is Agri-LITE™, made by SIR Petro Chemical, a green petrochemical company. The thing I find remarkable about this company is that they make a vertical-axis wind turbine that is small enough for use almost anywhere.

www.oilsponge.com.


continued on page 48…


the growth medium, we worked with a company locally and developed a recyclable plant-growth medium that is now made commercially available in the greenhouse sector to replace rock wool.

Fred: And what’s the base material? Is it polyester or coco? Mike: It’s actually a plastic. It is a fully recyclable category-2 plastic. It bears the 2 in the recycling triangle, which means it goes into the same circuit as your plastic water bottles and stuff like that. It came out of this project not too long ago. We’re also looking at pathogen control. Undesirable microbes will accumulate in your ecosystem on the Moon and you don’t have that luxury, because the ecosystem doesn’t have a lot of capacity: it’s not very big and you don’t have the luxury of using toxic chemistry to control undesirable pathogens, so we have a requirement on the Moon for a non-toxic residue disinfection system and that has lead us to collaborate with another local company that has developed an aqueous-ozone disinfection system where they dissolve ozone and water. They’re now spinning that off into domestic applications for the kitchen, it makes your roses last for two or three weeks, etc. There’s all kinds of applications.

Fred: And the Tomatosphere program – how is that going and how do you use that data?Mike: The Tomatosphere program is remarkable. It started in 2000 with some seeds that Marc Garneau took up into space for us and we distributed them to about 2,500 classrooms across Canada. This year, in the 2008-2009 school year, we had over 11,000 classrooms sign up for

Tomatosphere across Canada and some in the States, of course but mostly in Canada. We distributed seeds from a variety of different treatments. We come up with different treatments every year, including 19 months on the International Space Station, a week in a Mars-simulation chamber at Kennedy Space Center and a week in simulated-space exposure, which is a vacuum at -90°C, or we send them up to our Mars analog greenhouse on Devon Island in the Canadian high Antarctic and leave ½ million seeds there for a year an see how they like that. We have all of these different incremental advances in extreme seed exposure, just to test whether they will they germinate and grow with any vigor. The two different streams of the curriculum are students from grades 3-5 and 8-10. The program is part of the pan-Canadian science curriculum on nutritional science, space science and plant science. It’s a sort of one-stop shopping for the science teacher of those grades. We’re probably going to push 12 or 13,000 classrooms next year, as we continue.

Fred: That’s a lot of students and a lot of experiments going on. Mike: Yes, and the great thing is that the data they get, especially the germination data, which even a ten year old can’t screw up, is remarkably reliable. After the first hundred classes report their data, the variation in the entire country is almost infinitesimal – it’s not measurable. The variation among the data that comes from all classes is almost identical across the country and it’s identical with the concurrent experiment that we

run here at the university.

Fred: It’s really good confirmation. Mike: Absolutely.

Fred: About that data, has there been a group of seeds that you

know have been exposed to these outrageous extremes and surprised you and have actually germinated?Mike: Yes. When we put them in the Mars-simulation chamber at the Kennedy Space Center, I figured the ultraviolet radiation, extreme temperature and extreme low pressure for such a long time would have a profoundly different effect than it did. In fact, the tomato seeds came out with absolutely no ill effects.

Fred: Would you like to be part of a space mission some day?Mike: Yeah, except that I suffer from motion sickness, which I understand is a considerable ailment among astronauts. When you see a group of six astronauts up there and only five of them are in the picture, the other one is behind the camera, woofing his cookies because of the motion sickness problem. I think I would probably be… although I would love to go to the Moon.

Fred: Have you actually try to find a way into space? Mike: No. There is a current search for Canadian astronauts. For the next pool of Canadian astronauts, three of my students applied and one of them is still on the short list, so there’s still some hope that this program will generate an astronaut. We’ll certainly generate the training protocols for the horticultural-mission specialists that will be participating in Canada’s contribution to exploration in years to come.

Fred: Thank you, Professor Dixon.

To learn more, visit www.ces.uoguelph.ca/index.shtml.


About the author:

Robert Varkony is playing guitar and performing vocals with the rock band from Syracuse, NY, GuRGle (http://users.aol.com/grgl/index.htm) and he is also playing with Star 69 (www.star69jams.com), a band making a living of essentially playing covers of The Grateful Dead’s late sixties songs. Robert’s philosophy is simple: “In all honesty, rock ‘n’ roll, and later Grateful Dead music, have always been emotionally and spiritually important to me. It’s the same for all of us. If you listen close. Soundtracks to our existence. Playin’ these tunes, paying homage to the masters and keeping the flame alive is what it’s about for me. Searching, learning and discovering. Dancing at shows was always one of my greatest ‘highs,’ and I hope to be able to provide danceable, trippy music for others to enjoy. For me, playing in GuRGLe is about exploratory evolutionary rock... escapades into the melodically unknown... a live musical creation experience which is consciousness raising, healing and nourishing. People make things happen for themselves... let’s keep trying.”


Camellia sinensis, a small flowering evergreen native to China and India, is the plant from which all teas are derived. Green tea is produced by steaming fresh-picked leaves, which removes fermentation enzymes, while Oolong tea is partially fermented and black tea is completely fermented.

In 2737 B.C.E. China’s Emperor Shen Nung, an honored divine healer, drank green tea and proclaimed it heaven sent. After his discovery, Buddhist monks who had gone to China for study returned to Japan, bringing tea with them as a medicinal beverage. Tea’s popularity soon spread to Japan and the rest of the Far East. Today, green tea is the most popular tea in China and Japan, with China producing about 90 percent of the world’s supply.

It wasn’t until 1611 that the Dutch brought tea from China to Europe and America. Initially,

tea was very expensive ($30 to $50/pound), and available only for royalty and the upper class, and now it is the second most-consumed beverage next to water. Currently 2.5 million metric tons of tea leaves are produced each year throughout the world, with 20 percent produced as green tea.

Recent studies indicating green tea’s benefits to human health have led to a marked increase in its consumption over the last decade.

The studies have shown very strong evidence that green tea may help lower

blood pressure and therefore reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke. It is also linked with the

prevention of many types of cancer, strengthening the immune system, lowering blood sugar levels,

restricting the buildup of cholesterol and slowing down the aging process by preventing the accumulation of active oxygen

and lipid peroxide in our body. Antioxidants in green tea are 20 times stronger than vitamin E. Green tea also has a high vitamin and mineral content, including fluoride, which stimulates the production of saliva, reducing the effects of harmful acids formed in the mouth.

Researchers have been using 100 times the normal serving of tea for tests on animals. The implication is that one would have to drink large amounts of tea daily, which itself could be harmful because of excess caffeine, which can cause nervousness, insomnia, and an irregular heart rate. Pregnant women, nursing mothers and patients with cardiac problems are usually advised to limit their intake to two cups per day. New developments have brought us concentrated liquid green tea extracts that make it easy to consume the equivalent of 20 to 30 cups of tea, without the caffeine, but still containing 95 percent of polyphenols.

How do I brew a perfect cup of tea? Good quality water and proper brewing time are essential for a flavorful cup of tea.

1. Start with a preheated pot or cup and simply fill your teapot or cup with very hot water and let it stand for a moment.

2. Use fresh cold water. In areas with poor tap water, use bottled or filtered water. Never use water from the hot water tap. Let the tap water run for a few seconds until it is quite cold; this ensures that the water is aerated (full of oxygen) to release the full flavor of the tea leaves.

3. Bring the water to a rolling boil. Don’t let it boil too long, as it will boil away the flavor, release oxygen and result in a flat-tasting cup of tea. Pour the boiling water on the tealeaves or tea bag.

4. Brew for three to five minutes (for green teas, water should be a bit cooler and only steeped for one to three minutes).

About the author:

Robert Varkony is playing guitar and performing vocals with the rock band from Syracuse, NY, GuRGle (http://users.aol.com/grgl/index.htm) and he is also playing with Star 69 (www.star69jams.com), a band making a living of essentially playing covers of The Grateful Dead’s late sixties songs. Robert’s philosophy is simple: “In all honesty, rock ‘n’ roll, and later Grateful Dead music, have always been emotionally and spiritually important to me. It’s the same for all of us. If you listen close. Soundtracks to our existence. Playin’ these tunes, paying homage to the masters and keeping the flame alive is what it’s about for me. Searching, learning and discovering. Dancing at shows was always one of my greatest ‘highs,’ and I hope to be able to provide danceable, trippy music for others to enjoy. For me, playing in GuRGLe is about exploratory evolutionary rock... escapades into the melodically unknown... a live musical creation experience which is consciousness raising, healing and nourishing. People make things happen for themselves... let’s keep trying.”

Green Tea TimeIt’s Time For Camellia SinensisBy Robert Varkony



A quiet garden, a little fountain whispering in the shade of tall trees... The end of a sunny afternoon, a few birds singing, coolness settling... A bucolic atmosphere, millions of years from the atmosphere at the dawn of terrestrial plants’ existence. Literally millions of years: four hundred, to be precise. It was the onset of an extraordinary adventure that still endures. Between the Devonian (- 400 million years) and the Mississippian age (- 360 million years), well before pterodactyls (- 150 million years), these plant dinosaurs, with marine algae, paved the way for a more elaborate animal life. The formation of continents from Pangaea to the emerged lands we know today, followed by the advance and retreat of glaciers until their boreal decline 12,500 years ago have shaped plant forms through the centuries.

When the globe’s northern crown was covered in ice five-kilometres deep, oases of greenery thrived in more southern latitudes, preserving plant and animal biodiversity. From those stem the ancestors of a wild range of life-forms. When the climate warmed up, the colonization of surfaces newly freed from ice occurred on a large scale. As they gained distance, species were becoming more diverse, developing traits essential to their survival in their new environment and leading to speciation and an increase in biodiversity. Then a new cold period would erase all progress—surviving plants would retreat to these milder

oases and wait for more favourable conditions. Four hundred million years later, surprising vestiges remain.The most-recently discovered living fossil (or so it was thought...) was found in Australia in 1994. The Wollemi pine (Wollemia nobilis) was thought to have vanished 90 million years ago, and is now reborn somewhere in the Blue Mountains, a favourite location for tourists who want to breathe the prehistoric air of virginal nature. But was the Wollemi pine truly reborn? Since its (re)discovery, the species has been widely studied. The Wollemia genus, created in 1995, includes no fossil species, since its only species is the Wollemi pine. It is true, however, that the Araucariaceae family, which includes this pine, is in fact quite ancient. It peaked between - 200 and 65 million years ago, during the Jurassic period. Ancient fossils identified as being the new species were in fact from Araucariaceae species, whose pollen was virtually identical to that of the individual described here. The Wollemi pine is thus only a new species—or rather, a species that has never been described (an affirmation still contested in 2008!). And to make matters more confusing, the Wollemi pine... is not a pine (Pinus), but a conifer from the Araucariaceae family. In order to protect this rare specimen, its location is kept secret. About 1,000 years old, the individual only comprises about a hundred stems, all clones of the mother plant. Its extraordinary foliage resembles ferns, its bark reminds one of simmering chocolate, and its height is about 40 metres. One of the rarest


Botany | THE INDOOR GARDENER

Dinosaurs in your back yarDby sylvie laberge

you can finD a sample of prehistoric vegetation in any Ditch near you!


trees on earth, the Wollemi pine deserves all preservation efforts put forward by botanists to reduce the chance of it completely vanishing. One of their efforts has included the distribution of a hundred juveniles to botanical gardens around the world, including one here, at Montreal’s Botanical Garden.Other trees can also bear the title of living fossil—the spectacular magnolia is one. Traces of magnolia were found in sediments predating the Cretaceous, dated over 145 million years ago. It is said that the magnolia is the ancestor of all flowering plants because, contrary to gymnosperms (most conifers) that bear seeds in open receptacles, angiosperms, including magnolias, have developed a “pouch” in which the ovaries and ovules are hidden and which will later become a fruit, inside which seeds will be found. Originating from the southern United States (Magnolia grandiflora) and China (Magnolia sinensis), two distinct strains of magnolias are now found in many European and American gardens. Their flower’s morphology, with its vertical symmetry and the spiral disposition of pistils and stamens (instead of successive circles, like “modern” flowering plants) suggest a very primitive character. Magnoliaceae also include the tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) and the star aniseed (Illicium verum). They are very popular in China, where the magnolia is used (bark and petals) in the preparation of anti-allergy and anti-inflammatory remedies.For Asians, however, another tree fossil fills a much more important medicinal function: Ginkgo Biloba (Ginkgo biloba). Its therapeutic effects range from improving memory to treating Alzheimer’s, and include the treatment of vertigo. Since the 1990s, its been believed that the Ginkgo is the oldest tree living on earth. An individual’s longevity can span hundreds of years, and some known specimens are approximately 2,500 years old! Ginkgo biloba is thought to be the most ancient tree (in the strict sense): fossils from the species have been dated at over 270 million years. At thirty meters high, it’s an impressive sight that can be cultivated in almost all Canadian back yards. Even though it looks like a typical modern leaf-bearing tree (foliage loss in the fall, general silhouette, etc.), the Ginkgo belongs to the prespermaphyta line, which predates seed-producing plants (gymnosperm and angiosperm). Female plants bear ovules that will be fertilized by male pollen and will immediately germinate at the foot of the mother plant, without going through the seed phase. We know that the Chinese used Ginkgo 6,000 years ago, since it was already included in the most famous of Eastern herb-lores, the Pen Tsao Ching (the classic of medicinal plants), attributed to emperor Shen Nung, circa 5,000 years B.C. Today, every good urban park in the world includes at lest one of its representatives.But is it necessary to look to exotic plants to find a sample of prehistoric vegetation? Not at all! You can find one in any ditch near you! The sensitive fern (Onoclea sensibilis)

THE INDOOR GARDENER | Botany

ContaCt us and showCase your store in the magazine

There finally is a great magazine on hydroponics

Contact our sales and

marketing director, William Fitzmaurice,

at 1-450-628-5325 or by email at

[email protected]

Join usAnd grow with us!

TheGardenerAngVol4No4.indd 51 12/17/08 12:00:32 PM

was first officially described by Linnaeus, but was already known in the time of Dioscorides (he was the reference for 1,500 years, until Linnaeus). In fact, this fern has practically remained the same for the past 60 million years. Fossils found date back to the Eocene and are largely similar to the plant that is yet abundant nowadays. It has many remarkable traits: its fiddleheads do not form a crown like most other ferns, but a tough “root” at the end of which four to six fronds are clustered. These “roots” allow the sensitive fern to cover a wide area and, in fact, to move upon it. It can “step over” obstacles such as rocks, depressions, and even small streams, if it finds a “bridge” onto which nutritive substances and a substrate have accumulated, as those are essential to its vertical stance. In optimal conditions, it can travel over about ten centimetres each year. In ten years, a small colony will completely cover land that is welcoming to it, and it will take advantage of its movement to leave no empty spot. The only species within its genus, it is found in eastern North America and eastern Asia (paleobotanists are fascinated by the distance between the two locations) and bears a fertile frond, different from the sterile frond, as does a very small group, including osmundas and moonworts. At the end of a stipe that is about 50-centimetres tall is a string

of small beads filled with thousands of spores. The spores germinate easily: a humid, shady, compact and badly-drained soil can be a host for many dozens of two-centimetre plantlets. After three years, their rapid growth will have multiplied their height by 10 or even 15, and they will be about 30-centimeters high. It is a fern that can adapt to many conditions that seem very different from one another, such as the shores of a stream at the bottom of a hot, humid

valley, and up to 2,000 metres in altitude in the Rockies. No doubt this adaptability has enabled it to survive through many eras and their changing climates, and come with us all the way to the 21st century.Another dinosaur sometimes hides next to it. With the dandelion, it’s the most-known weed, the one we love to hate: horsetail. It is the oldest among those described here: the oldest horsetail fossils date from 400 to 350 millions years back, and were in existence well before the continents took shape. Carbon deposits from which we get our fossil fuel would not be the same had it not been for horsetail. At their peak, these pteridophytes (which reproduce through spores) reached the height of our large trees, as did many ferns. What sets them apart today is the presence of a fertile autonomous stem in some species, like the field horsetail (Equisetum arvense), our most common and the most common throughout the world. The pale pink fertile stem is surprising at first. Some say it resembles a mushroom; it emerges early in the spring, a few weeks before the emergence of the sterile stem, which is green and ramified, and useful to photosynthesis. After liberating its spores, the fertile stem fades and completely vanishes, leading us to believe that the two individuals

come from two different species. The division of the initial super continent, Pangaea, would have occurred between 200 and 180 millions years ago, over 200 million years after the appearance of horsetails. It could explain the circumboreal distribution of the species, but also its incredible adaptation ability. Horsetail can thrive as well on the dry sides of freeways as in moist and marshy wooded areas; when it settles, it’s best to work with it than attempt to fight it. Faced with many environmental stress factors, the fields horsetail is ingenuous—it lies down, crawls, gets back up, stretches and prospers. It can also hybridize with at least three other species of horsetail. Their individual answers to environmental aggressions can generate over 200 distinct types. A close kin, the scouring-rush (Equisetum hyemale), contains nearly 40% silica. Since nearly half of its epidermal composition is made up of sand’s main constituent, early humans used the scouring-rush in all kinds of ways: to scour, sharpen blades, sweep, etc. It is still used today in a remineralization decoction. Horsetails are ubiquitous and practically impossible to eradicate. The field horsetail can take over a disrupted plot of land in a very short time and make it difficult to cultivate any other plant.In 2008, a third of amphibians, a quarter of mammals and 50% of the fish in our seas are threatened. The horsetail had survived through the ages despite of everything. Should we interpret that as a sign of impoverishment of modern flora, or, on the contrary, as a sign of hope, as a living monument to the glory of Mother Nature’s resilience?


Botany | THE INDOOR GARDENER



Commonly known as amaryllis, the bulbs of the Hippeastrum are easy to cultivate and, with appropriate care, can last for many years. Their large, very flared flowers are 15 to 25 centimetres in diameter and offer very diverse colours, as well as simple and double flowers. Shaped like a wide trumpet, the flowers show prominent stamens and a one-colour corolla, white, pink or intense velvet-red, or white and striated in red, pink, orange, and sometimes yellow. Originally from South America, the various species of Hippeastrum from the Amaryllidaceae family are rarely offered in nurseries or seed catalogs; they have been replaced by the many hybrids produced in Holland. Those are offered in the spring and fall. It is always best to buy the bulbs as soon as they’re available and to plant them as soon as possible. Bulbs sold at the end of their annual rest period already contain an embryonic flower; they take two to four weeks to flower. Note that the floral scape, 25 to 60 centimetres high, raises itself before the appearance of the ribboned leaves. Planting and CultivatingThe bulb is 7 to 14 centimetres in diameter and keeps its fleshy roots—those should not be broken off or crushed when you pot the bulb. Plant one bulb per pot. Choose a pot that is slightly larger than the bulb’s diameter. Two or


Botanical Glossary | THE INDOOR GARDENER

AmArillysBy DAniel Fortin

three centimetres between the pot’s wall and the bulb will suffice; otherwise the bulb will seem lost in the pot. Proper drainage is essential. The soil must be fully drainable. Experts recommend a very porous substrate made of a mixture of potting soil, peat moss and vermiculite. The pot’s bottom must allow for the evacuation of excess water. Never burry the bulb in the substrate; its top third must be visible above it. If the bulb is still at rest, water sparingly until a large bud appears; it marks the onset of growth for Hippeastrum. Once growth has started, water regularly and abundantly. It’s advised to start fertilizing with a 20-20-20 soluble fertilizer every week, because the foliage’s

BeAutiFul But short-liveD:


growth must be stimulated in order to replenish the bulb’s reserves. During the growth of the fl oral scape, place the pot far from people and animal movement—the scape should not be broken. Don’t forget that it bears from two to four large fl owers that also make it more fragile; as needed, support them with thin bamboo stems. To preserve its fl owers, place the plant in a cool space.When the fl owers have faded, cut the fl oral scape at its base. Foliage will then develop. Place the pot in a very bright spot with, if at all possible, direct sunlight in the morning or late afternoon. If it fl owers in the spring, the amaryllis can be placed among outdoor fl owerbeds during the summer. It is non rustic—frost will damage it. Five to seven months after the foliage developed, it turns yellow and the bulb turns to rest. Reduce waterings to almost nothing, and place the pot in a cool and dry place for two to four months, checking every two weeks to see if the bud will reappear. When it does, restart the maintenance and cultivation cycle.

AmArillysBy DAniel Fortin

THE INDOOR GARDENER | Botanical Glossary

Did you know?Mark Twain and

the German TurnipHere is an excerpt of Appendix D from Mark Twain’s 1880 book A Tramp Abroad:

“[In German] every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system in the distribution; so the gender of each must be learned separately and by heart. There is no other way. To do this one has to have a memory like a memorandum-book. In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl. See how it looks in print — I translate this from a conversation in one of the best of the German Sunday-school books:

“Gretchen: – Wilhelm, where is the turnip?

Wilhelm: – She has gone to the kitchen.

Gretchen: – Where is the accomplished and beautiful English maiden?

Wilhelm: – It has gone to the opera.”

To continue with the German genders: a tree is male, its buds are female, its leaves are neuter; horses are sexless, dogs are male, cats are female — tomcats included, of course; a person’s mouth, neck, bosom, elbows, fi ngers, nails, feet, and body are of the male sex, and his head is male or neuter according to the word selected to signify it, and not according to the sex of the individual who wears it — for in Germany all the women either male heads or sexless ones; a person’s nose, lips, shoulders, breast, hands, and toes are of the female sex; and his hair, ears, eyes, chin, legs, knees, heart, and conscience haven’t any sex at all. The inventor of the language probably got what he knew about a conscience from hearsay.” – Mark Twain (The Awful German Language). Check out www.kombu.de/twain-2.htm to read more…



Although they are not very popular and thus not in high demand, hydroponic systems for outdoor cultivation carry many advantages over traditional cultivation methods. Th ey are easy to assemble and can be installed practically anywhere where cultivation is appropriate. Th e soil’s mineral and geological properties matter little or not at all, and digging or levelling the soil is not required. Furthermore, these systems use a lot less water than a more traditional culture. Maintenance of hydroponic systems is easy, because they generally require no drainage. Th ere is no water fl owing into the ground and very little of it evaporates.

Watering savingsOutdoor hydroponic units automatically irrigate the plants and are extremely effi cient to fulfi l plant needs for nutritive elements. Th ese conditions trigger a rapid growth, since nutrients, water and oxygen are all absorbed quickly. Th is technique is quite convenient for outdoor cultivation, because the plants are exposed to intense sunlight, and no defi ciency impedes the distribution of nutritive elements, so nothing slows the healthy growth of plants. Hydroponic systems used outdoors are most often portable, and can as such be moved quickly without disturbing root development. Remember that there can be many reasons why you want to move a plant—it can be because the sun’s position has changed during the day or the season, or simply for safety reasons (easy access for children or pets). A portable plant can always easily be placed in a location where sunlight will be more intense. Used in remote areas, portable hydroponic systems off er benefi ts that more traditional systems do not. Because no part of the nutritive elements provided is lost in the ground, plants grown in a hydroponic system absorb one third less water than those grown in conventional containers. Water accumulates in the unit’s reservoir until it is absorbed by the plant; only a small

quantity will evaporate. Systems can be designed to accumulate and keep large quantities of water in reserve, allowing for less frequent maintenance visits. In areas that get a lot of rain, reservoirs can be refi lled automatically if they are equipped with a small rainwater catchment system and a bottle or cistern.

Making your own outdoor hydroponic systemMany hydroponic systems are easy to assemble, and you can make your own. Th ere are in fact a few books on this topic. Th e simplest systems to assemble and maintain our those equipped with reservoirs and a wick-feeding system. Th ese so-called passive systems work without electricity, using small mechanical parts that regulate the input of water. When containers are all at the same level, a fl oat valve can be connected to a large reservoir, and individual fl oat valves can be used for containers placed at diff erent levels.

Th e wick system and the reservoir-equipped system favour rapid growth. Th e wick system uses a braided nylon rope, 0.95 cm in diameter (0.375 inches). Th e rope must be long enough to hang from both drain cavities all the way to the reservoir (fi lled with water containing nutritive elements) underneath. Th e container contains a substrate made up of vermiculite, perlite, or a soil mix. Water is drawn from the reservoir underneath by capillary action, which leaves the mixture permanently moist.

Th e reservoir system is even simpler to use. Th e container rests in a shallow basin fi lled with water containing nutritive elements. For example, a 51 cm (20 inches)-high pot will rest in 7.5 cm (3 inches) of liquid and will be fi lled with a dry substrate, such as expanded-clay pellets, granulated volcanic rock, or a mixture of perlite, vermiculite and sand. A fl oat valve can be used to regulate the fl ow of water from a gravity-activated reservoir. Such units can be buried in the ground or left on the surface, depending on the situation.

Buying a system for outdoorsSome people consider it more practical to purchase a ready-made hydroponic unit in store. Th ere are diff erent types of units, but many gardeners use the drip-irrigation system, the ebb-and-fl ow system or the NFT technique (nutrient-fi lm technique). Th ese systems generally work well and are rapidly installed, but they can only be used outdoors in places where there is a preexistent access to an electrical network, because electricity will be required to activate the pumps. NFT systems create a constant stream of nutritive solution on the roots, at the bottom of a slightly sloped channel. Th e pump only uses a minimum of energy to put water back in circulation, and it can be powered with a solar battery. Drip-irrigation systems pump the reservoir’s water through injectors that deliver the nutritive solution, drip by drip, all the way to the pots. Th e ebb-and-fl ow system fi lls the trays with water, which is then recycled back to the reservoir and again available, since the system functions as a closed circuit.


Amateur’s Corner | THE INDOOR GARDENER

Why turn to hydroponic cultivation? – Part 3

Why Not an Outdoor Hydroponic Garden?



THE INDOOR GARDENER | Amateur’s Corner

The sun: friend or foe outdoors?During the day, the sun’s rays can heat the water to such a point that the roots will burn. Dark-coloured reservoirs are the worst, because they better absorb the sun’s rays. Dark trays also reheat water: the darker their colour, the more they absorb and retain heat. White, however, refl ects light: trays and the water they contain remain cool. During the fall, water can cool down overmuch during the night, but roots do better when the temperature is above 18.5°C (65°F). A water heater (or a heating mat) will maintain an adequate temperature when the weather gets colder. Th ere are many other ways to modify the reservoir’s temperature. Th e fi rst is to hide the reservoir, so that solar radiation cannot reach its surface. You can also use dirt, rocks, sand, plant residue, or live aquatic plants. You can also irrigate plants only at certain times of day, when the water temperature is adequate. Th e pump can also be plugged directly in a solar battery; this will slowly irrigate plants at sunrise. Th e pump will work hardest around noon, when sunlight is more intense; its power will diminish towards the evening and stop after sundown.

Fertilization: learning to play with outdoor factors (temperature, water, wind, etc.)Th ere are many brands of hydroponic fertilizers. Each brand has its own enthusiasts. Hydroponic fertilizers off er benefi ts that conventional ones do not. Th ey all contain nutritive elements that fulfi ll the plant’s need and are specially designed to be used in irrigation systems (no matter what principle is used). Water quality varies greatly across regions. For this reason, a fertilizer that gives great results in a certain area may give diff erent results when used with water from a diff erent area. In the same way, conventional fertilizers are made and formulated to be used with soil and do not give the greatest results in hydroponics. During summer, the light outdoors is much more intense than in an indoor garden. Plant growth is more dense and quick. Plants grown in a sunny location have higher needs for nutritive elements and water. Cultivation units must be irrigated more frequently during the long warm summer days. Plants need a larger

quantity of water, and it is best to irrigate more often without worrying about saving water (you can save elsewhere!). As a consequence, if your nutritive solution is always balanced the same way during the hottest months and the coldest months, plants will absorb too many nutritive elements. Th e chosen fertilizer should be slightly more diluted during the warm season. If nutritive needs increase, and you provide your plants with more water, plants will absorb more nutrients, unless you’ve adapted the dilution rate. Th is simple precaution will prevent over-fertilization. While heat and a high content in phosphorus (P) improve the plant’s vertical growth, the fertilizer must contain more nitrogen (N) than phosphorus.Plants’ need for irrigation decreases in the fall when the intensity of sunlight diminishes and temperatures fall below 21°C (70°F). Th e fertilization solution must then be a little more concentrated, so that plants can absorb essential nutritive elements while consuming less water. At this stage, the fertilizer must contain more phosphorus (P) than nitrogen (N) in order to stimulate fl owering. Most fertilization formulas designed for fl owering are balanced in this fashion.

To concludeOutdoor harvests produced using adequate hydroponics systems are generally larger than those grown following a more conventional method (in soil) because they are not subjected to the environmental stress caused by transplanting. Hydroponics fulfi lls plant needs for water and nutritive elements. A hydroponics system used during intense sunny periods will optimize the plant’s potential. And if the plant threatens to burn in the sun, you can move it without stress. So... are you ready for outdoor hydroponic cultivation?

– C.A.

A New Eastern

Distribution Center for

Bloomington Indiana-based garden-supply wholesaler BWGS recently announced its expansion into the eastern United States with its third distribution center, located near Charlotte, North Carolina. BWGS has been a leading distributor of year ‘round gardening supplies since its inception in 1995. BWGS East will begin shipping in early 2009, taking advantage of Charlotte’s infrastructure and skilled workforce to shorten delivery times to customers all along the East Coast.

BWGS customer-service manager Chris Jones recently relocated from Bloomington to oversee the facility’s startup and continued success as its operations manager. Jones earned a BS in computer-information systems and an MBA in fi nance from the University of Tennessee Chattanooga, and has been a member of the BWGS team since 2004. His experience in the company and the indoor-gardening industry will allow for the smoothest possible transition to a fully-functional distribution center.

“I’m responsible for ensuring that BWGS’s high standards are carried over to the new facility. We pride ourselves on customer service and consistency, so this will be my primary focus,” he said.

Also making the move east is BWGS sales representative Dylan Seger. He’s already responsible for a large portion of the southeastern USA, and his presence will sustain the high level of service that customers in the region are accustomed to. “I’m thrilled to be a part of this growth,” said Seger. “It’s great news for our customers, and I’m excited to be in their backyard.”

BWGS is an employee-owned company that welcomes entrepreneurial spirits with an interest in owning part of a progressive enterprise. Now in its 7th year, the BWGS Employee Stock-Ownership Plan (ESOP) continues to mature. ESOP participants earn their shares simply by working for the company, and the value of their shares refl ects the company’s value.


Although the green outdoor activities offered by the organization are over for 2008, not everything stops in the fall at Sentier Urbain. In October, indoor horticultural displays were brought back to the walls of schools and community organizations of the centre-sud neighbourhood. At a time of year when vegetation is discreet, the Sentier Urbain’s team keeps on turning indoor spaces green by bringing in tropical plants, bird aviaries, water cascades and goldfish. Indeed when the organization’s gardens close before the first frost, bird aviaries and potted plants that occupy the gardens throughout summer are transferred to elementary schools and other buildings. Marguerite-Bourgeoys and Garneau schools, “80, Ruelle de l’Avenir” project, Comité social Centre-sud and Atelier des lettres organization are hosts to the fauna and flora this winter. Each year, approximately 850 students from Garneau school take part in thematic workshops in a horticultural space filled with plants and birds. This room, developed a few years ago, is an exceptional learning space for an initiation to horticulture and the environment, as well as a horticultural production space. In 2008, the ambitious “80, Ruelle de l’Avenir” project was born near Garneau school to welcome the neighbourhood students in its thematic spaces, including the one for horticulture. The new building

maximizes natural lighting and is host to many plants throughout the floor. Sentier Urbain is one of the partners responsible for the design of that space. Elsewhere, plants in the hallways of Marguerite-Bourgeoys school embellish the daily lives of over 230 school employees and pupils. Comité social Centre-sud is a first-line organization that welcomes over a hundred persons every day, offering meals and various services. It too has seen its environment transformed, thanks to the arrival of tropical trees and water cascades. As for the Atelier des lettres, about thirty people benefit from greenery and a calming ambiance while progressing with alphabetization. These children and adults benefit from the effects of plants on their quality of life. It is now recognized that plants have a real effect on human health. Indeed, indoor plants hold a genuine de-polluting power, going as far as an association between some plant species and specific polluting

molecules (benzene, toluene, etc.). Jean-Claude Vigor recently reminded us, in an article published by Le Devoir, that tropical plants are beneficial, indeed indispensable, to decontaminate the indoor-air within our buildings. “In a closed space, indoor air-quality is an intellectual performance factor,” said the horticulturist. Plants can absorb a large quantity of the pollutants found in our immediate environment and recognized as harmful to our health. Psychologically, simply contemplating plants and caring for them has a positive influence on mood, and can reduce psychological tensions. We invite you to visit our indoor green spaces by getting in touch with Sentier Urbain: 1710, Beaudry, suite 3.10, Montréal (Québec) H2L 3E7, Canada, tel.: 514-521-9292, fax: 514-524-0222, www.sentierurbain.org, email: [email protected].

Sources: – Dumont, Bertrand, 250 gestes au quotidien pour contrer les changements climatiques, Bertrand Dumont éditeur inc., Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, 2008, 144 pages.

– Vigor, Jean-Claude, “Les plantes tropicales : votre joker antipollution”, chronique Couleur horticole, Le Devoir, October 11-12, 2008.


Interior Design | THE INDOOR

Turning Indoors Green With Sentier Urbain By Sentier Urbain


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EndoFine and EndoFine Plus Team up for Plant Protection

Both EndoFine (for rooting cuttings) and EndoFine Plus (for foliar applications) have proven track records in commercial applications. Testing has also demonstrated excellent results for a variety of home-gardening applications. These two OMRI-listed products are now available to the Canadian gardening public under Brite-Lite Group’s PlantOasis brand. Both products are made from naturally occurring benefi cial endophyte fungus. The EndoFine formula must be diluted with non-chlorinated water and is used as a dip for preparation of cuttings prior to transplanting. EndoFine Plus is also mixed with non-chlorinated water prior to application as a foliar spray that can be used throughout a plant’s

growth cycle, up to maturity. EndoFine and EndoFine Plus act as mycorrhizal stimulants. They quickly establish a symbiotic relationship contributing to the uptake of nutrients and micronutrients, enabling

plants to better tolerate stress factors such as disease, chemical and microbial pollutants, temperature extremes, and drought. These products are ideal for use on all plants. EndoFine and EndoFine Plus come pre-measured in 10-g sachets to make them easy to measure and mix. These 10 g packs are available in cases of 100 units.

Optimum Hydroponix Nutrient for Growing in CoirOptimum Hydroponix® offers a two-part fertilizer designed specifi cally for growing in coir (otherwise known as coco fi bre). This nutrient formula is derived from Optimum’s many years of experience developing specialty fertilizers. It is perfectly balanced for

growing in coir fi bre, a natural material derived from the husks of coconuts. The demand for coir has increased

steadily in recent years as commercial growers and hobby gardeners alike recognize the benefi ts of this economical, environmentally friendly growing medium. The increasing popularity of coir has created demand for fertilizers designed to work hand in hand with coco fi bre. Standard soil fertilizers do not

contain the micronutrients needed for an inert growing media such as coir. Traditional hydroponic solutions contain all the right elements but at salt concentrations that can build up and be retained by coco fi bre. The coco formula from Optimum Hydroponix strikes just the right balance with a 2-part Grow and a 2-part Bloom formula. Available in the following formats: 1 litre, 4 litres, 10 litres or 20 litres.

For more information about the products above and where to buy them anywhere in North America, call


Industry News | THE INDOOR GARDENER

Rapid Rooter®: Rooting Plug and TrayRapid Rooter‘s® breakthrough technology produces a unique matrix of composted organic material bound together by plant-derived polymers. Rapid Rooter is created through a scientifi cally controlled process that produces large populations of benefi cial microbes in the plug media. These naturally occurring benefi cial microbes colonize young roots and help young plants to resist disease while maximizing nutrient uptake. Rapid Rooter® plugs are fortifi ed with General Hydroponics® micronutrients for abundant root growth. The optimal air-to-water ratio within the plug matrix causes explosive early root growth. Use Rapid Rooter® for robust early rooting that promotes explosive plant growth. Rapid Rooter® plugs are in available in 50 plug tray or in 50 plug bag.

Contact – Telephone: 1-800-37-HYDRO (1-800-374-9376) or 1-707-824-9376Fax: 1-707-824-9377email: [email protected] support: [email protected]

2-Way MeterGardeners can conveniently test moisture and pH levels with the handy ActiveAir 2-Way Meter from Hydrofarm. Moisture readings register on a scale of 0 (dry) to 10 (moist), and pH readings between pH 0 (acidic) and pH 10 (basic). The durable, easy-to-read tester is suitable for indoors or out and requires no batteries.

Active Air Dehumidifi ers by HydrofarmHigh humidity can cause plants to grow poorly and can also promote mould. Hydrofarm’s new analog dehumidifi er will extract up to 20 litres (43 pints) of water per 24 hour period, keeping humidity under control so your plants can thrive. Advantages: convenient handle for easy carrying, water level detection and automatic shut off, adjustable air outlet, optional continuous drainage, removable front-loading water tank, washable, activated carbon fi lter, 6-ft. power cord, 110-120v/60Hz/3.6 amps/400W.

To fi nd a Hydrofarm Authorized Retailer near you visit www.hydrofarm.com.

“I ran across a free issue of The Indoor Gardener Magazine that my wife got a while ago and I was actually impressed

with some of the articles in it...”

—“Drumin”, Garden Web forum (June 2006)

COME AND GROW WITH US! For any information, comment or request, contact: [email protected]. For sales and advertising, contact: [email protected] or 1 450 628-5325.

If you want to send us pictures and articles, please contact us at: [email protected] with “submission” in the subject line and we will get in touch with you. P.O. Box 52046, Laval, QC, H7P 5S1, Canada. Tel: 1 450 628-5325, fax: 1 450 628-7758, www.tigmag.com

The Indoor Gardener Magazine is celebrating 3 ½ years in business with its 22nd issue.

From Volume 1 Issue 1 to… Volume 4 Issue 4, get a collection of the best indoor-gardening articles out there!

JOIN US AND OUR READERS!

The Industry Is Raving About The Indoor Gardener Magazine

And The Blogosphere Is Raving Too…

“Many thanks for your insightful publication”— Jonathan D. Cardinale, May 2007LED Grow-Master Global LLCwww.led-grow-master.com, Bend, Oregon

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“Insightful”, “Indoor-gardening specifi c”, “I’m a huge fan of...”, “You can’t be an indoor gardener without it!”... “Got me hooked”,

“A compelling reference”, “Everything is there!”...


“In this month’s Indoor Gardener Magazine, there’s an article on ecological fungicides that caught my eye as it is rare that I take a free magazine home. Upon reading it I felt compelled to reference this article. It should be useful to anyone with mould or fungal problems not willing to disgrace their crops with synthetic chemicals. I found it particularly useful for my outdoor plants, as this part of BC gets misty in the fall and

rains consistently.”

—”BC Novice Gardener”, Gardens’ Cure forum(July 2008)“I ran across a free issue of The Indoor

Gardener Magazine that my wife got a while ago and I was actually impressed

with some of the articles in it...”

—“Drumin”, Garden Web forum (June 2006)

“The Indoor Gardener Magazine is fi lled with very good info, everything is there!“

—“C.B.”, Garden Web forum(January 2007)“The Indoor Gardener Magazine got me hooked!”

—“Fing_57”, Garden Web forum (March 2006)

COME AND GROW WITH US! For any information, comment or request, contact: [email protected]. For sales and advertising, contact: [email protected] or 1 450 628-5325.

If you want to send us pictures and articles, please contact us at: [email protected] with “submission” in the subject line and we will get in touch with you. P.O. Box 52046, Laval, QC, H7P 5S1, Canada. Tel: 1 450 628-5325, fax: 1 450 628-7758, www.tigmag.com

The Indoor Gardener Magazine is celebrating 3 ½ years in business with its 22nd issue.

From Volume 1 Issue 1 to… Volume 4 Issue 4, get a collection of the best indoor-gardening articles out there!

JOIN US AND OUR READERS!

The Industry Is Raving About The Indoor Gardener Magazine

And The Blogosphere Is Raving Too…

“Many thanks for your insightful publication”— Jonathan D. Cardinale, May 2007LED Grow-Master Global LLCwww.led-grow-master.com, Bend, Oregon

“I am a huge fan of The Indoor Gardener Magazine, and am interested in distributing it in my store.”

—David Sowers, store ownerGrassroots HydroponicsLake Elsinore, California

“How can you be an indoor gardener without reading the Indoor Gardener Magazine?”— Webmaster at

www.webterrace.com/garden “The Indoor Gardener Magazine from Canada is a bimonthly magazine that is listed in Ulrich’s (www.ulrichsweb.com). I have included it [in my print resources and periodicals list for a Pathfi nder on Indoor Flower Gardening in the Bay Area*] since it is indoor gardening specifi c.”—Jane Sumner, librarian Author of a Pathfi nder on Indoor Flower Gardening in the Bay Area San Francisco, California (* The Pathfi nder includes associations and online resources, many of which incorporate discussion forums and/or an Ask-a-question section in their pages in case you run into a plant emergency, have a question, or just want input from other indoor gardeners.)

“Insightful”, “Indoor-gardening specifi c”, “I’m a huge fan of...”, “You can’t be an indoor gardener without it!”... “Got me hooked”,

“A compelling reference”, “Everything is there!”...

THE INDOOR GARDENER MAGAZINE



Industry News | THE INDOOR GARDENER

BWGS is happy to announce that its vast selection of quality indoor- gardening products just grew again! For over 13 years, BWGS has provided indoor-gardening retailers with unmatched customer service and the best products the industry has to offer. Call BWGS (800-316-1306) or BWGS West (888-316-1306) to find out how you can turn their experience into your success!

Sunleaves Sunspot Reflectors Want to Plug ‘N Play!Sunleaves Sunspot 6 and Sunspot 8 Plug ‘N Play Reflectors offer performance and great compatibility without the cost of other reflectors. Both units have a heavy-duty housing, enamel-coated exterior finish, spectacular German Alanod interior for maximum light

exposure, and a socket mounting-bracket designed to maximize airflow through vents. Perfectly suited for gardens with carbon-dioxide enrichment, they feature a hinged lens enclosure that provides a completely airtight seal. Best of all, they’re pre-wired with a fixed socket that’s compatible with the industry-standard common outlet.

Sunleaves Rocks Rolled OutSunleaves Rocks are a reusable growing medium with serious H2O-holding power for use in any kind of garden. Their non-rolling shape keeps spills from becoming more than a simple sweep-up job, and they contain silica for superior plant health. They’re made in the United States by superheating domestic shale to temperatures up to 2,000-degrees Fahrenheit, rendering them pH-neutral and chemically inert. Gardeners can make their lives a little easier and take care of their plants and the planet when they grow with the rock that doesn’t roll! Mined and manufactured in the United States.

Organic Lawn-Care ManualDue to the prevalence of chemical-laden fertilizers and pesticides, maintaining an attractive lawn has become increasingly difficult for people who want to minimize their impact on the environment. Fortunately, the 272-page Organic Lawn Care Manual shows that maintaining a lush, green lawn doesn’t require a toxic soup of unpronounceable 30-letter chemicals. Author Paul Turkey promises to help readers “get their lawn off drugs” without sacrificing the beauty of everyone’s favorite summer hangout, picnic spot and

makeshift ball field.

DarkRooms Light Up at BWGSThe light generated by HID and compact-fluorescent lighting systems is great for plants, but it can be a source of frustration for gardeners whose living areas are cramped or don’t have an extra room for an indoor garden. With a DarkRoom, however, those frustrations are a thing of the past. A DarkRoom is the foundation of a completely self-contained indoor garden, featuring a lightweight, durable, washable interior reflective lining that keeps more light going where it’s supposed to go: to the plants. The frame supports up to 65 pounds of lighting, ventilation or other equipment, and every unit has access ports that accommodate ducting or other equipment. DarkRooms are available from BWGS in ten different sizes, all of which can be assembled without tools in minutes by one person, and collapse just as quickly for storage.

New From

Plastic Container Recycling ProgramIn partnership with ITML Horticultural Products inc. (www.itml.com), Kord Products inc. (www.kord.ca) and Dillen Products (www.dillen.com), Fernand Corbeil Produits Horticoles now offers an environmentally friendly and sustainable solution for the use of plastic containers in horticulture. Professional producers and retailers can contact a representative from Fernand Corbeil Produits Horticoles in order to have their used container stocks recycled into greenhouse and nursery containers. The collective effort will reduce the carbon footprint of the entire profession. Fernand Corbeil has started the construction of a recycling center in Laval, Québec, for plastic, nursery containers, polypropylene pots, and polystyrene trays and insertion systems. Fernand Corbeil’s trucks will pick up the materials to be recycled when they visit customers for deliveries. To qualify as a partner for this program, the producer must buy partner-brand containers from Fernand Corbeil, and the gardening center must place its products with Fernand Corbeil.

Tel: 1-888-622-2710, fax: 450-622-4571, [email protected], and www.corbeilph.com.

Lambert Forest CompostLambert peat bog’s new forest compost is perfect for mulches, transplanting and amending clayey soils. Its pre-humidified texture makes it easy to use and mix to traditional substrates. Entirely plant-based, it is an undeniable source of organic matter. Its composition lightens and feeds the soil, allowing for a rapid and adequate development of the plants’ root system. Lambert forest compost is certified organic by the OMRI®.

Tel: 418-852-2885, fax: 418-852-3352, www.lambertpeatmoss.com.

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Bioethanol FireplaceThis winter, take advantage of awesome rebate opportunities on bioethanol fireplaces by Frigor Inc. These decorative fireplaces offer up to 12,000 BTUs; their installation is simple, requiring no chimney and they produce no toxic emanation. Their revised price for holiday sales is $995 plus tax. Frigor Inc. also offers an end-of-season super liquidation ($500-$800 less) on 12,000-BTUs mural heat pumps—for air conditioning, heating and dehumidification—with a Sanyo compressor and three-year warranty for $1,295 and 12,000 BTU with Toshiba compressor and five-year warranty at a revised price of $1,749. These prices include everything but taxes.

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Q Good day, My name is Brian Johns and I am the owner of Happy Family Farms located in Flint, Michigan. This year, when we began to prepare our winter produce schedule, we ran into a lot of red tape when it came to erecting our greenhouses, hoop-houses and high tunnels. After much deliberation, we decided to move our winter operation indoors and switch to hydroponic/aeroponic production. In doing so, we learned how little information there is on the subject for the small-to-medium sized grower. As a result, we’ve chosen to produce a how-to DVD on “Organic-Hydroponic Food Production.” We are set to begin filming in early December with a spring release date. So what brings me to you? I’ve gleaned a lot of information from your publication and website at absolutely no cost. Now I would like to give something back. Along with being a farmer, I am a published writer and I would like to write a column or a series of articles for your magazine at no charge. Let me stress that I would not be advertising my farm or DVD in any of these writings. This is truly my passion and I simply wish to give back for everything given to me, my family and my company. I would be open to your suggestions for subject matter and believe that if we work together, we can develop a method of sustainable agriculture that will benefit generations to come. Thank you in advance for your time and consideration. I look forward to your positive response. Sincerely,

– Brian Johns, Happy Family Farms, www.happyfamilyfarms.com

A Hi Brian, This is a brilliant proposition and I’d like to read something about how you decided to move your outdoor crops inside in a short column. I really love your website and it would be great to have you (and the family!) as new collaborators. I hope to hear from you soon,

Best regards, – B.B.

Q Hi,I spoke with someone a few weeks ago about advertising, as well as doing articles on electrical. I have 25 years experience as an electrician and 3 years

of Electrical Engineering. Who would I contact to find out more info? Best regards.

– Darryl, nowirenuts.ca

A Hi Darryl,Same answer as for Brian above regarding submitting articles ([email protected]). For advertising, contact our sales and marketing director, William Fitzmaurice, at: [email protected].

Thank you – The Editors

Q Hi,I’d like to know if it’s possible to find information about the Echinocactus Williamsii cacti and its relatives in your magazine.

Thank you, – Bob La Roche

A Hi Bob,See the article by Didier Pol, tenured professor, life and earth sciences, in our volume 2, issue 5, at pages 56 and 57. Enjoy!

– The Editors

Q Hi,I’d like to know the best type of pot in which to plant my plantlets. Thank you.

– Mathieu Collins

A Hello Mathieu,I advise you to try environmentally friendly and organic CowPots, which you can plant straight into soil. It’s a very good process for the environment. Visit the company’s website at: www.cowpot.com.

Good luck! – P.H.

Q Hi,I’ve been growing for several years and I’ve managed to stabilize three F1 hybrids that are simply superb. I would like to commercialize these F1. How do I go about it? Thank you

– T.S.


Q & A | THE INDOOR GARDENER

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A Hi,First, you must be aware that the F1-hybrid seed market is extremely regulated and monitored, and that it’s almost impossible for independent producers to get access to it. Indeed, you fi rst have to get your F1-hybrid variety entered into your country’s national seed-production catalogue. In order to do so, you must contact the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV – www.upov.int), an international organization based in Geneva, Switzerland. UPOV protects new plants through an intellectual-property right. Th e UPOV convention was adopted in Paris in 1961 and revised in 1972, 1978, and 1991. To get them entered into the national catalogue, you must prove that your seeds are DUS, meaning that they bear the following attributes: distinctness, uniformity and stability. UPOV uses the third trait to eliminate most submissions. Indeed, to prove that your new F1 hybrid is stable, you must prove its stability over... 20 years! For each year, a summary of the F1 culture must be provided, proving that the plant obtained from your seed has not changed traits from one year to the next. And most importantly, that it is not derived from an unproductive F2 or F3! So I hope you started to work on your hybrid in 1988 at the latest, and that you took notes over these 20 years! You’ll also be required to pay CA$335 for each hybrid as a registration fee for the national catalogue. All these steps aim at eliminating small organic associations and small-scale producers, leaving the path wide open for seed-production multinationals like Monsanto, DuPont, Limagrain, Singenta, etc. Good luck if you choose to confront these international consortiums!

– P.H.

Q Hi, I have a gardening centre in Sainte-Julienne and I’d like to distribute your magazine. Can you tell me how to proceed? Th ank you.

- Anne Pagé, Le centre jardin Florus Pocus, Sainte-Julienne, Québec

A Hello Anne,Contact our sales and marketing director, William Fitzmaurice, at: [email protected]. Th ank you.

– Th e Editors

Q Hello to the entire Indoor Gardener team! We did receive the magazines sent following our subscription and our request for older issues, and already we’re photocopying the subscription form and distributing it around us, because Th e Indoor Gardener magazine is incredibly good! Congratulations, truly, to your teams! A big “thumbs-up” to all! In France, we’re still waiting for a hydroponic-gardening magazine of this quality! Sincere salutations!

- Marc St-Martin, Circ Avignon, France

A Hello Marc,Th ank you for spreading the hydroponic word in France, and particularly in the beautiful region of Avignon! We’ll expect thousands of new subscribers from all around you! Th ank you.

– Th e Editors


Q & A | THE INDOOR GARDENER

Adobe Photoshop Tutorials: 34; AeroGrow: 26; Aéroplante: 29; Agri-LITE: 47; Atlas: 31; B & B Hydroponic Gardens: 23, 24, 25, 26; Brite-Lite Group: 19, 60; BWGS: 57, 62; CanadianXpress: 20; CanFan: 37, 38; Caron, Jessy: 36; Clef des Champs: 10; Corbeil: 62; Double-Clic: 14; D.R.: 14, 15, 18, 19, 20, 22, 26, 31, 35, 36, 38, 42, 47, 49, 55; Fortin, Daniel: 4, 16, 17, 54, 55; Foster, Steven (©2000): 49; Frigor: 42, 62; General Hydroponics: 12, 60; Hydro Entrepôt: 33; Hydrofarm: 60; Laberge, Patrick: 4, 50, 52, 66; Lambert: 62; Leduc, Fred: 4, 40, 42; Liquid Fence: 13 ; Megasii Ltd: 14; MegaWatt Hydroculture: 13 ; MGM Studios: 39; Oakton: 8; Paradigm Gardens: 30; Petroza, Bruno (Virage Magazine): 27; Portable Farm: 34; Sentier Urbain: 58; Shepperd Christopher: 8, 9, 10; Soma: 32, 34; Studio Beauté du Monde: 15; Th e Indoor Gardener Magazine (B. Bredoux, S. Daimon): 18, 20, 22, 28, 30; University of Florida: 56, 57; University of Guelph, CESRF: 44, 45, 46, 48; Vanderbilt Online Research Magazine: 8, Weyl, Philippe: 6.

Erratum In volume 4, issue 3, in the last paragraph of Sylvie Laberge’s article “Grain Transportation” at pages 40 to 42: instead of “For a million seed protected,…” the text should have read: “For a million seed produced…”.


Erratum In volume 4, issue 3, in the last paragraph of Sylvie Laberge’s article “Grain Transportation” at pages 40 to 42: instead of “For a million seed protected,…” the text should have read: “For a million seed produced…”.


In the Far East, they have understood it for thousands of years: the concept of Inner Balance. It is con-sidered the key to quality of life. Their ancient rice terraces have had water circulating through sophisticat-ed irrigation systems for centuries. Even today, these terraces are still a signifi cant resource in local food pro-duction across South East Asia. CANNA has applied the ancient concept of balance to modern technology to develop a state of the art line of nutrients for your hydroponic system: CANNA AQUA. Unique chelating agents en-sure that, in any closed hydroponic system, nutrients are available to your plants for longer periods of time.Special pHbuffering technology keeps your pH exactly where you want it to maximize your plants’nutrient uptake. At the same time, your system will stay remarkably clean. Let your plants experience The Art of Balance with CANNA AQUA.

CANNA AQUAThe Art of Balance

www.canna-hydroponics.ca

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The Indoor Gardener Magazine Volume 4—# 4 (Jan./Feb. 2009)

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