April 21, 2020 ~ Spring always brings out the urge to start seeds in me. I had four raised beds when we lived in a sticks-and-bricks in Virginia, and I like to think I had a pretty green thumb. My neighbor, Katrina, and I would talk gardening and plants all Summer long. She was very generous in sharing her seeds and bounty from her garden. We both looked forward to Spring because it meant a new season of experiments in what plants would thrive in Virginia’s hot and humid weather.
Preparing for our eventual full-time travel in an RV, we took the opportunity to downsize when the Army transferred Scott from Virginia to Pennsylvania for his final two years of active duty. I knew we would be living in an apartment in Pennsylvania, and figured my gardening days were over. I gave whatever gardening tools she wanted to Katrina, then sold the rest at a garage sale. The night of our garage sale, I shed a few tears trying to fall asleep but thinking of the set of four gardening hand tools I had sold that day. I felt such a sense of loss, and I think the reality of having to set aside a hobby that meant so much to me was finally setting in. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I grabbed my phone and ordered the same exact set from Amazon. Then I rolled over and went to sleep happy. The tools are currently in our storage locker waiting for me to have a piece of ground again. Their presence gives me hope that I will once again be able to garden, and that was well worth the cost of the tools that I bought back for three times what I originally paid for them.
A few years into our full time RV adventure, I came across a grow light on Amazon. It looked small enough, yet sturdy enough to possibly try in the RV. We have a ledge by our dining room table that has a decorative bowl on it, but the rest of the ledge has become the landing pad for all the campground paperwork we receive upon check in , keys, wallets, sunglasses, regular glasses…you name it, if it is able to fit on the ledge it finds it’s way there. I got the measuring tape out and measured, checked outlet availability, found a suitable planter to go with the grow light, got the okay from Scott and placed my order. In short order, I was growing herbs in my RV! In fact, the first system was working so well I decided I could fit another right next to the first one.
Today I planted three Micro Dwarf Tomato varieties, Mohamed, Little Lise, and Andrina. These Micro Dwarves should only grow 8 – 10 inches high thereby easily fitting under the light. The lights by iGrowTek use only 20 watts of power, so I can safely plug two lights into one extension cord. The power draw is so low that it is of no concern to us when we rely solely upon our solar and lithium set up. The grow lights come with the bottom tray and the light, but no actual grow box. Also from Amazon, I chose to use a rectangular, self-watering planter from GardenBasix. The planter fits nicely in the tray. I use museum gel to secure the light tray to the ledge, and also the grow box to the bottom tray.
I only ever had one issue with traveling with the grow light set up. One day we drove over a particularly bumpy route, we found several things jostled out of position in the rig when we pulled over for the night. One of those jostled things was the planter. It had remained secured to the bottom tray, but the herbs I had growing were all in disarray. Some had toppled over and the soil was drenched, almost watery. There is a joke among RVers that driving your RV down the road is like subjecting it to a hours-long earthquake. Well, my planter experienced a phenomena associated with earthquakes called “liquefaction.” It is where water from underneath the ground is jostled upwards and mixes with dirt to form a slurry…the ground becomes a watery and unstable mess. Upon reflection, I realized I had filled the self-watering planter with 4 cups of water the previous day. The bouncy road caused the water to splash up through the holes meant for the roots to descend into the water and mixed with the potting soil forming a slurry and dislodging the herbs. Only a few plants were salvageable. After that, I am careful not to have too much water in the reservoir on travel days. Two cups water is fine.
The planter from GardenBasix comes with compressed coco coir which I used for my first planting of herbs. I was in need of more soil after the “earthquake”, so I ended up buying a bag of seed starting mix. Both coco coir and seed starting mix do not have any of the nutrients needed to produce healthy plants so the nutrients must be added. I do this by squirting a small amount of “Grow Big” liquid fertilizer from Fox Farms into the water I am adding to the reservoir in the planter. My herbs are doing very well on this fertilizer, which I also found on Amazon.
