From Gamer to Gardener: Part 1

Hey fellow Steemians, my name's Jon and I'm in love with this platform. I've been gone for a while, but I'm back in the action and Steemit looks more awesome than ever! Life has been busy, but I want to get plugged back in. I'm running my own gaming group and am now in the process of starting my own for-profit farm, so I will be writing about that soon.

For now, I'd like to fill you in on my gardening adventures so far! I will be posting a weekly update on my personal garden, until I get my actual farm built.

Here's a bit of backstory.

I grew up on a farm, in a large family, and enjoyed gardening. After I got a Bachelor's degree in Public Policy, I moved up to Washington, D.C. for work, but ultimately decided that I was more interested in business/entrepreneurship. So after working in the Washington, D.C. area for a while, I went home to South Carolina and ended up tutoring.

The tutoring went well, paid for my expenses, and allowed me to delve into gaming in my free time.
My main focus with my gaming was to emulate real world business ideas in game worlds. However, not many games had economies vibrant enough to do that. I studied EVE Online a bit, but it didn't have the gameplay I was necessarily looking for - though it certainly had the spreadsheets and supply and demand economy. Also, I was interested in financial ventures in video games and at that time, the biggest news in EVE was the bank fraud, so I didn't think that was the place to go.

I had been following an in-development project called Chronicles of Elyria for some time and I decided to see how they were faring. When I logged back into my account and connected with the community, I found out that they were in the middle of a contest to find the nobility for the remaining kingdom on their North America - East server.

An economy like no other.

Chronicles of Elyria caught my attention because of the breadth of opportunity. The starting continent was to be the size of 900 Skyrim maps, with a dynamic supply and demand economy. Every player action would affect the economy. The travel times were to be realistic and every item, including currency, had to be physically transported by players. Permadeath was a real risk in the game, but also served as a way to progress further in your skill level.

The economic potential was huge and so I started my own campaign to become King of this "Free Kingdom" they were offering. At the beginning, I didn't even have a name for it, so I called it "A Campaign for Economic Prosperity." We had interviews and debates and discussed nearly every point of in-game politics, over 3-4 months. At the end of the contest, people raised over $5000 in "Kingdom Tokens" to make me a Duke.

I became a Duke.

So I built the "Duchy of Vitalis" and we began to enact the principles on which I'd run my campaign. My central belief is that if you provide value to people, they will provide value to you in return. We started a seminar series teaching people about becoming Mayors and we delved into the Tribes and Biomes in the game. Shortly afterwards, we began our "Scales of Vitalis" business contest, in which we helped contestants take business ideas and turn them into business plans, or refine existing business plans.

We ended up with two finalists, who had video interviews and both received investment offers from our nobility at the end of the contest, on top of the $100 prize we offered. The Duchy grew significantly over the course of all these events and time spent with the community, and we now have 200 to 300 members in the Duchy.

However, my job started to take up more time, and after a year of running around from student to student, I decided that I needed a change. The gaming group was taking up more time and effort and I needed an income source that wouldn't keep me running around all the time. So I went back to my entrepreneurial ideas.

I wanted to start a business.

I was looking for something that wouldn't require much startup capital. After thinking back to the fun I had growing tomatoes and cucumbers as a kid, I settled on gardening for profit and selling produce at a local farmer's market.

Upon deciding I wanted to be a farmer, I went through the process of deciding what to grow. I researched a lot of cash crops and settled on mushrooms, because of the easy growing process and lack of micromanagement. I did my research, studied the business, and went so far as to order an enclosed structure to house the mushrooms (I figured having a sterile environment would help in selling the produce).

My next step.

I needed to find my target market and see how viable selling to individuals would be, as opposed to restaurants and grocery stores. So I went to a health event with a family member, a "Salad-in-a-Jar" event, to be specific, to scout out local health nuts who I could sell to. During the event, someone mentioned "aeroponic gardening" to me and I did a little bit of research when I got home.

A change of mind.

After some initial googling, I dove into the research and by the next few days I was sold on the concept. Rather than growing produce in the dirt naturally, or in water, like hydroponics, aeroponic systems hang the roots of the plants in the air and spray nutrients onto them directly. I found a tower system that basically ran itself, requiring only a few hours of maintenance each week, for about twenty different plants.

I could use less water, less space, and grow three times faster, so I was sold within a few days. I decided to test it out and see whether I could use this to build a business. So I purchased my tower garden. I received it in three days and started the setup.

It looks fancy, but was quite easy to set up. We had a small plastic covered "greenhouse" of a sort, so initially, I put the tower there.

I got started.

I grew my own seedlings over the next thirteen days. I grew tomatoes, cucumber, lettuce, and basil. I probably needed to grow them a little longer, but I got impatient and decided to put them into the tower. The seedlings weren’t doing as well once I put them in the tower and I couldn’t figure out why. After a week or so of watching them, I inspected the tower again much more closely.

The seedlings had grown, and a few were doing really well, but some of them were looking wilted or unhealthy.

I added grow lights.

The grow lights allowed me to grow the plants 24/7 and though the growth was already fast, they shot up after that. The growth was crazy to watch.

It turned out that I had not actually turned the timer to the right setting, and the seedlings were being watered 24/7. About half of the seedlings died, so I went to the local grocery store and found some plants to transplant into the tower. I ended up with an inordinate amount of herbs, as that was primarily what they had available.

So I pulled out the dead seedlings, cut the rockwool cubes in half, and spliced them with rubber bands, around the new plants I’d purchased. I planted Basil, Rosemary, Oregano, Parsley, and Mint.

The growth in the picture above is after about one week after the transplants, or two and a half weeks after I planted the seedlings. I was checking the tower roughly once every five days, to see if everything was running smoothly. My tutoring kept me quite busy, so I didn’t monitor it that much, during the first couple weeks.

This is the first installment of Gamer to Gardener. I plan to tell the story of my adventure in aeroponics till I get to the present and then delve into the farm project I am working on now. If you liked this post, please upvote, and if you’d like to see more of this content, please follow and resteem. I will be posting weekly content regarding both my gaming and gardening interests and activities! By the way, I'm curious, what do you guys think of urban gardening or new technologies in agriculture? Let me know in the comments.