Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Harold and Sue Karber" <karber@pldi.net>]

That was 24 or 25 years ago.....  before he made his first windcharger, telescope and a host of other things.   We also were playing with solar energy, robots, All the kids made things.........so as best we remember..... At that time only glass fiber optics were available.  Now there is plastic also.    So everything was glass fiber optics.   I hope this helps you.   I had not thought about it in years.

He bundled a wad of fiber optics bought at either Radio Shack or some other like place the owner got them for him at his cost these were too short to use but in the space craft science project......then he got some more from people at church who owned a telephone company and they had been given some from folks who wished to convert their system to fiber optics.  The people trying to sell the fiber optics were great to him.   This made it possible to do his work.   Fiber Optics are expensive.  My precious husband found him some heat shrink big enough to make his project and they made their bundle.   DO NOT UNBUNDLED FIBER OPTICS.   Put the small bundles together with larger heat Shrink or tape and make the size you want.  Now there are larger sizes back then we took what was offered and had to build guessing what we would need.   Jim had the candle light amount down to a science from sunup to sundown but that notebook is long gone.    He then ran them up and outside to capture the sun.  Had he continued the next year he would have brought in a single huge bundle and then split individual bundles over growing areas.   Capture in one big bundle then fan out at the plant site hanging individual small bundles over plants.      After several trials he and his dad made a tracker somewhat like a photocell tower tracker to catch sun from east to west all day.    My husband did not do the work.   He was hands off which should have gotten him a medal since it would often had been an hours work for him instead of all day or more letting Jim actually do it himself.   Harold would spend hours helping find material for Jim to read and learn from or someone that knew to teach him.   It was surprising how little light it takes to make things grow if concentrated and since the light was not "hot" it did not cook the plant and with mirror backing which actually was discarded reflective stuff that had been taken out of a locker room and replaced the light was bounced all around the plant.       He just did it one winter, with one plant dirt one hydroponics from transplant to tomatoes then replanted the plants outside in the spring.   Every day he shook the snot out of each plant to mimic wind and keep them strong.   He pollinated with a really fine paint brush.  

My thought would be to get fiber optic cable that is discarded by telephone company/manufacturer or like with too short a run for their use but would work for growing your plants.   If a cable is cut (the cut fibers are a devil to splice but would not hurt your project) that bundle is worthless for long runs but can be recovered with heat shrink for your purpose with some loss but who cares.   My son graduated in 1989 so this was probably in 1982 or 81 or 80 and the technology new.   We also had solar hot water then and solar power and were thought to be totally insane and wackos.   It was brand new technology.   We since have become eccentrics instead of weird.  

One of the things that helped my son was those who gave him the fiber optics were so excited about the experiment.   No way we could have afforded them otherwise.   We gave the bundle to the school for others to see and learn about them and as far as I know they are still there.   We got transferred the next year.  At the Science Fair Tri State my son's work was deemed too far out to be practical and his exhibit was relocated into another class and not judged as out of that class's criteria therefore not eligible to be judged.    He did send his work into NASA and was invited to the Hudson Space Center and we took him.    That was his last science fair but far from his last experiment. 

Solar tubes do about the same thing and can be homemade.   The mirror material and tracking the sun would bring in the true sun light.   One of the things found with the fiber optics was the range of colors.   One of the things my son was going to try was filters on the fiber optics to see if it made a difference in growth.    I don't know how that would have gone.   He decided not to continue his work after not even placing in the tri-state and we got transferred.    There was a lot of work that went into his findings of dirt vs. hydroponics, centrifugal force being needed and why,  root crops like carrots need centrifugal force while above ground don't need much if any.   He had things submerged in water with air and light to them to try and find out if that made them grow right or not since he learned that practice underwater mimicked space conditions.   That meant air that mimicked space and container watertight with hoses in and out and a lot of work that actually showed carrots grow wacky under those conditions.  It was an unusual year at our house.  

The kids built a huge telescope also, grinding their own lenses and it worked.  That too had a tracker.  

----- Original Message -----

From: Kate Moran

To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org

Sent: Sunday, October 07, 2007 11:09 AM

Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] More on fiberoptics?

Is there anyway to get some further details on how your son's fiberoptic system was set up?  It sounds like it has lots of elements that we would like to incorporate.  Up here in Wisconsin the tomatoes are ending and that is so depressing.....

 

Kate

. When fiber optics were new one of
my sons ran a tube of fiber optics from outside to the basement and grew
tomatoes all winter as a school project. The light from the fiber optics
worked great. True it was just one plant but it worked. His Science
project was a mock space station with centrifugal force rotation, fiber
optic growing of a closed system for food which had fish for protein to
consume the worms that composted etc.. He even allowed for some fiber
optics to be used for repairs so their storage was in use growing food until
or if ever needed for repairs. He also discovered that dirt was lighter and
easier to manage than hydroponics. He never worked out all the bugs but
then he was just a pre-teen.

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