This week met with some disaster and some progress.  I'll start with the bad news, and some friendly advice.

We've discovered a rather critical weakness in the do it yourself aeroponic system.  The system has spray-heads that are threaded into place.  Normally, these spray-heads are directed at the roots of the plant.  However, we've made an unfortunate discovery recently.  Under constant pressure, one of our sprayers eventually rotated a wee bit.  This rotation caused the spray to sneak through a gap in the lid of our Sortera (the body of the DIY unit is an Ikea Sortera).  This was no fun at all, as it put about two gallons on water onto our bamboo floors.  Don't run your hydroponics on hardwood floors unless you're brave or stupid.  I'm a little of both.

Our disaster did lead to a discovery though... A plastic washing machine tub (bought at Home Depot) is an almost perfect fit.  Take a look at the trays underneath our two experimental eggplants:

The trays provide a level of safety that I now feel is critical.  We've always used large black rubber-backed commercial rugs; but they have an admittedly limited capacity.  The new trays are a great way to go.  They've slightly larger than we need, but they're a commodity item purchased from Home Depot.  Thankfully, the entire light stand fits inside them pretty easily.

Disaster behind us, we've got some tasty news to discuss.  Our eggplant in the original DIY aeroponic system has just given us it's first eggplant.  It's spectacular.  It's absolutely perfect.  In fact, I liked it so much that I decided to turn it into a white-matted stock photo.  I thought it was the perfect specimen; so I spent about an hour on the following photo:

Sadly, perfection has it's price.  It has departed this world, after such a short career.  Here's the last known photo of our beautiful eggplant:

Silliness aside, this plant is a great succeess.  I'm very happy with the flavor of the eggplant, and I'm looking forward to the other ones (which are still babies).  The House and Garden nutrients did a great job, and it ended up with a very smooth and mellow taste.  I'm really pleased, as some other nutrient solutions have given eggplants a bitter taste during previous trials.  I've been rather lax in my attention to the "food" eggplant, but the results are still great.  I'm going to start using House & Garden more frequently in the future, as it's very effective.  My greatest praise for House & Garden is the pH stability.  I'm not sure how they do it, but I barely ever touch the pH in the solution.  Truthfully, I don't even measure it very often anymore, it's so stable.

As some of you may recall, we tried a new experiment a few weeks ago... Outdoor aeroponics, mounted on the outside of one of our sheds.  We have good news and bad news.  However, the bad news is mostly due to me being too aggressive.

I'll readily admit that I started the experiment too early in the spring.  Additionally, the plants that we used were too young.  No excuses here... I blew it.  The temperature swings have been too severe.  Originally, I'd intended on heating the reservoir; but it never materialized.

Here's a photo from this morning: 

Although most of the strawberries are still alive, they're not in good shape.  They are certainly not as healthy as their indoor brothers.  The indoor plants might go outside eventually.  However, Fort Laramie strawberries are difficult to obtain.  For the moment, I'll be using them for breeding purposes primarily.  Here's a closer view of the sad outdoor strawberries:

Although my personal stupidity has caused the experiment to be... less than satisfying... all is not lost.  We've learned a lot from the experiment thus far.  Here are the observations:

• The unit itself is performing wonderfully.  We have been able to run it for weeks using the smaller ActiveAqua PU550.  We're not losing much water at all.  The return-drain is working very well.
• The nutrient mix has been very stable.
• It's certainly not as convenient as the indoor gardens.  Perhaps it's just me, but I end up spending less time on this unit.  Out of sight, out of mind.

Back to the indoor experiments... Our eggplant in the original DIY aeroponic system has grown qutie massive.  It's got loads of flowers, and one really beautiful eggplant going.  Here's a very close photo, at roughly life-size.  It looks a bit orange, as the HPS lights are very intense.  It's really shiny and very healthy.

Sadly, this week offers more questions than answers.  We've got a number of experiments going at the moment, with some puzzling conclusions.

The CO2Boost Experiment has taken a very surprising turn.  The control plant is now larger than the supplemented plant.  I'm not sure how to explain it.  However, I'll give it a shot...  As much as I attempted to keep the experiment fair and balanced, there is a difference in the plants.  When the experiment started, we grew 12 seedlings.  From the 12 seedling, we selected the two that were the most equal.  Although these plants were as similar as possible, the difference may be explained by the variations in the plants themselves.  Additionally, I've got one other unproven theory... I don't know enough about eggplant biology to say for certain, but I suspect that eggplants may not get much extra growth from CO2 supplementation.  My "food" eggplant (in the "mark 1") is doing very well, without any CO2 supplementation of any kind.

Secondarily, the outdoor strawberry experiment isn't going very well.  I didn't take any pictures, but things aren't pretty.  Most of the plants are very weak, and don't seem well acclimated at all.  I don't have a better explanation at the moment, but my theory is that they are too young to tolerate the temperature swings in the cold nights.  Their indoor brothers are performing much better.  Here's a photo of the indoor group:

Lastly, here's a quick photo of the "food" eggplant in the "mark 1".  It's performing very well, with lots of fertilized flowers.  It's huge, and very happy.  I think I'll be using more House and Garden (Van de Zwaan) nutrients in the future.

I've recently made a new discovery about the "mark one" aeroponic unit... It's rather tall height makes lighting a bit more complicated.  Take a look at the photo below for reference:

Our eggplant is flowering now, and it's grown pretty tall.  The added height from the aeroponic unit brings it closer to the light than I would prefer.  Although our lights run somewhat "cool" for high intensity lights, I've found that you want to keep the lighting reflector at least 18" from your plants.  If you position the light closer than 18" from your plants, you're very likely to burn the leaves with the heat of the light.  Don't forget... Reflector type makes a big difference.

A HydroFarm Radiant reflector distributes heat much better than the smaller Hydrofarm Daystar.  Both the larger size and different shape allow the Radiant to distribute heat more widely (unlike the Daystar's "death ray" heat pattern.

Regardless, our eggplant is growing larger than I would prefer, and it's closer to the light than is probably good.  However, we're limited by our ceiling; so we've got to make the most of the situation.

Now, for something completely different...

I'm puzzled by the CO2Boost Experiment...  Although I don't have a justification, the "control" plant has gained a lot of ground on the "supplemented" plant.  I need to do more research on eggplants.  I'm not a plant biology guy... For that matter, I'm not a biology guy at all.  All I ever took in school was chemistry and physics.  My running theory is that an eggplant may not respond to CO2 supplementation...  We'll be bringing in some sophisticated testing gear later in the week, so we'll have fresh information for the next post.