As I've continued to experiment with the hydroponics setup for my wheatgrass; I continue to learn interesting and useful things.

The first crop of wheatgrass has been fully harvested.  Some of it is still in the fridge, awaiting the juicer.  I've done my first full tear-down cleaning of the MegaGarden.  Here's a picture of the MegaGarden at the moment:

I've decided that I don't need the full capacity of the MegaGarden for growing wheatgrass anymore.  I ended up producing more than I could use, and I ended up wasting some of it due to poor planning.  Here's the new idea:  We've made small baskets by using plastic canvas  (that we bought at AC Moore).  Plastic canvas is commonly used by people doing yarn projects, but we had other ideas.

The baskets are made from two pieces of material.  Firstly, we cut a square.  Secondly, we cut a long strip (long enough to wrap all the way around).  We wrap the long one around the square, and sew it with fishing line as we go.  It takes a little time to make them, but they should give us more flexiblity in the future.  We tried it, and yes, they are dishwasher safe.

The baskets will allow us to grow enough grass for one ounce of juice.  Also, since they keep the seed separated, we will be able to stagger the growth cycle in the garden.  Although the picture above doesn't really show it, the seeds were started two days apart.  Hopefully, we can get the grass into a natural cycle that matches our juicing demand.

The odd-looking basket in the top-left doesn't contain wheatgrass; it's filled with Rockwool cubes.  We're starting other plant varieties in the garden.  The Rockwool is the staring point for our tomatoes.  I'm sure they will take a long time to mature, but that's ok.  We've got the extra room, and I'd like to see what happens.  From what I've been told by HydroFarm; I should switch to a 200W Compact Flourescent bulb when the tomato plants begin to flower.  That makes sense.  More light should drive greater growth.

Also, I recently learned something the hard way.  I ended up having to tear down the whole MegaGarden for a cleaning after a mold outbreak.  Mold started to appear on the roots of my mature wheatgrass, then on the seeds.  In retrospect, I was being dumb, and the mold was a normal reaction.  Here's the moral of the story:  Don't run your pump (for flooding the tray) when the lights aren't running.  Ideally, the tray should be dry when you shut down the lights for the night.  I was running my flood cycles at 15 minutes / hour, 24 hours a day.  That meant that the floods were still happening in the dark hours of the night.  Secondarily, I forgot to turn on the lights for a day; so that only made things worse.  No problems now; live and learn.

I should probably set up a timer for the lights, but I've been switching them manually up to this point. 

It's funny how things work out:  I started this because I couldn't find a lot of information about hydroponic wheatgrass.  Now I'm ranked on Google for that very topic.  I admit that I'm not near the top (yet); but I'm sure it will improve over time.