First up this week is a followup on our Fort Laramie strawberries...

I'm downright amazed at how well they're doing.  It's really quite remarkable.  They were sad-looking little things last week; now they're real strawberries.  Every one of them has green leaves, and they all appear healthy.  It's wonderful.  Their root systems are apparently much healthier than I had originally thought. Here's a photo of one of the little fellows:

I'll be the first to admit that I was disappointed by the poor customer service at Henry Fields, but the plants are of excellent quality.  I really never expected them to wake up from dormancy so quickly.  It's not too late, you can still score some of these for spring planting.  In theory, we'll be moving a bunch of ours ourside in an outdoor aeroponic experiment.

Also, we've done some major rearranging in the growing room this week.  Our monster Bambino eggplant has departed our company, and we have some new action growing.  Removing the Bambino was much more difficult than it sounds.  It had an incredibly large root system.  The root mass was at least 14" in diameter.  It had roots throughout most of the TurboGarden.  In fact, it took me almost 20 minutes of "demolition" just to remove it from the TurboGarden.  I didn't even attempt to salvage the 5" net pot that held it.  It wasn't worth the effort.  It took a long time to clean up the TurboGarden.  It's sitting empty for the moment, waiting for the next project.

The removal of the Bambino eggplant left us lots of room.  That's a good thing, as we needed some.  We've set up the original DIY aeroponic system under the 400W HPS light system.  We've placed a Black Beauty eggplant that we're been growing into the individual system.  It's on it's way to becoming a big plant.

Additionally, Jessawick's orchid is now in full bloom.  It has 10 individual blooms, and it looks amazing.  It really took well to life in the ebb & flow system.  It's had a very favorable response to Technaflora nutrients. Here's a photo that we just took of it during bloom:

Lastly, we have a big announcement this week...

As you may have seen, we've been building a lot of new toys lately.  It's time to announce the purpose.  We've doing a side-by-side growth study using a CO2Boost carbon dioxide generator.  We're going to be running this study for approximately 3-4 months, with daily statistics and weekly photos.  We hope to show an objective difference in plant growth between our supplemented plant and our control plant.  We'll be using Black Beauty eggplants.

Here's a photo of the twin aeroponic systems, with the plastic barrier in place:

Although it's not easy to see in the photo, there is a two-layer plastic divider between the two systems.  The system on the left is supplemented with carbon dioxide from the CO2Boost bucket.  The system on the right is used as a control.  Both reservoirs are carefully monitored to be as equal as possible.

More details are available in the article itself.  It contains all the background and methodology used in the process. 

The complete article is available during construction.  Fair warning: It's being edited daily as the study progresses.