I realize that my posts are usually better when I have more time to research and write.  However, this week it's just not going to be that way...  The real world has imposed upon my time, and this week's column is going to be rather brief.  Regardless, we've got some updates from the growing room.

A few weeks ago, we moved all our strawberries outside into an aeroponic unit.  I don't know how long we'll be able to keep them out there, but at this point, I'm hoping for Halloween.  The unit that we have isn't heated, but the reservoir is buried in order to give some stability of temperature.

The largest plant is producing lots of runners.  We're taken two runner cuttings, and are trying to start new plants from them.  Although they don't look all that happy, they are six days from cutting (and still alive).  In fairness, I was pretty dumb.  I've got cloning gel sitting on the shelf, and I didn't use it.  We'll wait and see what happens:

Ok... Time for the orchid.  As some of you saw in last week's post, our pet orchid is starting to bloom once again.  Normally this takes longer, but in this instance, it's bloomed again after only four months.  We're surprised.  Although we really like the orchid, none of us are experts on orchid biology.

Our orchid is from a very rare and special orchid nursery.  It's a Phalaenopsis, and it comes from the genus Homus Depotus.  Yes.  That's right.  Home Depot.  We get questions all the time about where we get our plants.  In all truth, this fellow was just picked up at Home Depot.  It didn't do very well, and was about to die.  Since we didn't have anything to lose, we tossed it in the Ebb & Flow system, just to see what happened.  It's been a few years now, and hydroponics is the best thing to ever happen to it.

Here's the latest bloom photo:

Lastly, we need to discuss the cantaloupe...

It's pretty big these days.  Since we don't have a "proper" support system for such a viney plant, we've just trained it around the light stand.  It's cohabitating with a tomato plant under a 400W HPS light.

It's really turning into quite the wall of biomass.  We've got lots of flowers, many of which we've already fertilized.  Here's a closeup of the future... Future cantaloupe.