|
Hydroponics Tuesday
We've got some interesting and unexpected news to report this week... Recently, we've been contacted by a manufacturer of hydroponics equipment. They would like us to perform and document side-by-side testing of plant growth both with (and without) their product applied. We will likely be starting the study in the coming weeks. Sadly, the PVC aeroponic units are not complete yet. We've been distracted by another DIY project. We're working on a new home made aeroponic unit, which has fewer parts and lower cost than our last unit. We found a perfect reservoir container, so we'll be building some new aeroponic units in the near future. Ikea offers a plastic container that's ideal for a reservoir. We'll post a photo soon. As always, here's the overview photo of the week:
| Plant | Type | Status |
|---|
| #01 | Alexandria Alpine Strawberries | Small fruit and flowers are appearing regularly. Sadly, the runner that we attempted to root did not fare well. It is in plant-heaven at the moment. |
| #02 | Alexandria Alpine Strawberries | Small fruit and flowers are appearing regularly. | | #03 | Alexandria Alpine Strawberries | Small fruit and flowers are appearing regularly. |
| #04 | Alexandria Alpine Strawberries | Small fruit and flowers are appearing regularly. |
| #05 | Alexandria Alpine Strawberries | Small fruit and flowers are appearing regularly. |
| #06 | Alexandria Alpine Strawberries | Small fruit and flowers are appearing regularly. |
| #07 | Alexandria Alpine Strawberries | Small fruit and flowers are appearing regularly. |
| #08 | Alexandria Alpine Strawberries | Small fruit and flowers are appearing regularly. |
| #09 | Alexandria Alpine Strawberries | This fellow has had a hard life under the canopy of the eggplant. From now on, we'll be planting eggplants in "private" units, so they can't be bad neighbors. |
| #12 | Bambino Baby Eggplant | The Bambino continually dominates the TurboGarden. Our constant trimming is all that gives the strawberries a chance. |
| #18 | Black Beauty Eggplant
| This sprouting was originally going into the single-site unit, but because of our pending experiment, the transplant has been delayed. |
| #19 | Black Beauty Eggplant | Not as large as it's brother, but quite healthy. About 3" tall. This one will eventually find a home in a WaterFarm drip system. It's nowhere near old enough yet, so it will be staying-put in the MegaGarden for the time being. |
| #20 | Alexandria Alpine Strawberries | Recently emerged as seedling. Happily living in the MegaGarden. Still small, but that is to be expected with strawberries. |
| #21 | Alexandria Alpine Strawberries | Recently emerged as seedling. Happily living in the MegaGarden. Still small, but that is to be expected with strawberries. |
| #22 | Alexandria Alpine Strawberries | Recently emerged as seedling. Happily living in the MegaGarden. Still small, but that is to be expected with strawberries. |
| #23 | Alexandria Alpine Strawberries | Recently emerged as seedling. Happily living in the MegaGarden. Still small, but that is to be expected with strawberries. |
| #24 | Alexandria Alpine Strawberries | Recently emerged as seedling. Happily living in the MegaGarden. Still small, but that is to be expected with strawberries. |
| #25 | Alexandria Alpine Strawberries | Recently emerged as seedling. Happily living in the MegaGarden. Still small, but that is to be expected with strawberries. |
Many things are pending and progressing this week. Here is the first bit of news... We've just published a review of the book How-To Hydroponics. In short, it's a great little book. The information is relevant and current. It's a short book, but a good one. Secondly, an update on the new home-made aeroponics system: As much as I hoped to announce it's completion this week, construction has been delayed. The original model was going to be built from 4" square PVC. However, after much consideration, I've decided to start over using larger 5" square PVC. This should allow more room for irrigation and roots. I think the larger diameter is worth the effort. For those of you considering building your own "Aeroflo-style" units, here is a bit of preliminary advice: Home Depot only seems to stock the smaller 4" stuff. However, Lowes stocks both the small 4" and the larger 5" stuff. We spent quite a while cutting and fitting the smaller stuff. Now we're going to start over with the larger stuff. Additionally, if you're building your own aeroponic unit... - Make sure to buy Botanicare's brand of 3" net pots. They are much better for aeroponics than the more cheaply-made ones from General Hydroponics. The ones made by Botanicare have a "solid ring" around the top, which will give you a much better water-seal around the pot.
I'm not sure yet what size pump will be required. Truthfully, I've already got a PU250 from ActiveAqua sitting around, so I'm going to see how many aero sprayers it can power before becoming overwhelmed. I don't expect that the PU250 will be enough pump for this project, but I'd love to know exactly how many sites it can power. Also, in unrelated news... I've been reseaching better varieties of strawberries to grow. Please do not take this as anything but rabid speculation. After doing a bit of reading, I'm looking forward to experimenting with Quinault variety strawberries. Quinault is a fairly recently developed hybrid strawberry, which is said to produce large yields. It's everbearing and self-pollinating. Self-pollinating is becoming increasingly interesting to me, as we garden indoors extensively, and pollination via paintbrush is quite tedious. We'll post results when we have some. Expect it to be about a month, as we haven't even ordered any yet. Jessa's exotics are doing very well in the MegaGarden. 
We are continually trimming back the Bambino Eggplant. We're getting about 10 little fruits each week. This will probably be the last time that I run eggplant and strawberries in the same reserveoir. I'd prefer to control the solution independently next time. As always, here's the overview photo of the week: 
| Plant | Type | Status |
|---|
| #01 | Alexandria Alpine Strawberries | Small fruit and flowers are appearing regularly. Sadly, the runner that we attempted to root did not fare well. It is in plant-heaven at the moment. |
| #02 | Alexandria Alpine Strawberries | Small fruit and flowers are appearing regularly. | | #03 | Alexandria Alpine Strawberries | Small fruit and flowers are appearing regularly. |
| #04 | Alexandria Alpine Strawberries | Small fruit and flowers are appearing regularly. |
| #05 | Alexandria Alpine Strawberries | Small fruit and flowers are appearing regularly. |
| #06 | Alexandria Alpine Strawberries | Small fruit and flowers are appearing regularly. |
| #07 | Alexandria Alpine Strawberries | Small fruit and flowers are appearing regularly. |
| #08 | Alexandria Alpine Strawberries | Small fruit and flowers are appearing regularly. |
| #09 | Alexandria Alpine Strawberries | This fellow has had a hard life under the canopy of the eggplant. It's not strong, but it's surviving. |
| #12 | Bambino Baby Eggplant | The Bambino continually dominates the TurboGarden. Our constant trimming is all that gives the strawberries a chance. |
| #18 | Black Beauty Eggplant
| Strong sproutling. We'll probably move him in a week. This one will likely get the "single-site" aero all to itself. |
| #19 | Black Beauty Eggplant | Not as large as it's brother, but quite healthy. About 3" tall. This one will eventually find a home in a WaterFarm drip system. It's nowhere near old enough yet, so it will be staying-put in the MegaGarden for the time being. |
| #20 | Alexandria Alpine Strawberries | Recently emerged as seedling. Happily living in the MegaGarden. Still small, but that is to be expected with strawberries. |
| #21 | Alexandria Alpine Strawberries | Recently emerged as seedling. Happily living in the MegaGarden. Still small, but that is to be expected with strawberries. |
| #22 | Alexandria Alpine Strawberries | Recently emerged as seedling. Happily living in the MegaGarden. Still small, but that is to be expected with strawberries. |
| #23 | Alexandria Alpine Strawberries | Recently emerged as seedling. Happily living in the MegaGarden. Still small, but that is to be expected with strawberries. |
| #24 | Alexandria Alpine Strawberries | Recently emerged as seedling. Happily living in the MegaGarden. Still small, but that is to be expected with strawberries. |
| #25 | Alexandria Alpine Strawberries | Recently emerged as seedling. Happily living in the MegaGarden. Still small, but that is to be expected with strawberries. |
We've got a lot going on this week, but sadly, much of is isn't ready to publish just yet... As you can see in this week's photo, we've been trimming the eggplant back quite a bit. We're trying to give the strawberries more access to the light, and the eggplant has been a very bad neighbor. We haven't cut back any of the fruiting blossoms; we've been cutting leaves exclusively. 
Also, we've been working on a new design for a home-made aeroponic unit. We're partially through construction, and we hope to post further updates once it's up and running. The new seedlings are doing well, and they will likely find homes in the new aeroponic unit shortly. The new one is a different design, it's made from PVC fence parts (a square post jacket, meant to cover a 4x4). We'll try to post some photos sooner than later. Also, in response to some mail that we've received lately, here's a wide photo of our growing room. Some people have been wondering about the lighting setup, so here's a good photo of our MegaGarden (with 125W fluorescent light) and our TurboGarden (with 400W HPS light): 
As always, here's the overview photo of the week: 
It's been another week in the hydroponics lab, and business is progressing just as expected. The strawberries are doing just fine, and we're harvesting baby eggplants regularly. We trim back the leaves of the eggplant frequently, to give the smaller strawberries a shot at the light. Additionally, we've bought a Hydrofarm LightTrack. We haven't unboxed it yet, but here's a little overview on what a LightTrack is, and how it works: A LightTrack is basically a small motor that moves back-and-forth on it's track, towing your light with it. This allows you to "spread" your light over a larger area, rather than just adding additional lights. I cannot yet speak about light levels or light falloff; but I plan on writing about it as soon as we've got it running. We'll need to start using it once all our new growing systems are operational. At the moment, we're trying to sprout some new plants to fill up the systems. We're trying an experiment with some pomegranate seeds... We've extracted them from a store-bought organic pomegranate, and we're attempting to sprout them in the MegaGarden. We'll update if/when they become viable. Also, our small "Black Beauty" eggplant sprouts are doing well. They're still small, but that's to be expected. 
This week's overview photo: 
It's been a long time in development, but I'm proud to announce that Hydroponics Tuesday has finally moved into it's new home. For those of you that have read the Hydroponics Tuesday column on BarnyardBBS, you'll now find that Hydroponics Tuesday has grown up, and has a dedicate website of it's own... HydroponicsTuesday.com. The new dedicated website offers new opportunities for the column to grow, and to explore new directions. For example, the new website features some new sections, like articles and reviews. I realized a few months ago that with the recent growth in readership, Hydroponics Tuesday needed to expand beyond a weekly column. The new sections of the website will let us share more detailed writeups on specific topics, which can be more easily navigated. Many of the topics in the articles have been mentioned previously in the blog, but serve a common interest by being expanded into full articles. I'm writing more frequently now, and more content will be appearing often. This will be the last post that is carried on BarnyardBBS.com. From now forward, all new material will be posted directly to our new home at HydroponicsTuesday.com. Ok, now to cover some actual news about my pet projects... The experimental homemade aeroponic unit has been running "wet" for about two weeks now. She's perfectly watertight. We've just waiting on the new eggplants to mature enough to join the party. At this point, I'm pretty happy with the stage of the new aeroponic unit. However, only time will tell. Additionally, we have two new additions to the growing room, they just aren't set up yet. I gave Jess a new EcoGrower for Christmas, as she wanted to try a drip system. She also got a drip-ring WaterFarm, which we're thinking about using for a pomegranate tree (don't ask which variety yet, we're still researching). Actually, I'm looking forward to using the EcoGrower for an experiment. I'd like to do a head-to-head competition between a drip system and an aeroponic system. Although I'm quite sure that the aeroponic system produces faster growth, I'd like some objective evidence to support my opinion. We're growing two "Black Beauty" eggplant seedlings; hopefully they'll be a fair comparison. Here's a photo of the new batch of strawberries. They've just emerged as sproutlings. They're living in the MegaGarden, and they'll remain there for a while. For those of you not familiar with our growing setup: We use an Ebb & Flow system called a MegaGarden as our "nursery" for baby plants. It's lighted by a 125W Compact Fluorescent system, and the nutrient mix is formulated for vegetative-stage plants. When the plants are mature enough, they're moved out of the MegaGarden, into their final homes. 
Also, here's a photo of the baby eggplants that have recently emerged. They're living in the MegaGarden as well. 
This week's overview photo: 
|