Finally, our new Fort Laramie strawberries have arrived.  It took much longer than expected, but they are finally here.  They arrived last night (03/24/2008).

We unpacked and planted them immediately.  We've got them in hydroton, sitting in the MegaGarden.  We'll plant them outdoors as soon as the weather gets a bit warmer.  Although Fort Laramie are rated for cold weather, these fellows are just young rootstock, and I don't want to push my luck.

Luckily, we have enough room in the MegaGarden to have a home for everybody.  I don't have extensive experience with rootstock plants, but these guys transplanted without any trouble.  Hopefully they will be happy in the MegaGarden.  I hope to plant them outside sometime in May.  I'm considering using a heated reservoir to get them outdoors a bit sooner.

If you're wondering where we got them... We bought them from Henry Fields.  Although the plants we received appear healthy and in good condition, I have mixed feelings about Henry Fields.  Throughout the process, I was unhappy with their service.  The initial shipment that they sent me was quite incorrect.  My package was labeled as strawberries, but contained Blue Flax.

Ok.  Everyone makes mistakes.  I can understand making a packing error.  However, they expected me to ship back the Blue Flax at my own expense before they would send me the strawberries that I ordered.  Additionally, it took them over a month to ship my replacement strawberries.

Also, should you choose to deal with Henry Fields, be warned.  They will literally bomb the crap out of your email.  I get one of their "special offers" almost every day.  It's really quite unnecessary, especially considering that I requested to not be contacted.  Although their plants appear to be healthy and in good shape, I doubt that I would do business with them again.

In theory, we should have a lot of new strawberry developments over the next several months.  I've spent more time working on the PVC "tube" gardens, and they will be ready for planting (just as soon as the weather gets a little warmer).  We'll be doing the PVC gardens entirely outdoors this year, as our growing room has gotten quite crowded in recent months.

The Bambino Eggplant is still on reprieve.  We're eventually going to replace it with strawberries, but it gets to live for the present.  Here's this week's photo of the monster:

I learned an important lesson this week:  Provide your plants with more support than they require.  Sadly, this lesson was learned in retrospect. The large eggplant has a branch collapse under it's own weight.  Eggplants really aren't self-supporting, not even the dwarf "Bambino" variety that we're growing at the moment.  Add support lines are you plant grows.  This is the reason that we always make cage-style lightstands... They give plenty of places to attach support lines.

Also... 

I've just posted another writeup in the reviews section of the website.  It's possibly everything you've ever wanted to know about those inexpensive timers you always see at the hydroponics store.  They're slightly more interesting than you'd think.  I ended up opening up one of mine in a failed experiment.  I was trying to find an inexpensive way to create a aeroponic cycle timer.  I had hoped to find a way to "speed up" the timing mechanism of the timer.  Sadly, these timers are totally analog.  Circuits are so much easier to play with than pesky gears.  Ah, well.

We should be ready to start our side-by-side study next week.  More details on that later. 

I'm still working on a new way to photograph things.  Here's the new angle this week:

We've got a lot happening this week, and even more on the way.  Let's get right to it:

I've posted two new articles this week.  The first one is all about our Hydrogen Peroxide in hydroponic gardening.  I hope it's of some help to all you with bacteria in your reservoirs.  Hydrogen Peroxide is a great way to perform a bacterial reset in your reservoir.  It  kills off all the bacteria in your water, then breaks down into water and oxygen.  It's really great stuff.  Check out our new article, Hydrogen Peroxide: The Bacterial Reset Button.

Our second article is a follow up on our do it yourself aeroponic system from a few weeks ago.  Since you're likely to want a light stand for your aeroponic system, I thought it would be a good idea to show you how to make one.  It's the most inexpensive way that I know, and will also provide support for your plants as they grow.  These two projects will give you a really solid growing system.  Additionally, it's the best way to grow "one big plant" in an aeroponic system.  As you may have seen in my photos, an eggplant has the capacity to grow quite large.  In my case, it conquered my entire TurboGarden.  In the future, I'll be growing eggplants in their own single-site units, as they tend to have a very large canopy.  I think the single-site aeroponic unit serves this need well (not to mention, I don't know of any single-site commercial units).

Also, we've done a bit of rearranging this week.  The whole hydroponics room got turned upside-down when we made room for the new aeroponic units.  Take a look at the new layout:

It took some work to make room for the new arrivals.  However, I'm overjoyed at the new layout.  You'll notice that there are two identical units on the far wall. This is going to be very important in the future.  We're going to start performing comparative side-by-side studies.  Since these units were built to be identical, we'll be able to perform some really legitimate comparisons.  Both units on the far wall are the do it yourself aeroponic system, with the matching light stand.  They are equipped with brand new lighting systems.  The lights consist of LumaTek 400 Watt Ballasts (capable of running High Pressure Sodium or Metal Halide) and HydroFarm Radiant reflectors.  We should be starting our first comparative grow in the near future.

Also, to make room, we moved the "nursery" to the other side of the room.  All the babies start out in the MegaGarden.  The MegaGarden is also the home of Jessawick's phalaenopsis orchid.  Take a look at the newly moved setup:

Since I've been getting a lot of emails from readers asking about the orchid, I thought I'd post a closer view...

Not all the flowers are open yet, but we're getting more by the day.  There is a fourth flower on the "back" side, but it's hard to see in the picture.  I don't have a particular time-frame, but I'd expect the rest of the blossoms to open in the next week or so.

In other news, things are happy and stable.  The eggplant is still a monster.  It's still dominating the TurboGarden, and doesn't seem to be slowing down.  It's about seven months old now, and it doesn't seem to realize that winter just isn't going to happen. Although I hate to admit it, I may have to kill off the eggplant in a few weeks.  Once my herd of Fort Laramie strawberries arrive, I may need the TurboGarden's 14 sites to be available.

Regarding the Do-It-Yourself department... I've been working on the PVC tube gardens once again.  I've almost finished a 14-site (10 foot) 4" tube.  I've managed to get it running using an ActiveAqua PU550.  In theory, I hope to use it for outdoor strawberries this year.  I think the long tubes are unwieldy, and would be hesitant to recommend them for indoor use (long and thin is really a pain regarding lighting).

I'm afraid that I won't be able to post the typical "overview" photos of the TurboGarden anymore...  The new layout of the room doesn't give me the angle with the camera anymore.  I'll need to invent a new angle for showing off the baby plants.

After a few months in the MegaGarden, Jessawick's orchid has started blooming.  I'm pretty pleased with it's progress.  It was in pretty bad shape before it started living in the hydroponic system, but it's quite strong these days.  Thur far, we have a single flower blooming, but more are on the way.  We've been using Technaflora nutrients in the MegaGarden for the last several months.  I've really grown to like Technaflora.  They stay "in solution" to a much greater extent than some other nutrients that we use.  Technaflora has certainly done right by our orchid.

We have a sample of Orchid Focus still sitting on the shelf.  I'd like to try it, but the MegaGarden is always supporting multiple plants.  We'll try it once we have an "orchid-only" setup.  No date set for that, as yet. 

I'll be adding plans for building a lightstand for the Do it yourself aeroponic system in the next week or so.  It all depends on how distracted I am with the PVC tube gardens.  In theory, I'll have a number of Fort Laramie strawberries on my doorstep shortly, and I'll need a home for them.

I'm reworking the design on the PVC tube gardens, to get better irrigation with the sprayers.  More on that once I figure it out...

Here's the photo for this week: