Baby Tomatoes in Rockwool

Four days and counting and the little baby tomato plants start popping out of their seeds and stick up their baby cotyledon" leaves. These will be followed after a while by the true leaves. But it's always great to see the little ones pop out of their seeds and get started.
I've mixed up a gallon of normal strength nutrient but I typically cut it 4:1 with water when I'm first starting. I don't want to hit the little baby tomato plants with too much nutrient strength.

Finally Getting Around To It

Procrastination is the name of the game. I am only now finally getting around to seeding my tomato plants. Yeah, yeah, yeah ... I know I should have done it at the end of last month or maybe even earlier. Better late than never. Now I have to get going. Here's what I seeded in a matrix of 11 rows and 8 columns. We'll see what comes up.

My procedure is to take a sheet of small rockwook cubes. I use really small ones if I can, about 3/4 inch on a side and about 1 1/2 inches tall. They come in a sheet. I then saturate the sheet with them all together in fresh water and then put seeds into the individual cubes. At this point I don't use any nutrient but I put the rockwool sheet in an aluminum pan (one of those disposable kind of pans they sell to cook brownies in at the store) and flood the pan with some dilute nutrient so that some nutrition, but not at high levels, wicks up through the rockwool to the plants.
There are a couple of rows in there that are there just for curiosity. Row 1 has five French Dona seeds from 2005 to see if they will germinate. Maybe not, but you never know. Row 3 is a row of old pepper seeds that I think I harvested from some jalapenos I grew a couple of years ago. I just found them in the basement so I thought I'd take a chance. Then Row 4 is a row of seeds harvested some unknown time ago from green peppers bought at the store. Probably none of these will germinate, but then I'll know.
I'm thinking about doing a germination experiment just for the fun of it because I never throw out the seeds I don't use, so I have seeds going back a number of years, often of the same varieties. Science is fun!

Time to get going ...

Well I've been sitting around doing not much for a while now so far as hydroponics is concerned. But now that exams are finished, grades are in, and all the 2009 graduates march on Sunday at the college I teach at, I'm quickly running out of excuses not to get to work on my hydroponics system for the Summer.
I've mentioned that it's going to be a passive system, probably several passive systems so I can compare them to see how relatively effective they are. I'm planning to do maybe 1) a smart valve system, 2) a wick system, 3) some kind of float system and put pretty much the same plant varieties in each. That way I'll be able to compare the system effectiveness. I was also thinking about doing some nutrient experiments.
Some years ago when there was a pretty active hydroponics listserv on the web, there was a fellow in California I think who was always trying to grow hydroponically with a mixture of Miracle Grow and Epson Salts. I thought it might be fun to experiment with that as a nutrient system too, just for the fun of it. Generally though I've been really happy with TotalGro's Steiner mix. I think I talked about that in an earlier post.
The last day to expect frost here in the Shenandoah Valley is May 17th which just happens to be the day our new graduates walk. So I'm expecting to get really serious next week.

Nutrient Issues

The one nutrient issue that I've run into in my ten some years growing hydroponically is the concentration issue. You can't have a liquid concentrate of hydroponic nutrient solution that delivers all the nutrients you need (at least none of the systems I've tried works as a single concentrate). The reason is that in concentrations some of the non-organic ionic compounds will change their loyalty and chemically reaction with other ions to precipitate out some of the important nutrients. This is undoubtedly a complex concentration related and perhaps pH related process as well, but take my word for it.
The result is that if you get nutrients in concentrated form but multiple solutions, there's a reason. Don't mix them in concentrated form. Instead add them separately to your diluted nutrient solution so you don't precipitate out any of the ionic compounds.
This also applies to single nutrient concentrates delivered in powered form. If you try to make life simpler by mixing them up in a concentrate they will precipitate out some of the nutrients and you'll end up with nutrient deficiencies. I know. It happened to me and I didn't realize what had happened until I read the fine print. Of course the fact that my plants were all deformed was a clue.

Warmth ...

It was actually warm today. I guess the Winter will be over soon. That usually means it is time to really start getting serious about this hydroponics thing. I was down in the basement today looking at rockwool cubes. I usually start my plants in 1" rockwool cubes with some dilute nutrient. There isn't much point in getting them started too early since then they just get large and unruly and if you don't have a place for them they end up all snarled and tangled together and you have a devil's own time getting them separated. So I'm not starting any seeds just yet. I'll probably wait until April sometime, maybe towards the end. Our last day for a freeze/frost in Harrisonburg is about May 17th ... although even then I've had some close calls. One year I pushed the season a day or two and ended up with most of my plants frozen and the nutrient feed tubes had frozen and I pumped all the nutrient out of the tank onto the ground. Bad day in Black Rock! So that has discouraged me from pushing the date too much.

This year there is a bit more to think about since I don't have a complete design for a series of passive systems. I'm not too concerned since some will be really easy (wick systems are that way) but some of the smart valve and modified float valve systems I'm thinking of still have some design time and some fabrication. That can probably wait until early May when I finish up at the college. As the Spring gets closer, the anticipation gets higher. I really love this hobby!

Seeds

Something about getting seeds in the mail in the middle of Winter when it is freezing cold makes Spring seem all that much closer. I now have about eight or nine tomato varieties to pick from and that becomes sort of the basis for targeting the system design.

Seeds are a wonder anyway. I always enjoy getting them started a little early. A few years ago I started growing my seedlings indoors under a GH lamp starting around late April to put out after the chance of frost had ended. Here in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, that's around May 16th. In the meantime I'm daydreaming about what the coming system will be like.

Hydroponics as a Spiritual Experience

I got started working on hydroponics because I didn't like digging and weeding. Besides that I'm a techie and we like to make measurements, build things, and just figure out how things work. It's a lot of fun. Hydroponics was a natural. So when I started fooling around with it now about thirteen years ago it was a never stopping kick, each different system, each different plant or instrument was a different adventure.

Now I think all work is fundamentally spiritual. We are creative beings and we imitate our creator as Tolkien pointed out with our ability to subcreate. We can't create from nothing as God can, but we can create marvelous things by manipulating the elements of God's creation that He has made available to us.

But there's another dimension beyond our own subcreation and that is the reflection on close inspection of God's own creation. St. Paul says in Romans 1:20 "For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; ..."

As one tends one's hydroponics system the wonder of plant growth is a constant revelation. I encountered a picture on the internet of dew drops on leaves of grass and I've added a picture of just one drop of dew here. The wonder is everywhere and it fills up one's spirit.