The Mini Jungle Saga Continues — Tiny Tomatoes

Not sure what to do with this little mini-jungle that's been developing.  One problem is that it has now reached the point where it might be unsustainable since it's gobbling up nutrient at about a gallon a day, well maybe a smidge less.  If you forget to check the plants can get droopy really fast.  This afternoon I went to check that the rockwool was getting fairly dry (I must have forgotten to put nutrient on them yesterday) so I filled the tray and after a couple of hours they were back.  But I imagine that that kind of stress is not good for them.

Now they have little tomatoes on a lot of them, which makes them all that much more difficult to just sacrifice.  See picture.  Jessica found a bunch of pots and is lobbying to put them into pots.  That might work but the shock from separating the plants might be a problem.

I'm currently thinking of it as an experiment in plant crowding.  How's that for a rationale for screwing up?  It's also an experiment in just adding nutrient to rockwool without any flow.  The oxygenation doesn't seem as if it ought to be very good, but the plants don't look all that bad given the crowding and the sporadic watering.

The Price of Delay

Back on April 8th I posted a picture of the original 1 inch rockwool cubes that I seeded with about four different kinds of tomato plants.  SEE HERE Well a small problem developed.  We decided to move and bought a house about 40 miles North and that made it difficult to decide how to proceed with the Summer 2012 Hydroponics adventure.  The short term solution was procrastinate but keep the plants going with nutrient.  So there they are as of today ... a dense clump of tomato plants, the smallest "jungle" I've created to date.  They are healthy but now thoroughly intertwined so that if I separate them I'll destroy a lot of developed roots.

The bottom line is that we bought a house and are very busy transferring stuff from this one to that one and this clump is living on our back screen porch just outside the door on a railing overlooking the backyard.  It's pretty cool but it is now absorbing about half a gallon of nutrient a day and will likely increase and I'm not quite sure what to do with it.  You get attached to your plants and don't like sacrificing them.  So I'm currently trying to figure out what to do with a mini-jungle of about twenty-four tomato plants all growing in less than one square foot of 1 inch rockwool cubes mounted in a shallow plastic container.  Stay tuned!

Lights and Reflectors

Grow lights are a great way to grow indoors. I've not done a lot of it although I have a couple of security lights which can double as grow lights. When I first did some of this I was amazed to discover how little light fluorescent lights put out. They have to be just a few inches from the plants and then they only provide enough light for deep shade. High pressure sodium (HPS) puts out a lot more light and so does metal halide (MH). I've fooled around with both a little, mostly to start seeds before it is warm enough to put the plants in the back yard. Nate Lipton from GrowersHouse.com sent me a link to a piece on reflectors. For the technically inclined this is great fun. For others it might just be important to know that if you're using an expensive high-powered light you really don't want it going all over the place, just on your plants. So the efficiency of reflectors is important. Check out their site for other stuff if you're so inclined.

Feeding 16 was never so easy!

SEE HERE I've always liked the idea of geodesic domes as greenhouses. This is an interesting aquaponics system that uses a geodesic dome.

April Musings ... Rockwool Cubes and All That

Well here we are on Easter Sunday, April 8th, 2012.  Around April 3rd I finally got off my duff and planted some seeds in rockwool cubes.  First I soaked the rockwool cubes in water for a day pouring off one charge of water and adding another.  This is good practice to make sure the pH of the rockwool cubes isn't too high.

Then I seeded them with three kinds of seeds: Abe Lincolns, Better Boy hybrids, and Best Boy hybrids, eight each for a total of 24 rockwool cubes in a matrix 4x6.  Here's what they look like now. (see below)

They are currently in a plastic container which I cover and sit near a Southern exposure window since I'm too lazy to keep track of what nights it is going to be cold.  I made up a gallon of weak nutrient, about one-sixth standard growing strength (a teaspoon of concentrate of the blue and the white instead of an ounce) and here's a picture of the nutrient and the container when it is closed.

Then I was walking around my hydroponics design stores (Home Depot and Lowes) and was looking for a "greenhouse".  Of course nothing is as it seems.  A "greenhouse" is something that can be used as a baby greenhouse.  There are lots of clear plastic containers that seem to fit the bill and then I saw a cute thing, an inexpensive radio thermometer which will radio in your outside temperature to display inside.  Wow, I thought.  That's a neat way to create a baby greenhouse and monitor.  So here's a picture of the sensor.  (I already have one on my screen porch so I thought if I put the baby greenhouse out there and the extra temperature monitor then I'll be able to see the difference between the temperature in the screenroom and the temperature in the baby green house on the screen porch.  So here's picture of the sensor (about $25)

And this is the baby greenhouse.  Right now the sensor it out on the screen porch inside the baby greenhouse while the plants are in the house still.  I'll wait until they get a little bigger before putting them out. Here's the greenhouse.  It's just one of those clear plastic containers which you can put outside upside down.  We'll soon see how this works.

Since my camera has a macro capability here is a close up of the two tomato plants best expressing their baby leaves.  So far things are going well.  I'll keep you abreast of the adventure of the baby green house.

Thinking ... It's Winter!

Winter is the time between systems.  This past year without a hydroponics system reminded me in spades why I went over to hydroponics in the first place.  No weeds, fewer bugs, I've yet to have a slug climb up to the plants in the NFT systems.  The result is much better and uniform fruit and higher yields.  What's not to like about that?  But you do get more tomatoes than you can comfortably eat yourself.  The secret (well not so secret) is that beautiful tomatoes are a cinch to give away.  The only problem is people keep coming back for more and are disappointed when they're all gone.  This year Jessica (the better half, often referred to as "The Boss" or "She who must be obeyed") has informed me that I'm to build at least a one tube system because that produces as many tomatoes as she wants and make sure that you plant big ones, not those French Dona's you're so fond of.  Nothing opinionated about that right?  Well a one tube system or even a half tube system is a cinch.  I'll make a little figure to show what the minimum one tube system looks like.  There it is at the top of the post.  Simple really.

The Season's End

Sooner or later you end the season and we've had a couple of overnight cold snaps and the garden in the ground, only the second I've done is quite a few years, is now history. Putting down newspaper and straw kept the weeds down but the garden was plagued by bugs and grubs and things that generally make tomatoes unappetizing although I'm a master at cutting out the bad parts. I've been too lazy to do the final update and roll up the statistics so maybe I'll do that later.

Right now, this year's experience has made me appreciate hydroponics all the more.  I never had grubs and bugs in a hydroponics system like I did in the ground.  I suppose I could have sprayed or something.  Not sure what would have worked.  Overall I had more tomatoes than I knew what to do with.  Jessica said that next year I should just do one tube (seven plants) and that would produce more tomatoes than we'd know what to do with and not be a very difficult system to set up and maintain.  That's definitely a thought.  A one tube NFT system would be fun and easy, so maybe that's what I'll do.  I certainly don't need the kind of production I get off a six tube system and the six tube system is a bit of a pain to set up.  It's not really hard except for the overheads.  The one problem with a one tube system is that I'll probably have to guy-wire the overhead support system since it will just be a single inverted "U" structure which will have no lateral stability unless it is guyed.