It is in the high 90's by noon and by five we hit 100 degrees here now. The past two days we had 103 with a "feels like" (according to my weather station here on the ranch) temp of 107.
Chiller was turned on and is now cycling the water reservoirs every 30 minutes. I am glad we invested the money in the RainBird controller, valves, and pump start relay back when we installed the greenhouse. This whole control system really makes water control a breeze - especially compared to what we go through in the indoor grow room.
We did complete water and nutrient changes in the greenhouse yesterday. We are still using the SNS mite control - seems to be the only one we have had any success with so far. Expensive, but it works better than others we have tried.
The blueberries are down to one plant. Hmmmm. The blackberries are looking really good. Best of the three "bush" berries. We have two raspberry plants we are trying to nurture back to health after a good infestation of mites. The strawberries are doing very well. Lost a few to crown rot but more than made up for those with all the runner plants we had growing off the other plants.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Monday, May 23, 2011
Grow 6 Update
We planted several varieties of bush tomatoes about a month ago. They have since spent about 3 weeks in the AeroFlo36 to strengthen their roots and vegetation before placing them in the PowerGrower and Ebb n Gro systems. We have high hopes that "bush" tomato plants will produce the full size tomatoes that we all want. We switched to these hybrids out of necessity. We like to grow many different plants in the grow room and when plants get so large (like the normal tomato plants) it limits our ability to grow many things at once.
We have finally dialed in success on the Roma plants. Increasing the pH to 6.9 and decreasing the nutrient levels (between 1/2 and 3/4) we have eliminated all of the leaf curl, dry-out, and otherwise sickly looking aspects of this variety. We are now picking ripe luscious Roma tomatoes almost every day.
We have to get our lettuce production going again now that we have finished growing starter plants for our friends, got new bush tomatoes transplanted, and have no room left for anything in the PowerGrower or Ebb n Grow system. That leaves my favorite plants - lettuces and small herbs for the AeroFlow. MMMMMM. Summer Salads here we come.
We have finally dialed in success on the Roma plants. Increasing the pH to 6.9 and decreasing the nutrient levels (between 1/2 and 3/4) we have eliminated all of the leaf curl, dry-out, and otherwise sickly looking aspects of this variety. We are now picking ripe luscious Roma tomatoes almost every day.
We have to get our lettuce production going again now that we have finished growing starter plants for our friends, got new bush tomatoes transplanted, and have no room left for anything in the PowerGrower or Ebb n Grow system. That leaves my favorite plants - lettuces and small herbs for the AeroFlow. MMMMMM. Summer Salads here we come.
Where Has The Month Gone
I apologize to all of you that have sent me messages asking what is happening with the various plants we are growing. We have several projects going on here at the ranch that have caused me to limit my time on the blog. Sorry for that.
We have had mixed results in the greenhouse ("Berry-House"). Several of our plants have done extremely well, others, well lets just say there are a lot of hungry bugs outside. We began spraying with some organic solutions several weeks ago on Mondays to slow them down. It did, but not completely. We have also noticed that some of our plants seem to be getting a fungal disease or something. Such is life in outdoor gardening I guess. We keep studying though and are not giving up.
The strawberries that we have picked so far have been fabulous. We are getting major runners on the plants now. One reason we only planted 5 strawberries per tray - leave room for the runners! Good thing we did - as you can see they are filling up the trays nicely.
We have had mixed results in the greenhouse ("Berry-House"). Several of our plants have done extremely well, others, well lets just say there are a lot of hungry bugs outside. We began spraying with some organic solutions several weeks ago on Mondays to slow them down. It did, but not completely. We have also noticed that some of our plants seem to be getting a fungal disease or something. Such is life in outdoor gardening I guess. We keep studying though and are not giving up.
The strawberries that we have picked so far have been fabulous. We are getting major runners on the plants now. One reason we only planted 5 strawberries per tray - leave room for the runners! Good thing we did - as you can see they are filling up the trays nicely.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)