Tomato News

The Cherry Toms have continued to sprout flowers all over each plant.  Roma Toms continue to baffle me a bit.  Roma in the AeroFlo36 has made a great comeback but still is slower than the Cherry was in the AeroFlo36.  We are suffering from "leaf curl" with the PowerGrower Roma and I need to get the books out tonight to research a solution.  Funny thing is, it actually sported its first flower yesterday.

Roma in PowerGrower - notice "leaf curl"

Cherry Toms in PowerGrower - adding flowers daily

Roma "kickback" adding veg, no flowers, no leaf curl.  Hmmm

I have continued pulling suckers off the Cherry Tom plants and now that the CO2 is back on in the room we have seen more growth than ever before.  After no CO2 for a week, you can really notice the difference in the veg that was added during this week now that it is back on.  Lesson learned - if you want it to grow bigger and faster, add CO2.  We run 1500 ppm.

Grow 1 and 2 Plants Exploding

Our AeroFlo36 and PowerGrower continue prove themselves as very good investments.  Not only have we seen great progress on our Grow 2 plants placed in the AeroFlo36 but also the two plants (Roma Tom and Basil) that we kicked back from the PowerGrower from Grow 1 that we thought would die.  Check out the root mass now on the Grow 1 Basil that is recovering nicely:

The Arugula adds more leaves every day while the Yellow Peppers aren't far behind in veg.  I  must find a home for these peppers in the PowerGrower soon (or maybe an Ebb and Flow system test?  Hmmm).  That little Leek in P1 below next to the yellow peppers is sporting good growth too.

The Buttercrunch lettuce seems to just love the AeroFlo36 as seedlings from Grow 2 are doing wonderfully. Our original Buttercrunch plant from Grow 1 is getting huge in the PowerGrower.  It may be salad time for that one in the next week.  The Buttercrunch from Grow 1 was planted as a seed on Sept. 18.  Wow, seven weeks from seed to table.  Try that in dirt!

We can't leave out the Basil......so hard to get fresh Basil where I live, not to mention Italian Parsley!  I "staked" the Basil plant tonight as it was getting a little top heavy.  Another lesson learned.  STG hail is a great medium until you start using it for tall, heavy plants.  It is light and fluffy....and unless you really pack it in (and I mean really!), it seems as it has a problem supporting these plants.  Haven't tried those little pebbles (Hydroton) yet as it has a lot of pre-use maintenance.  Maybe another test to add in the book...(Ebb & Flow, Hyrdoton, LED???)

Grow 2 Is Going Green

And we couldn't be happier.....Even the parsley germinated in Grow 2!  The buttercrunch, romaine, and arugula are now at a point where we will begin to "weed out" the small sprouts and leave one per cube for transfer into the AeroFlo36.  The cherry and roma tomatoes from Grow 1 are getting bigger every day.  We will transplant them into the PowerGrower when we move the Grow 2 seedlings.  We are anticipating the move in another week.  We want to see a few roots exiting the Rockwool cubes before we move the seedlings.



AeroFlo36 Stats:  pH 6.4  ppm 802
Environment:  Temp 76, Hum 31%

Still have not received the Nutramist Fogger!

Grow 1 Plants in AeroFlo36

We continue to see great progress on the Cherry and Roma tomatoes in the AeroFlo36 system from the first seed germination (Grow 1).   Cherry tomatoes (on left in photo) are growing 2 to 3 leaves every day.  Roma in back right of photo looked like it wasn't going to make it when first put into the AeroFlo36 but has made a surprising comeback.  Front right Roma continues to gain height and leaves daily.

Basil from Grow 1 also has increased in height and puts 1 to 2 leaves on every day or so.   We are excited to see such progress on these Grow 1 plants as the germination stage was abysmal for these plants.

Grow Room & Seed Germination Update

Grow Room Update 
Equipment shown in the video was acquired from a local grow shop - great educational resource, and retailers with an Internet presence.  Special thanks to Texas Hydroponics (www.texashydroponics.com), Growco (www.4hydroponics.com) out of Michigan, and Discount Hydroponics (http://discounthydroponics.com/) out of California for all the great service, selection, and information provided to make our grow room the best we could.  Other miscellaneous items acquired locally or had on hand.  I am sure that some would go the DIY approach on some of these systems, I wanted to take the "proven" systems and used them first, then experiment with self constructed systems.  You sure can learn a lot from the pros, and they deserve to be paid for all those years of R&D.




We finished the grow room ducting yesterday and as you can see in the video we are now in production.  

First Seed Germination
Our first germination started several weeks ago and produced less than expected results.  We used STG seed cubes and got about 25-30% of the seeds to germinate.  I think we know where we went wrong.  The process we used included:
    1.  Wet all cubes in the slab with pH corrected R.O. water, no nutrients
    2.  Drained excess water from the propagation tray (did not "squeeze" the cubes)
    3.  Placed seeds in cubes at depth indicated on seed packet
    4.  Placed humidity dome on the tray
    4.  Placed propagation tray under T5 light, 16 hours on, 8 hours off
Although we had good rates on the Cherry and Roma tomato plants, the rest didn't come out well.  We started to see fungus / algae / mold on top of the cubes.  I think due to the high humidity under the dome and poor air circulation in the tray itself (we used the entire block of 98 cubes in the package).  After a few weeks, we picked the best 12 seedlings and placed them in the AeroFlow36 system under lights on 16 on / 8 off cycle.  We also cranked on the CO2 system to deliver 1500 ppm in the room.

Second Seed Germination
After assuming we had to much humidity, no airflow, and perhaps too much water in the propagation tray, we switched strategies for the second planting.  We selected the Rockwool plugs in a 50 count divided tray.  After soaking the Rockwool plugs over night in the conditioning solution - noted below - we placed seeds in the plugs at appropriate depths, replaced the humidity dome and left the T5 over the tray off.

After 2 days we began to see sprouts on the buttercrunch lettuce, romain lettuce, and arugula.  I waited one more day (today) and saw that we had initial leaves on the same, so I turned on the T5 for 16 on / 8 off cycle.  We still do not have germination on the peppers, leeks, fennel, or parsley which all have longer germination rates.  Will update as we get them.