During our 2017 season we had some good and some bad experiences.

Believe it or not, this all started because I wanted broccoli.  Pretty expensive venture for some broccoli, huh?

A majority of the equipment was purchased from HTG, which I highly recommend.  The rest were add on pieces that were scrambled together from various places like Homestead Gardens and Tractor Supply.

During this season, since it was our first one, the decision was to grow a variety of things that have different requirements to push the limits of our growing rig and discover how the various types of equipment would affect the growth of the plants.

About halfway through the season we noticed that we were having some wilt and brown spots.  As it turned out, we discovered the absorption rate of the rock wool was too great and we were flooding the tables too often.  We cut our flooding times down from six times a day to four and the problem resolved itself in a matter of days.

The rock wool develops an incredible amount of algae with the light exposure.  Next season, we will use more of the panda film to limit the amount of light exposure to the plant potters and roots.

Overall it was incredible first season.  Here are some of our bragging pictures:

The start of the season:

Cucumbers!
Almost weekly we designated a time for pollination.

Tomato!  Supposedly the easiest type of plant to grow indoors. Although, we discovered that certain heirloom tomato varieties did not flourish like some of the cultivars.

Other stuff!  Cabbage, peas, Brussels sprouts, and peppers!

 

Overall, we had enough produce from the garden to provide us with all of the produce we needed, plus some, during the winter 2017 season we had enough produce from the garden to provide us with all of the produce we needed (plus some) so regardless of whether we did it the “right way,” it was a win-win.