FINALLY!

We changed a few things from our original charted rubric, it’s not a huge change, just some vegetable changes because we had a few extra sprouts of basil and bush beans.

*** this rubric is subject to change at any point as the amount of space needed may vary if more plants are put in the “vacant place holder” spaces.

Our sprout-lets let us know that they were ready to go into the hydro tent so we obliged. The peppers are, of course, taking their time so we did not plant any of those because we are waiting for them to break the surface, but everything else has come up.

Here is an overview picture of our tent with the baskets:

Here are some baskets with sprouts, we filled up the reservoir and added our first set of nutrients. We flooded the table for a bit just to get the plant’s roots wet and get them settled a bit in their new homes with the hydrocorn (things tend to shift after they are placed in the baskets). The timer is currently set for a 16 hour time cycle just like the soil tent. The water reservoir is set for 5 cycles per day currently and will be scaled back once the roots establish and the plants grow some.

They are hard to see, but I promise our little anemic plants are there in the big wide world of hydrocorn pellets.

20180128_160137

Top Row:
Brussels Sprouts/Vacant/Cucumbers

Middle Row:
Peppers (Not Yet Planted, NYP)

Bottom Row:
Peas/Pepper (NYP)/Bush Bean

Top Row:
Porterhouse Tomato/Vacant/Bell Pepper (NYP)

Middle Row:
Basil/Peppers (NYP)

Bottom Row:
Cherry Tomato/Lettuce types

The lettuce box was established…

So what we have here is (from left to right):

Romaine / Burpee Bibb / Grand Rapids / Buttercrunch / Red Romaine

Based on how the lettuce box grew last year, I am sure that we should have quite a nice flourishing crop this year.

I followed the first week schedule for the Roots Organics feeding system and found that the worm castings in the Buddha Grow product settled in the bottom of our reservoir. The worm casting sludge is not a big deal, but does make for a messy cleanup from week to week when I change out the water and re-fertilize the plants for the next week. Overall, I will have to make sure to check the water feed lines well just in case they get clogged with the worm castings during their daily watering. Midway through the week I found that I had to add water to my reservoir, which I find to be serendipitous as I had planned to water down the reservoir halfway through the week in order to start flushing for the new additives by the time the fertilizer change out is to occur regardless. Currently, the timers are set to water once per day.

The light timers are currently set for 16 hours per day during the vegetative cycle. We could leave the lights on for a 24 hour cycle, but the lights are set for 16 hour cycles so that the plants are not too freaked out when the change over to a 12 hour light cycle happens during the bloom cycle.

The plants seem to be thriving well, so without further ado, here are some wonderful bragging pictures from the top of the soil structure to bottom: