Microgreens Finale

Well the ones that seemed to be doing best all died overnight.

The soil was completely dry.  I am guessing their usage of water increased exponentially as they grew.  I did not water them the last day because the soil seemed damp the day before.

The other batch did fine, and we ate them served over tilapia.

I'm guessing the plastic lid helped keep a lot of moisture locked in.  I will incorporate that into future microgreen growing operations (maybe coupled with some sort of automatic watering system).

The ones that we ate were delicious.

Microgreens update 4

Here are 3 pictures from Sept 26-28th.

These greens are looking really good. If I could separate them without killing most of them I would just plant them somewhere and let them grow into full sized lettuce.

My other set:

They look good, not quite as tall and full as the ones in the clear plastic tray but still these look healthy.

The only major difference in the two were was a plastic cover over the larger tray.  They used the same soil mixture (3/4ths potting soil mixed with 1/4 peat).  They received the exact same amount of light (24 hours the first 3 days, then 12/12 from then on).

We are planning on serving them with some fish on Thursday night.  I have sampled them and they taste delicious already.

Microgreens update 3 + hydroponics

My microgreens are looking amazing under the lights.  The last 2 days I have been running the lights for roughly 14-18 on, and the rest of the time off, depending on what time I remember to shut them off (must get timer soon).

Here they are on Sept 24th:

And here they are today (25th):

They still aren't getting tall.  There must be some kind of perfect stress level where they get enough light not to fall over and die but not enough to stretch up and grow tall, unless there's going to be a growth spurt later on.

I bought a Fig tree clone at Pepper Place market yesterday from a very nice old Japanese man whom, despite being his first year selling bonsai fruit trees, knew a lot about what to do and he explained it to me in great detail.  I think I remember most of what he told me.  As a bonus he gave me some peat pellets and let me keep the plastic root ball container that you put around the branch.  By applying rooting hormone I can use this plastic ball around a new cutting and make a brand new tree from a healthy branch.

Pictures:

Looks like a pretty healthy plant.  I put it in the shade near the north side of my house so that it can acclimate to the pot first, then i'm going to move it out into the sun.  I will probably keep it in the pot through the winter (I can bring it inside during really cold nights) and let it's root system build up then transplant into my yard sometime early next spring.  It's probably a few years away from producing edible fruit but it will be interesting to observe.

Lastly, here is a 'dry' run of my hydroponics system    *video removed, sorry* :( .  I probably spent about $40 on this.  I actually have 2 rails with 3 holes each for a total of 6 plants.  I am going to try one of each:  Kale, Arugula, Buttercrunch Lettuce, Collards, Mustard Greens, and Spinach and will document the results.  As long as I can figure out the proper nutrient amounts I am thinking this will be a big success.

Still need:

Rockwool/Rapid Rooter/Oasis cubes for holding the seed.  (Jiffy Pellets are apparently great for soil but terrible for hydroponics).

1/2" drill bit so I can drop that tubing down into the end of the pipe.

A pH meter.

Hoping to have this all set up by next weekend.

Microgreen update

2nd round of microgreens are still growing.  Not getting taller, but they look extremely healthy.

The 24 hour light experiment has been interesting.  I'm starting to think they need that darkness to grow upwards, and that when the plant stops photosynthesis it begins stretching to find the light again.  This could be a natural reaction to growing into a shaded area, the plant would grow taller to try and reach the light again.

I will get a timer this weekend and set up my next batch to run off of it.

So far I am extremely pleased with my t8 fluorescent lights, I am thinking they will be perfect for the full fledged lettuce hydroponics system.  Already considering buying a few more narrower units (2 bulb instead of 4 bulb) which will fit on the lower shelves (this unit is too wide) so that I can have multiple germination trays running at once.  I will try and take a picture of my whole setup in a few days.

Microgreens attempt #2

First off here's a picture of the wheatgrass smoothie I made from that wheatgrass I grew last week:

I finally received a shipment of Hydroton so my first hydroponics setup should be happening very soon.  The only big thing I really need now is a pH tester, which is fairly important for the whole setup.

Typically when planting into hydroton you will use some sort of pellet or cube of material to hold your seedling.  Most people use Jiffy Pellets or rockwool or some established type of growing medium.  I've been debating using Sure To Grow which is a pH inert plastic fiber cube.  My only hangup is that they are not reusable.  Granted rockwool isn't either, but at least for rockwool or some type of peat pellets I can buy them nearby.  Sure To Grow I would have to reorder every time I ran out.

Hydroton is the same, but you are able to wash the clay balls and reuse them a few times.  Supposedly roots will eventually pierce the hardened clay and can mess up plants after several reuses, but at least I can get a few good grows out of them.

I have a huge variety of lettuce and other greens ready to go.  With only 6 'holes' in my first system (a custom built NFT), it's going to be hard figuring out what to grow.  I went ahead and planted about half a packet's worth of various lettuce seeds in my garden, spacing them out into several rows.  I will go back and pick the weaker ones out when they begin to sprout to give the best looking ones a good chance.  The weather is damp and mild (mid 70's most of the day), which lettuce enjoys.  Hopefully another heat wave won't come by and spoil the crop.

Pictures of my latest microgreen experiement.

This time I am using the light I plan on using for my lettuce hydroponics experiment and leaving it on 24 hours a day.  I am going to get a timer for the light when I switch over to hydroponics and run that light 18 on, 6 off, even though that's a bit longer than the natural day, plants seem to thrive off the extra light per day.  The light isn't anything special, it is a 48" 4 slot t8 fluorescent workshop light i bought at Lowes for about $40, and I am using GE 'Solar' t8 bulbs which put out 2900 lumens each of a color temperature around 5000k (those were only about $6 for a pack of 2).  Not great for flowering but from what i've read, should be perfect for growing lettuce.

I've been reading up on the work done by Travis Hughey who has been experimenting and designing aquaponics systems for many years.  If you are interested in aquaponics I highly encourage you to check out his Barrel-ponics manual that he provides for free on his website here:

http://www.fastonline.org/content/view/15/29/

A great design with a lot of useable ideas.  I just need to figure out how to get ahold of some blue plastic 55 gallon barrels...

A microgreen/wheatgrass experiment

While building my first hydroponics system (NFT) I've been experimenting with growing microgreens and wheatgrass, two things you can do indoors in windowsills and in areas with moderate light.

So this is what I started out with.  A tupperware tray with some soil from my garden in it.  In the back are little toilet paper cardboard tubes that I cut up and packed with soil and a tiny seed.  In the front part I sprinkled an entire packet of spring mix lettuce.  I watered the entire tray until it was fairly soaked.  I tried not to overwater and I think I was fairly successful.  In the back there are some drying basil leaves and in the front is a small cardboard tray filled with a thin layer of soil that I sprinkled some wheatgrass seeds (wheat berries) onto.

Looks pretty but it didn't work out very well.  I decided to dump this into a bigger glass casserole dish and put more wheatgrass seeds into it.  I also soaked my wheatgrass seed in a glass of water overnight.

The new wheatgrass tray is over to the right.  In the middle is a standard Jiffy Germination tray that I bought at a garden store.  It has 36 Jiffy Peat Pots which expand when you fill the tray with water.  I've read that you should just fill the tray up, let sit for about 5 minutes, then pour off the excess water.  Give each pellet a light squeeze and if a small amount of water comes out, they are ready.  I loaded each tray with a variety of seeds ranging from Arugula, Collards, Mustard Greens, Spinach, and Lettuce.  Then I covered it.

A few days into it and microgreens were popping up in the tupperware tray.

The wheatgrass was doing exceptionally well too.

There are little sprouts in my jiffy pots, too.

Unfortunately I didn't give the Jiffy pot seedlings or the tupperware tray seedlings enough light.  They became tall, stringy, and weak, and after about 5 days, were falling over and dying.  I pulled them all up.  Instead of reusing the jiffy pots I opened each by cutting off the netting (or just pulling it off with my fingers) and took all the peat and mixed it in with some potting soil.

The wheatgrass however was a different story.

I was amazed at how fast and well it grew.  Nearly every berry planted turned into an 8 inch high blade of grass.  I lightly watered the dish they were in every 2 days or so, when the top became very dry, but they really didn't need much else.  I put them under a desk lamp I have with a CFL bulb in it but I don't even think they needed that.

I ended up making a wheatgrass smoothie with 2 bananas, about 1/2 cup of orange juice, and all the wheatgrass from that tray.  The bananas were a bit much, I probably only should have used 1, I couldn't even taste the wheatgrass, which I hear tastes awful to some people (they probably drink it straight, however).  I did feel pretty good the rest of the morning after drinking that shake, wheatgrass may not be a miracle cure for everything as some suggest but it is loaded with nutrients, roughly the same amount as in a serving of broccoli or spinach.  Amazing that it only grows in 8 days for the cost of a $1 packet of seeds.

Growing it gave me an interesting experience in waiting for food.  Ultimately I am going to be waiting weeks or even months for things I plant to produce something edible.  In this culture we can pretty much get food on demand, and that has desensitized a lot of people to what is really required to put food on their plates.

The plan

I became interested in hydroponics several months ago after seeing a video on Will Allen, a former NBA player who decided to go back to doing what he loved, which was farming, and began experimenting in aquaponics to grow vegetables and fish in the same space.

(Aquaponics = Aquaculture, or the raising of fish and other organisms that live in water + hydroponics, which is the process of growing plants without soil).

Here is a video of Will Allen and Growing Power, which is his urban farm + education center in Milwaukee:

At the time I didn't think full fledged aquaponics was an attainable goal for me but I have since changed my mind.  It's actually quite doable, and no more complicated than maintaining a large aquarium.

In the past few months I have given myself a crash course in horticulture and hydroponics, learning the science behind them as well as many techniques people employ.  I think one of the things that attracts me to it is how young this field is.  It's barely 60 years old and people are still innovating and improving the art.  One thing that makes you know the field is still new and fresh, there is no 'standard' big corporation hydroponic setup aside from a few manufactured systems like Crop King and the like (which I think are still great in what they do).   It is still very much in the hobby phase.  I suppose like the early automobiles that were hand crafted by blacksmiths, and personal computers which were built on wooden breadboards, someone huge will eventually step in and dominate the market, but that hasn't happened yet.  Looking at hundreds of different setups that people share on the internet, every single system out there is custom designed by people browsing the aisles at Home Depot, Lowes, Ace Hardware, and other stores in their area.  The parts are all off the shelf, although there is an increase in specialty shops on the internet that make specific fittings or tools.  Nearly everything needed for hydroponics can be done cheaply by anyone.