Aquaponics - Mini seed raising grow house success

It's well over a month since I wrote a post on seed raising, where I tried my current method for the first time.

I think it's a success.

I planted fifteen cups with perhaps two or three basil seeds in each. From that I got around thirty sprouts with every cup having at least one successful sprout. I'm not sure what the normal germination rates are for basil, but that's good enough for me.

The main advantage is that they are planted directly in the posts they will spend their entire lives in, so they wont get disturbed with transplanting.

I've since removed two sprouts and planted the pots with lettuce, with each one planted about 10 days apart. (a new lettuce cup is in there now to the left of centre) This means that, since the basil sprouted, I've planted, sprouted, and moved out two cups with cos lettuce in the time the basil has taken for the basil to have grown enough to be ready to move.

Here's one coz lettuce I just moved.

There are three seedlings in it, and I'm pretty sure I put three seeds in, so my method seems to be working fine.

I'll probably take the smallest one out, but my experience with three or more spinach seedlings in the one cup says it should be fine. I repeat harvest spinach and lettuce, so the plants never get to full size, but if one get's too big, I'll just harvest the excess and just leave one per pot. Whole small coz leaves make great Caesar salad.

This is another cos lettuce cup I moved ten days ago or so.

The cos lettuce seedlings I grew without covering the seed at all. I just dropped them on the surface, and put the lid on the mini seed raising growhouse. The condensation rain was enough to keep them wet enough to grow roots long enough to touch the water. That's enough enoughs.





It's also interesting that it's the original water in the mini seed raising grow house, that is now around five weeks old with no signs of it going off or tuning green.

So here is my official seed raising guide...




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120 Things in 20 years Seed raising guide 2011        Page 1 of 1  



Put a seed on top of a pot filled with scoria.
Put the pot into a mini seed raising growhouse with an inch deep of fish tank water in it.




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You can print that out and make a calendar with it if you like.


120 things in 20 years. Not just empty space and success with mini seed raising grow houses for aquaponics, but so much more.