Aquaponics - PVC Tube tomato

My PVC tube tomato seems to have found it's feet.

It took a while after I removed all but four or so leaves on each of the four plants that make up this particular experiment.

 It's probably back to around what it looked like four weeks ago.

By my standards, that actually constitutes success.





On a side note, the foliage in the background is the grow bed that I emptied and flooded around five weeks ago (flooded to get any slugs out).

That's lettuce you can see, and we've been cutting a salad a day from just that right hand side. The left hand side was Bok Choy, but that all went to seed, and has since been fed to my worms.

When I put the seedlings in (bought from a shop) I also sprinkled some mixed lettuce seeds around.

It looks like this five weeks later.

We've been harvesting from the front, and you can see some of the seedlings from the seeds are looking a little weak because they have been struggling for light, but now they have some, they will spring to life.

In summer, and harvesting a light lunch size salad each day, (in Adelaide South Australia at least) we found you need around half a blue barrel worth of growbed real estate, as long as you seed every week.

I like coz lettuce because it can be harvested as it grows (ie just cutting off leaves rather than pulling up the plant) , but these loose leaf varieties are proving to be quick growing, and can also be repeat harvested. if you drop seeds in around the seedlings when the seedlings are around the size you buy them at, the seeds are seedlings when the lettuce has been repeat harvested as much as it can, and finally gets pulled out.  I just read that again, and I think all that means something. 

The leaves get bitter toward the end of the lettuce life cycle as they are about to go to seed. The leaves  also grow further apart. So once they start growing from a stalk rather than from a central point at the base, it's time to pull the plant up, and let the light in to the little ones, that are by this time the size of the store bought seedlings.

I don't think I've ever grown the iceberg style lettuce that grows like a cabbage, so I don't know if you can repeat harvest that, but I suspect not. 

I used to take a lot of care with growing lettuce seedlings, and transplanting them, but now all I do is put a stack of different seeds into a jar, and sprinkle a pinch of them around directly into the growbed. 

I suspect the clay balls are better than scoria when you direct seed. I think the seed (especially small seeds like lettuce) fall down until they stick to the side of the media once it's deep enough that the media is damp. 

I suspect that's just right as far ar growing goes. 

Perhaps with scoria, the seeds catch in the holes in the media before they get to the correct depth. 

Or it could just be luck, but I'm seeing much better germination rates in the clay ball media. 

But it's also a constant flood grow bed, so perhaps that's got something to do with it as well. 

120 Things in 20 years - Results, but no science to back it. Oh, and also PVC Aquaponics tomatoes.

Aquaponics - NFT coz lettuce

My original, repeat harvest coz lettuce are at the end of their productive life, and have to be retired.

This is the first time I've been able to check to see how my plastic cup system is working.

I let a few go to seed so I can collect it for ongoing production, but all I need is one plant because they produce so much seed. The result is I'm ripping up and composting the rest.

They have a fair size root system, although nothing compared to the spinach that was only half their age.

This is the root ball that was inside the cup.

I'll need to learn a little more about lettuce, and make sure that it's not this tight root mass that's causing the plants to go to seed.

It doesn't really matter if it is, because we got a stack of lettuce from them as we were harvesting them as they grew by just cutting leaves as we need them.

The lettuce required quite a pull to get it out from the plastic cup as the plant had expanded, and pushed the grow media (scoria) into the sides of it. If I hadn't let them grow on and go to seed, this wouldn't have been as much of an issue. The stems get quite think and woody as they get older.

As usual this camera doesn't do a very good job of low contrast subjects, but I think you can see it a bit.

The cups all came out in reusable condition and I'll let them dry out in the sun to kill off any mould or beasties growing on them, and then reuse them for another batch.

In the mean time I've been planting their replacements for a while now, and have eight or so at various stages of development.

This time I plan on not taking leaves off as they grow, but rather waiting until they form a heart, and harvesting the entire plant at once.

The vague plan is to make some kind of comparison.



120 things in 20 years, not just Aquaponics - NFT coz lettuce

Aquaponics - Coz lettuce

My coz lettuce look fake.

I'm pretty sure they're not, because we eat them every day, but they look it.

In fact they look so fake I'm wondering if that's why the supermarket versions look the way they do.

Perhaps they leave out the iron or something in the plants diet so they look less like plastic lettuce and more like the lettuce I'm more familiar with.

My lettuce look so fake they actually look like a cross between spinach and cos lettuce.

But they really are cos lettuce.