Adam's Hydro Garden: Back to Business

I am finally back in Oregon after three weeks of intensive turfgrass education, and I must say I am very happy to be home. I was super excited to see my wife and our two dogs, and to see how my hydro-garden was looking. I had set up automation (irrigation and lights) on everything except for my wick watering bins, so I was fairly certain that everything would at least stay alive. None of the units received any additional water, fluid changes, or any other care at all. When I got back home at 3:00 am, I said hello to my dogs, and pulled back the curtain on my hydro-garden to see how things were doing. I must say I was very happy to see how much everything grew while I was gone. The most striking thing to see was the fennel. They were hovering around six inches when I left, and by the time I got back, they had grown up into my light fixtures that I had raised to ten inches above the plants. My lettuce bin was also packed with growth, and two of my cilantro plants had grown pretty large.

Healthy Cilantro, Sickly Basil, and Healthy Fennel

Luscious Lettuce and Kale

Gleaming White Roots = Healthy Plants!

Buttercrunch Lettuce, Ready to Eat

The only plants that appeared to suffer a bit from neglect were the radishes in the wick-watered units. They were watered only once before I left, and there was nearly no moisture in the bins by the time I got back. The leaves on about half of the plants were slightly wilted, and some appeared chlorotic (unable to produce chlorophyl, usually appearing yellow). Yesterday, I filled the bins with a fresh 450 ppm nutrient solution, and I fully expect the plants to recover.

Radishes are dry, but still alive

Yesterday, after getting half a night's sleep, I went to work for a few hours, and came home to tend to my garden. I pulled all the rafts from the bins, placed them between folding chairs, and started tending to the bins. I checked the ppm of the remaining nutrient solutions in order to see how much actual nutrient was absorbed by the plants over three weeks. The lettuce had consumed the most water and nutrients by far. There were only about 1.5 gallons remaining out of the 4 gallons that were added prior to my trip, and the solution only read about 150 ppm, very low compared to the original 600 ppm . The other bins were both at about 400 ppm after originally being mixed to 700 ppm. I cleaned all the algae out of the bins and filled them each with 4 gallons of water, and mixed the solutions to 450-650 ppm. I also changed out the solution from the reservoir that feeds the seedling tray and the coco bin. This reservoir barely had enough water to allow the pump to remain submerged, and it was a bit dirty from the coco draining back into the reservoir. I mixed this reservoir to 400 ppm.

Carrots and Radish in coco, sowed 3 weeks ago

Seedling tray, mostly planted 3 weeks ago

Once everything had fresh water, I did a bit of rearranging so that the smaller plants would not be shaded by the larger ones. I only have 3 rafts, so i placed the smaller plants in a true DWC lid that keeps the net pots suspended above the solution; only the dangling roots contact the solution. I already had a fourth light fixture and a larger bin, so I set it up as a DWC using a lettuce raft to hold the plants deeper into the bin, but not actually floating on the water. So, now I have 4 functioning DWC units, 2 of which are true lettuce rafts. There are quite a few seedlings that are ready to move to a new hydro home, and I am currently working on a vertical drip system which will be unveiled soon, so stay tuned. So, here is how we are looking now.