Small Fish, Big Pond

Sorry this post is still a week late

On Wednesday I was sick and didn’t go to work. Outside mirroring my feelings an early summer thunder storm was rolling over making the sky dark even at noon. The only light came in bursts from lightning shortly followed by loud thunder.

The wind was thrashing the trees about, leaves and small branches were rattling off the side of the house. When the small amounts of rain did come down it slapped noisily against the windows.

I laid in bed slowly recovering, wondering why the wind had me so much on edge; something just didn’t seem right but it hid at the back of my brain. It was a whirlwind outside but I was safe indoors buried under a blanket. It not like the wind could knock the house over on top of me, crushing me like a small cucumber plan-

SHIT THE PLANTS!!!

I jumped out of bed, yanked on a pair of shorts and shoes without putting on socks and ran outside to check the hydroponic setup.

The A-frame was really good at keeping things from falling away from the plants so when it collapsed it did right on top of everything, yanking some of the plants out of their positions and knocking one of the planting tubes off to the side.

The pump can pump through the whole reservoir of nutrient in less than the 15 minutes that the timer runs so with the planter knocked off to the side it drained everything out onto the ground leaving the plants dry for however long it had been sitting there. Luckily there was enough humidity in the planter that it kept the roots alive except for the cucumbers on the end which were pulled completely out. Its root mat had gotten big enough that the roots stayed in the planter and ripped apart from the plant itself.

It’s amazing how little you think of being sick when you’ve got something else to worry about. But I didn’t really feel upto rebuilding everything so I pulled the wreckage of the trellis off, put the planter back together and filled the reservoir up with water. That should hold everything until to Friday when I could rebuild everything properly.

Over the next 2 days the cucumber that had been yanked out didn’t fully recover and might as well be replaced. One of the peppers had a lot of its new upper growth smashed off but should be ok. The peas had already been producing but lost a few stems that had to be trimmed.

This weekend I got a replacement cucumber and a bunch of hardware to reinforce the trellis rack to support the plants. Plus the remaining cucumber has gotten large enough it needs some support to grow up so I needed to get some twine for it to hold to and some gardening velco strips that can support the vine.

The reservoir lid was yanked part way off and one of the hoses came off. Now everything is nice and neat again.

Finally all back together and with some good reinforcements to keep it from falling over again.