Small Fish, Big Pond

It’s a long one.
Some unfortunate events have come up with the Hydroponic garden but I have solutions! First one of the young lettuce groups died. It was a bit of a mystery at first, they wilted like they weren’t getting water. The roots looked good albeit small. But the plants had rotted just under the “topsoil” severing the leaves from the roots.

The problem revealed by macro photography. An aphid infestation!

In small numbers they aren’t too bad but so many on a small plant was too much.

Meanwhile my Basil is being eaten by unknown assailants. During the day there are no bugs, lightweight foliar insecticides do nothing.

But today a big clue. Masses of insect droppings near one plant.

Checking other afflicted plants I caught one of the guilty party making a run for the roots to hide. Earwigs!!!

I did some reading on how to get rid of earwigs. Not much info, the main points:

• Earwigs like moisture, remove moist areas (Umm, a moist environment is integral to my healthy root zones).

• You can lure and drown earwigs in shallow tuna can partially filled with oil buried even with ground level, like with beer and slugs (Umm, no ground in hydroponics).
• You can just wait till night and remove the earwigs by hand (Sure I can guard my plants 24 hours a day and clean them by hand but I don’t really have time to turn the hydro into a full time job).

I guess this is the whole point I am doing this; there isn’t much documentation to teach you hydroponics like this so we’ll just break new ground. The final solution I decided on was, powerful insecticide from the store, sprayed into the root cups. To avoid a buildup of toxins I decided to try spraying, then flushing roots with water from the hose to wash the hopefully panicked/poisoned earwigs away. The insecticide couldn’t penetrate to the roots and was largely ineffectual. But when I sprayed water into the rootcups from below the earwigs fled the unexpected flood by streaming up the stem of the plant.

The lightbulb went on over my head! Why spray when you can simulate a flood and get the earwigs to leave of their own free will?

Thus began “Operation Noah”. Dunk the plants in water upside down and watch the earwigs race for high ground. It seems a little odd removing plants from their planter, and inserting them upside down in water, only to drain them, check the roots visually for remaining pests, then returning them to the planter no worse for wear. Try that on a traditional garden.

The two Basil that were getting eaten alive were both earwig nests. 20-30 earwigs fled each, no exaggeration. 15 or so when the loose Hydroton was dumped out, and another 10 or so once immersed in the water.

The other two basil had 4-5 loose guys that came out in the water.
The peppers were pest free and healthy as… a tree??? (that silly analogy comes oddly close to applying here).

Once all were cleaned and hopefully a little more pest free they got some foliar spray and some sticky traps were laid out to keep the resurgence from coming back for a while. Hopefully long enough for the Basil to recover some root growth and make a comeback.

More pics at the hydro fickr stream.

If you look at the pictures of the Hydro setup from a few days ago you’ll notice the lettuce is going apeshit; it’s even bigger now and they two new lettuces have kicked into high gear and started growing like crazy too. And I’m happy to say the new guys are kicking the ass of their “control group” brother growing up the traditional way in the garden. It’s growing so much I’m really worried about overgrowth getting too dense.

I read that you can prune Butter Crunch outer leaves and eat them while it matures. And since it needed it anyway I cut off some of the outermost leaves for a salad and to allow the remaining plants to expand and grow; plus it open up the base to the air and helps to create an environment more hostile to parasites and disease.

I only used about half the leaves I pruned and composted the rest, and since I was too chicken to eat 100% hydroponic food (what if it poisons me?!) I mixed them in with an equal amount of store bought salad mix. The result was a big salad, 50% hydroponically grown; and the good news is I haven’t died of unforeseen causes. Other than a slightly off taste (that might have been the fancy “twigs&weeds” store bought lettuce) it wasn’t any different than any other salad. Maybe I’ll do a 100% hydro salad next and follow up with an iceberg salad just to do a more detailed taste comparison.

They’re seriously getting big. But every day is more proof, the hydroponics is growing as fast or faster than the garden.
All lettuce was purchased from the nursery at the same time.
First group planted about 3-4 weeks ago.

A week later two more groups went in after sitting in their nursery trays.

The same day I stuck the “leftovers” in the garden to see how they’d do.

As you can see the Hydro lettuce is musch greener, larger, and more lush. They get more sun but the lettuce is a cool weather plant so being out in summer is hard enough, a bit a of shade should help keep the heat off.

This is just a quick overview of my hydroponic garden. I’ve been meaning to start it for two years and finally got around to it this spring. I’m not sure what the full extent of this experiment is but I knew that no matter what it would be fun.

It’s no doubt that everybody who sees a hydropower garden is curious about it and about the science behind it and I’m no different. But rather than just pass the idea by I wanted to know firsthand what it takes to grow and what the benefits and drawbacks of a hydroponic garden are. I’m not sure if I want to eventually turn this into a commercial venture or somehow take this beyond just a hobby/experiment. I’ll think about that later and after I’ve learned more with this current setup.

Even if I don’t personally make this a commercial venture my main questions are related to that. I want to know how well it works, and how much it costs compared to traditional farming and gardening. To that end I’ve come up with my first experiment: a normal NFT setup outdoors rather than in a greenhouse or indoors under grow lights. There are many outdoor hydroponic setups but most I’ve seen are geared towards larger plants taking up the same amount of space as if they were in a normal garden. I think an NFT setup allows for more plants to be grown in a smaller area with savings in power and water consumption but I don’t know how well it will withstand the weather.

Plus I think NFT setups just look cool and fun to try.

The possibility of replacing an entire farm with a hydroponic solution is interesting and has already been done in Arizona with tomatoes (about 25% of America’s tomato output). But right now I’m thinking more in terms of a smaller complete solution that could be sold to hobbyists and urban gardeners without the land or room to create a normal garden. I think my next experiment will be to build and test this setup for the “urban gardener”.

More Pics at my flickr site:
Hydroponics


tags: hydroponic, gardening