Growing plants in the Rockies» Hydroponics

January and we are a growin…

Chris — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 03:46:24 +0000

Yes its January, its cold (32F daytime and 10F at night) and the little greenhouse that could is still hard at work. We still have an aphid problem, and insecticide just isnt doing anything, so we have gone natural and this week ordered 1500 ladybugs from California. Honestly I thought we would have rid the greenhouse of aphids when the soil was all removed… but no they are still there, and worse than when it was a soil based garden.

At the moment we have changed both hydroponic systems to Age Old Organics Liquid Soil Part A and Part B mix. Its cheap and seems to be making the plants grow extremely well.

Lettuce happy as larry and not going to see	The toms and the peppers	The peppers are covered in fruit, its totally amazing. And these plants are now 6 mths old!
The top layer of the ebb and flow	The bottom layer of the ebb and flow	Bok choi
Strawberry plants, all are covered in fruit, but they are also all covered in aphids

Been a cold week

Chris — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 13:47:46 +0000

We have had the coldest week since havng the greenhouse up, with temps dropping to around-5 F / -25 C the greenhouse heater has been able to just keep the inside temp at 55F at night, with daytime temps in the 60-70F range. So not hugely hot, but when you go in there from outside you definitely feel like you are in summer.

With some modifications to the left side ebb and flo system as the roots grew the flow slowed in the upper pipes, so had to change the pipe angle to let more water out of the top pipes, which of course meant a couple of days of drips as I tried to plug them with silicon. The right side drip system has leak still in one of the buckets in the outlet pipe, still cant get it to seal… one day but its not a big leak.

The tomatoes are growing like mad, and we have already been able to get some nice sized peppers from the plants, and many strawberries… although they get eaten normally before they get to the back door of the house!

The only real problem at the moment is the seedlings, we are having a hard time getting them to grow, so this week I tried to plant some in soil with the intention of washing off the soil once they have grown to transplant size…we will see if it succeeds.

This is a transplanted Utah Celery seedling	the tomatoes and peppers, the toms are cold weather Canadian varieties.	Strawberrys and parsley thrive in the ebb and flow
Strawberries are all covered in fruit

Its cold and the greenhouse is still growing

Chris — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 03:50:09 +0000

Well its been a while since I have updated this blog, with recurrent training at work and then vacation it just has been too hard to do the updates, but here it is!

The hydroponics now rule the greenhouse, which is great as there is no way to have a watering system for soil based plants when its below freezing outside.

Today is was 8 F outside, there was snow on the greenhouse roof and it was 55 – 60 F inside (with the help of a fan heater set at 55 F )

These pepper plants came from the soil based garden and hae thrived since been washed and transfered to hydroponics. The tomatoes are grown from seed and are getting there	This is the little greenhouse that could as it sat today in the cold and snow, it was 5 F	Strawberries, who would have thought, these plants too came from the soil garden and started getting fruit on them within 1 week of being soilless
the ebb and flow system in operation, and just 1 month old	the lower level, still waiting for more plants to grow from seed ... which is the slowest stage of the growth	this is a little iceberg lettuce seedling