Week 7.2 - Strawberry makes an appearance

March 10, 2011

One of the strawberry plants finally grew big enough to move in.

 Here it is once I washed the seed starting mix from the roots.

There we go. Now the whole column is inhabited!

Thanks for checking it out!!

MK

Week 7.1 - The Dissection

March 6, 2011

So the algae got the best of my second column. As you can see from the
picture below the reservoir was full of the green stuff. The airlift
lines and everything else was infested too.

The plastic growing medium I was using seemed to be perfect breeding
grounds for the algae. You can see around the base of the plants there
was so much if it, it was greener than the plants themselves. I could
probably harvest this stuff to make biofuel. I guess this column would
be an excellent algae farm...

This is what the tempest medium looked like on the sides.
The algae grew on the side that was facing the window.
The white duct tape did not stop the light nearly as much as it needed to.



So the dissection begins...

The BF and I tried to save as many plants as we could.
You can see the roots did not grow very well into this medium.
There were a few that ventured into the plastic, but most of
the roots were stunted and only grew in their little pockets.

You can see the limited roots in the tempest, and the extent of the algae.

 

The roots didn't spread out much at all. I think this may have been

because the medium was squished into the bottles so tightly.

Or maybe because of the light shining through the bottles.

 

 

 

This bottle was pretty gnarly!

 

The chili peppers in the top weren't getting any nutrients because the

hose was positioned so that it just ran down the side of the bottle.

I think I might be able to salvage the two stevia, they didn't put out roots either.

 

 

I am going to use this black tubing from now on. Just try and grow now algae!!

Alrighty, I apologize this post has taken me ages. Life sometimes gets busy.

I will leave you with a picture of my some swiss chard that I harvested. LOVE the bright pink!

MK