Updates on what I have been doing - not a lot.

Dry Wall
Over the past couple of months I have been slowly working on my Aunt and Uncle's place doing some drywall work and some other general handyman stuff.  For the most part it has turned out pretty well, even though I am no Michaelangelo when it comes to drywall repair, it is passable.


Word of warning though, if anyone ever asks if you can do drywall just say no! I had white snot for days after sanding the tape and mud.  Not fun. Luckily I am almost done.  But they are my Aunt and Uncle and I would do anything for them, even drywall.  To the right you can see a picture of the work 90% complete, just some sanding and filling left.


Hydroponics Update


It has been a few weeks now and I have learned tons about how to grow things hydroponically.  Well more like how not to grow things hydroponically.  Turns out that the system I built from my limited knowledge and no experience is more of an advanced system and prone to issue if you don't know what you are doing (who knew?) But regardless, this whole thing was designed to be a small scale learning experience and in that mission the project is a great success.

The results so far:
Strawberries - out of 10 only one survives.  It appears to be doing well and is growing new roots.  Hopefully I can get this one to flower.

Broccoli - These are the real winners! Three of the plants are flourishing and growing a great set of roots.

Lettuce - They are still going, although not growing as fast as they should.  However, I planted something like 40 in the hopes that a few would survive and so far most are still growing.






Here are two of the larger lettuces and the one on top of the channel is a basil cutting from the soil garden.

Pythium - the evil fungus and what to do about it.

Well after much research it has been concluded that Pythium was the cause of my strawberry failure.  The factors that lead to this outbreak were:

• High nutrient water temperature.  I set up my system in the fall thinking that temps would start to decline, unfortunately shortly after planting the strawberries we had record high temperatures.  The nutrient water climbed into the high 70's.  Read More

• Transplanting established plants from soil. I did rinse most of the soil off, but I wasn't aware of the dangers of taking a plant from soil straight to the hydro system.  It is imperative that if you must use plants that were in soil, that you thoroughly clean the plant from ANY organic debris.  It is preferable that the plant is quarantined in fresh water and continually rinsed to make sure that all material is off.  Then soak the roots in a weak (the kind you buy in the store) Hydrogen Peroxide solution.  This will get rid of any remaining organic matter and remove any damaged parts of the plant. Read more

• Make sure the plants aren't stressed.  In my case I was overwatering the strawberries and stressed them in that way.  Stressed plants will succumb to pathogens more readily than healthy plants.  Make sure that the growing conditions are correct for the type of plant you are trying to grow. 

• Sterilize the nutrient water OR grow beneficial organisms.
• Beneficial Organisms.  There is a lot of conflicting research out there about how beneficial "good" bacteria and fungus are for hydroponic systems.  Some say they help increase the amount of nutrients a plant can uptake and fight off pathogens.  Others say that the nutrient water is already full of nutrients in plant friendly forms so there is no need for these organisms that are useful in soil horticulture.  I vote it can't hurt, even if the plant isn't getting any additional nutrient benefit from the microorganisms the protection granted could be worth it.  
• Sterilization of the nutrient water. There are two common ways to sterilize your nutrient water:
• UV.  There are a variety of inline UV sanitation systems out there designed for aquariums as well as hydroponics.  They range in price from $50 to $500 and are fairly effective against killing off most micro organisms.  However, they may not destroy all spores.  You can use UV with beneficial organisms, but must turn off the UV for a few days to allow the organisms to colonize the root systems of your plants.  Otherwise you will just kill them with the UV. 
• Ozone.  Ozone is the nuclear option.  It sterilizes the water, but if used incorrectly can cause health problems to the operator and damage the roots of plants.  You can not use beneficial bacteria or fungus with Ozone, it destroys everything the ozonated water touches. Also, ozone generators are costly.  This might be a good alternative in a large scale system, not great for the home hobbyist.

Basically, make sure your plants are healthy, monitor your plants everyday (TDS, pH, visual inspection of the roots and nutrient water) and most importantly, keep everything clean.  This is what I have learned thus far, hopefully round two will be more successful. 

Hydroponics - Oh no, Root Rot!

Well, my poor strawberry plants had a fungus of some sort and the roots were rotting.   I am still trying to figure out what caused it, but I have made some changes.  Turns out strawberries do not like "wet feet", ie they shouldn't be saturated.

Unfortunately I didn't know this when building the system, and set it up so that a trickle of nutrient water was constantly going over the roots. I had been using a modified NFT (Nutrient Film Technique) system.  In an NFT system the plant roots must reach the bottom of the channel so that the tips are immersed in the nutrient water.  However, if your roots are long enough to reach the bottom, then you can't use this system.

Under normal propagation you let the roots grow long enough before transplanting them into the NFT system. But since these plants were store bought in soil, many of them didn't have long enough root structures.  Thus I was encouraging the roots to grow by running water through the net pots and down the roots.  (see the previous post for more info).

I was able to save enough of the roots by soaking them in hydrogen peroxide (it eats away the fungus and dead root material) and rearrange them in the pots so that the roots make it down to the bottom of the channel where the water is. My first big failure and lesson learned.  Hopefully the plants will survive, they are in pretty sad shape right now, and our little cold snap isn't helping I am sure.

Sadly I panicked when I saw the condition of the roots and didn't stop to take any pictures.  Next time I will get pictures!