The tomatoes are getting bigger… I need to probably cut back on all of the leaves that are half hidden from the sun. It seems to me that leaves hidden from sun/lamp light must be a net drain on a plant. Also, if I trim everything back, the plant might focus more on growing fruit than growing more leaves.
OK. The lamp is up and the plants are spread out and pruned (probably too pruned). The whole set up is rather rickety… but I think it’ll hold.
In any event, there is a lot more space for the leaves to get light now. Also, the basil isn’t getting crushed at all any more (although the basil seems to want to shy away from the lamp - even from the ceiling).
Some good news: spreading the tomato vines out let me see that I actually have tomatoes!
I think that I’m only weeks away from red romas!
You may not really be able to tell from the below picture… but the plants are really growing like crazy.
Instead of growing like they should, the tomatoes and squash are clobbering each other and the basil. I finally have all the materials to make a really crummy and fragile means of hanging the lights AND the plants from the ceiling. I’m sort of excited to see just how big the tomato vines really are.
I couldn’t help myself. It was too big to be ignored.
It didn’t really have much taste though… as I said before, I think I really need to make sure that nutrients are getting to the roots. Water alone doesn’t seem like it will do the trick.
Out of nowhere we’ve got squash… and a big one. It came and rested under a leaf on the shelf of the window so I’ve missed it until now. It is a little white (as opposed to the yellow that I would expect), that is probably because I’ve been lax on making sure the water source has food in it. Still pretty exciting.
In other news, the plants are threatening to start really competing for sunlight. I haven’t been turning the light on much because as soon as I do everything overheats. I really need to do two things: put the light up on the ceiling, and put in supports for the plants. That’s all a little easier said than done because I can’t drill anything into the ceiling (metal fire shielding that I can’t get through). I suppose I’ll procrastinate until the problem can no longer be ignored. We’ll see.
The tomatoes have been trudging along. They didn’t pop up fast, or grow very quick, but they are steadily getting taller and taller. Their neighbor (the squash) is sort of encroaching on their space, but it hasn’t been too much of a problem yet.
I know that I need to prune these things, I’ve heard that the suckers have to go, but I don’t know what is a sucker and what will eventually be a tomato. I need to call my uncle again. Or do some researching.
Anyway, they are coming along nicely as far as I can tell.
As can be seen below, the squash is growing like crazy. It actually started flowering today. I don’t know if it is necessary or not, but I always hear that some plants need pollinators in order to fruit. Well, there are no bees in my room, so just-in-case it IS necessary, I’ve decided to play the roll of pollinator. It should be only a few weeks now before I can eat these bag girls!
These flowers are actually pretty nice looking.
I don’t know if this is really necessary, but I sort of enjoy it!
It is weird, but this stalk split when the plant got heavy and started leaning over the edge of the trough. I thought about killing it before it got too diseased, but I let it go. Nothing has happened so far, and it has been split for a few weeks. Maybe it’ll live?
…since my last hydroponics post. Its funny… when I see it every day I don’t even notice a change, but when I look on here its amazing how much changes.
OK. A lot has gone down since March.
So thats the gist. A bit of a mess, but everything is doing well for the most part.
OK. 12 days since my last update and everything is progressing nicely. I started some radishes, lettuce, squash, and tomatoes around 12 March. Everything except the tomatoes have grown enough that I have put them in the system. See Pictures
The red stemmed plants here are radishes. Also growing is chives (look close) and salad bowl lettuce. The lettuce is acting a little wilty… maybe it is getting too much water?
This is the best of my three squashes. You can see the rockwool cube I started it in. It is really leaning toward the window, but I don’t think that will be too much of a problem.
This last picture shows the whole system. There are two squash plants on the window side and one one the other. The real leggy viney looking plants on the non-window side nearest the camera are (I presume) morning glory (which will get killed if/when it starts grabbing anything). You can also see the basil on the window side is doing really well.
It has only been two days since I pointed out what looked like a rock growing (see previous post). The below picture shows the same two plants after they rifled up at around 2 inches per day. I don’t even have any nutrients in the water tank yet (just tap water). I need to get to it I suppose.