Friday, December 31, 2010

Greenpinelane.com, LED grow lights and Tomatoes

Found a really neat site today called greenpineline.com today and have been searching for tips. It seems this web site is more geared towards lighting instead of growing but it still has alot of information. One bad point of this site is at it appears the the author has stopped updating it :(.

As for my own tomatoe grow things have been slow but steady. The cherry tomaotes in back never seemed to recover and have been chapped and replaces by some Tiny Tim seedlings in rockwool. I will updat in a couple of days with some pictures and maybe another video. -Chris-

Monday, December 27, 2010

My First Video, My First Hydroponic Garden

Cherry Tomatoes are recovering, small blossoms forming


Well things are kind of slowing down this week, the temperature has fallen in the apartment but I can’t have a $100+ heating bill again so the show must go on.  The wilting/ crumbling leaf problem I had on the cherry tomatoes in back as seemed to stop. I ended up changing the rez and using 800ppm of Flora Nova. I’m thinking the problem was too much nitrogen and not enough phosphorous. As I mentioned in my last post I was trying to raise my humidity from 30% to 50% on average and this turned out to be a big mistake in my situation. It snowed and the temp dropped in my apartment causing my tiny tims to from a pretty bad case of edema  ( cell wall breakage due to a high intake of water and low transpiration). I have lowered my relative humidity back down and the problem seems to be correcting itself. Now for the weekly pictures!









                As I mentioned in my last post I was trying to raise my humidity from 30% to 50% on average and this turned out to be a big mistake in my situation. It snowed and the temp dropped in my apartment causing my tiny tims to from a pretty bad case of edema  ( cell wall breakage due to a high intake of water and low transpiration). I have lowered my relative humidity back down and the problem seems to be correcting itself. Now for the weekly pictures!

Monday, December 20, 2010

New Growth,New Problems.

Well alot of growth has happened in the last ten days. After my last post I did a rez change and replced my solution with a Ph of 6 and a ppm level of 1350 ( this up from 1150). After three days of this I noticed a downward curl of the leafs of the cherry tomatoes in back. Thinking it was just the nurtrients being to high i decided to add about percent more water to my rez to bring down the ppm level to about 950. The decline has continued for several days at this point but the new growth looks passable. I think it might be my humidity levels which have been as low as 30%. I wll keep trying to figure this one out but I think I wll start some replacments in rockwool tonight just to make sure.

Now for some pics

 In these 2 you can see how they are starting to dry up.
 This is a Thai Basil seedling, My girl friend loves Thai food so I thought she might like this.
 Roots are doing well. This is the Tiny Tom in the center
 More advanced symptoms.
 The healthy leaf right above it
 This is the hops plant I am just having fun with.
 The roots on the Tiny tom in the center
 Same plant
My rhizome budded 

 My Rez Temps are Decent
 Group shot for height comparison

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

My First Real Hydroponic Set Up.

Hello Everyone,

This is my first hydroponics setup and I will do my best to keep up on the updates weekly. The two in the back row are Cherry tomateos. The seeds where taken from a random cherry tomateo in my fridge. The front two are a heirloom dwarf called Tiny Tim. The red cup to the right is a hops rhizome I'm going to add soon. I am uses a 90 watt UFO pruchased off ebay with a ratio of 7r:1b:1w. For nutrients I am useing General Hydroponics Flora Series and adding Diamond Nectar.  I think anyone that is interested in hydroponics knows what a seedling looks like so I am starting at day 14.







I am well aware that people may have diffent opinions on the best way to do this sort of thing. Please keep in mind that I built everything myself and I have a tight budget. More professional and Higher Yeilding Systems will follow as funds allow.

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