Work has been busy, between a product release scheduled for 2 weeks and getting the .Net Micro framework to talk to a gprs modem with AT commands (ok, that is geek for saying I am trying to get a very small computer, kinda like a small ipod, to talk to that thing in a cell phone that lets you go online.) Hectic, but fun.

On the green side, things have been rather uneventfull. It has been raining, a lot, every day in fact for the last 2 weeks. Typical African weather, hot clear mornings, come 3 pm, clouds then rain and cold.

The Green peppers are growing, slowly, but growing. The new chilli’s are coming along. I bought a little fish tank full spectrum light to augment my aeroponic setup in the kitchen, and I have had them under there for a few days and looking good.

The aeroponic setup has been a little disappointing from a rooting/cloning perspective. Most of the cutting I made have died. But it has been spectacular with the orchids!! We have revived and regrown 3 to the point where they can be replanted outside, and 2 more cuttings are showing new buds. Yay, in cost terms,that about covers the cost of the setup, so happy days.

I put some sweet basil into my lettuce raft, and that is working nicely. They are about twice the size of their brother and sisters in the pot plants. Me thinks I might make a dedicated basil raft. I have notice though, that basil does not like the the one plant food I have. It does have enough potassium, and they go down hill really fast. Strange that because the green peppers love that food.

The Tomatos are going well. The second plant is now way bigger than the first, and it’s full of flowers, so a good crop from that one will be had. The sick one is much better and is spreading out again. the 2 fruits have grown and it will be a toss up bewtween them and the green bpeeper as to which one will be the first fruit to get harvested from my system .

I have some photo’s but please excuse the quality, the battery was dying and it was raining….

Till next time.

Me thinks its a greenie

 I was rather hoping that the majority of the plants in the tubes would be chilli. However, having now got a semi positive ID on what a green pepper looks like, I would say that the majority are the 0 scoville scale variety. None the less, good job all round.

I am also happy that the bushes are positively teaming with fruit set, half the flowers have dropped, and of most of those are setting up nicely.

Even more surprising after I discovered a rather big oversight on my part. The reservoir was almost on empty. so empty that the pump the pumps were almost running dry.

Now, this is a rather strange occurrence, as it is a 110 litre tank, and we have had a few weeks of light rain. The last thing I expected was an empty tank. Obviously now, the PH in the tank was waaay off, down to almost 5. The plants in the gutter had some serious nutrient/acid burn, but the chilli/peppers were rocking.

the miracle of nature/science

So,I performed and unscheduled water, umm, refill I suppose, and all is well on the hydro front. I pondered this development last night , and concluded that the gutter it either holding too much water, or, it is allowing for more evaporation.

Seeing that we have had rain and mild weather, if it is evaporation, we might be in poo come the real summer.

I have put some 90% shade cloth over it now, but I really need to make up a cover of some kind. I will save that for next weekend. (gutter on the far left)

More good news, The hot as a penthouse centerfolds big toe chilli’s have decided to join us. Most have geminated now. Unfortunately I only have 1 Bhut jolokia up. I have planted another seed in the trays, and have set up on it a container and am trying to germinate him inside, so we will see, har,har,har. I is excite!!

grow baby grow!!

I will leave you with some more photo’s of the progress, and say salaaaaam. I must go and do some work. Busy playing with a GPRS cell phone module, trying to code it to send SMS’s and stuff .

The weather has been rather funny of late. Summer and Winter seem to have worked out a work roster. 2 days on, 2 days off. this has been the pattern for about 2 weeks now. Cooking, then cold, then cooking again. I am not complaining, I love the cold so the longer it stay coolish the better for me, but it is still rather odd.

But summer is definitely winning. There is a feeling around, everything is waiting for the that one week, when summer kicks in for real. Everything is green now, but waiting for that heat wave and then we will have that explosive growth, and wham, it is summer.

On the hydro side, I have finally gotten round to setting up the open gutter, I have it planted out with some , beans, peas, 2 chilli’s, some basil and 2 strawberries. Seems to work OK so far. I am trying out vermiculite for the first time too, so we will see how it runs.

The Tomato seems to be recovering, thankfully. It has set 2 fruit, and they seem to be growing nicely. I have to prune all the dead leaves off, so it is looking rather forlorn. It kind of reminds me of that story of a beauty queen, while having her hair did, the dresser slips with a sheep shearing machine, and shaves, quite accidentally, a perfect picture of George Bush’s bum on her scalp. nasty.

Nasty

fruits... gowing

Here are some pics of some of the ones that have flowered.

I was trying out foliar feeding,I guessed I over fed and this is what happened.  The tomato has leaf curl and is going black. The one chilli’s leaves are developing black spots all over.

To be fair, the last few days have had some extreme weather swings, we had a 35+ days followed by a cold rainy day. So I think it might be a combination of these factors. 

Another article states it might be a Phosphorus deficiency, but the other symptoms of this are not present. But I am no horticultural master, so I could be completey off on this.

Anyone got an idea of what is happening?

http://highrisehydro.wordpress.com/2008/10/

A guy doing indoor hydroponics, nice looking setup.

Aeroponics is about using very fine water spray or mist, to grow your plants in. I it said to be almost 10 times faster than normal hydroponics, and is superb for cloning and root development.

The base of my system will be an ultrasonic fogger and a air stone. Basically, the foggers are a little speaker that vibrates at 2 million cycles per second (2 MHz), so kinda like a bad ass submersible dog whistle. The water above the speaker gets vaporised into a very fine mist. They uses them for humidifiers and nebulizes etc. Mine I found in a novelty store,used as a party trick to make smoke on water, how, well, cheezy is that? Even more Cheezy is that is has a red and blue LED that light up. Nice. This is what they look like :

the mister thingy

So Let me begin at the beginning, first locate and purchase a window box planter. The snag is to make sure that the box is sealed, and that the tray it comes with fits in the lid. It took me a while to find one, but eventually I did. looks like this :

window box of the sealed variety & tray

Now, take the tray and perforate it with holes what match your growing cups.

all holed up.

all potted out

pot mutilation, takes a while...

water sealing, with stripping

Next, time to start assembling the unit. I drilled a hole in the corner of the lid and ran the air line and fogger cable down through that. The Fogger actually rocks, check it out :

smoke on the water

Fire in the sky

So the pots sit on top of this and this fine mist get the roots going.

Mini rastafarians living beneath the pots.

The finished unit :

rocking, all up and going.

I walked around the garden and chose some random stuff to try and clone, or just make better roots. These 2 are orchids that arn’t really so happy. I also have in there some basil, a Rose, Rosemary, Oregano and another orchid.

I took snippings of the ones I wanted to clone and dipped them in some rooting hormone. stuck them int the pot with some Coconut coir.and covered the tops with some stones. I also added some rooting hormone to the water. Not really sure if that is how it is supposed to work, but whatever, I am doing it anyway

If all goes well, I should have some roots in around 5-7 days. I this works nicely, I think I might stick some of the chilli’s in here to get the roots going before putting them in the tubes.

I set this unit up on a timer, so the Fogger runs for 15 minutes on, 15 off. The airstone runs continously. I think this should be enough, I dont want the roots to rot, so I will have to watch this.

I hope this shows how to do it, I will keep you all informed of the progress.