AeroGarden updates

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I’m currently running three AeroGardens (one is at work not shown). The two I have at home are an AeroGarden Bounty Elite and an old AeroGarden Classic 7. The seven has only herbs in it now, and they are doing well for the most part. The Bounty Elite has four pepper plants; a crossed Peach Lightning Hab, a crossed eximium and two Aji Pineapple. The roots are so massive they are starting to push the plant pods out. I plan to yank those prior to starting seeds for the 2017 grow season. I’ll start nine plants, and move eight of the sprouts to different hydroponic systems. I’ll keep one in there to grow to maturity. I also have an AeroGarden Sprout that I plan to start soon with lettuce. I’ll show how to start lettuce seeds without needing to buy the pre-seeded pods from AeroGrow. I’m going to run this at the same time as my Kratky lettuce experiment and compare the grows.

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Indoor grow update

Since my outdoor grow for this season has ended, I have time to fix some much needed issues with my indoor setup. The main problems were improper spacing between the CMH light and plants, and neglect of the DWC hydroponic setup for my Jamaican Hot Chocolate.

I rearranged the light so it is suspended from the ceiling now instead of the top of the shelving unit. For the hyrdo, I setup a two bucket design. The inner bucket, which the net pot lid fits on, contains the tubing and air stone and has holes in the bottom and sides. The outer bucket contains the nutrient solution. This way I can easily replace the nutrients by moving the inner bucket to a bucket container that has fresh solution. This makes the process quicker and easier, and also prevents disturbing the roots. I also started a calendar to remind me when I need to change the nutrients. I’m going to do this every two weeks, but will add nutrients/water if needed between nutrient solution refreshes.

The new lighting arrangement should help my Thai Dragon and Chiltepin plants also. The Thai Dragon is in a two gallon self-watering system that I built. It was outside, and has been doing really well. Also have a Chiltepin in a Kratky setup, but it has depleted its solution. I added some to give me a little time to figure out a more long term solution. I pruned all the plants back too, which will help new growth.

I’ll post updates every week or two showing how it does. I plan on adding a Kratky setup with some lettuce to the rack soon also. I’ll do a comparison grow between that and same type lettuce growing in an AeroGarden.

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Grow update 2016 Harvest

Pulled a bunch of peppers over the last couple of days. This is probably one of the last updates for the 2016 growing season. Our first frost should be here any day now so I’m trying to get these picked and put up as soon as possible. I forgot to mention the Kraken Scorpion and Super Hot Beast I picked, had a pretty good harvest on those as well.

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