Aeroponics First Planting Progress Day 3

Table of contents for Aeroponics Plant Progress

Today we are seeing our first encouraging signs of growth on the plants! You’ll remember from yesterday that we suspected that we had jumped the gun on putting the plants in the system before their roots had gotten big enough to properly utilize the fog. Well, today we are seeing all of the plants with longer roots really starting to put some growth on now which seems to indicate to us that this was, in fact, the problem.

As such, we will be actively pursuing ideas we’ve seen around the interwebs to use soda bottle tops as plant cups. Into these tops we will be putting some sort of support material–think cotton balls or coconut fiber–to keep the seeds from slipping through. The plants will be rooted in these until their roots are substantial, 2 or 3 inches beyond the bottom of the cup, and then they will be transplanted to the aeroponics system. This will require more prep and setup but the results should be much better.

Despite being somewhat disappointed at the death of all the small-root plants (it’s always about size, isn’t it?), we are excited to see growth in our peas. Here are some pictures to slack your curiosity.

sprout1

You can see the dead lettuce in the upper holes, the peas that are surviving in the middle holes, and the string beans which we don’t know about yet in the bottom holes.

sprout2

Here is a look inside the root chamber showing the long roots of some of the peas. Nice!

sprout3

A view of the other side inside the root chamber of more of the peas. Some of the roots have really gotten long. Maybe 2 inches.

The fogger on and off times are the same today as they were in the previous post. No changes have been made to anything. We keep checking the water level but have so far seen no difference from one day to the next. This is very promising as it looks like the water will last a long time.

That’s all for today. Stay safe and sustainable!

P&S