Aeroponics First Planting Progress Day 6

Table of contents for Aeroponics Plant Progress

Today we have our normal plant progress pictures, but we are also going to show you our new and improved method of sprouting and supporting the seedlings. We basically found a system used by others out in the wild wild interwebs and modified it to make it better for us and our purposes. We’d like to give credit to whomever came up with this but we saw it in several spots around YouTube and other sites. It came from the Before Time, in the Long Long Ago…

Anyway, let’s do the build first and the plant progress pictures after.

Plant Cups

We have basically taken 16 oz pop bottles that Pam scrounged from work, not being huge purchasers of bottles ourselves, and cut the tops off to make funnel-sort of arrangements to start our seeds in. We make a wire mesh stopper in the neck and use cotton to support the seed and hold water around it during sprouting. The arrangement looks pretty solid so we have high hopes for it.

Materials/Tools:

16 oz soda bottle
4″ length of stainless steal wire
1/8″ drill bit
Drill
Utility knife
Pliers
Wire cutters

Steps:

Gather your tools.
Cut off the top of the soda bottle.
Drill four holes in the mouth of the funnel.
Thread the stainless steal wire through the holes in a cross pattern.
Twist off wire with pliers and clip off ends.
Done!

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Use:

Open a cotten ball and place seed inside.
Lightly push cotton ball loaded with seed into the neck of the bottle top up against the wire.
Put plant cup with cotton and seed in a dish with bottle mouth down.
Put nutrient water in dish until it barely touches the bottom of the cotton.
Wait for the seed to germinate.
Done!

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We started three of these cups cause that was how many bottles Pam found at work, and planted lettuce, string beans, and a cucumber. We know it’s a random assortment of stuff that really doesn’t make any sense. There is no rhyme or reason to it. They just seemed like a cool idea at the time. Once these sprout and develop substantial roots, we will place them into the aeroponics unit also.

The main difference between this method and our previous one is that we will be waiting for much more substantial roots to show and the plant will be fully supported in the cup as the roots have grown down and around the wire. At least, we hope that is what happens!

Plant Progress

Here are the pictures of the plants. Down to four peas left out of everything but they are showing between 3″ and 4″ of root length at this point. We have also started spritzing the top to keep the seed package moist so that the stem portion is not hindered in development. Meh…we’ll see what happens.

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