I'm propagating more seeds than whats needed just incase some of the seeds aren't viable and so i can pick and choose the better plants later on.
I've also used a selection of different propagation media incase i have better success with one and not another. I've used 1.5" rockwool cubes, fleximix, jiffy 7 peat pellets and a new media called sure to grow which is like pillow stuffing.
I pre-soaked everything with VitaLink Plantstart and BioPlus, two great products for getting well rooted little plants. I set the EC to 1.0 and the pH to 5.8.
I am using a T5 LightWave 8-Way flourescent lighting unit above the propagator and i'm really impressed by it. I can choose to have 4 lights on at once (4 middle tubes or 4 outer tubes) for when they are young and all 8 lights for vigorous growth when they are large enough.
Sometimes when the sun came out temperatures would reach above 30°C in the propagator, it was essentialy a greenhouse inside a greenhouse. To prevent cooking my young plants i used black and white reflective sheeting to reflect the suns rays away from the propagator, and lifting the light away helped. Opening the vents helps cool down the propagator but drops the humidity levels in there, I can keep an eye on my temperatures and humidity levels using a hygro-thermometer and it tells me the maximum and minimum levels of both readings. Now i'm waiting for seeds to germinate i can organise the rest of the greenhouse.
Glad you're back, I was starting to think you'd given up on this blog!
ReplyDeleteYeh sorry about that, i'm glad i've still got people checking the blog! Toward the end of the last growing season it was hard for me to find time to work on the blog. I had 3 job roles at Aquaculture; greenhouse manager, sales and alot of my time was spent doing marketing. Then there was cleaning out the greenhouse which took forever on my own. But yeh the blog is definately something that will have time spent on it and i will try to update it as regularly as possible. If theres anything you would like me to include in the blog just let us know.
ReplyDeleteI asked a question about what nutrient balance you used for the banana plant a long time ago that never got answered.
ReplyDeleteDo you remember what feeding program you used for it?
Last year i used VitaLink Max Bloom a two part nutrient with an NPK ratio of 5/9.6/4.6 and added VitaLink Buddy at just 1ml/l to increases the PK ratio. It did really well with that and i was suprised to see such a large bunch.
ReplyDeleteHowever this year i took a healthy banana plant, transplanted it into the same system and it took really well. But in the last few weeks it has started getting dark brown spots at the edges of the leaves which have then turned crispy. It doesn't look very nice and i can't find a solution to the problem. I thought it was because i was using grow nutrients to begin with so i swapped for bloom nutes but it is still appearing on new growth. I will post pics soon enough.