Establishing young plants 10/03/09

These are some of the young plants i will be growing, sweet peppers on the right, tomatoes in the middle and chillies to the right. There are also some plants called Pepino at the far right which are nicknamed melon pears because of their sweet soft fleshed fruits.
The plants have recently been inserted into the larger 4" rockwool blocks and have been kept under a gentle fluorescent light to let them develop their root system before intensifying the light, i'm using a T5 high output 8-way flourescent light because it produces lots of lightat a low temperature with low power comsumption and has a good spectrum of light for vegatative growth and i can choose between 4 and 8 lights. I'm keeping humidity high into the 70%'s to slow the transpiration rate. I use 2 HR50's for the whole greenhouse which is 75m2, they're linked up to a humidistat to control humidity.

As you can see the plants are sat on mesh grid this allows air to the underneath of the blocks. When roots reach the bottom and come into contact with the air the tip dies back.
Using the analogy of 'topping' a plant where you nip the growing tip off a plant to encourage side branch growth by changing the position of growth hormones in the plant. The same principles can be applied to the roots.

This technique is called air pruning and is something i will always do to get my plants established well enough to cope with environmental changes. Changes from the propagation stage to final planting position include greater light intensity, heat, air movement and amount of water recieved by the plant. Moving a plant too early will put too great a demand on it before it has developed and will stress it to the point of stunted growth, poor root development and risk of becoming disease infected. A well established plant will grow quicker and healthier and have potential to yield greater than one that isn't.

Note: All plant species and varieties among species have widely different root systems some thin some thick, some are abundant others are not.

A technique in commercial grows is to use a root-stock plant and to graft a favoured top part of a plant onto it. This means you use a variety of plant that has been bred to produce alot of roots and is disease resistant. That plant hasn't been bred for flavour or yield so to get the best of both worlds, they simply cut the top off and replace it with a plant that has been bred for flavour and yield. It's a technique i've not tried but am very interested in the benefits as you can choose the best phenotypic characteristic from two plants.

Arranging systems

With seeds sown i can concentrate on the layout of the greenhouse. Once i put a plant into a system it will be a nightmare to move it so it's best getting it right from the start. I found it took longer planning the greenhouse layout than it did moving all the systems back in.

To tackle things methodically i looked at things i would use most often. Starting off with the 350l waterbutt that i use to top up my tanks with, storing water in the waterbutt allows the water to reach room temperature and any chlorine to evaporate. The waterbutt also holds the water to both my HR-15 humidification systems. I chose to position the waterbutt in the centre against the backwall of the greenhouse because thats the least distance for me to travel with buckets of water, and both humidifiers point to either end of the greenhouse to distribute the humidity evenly and effectively.
The next choice i made was because the greenhouse is a display greenhouse i wanted it to look good when you walk in. I thought that putting the IWS Systems either side of the waterbutt would present some symmetry when entering the greenhouse. It also display the 3 sizes of waterbutts that we stock.
Last years banana plant grew massive and hopefully this year it will too. Taking this into consideration i had to position it at the far end of the greenhouse under the apex of the roof where the greenhouse is at it's tallest.
Since this picture was taken i've done a bit of shuffling around of systems. I swapped the drip system with the NFT Multi-Duct 601 because i have set the drip system up as a 'run-to-waste' systems and it makes life easier for me when it is near the door and i can run a hose out of the catchment tray.

Using a vertical grow system such as the coliseum must be positioned facing the sun when not using artificial light and again i run it to waste straight out the door.
Another thing i had to consider was planting density, which plants were off in what systems, how many plants will fit in the system and how much space will the plants require at their mature size.
It can be quite hard to visualize all those factors when your plants start off so small. I like to give myself room to manouvre around the plants but i also like the jungle look in the greenhouse.