All apologies 01/07/08

To all that follow this blog, i am sorry that i haven't been able to update my posts for a hell of a long time. This summer has been a busy time for the company with hollidays and staff change. Lots has happened in the greenhouse but i will try and update you with some of the more important stuff.

I will be allocated more time, more frequently to spend updating the blog too keep you more up to date with what's goin on.

Setting up an NEF Ebb and Flow / Flood and Drain system with Pablo Beetroot 05/05/08

I have chosen to grow a variety of beetroot called Pablo for its uniform shape, smooth skin, great taste and high yield. As you can see i have germinated the seeds in jiffy peat pellets. I like these because they retain moisture well and contain slow releasing nutrients that are vital for early growth. I have brought them on until they are well established and about 10 - 15cm in height. Their leaves are weighty so i have used sandwich bag ties to hold them up by tying a loop around the stem and sticking the other end in the peat pellet.

Sit the 45 litre nutrient reservoir on a level surface and place the flood tray on top so that it sits in the grooves. position the tank so the gap faces the front. This is where you check and fill the nutrient solution. There are two tubes that stick upright from the flood tray. The smaller of the two nearest the front is attatched to a microjet mc 450 pump and allows for the nutrient solution to flood the medium in the tray.


The second larger upright tube is an overflow drain so that the flood tray can never overspill into the grow room. Handy when theres electrics about. There are also small holes in the grooves of the tray which are for drainage too.
I have added a thin layer of large 8-12mm clay pebbles to allow for better drainage.


I have filled the rest of the tank with seramis that are smaller than the clay pebbles i have used and they also hold onto more water to prevent drying out between floods.
I dug a space in the seramis to fit the peat pellet, in a staggered arrangement for maximum growth space and covered it back up with the seramis.


After transplanting the plants look lifeless and limp. This can be normal as there are stress factors such as a sudden drop in humidity and temperature from coming out of the propagator. Also because the seramis was dry when i transplanted i felt that it sucked some of the moisture out of the roots and peat pellet by process of osmosis.


I took a jug and scooped the nutrient solution i pre-mixed from the nutrient reservoir and poured it over the medium. I then made a black and white cover to prevent loss of moisture from the medium, i cut holes in the right place and pulled the plants through.


After a few days when the plants had rooted in and become established i began to flood the table once a day using a grasslin segmental timer set to 15mins on at mid day.
After nearly two weeks the beets are showing rapid signs of growth.

Setting up an Amazon aeroponics system with perpetual spinach 20/05/08

The amazon took two years of development by company Nutriculture to bring to the market a reliable product of top quality that gives high end aeroponic results at an affordable price. Aeroponics offers an optimal ratio of oxygen, water and nutrient to the plants roots which allows for rapid growth, promoting high yields. It is simple to set up and i will show you how.
Lets begin with the base. Everything will be stacked upon the base so make sure it sits on even ground, do this accurately using a spirit level or by seeing whether water builds up at one end or is evenly spread in the bottom. The base is also the nutrient reservoir and has a 50 litre capacity. Make sure the lowered groove/lip is towards the back of the tank as this is where the next tier will sit, allowing you room at the front to mix your nutrient solution.

The next teir is the base of the root chamber. It has two holes at either end, the larger should be facing the back of the system as it is a drain hole. The smaller hole at the front is to allow the delivery tube to connect to the pump.

Next we sit the already assembled delivery tube and sprinklers in the raised grooved beds to hold the in position for an even delivery of solution to each plant site, it is raised to prevent root mass building up around them and blocking them.


Twist the 'tail' end of the delivery tube so that it fits through the small hole in the base of the root chamber and hangs into the nutrient reservoir.
Here we connect the pump to the delivery tube. I have used an extra piece of standard 1/2" hose pipe to lengthen the delivery tube so that the pump sits flat against the bottom of the nutrient reservoir and gets the maximum usage out of the tank.

Now we can place the lid on top. Here you can see this is an eight site Amazon but there are 4, 8, 16, 32 site lids, and now you can double the ammount of sites with the brand new Twin Amazon that shares a nutrient reservoir (keep updated as i will post a blog on this new system soon.
Here is i have covered the amazon in black and white, this helps reflect light and heat to prevent an overly warm nutrient solution as the greenhouse is already warm. However you may want to add a water heater if you need to control your temperature.

There are two sizes of holes in the Amazon lid that hold either 1.5" net pots or 3" net pots. The 1.5" net pot sized holes are ideal when using an aeroponic propagator such as the x-stream aeroponic poragators as you can simply propogate and grow a fully mature plant without transplanting into a larger sized pot. However there is also a 3" net pot sized hole and is ideal for larger sized plants with greater root growth and stem size.
I will be growing a perpetual spinach in the amazon which i have germinated in 1.5" fleximix blocks, but for demonstrative purposes i will show you a simple method of how to transplant either a 1.5" net pot or grow cube such as rockwool, fleximix or jiffy peat pellet.

Simply insert the 1.5" net pot, fleximix, rockwool, jiffy into the 3" net pot and fill the side gaps with seramis (as pictured) or small 4-6mm clay pebbles as these are small enough to fill the gaps without spilling out of the net pot. They also provide excellent drainage preventing any rotting around the stem.
This is a picture of the sprinklers in action, they spin round supplying an even spread of nutrient solution to the roots keeping them moist but allowing maximum aeration for a fresh supply of oxygen to the roots.

Keep updated as i will post new blogs on the spinach's development.

Wind burn 03/05/08

The chilli plants have grown real tall now, so tall infact that the upper leaves are in the direct pathway of one of the circulatory fans at the top of the greenhouse. The force of the air movement causes an extreme case of evaporation of water from the leaves. Transpirational pull cannot keep up with the moisture loss and so cells in the leaf dry out. At such a level of water evaporation from the leaves it leaves behind the nutrient salts that cannot evaporate making them more and more concentrated until they reach a toxicity level.
Leaf burn usually starts with signs of upward curling of leaves. Then there are similar signs to nutrient burn with browning patches and around the edges of the leaf, deformed growth patterns. To stop further wind burn effects i am going to move the fan to another area of the greenhouse. To prevent anything like this happeneing predict the growth of your plants when deciding on positioning of a fan.

Aphid pest problem 12/04/08

I have noticed some curling and deformities in the new growth leaves of the chilli plants. These deformities have come from toxins in aphid saliva that cause mutations of plant cells, they cells around these mutated cells grow and expand, resulting in a curling effect.

When the leaf matures it fully expands and flattens out, where the mutated cells were there is now a hole because the imbalance of growth hormones of these cells don't allow the cells to form properly.






I have seen a few aphids on the lower leaves of a few chilli plants. This is not usually a problem as we release parasitoid wasps as a control regime for preventative measures.

A few aphids soon became a load of aphids, aphids are asexual this means they don't posess male or female sex organs. Infact they are born pregnant with an exact clone of themselves. You can tell which ones are mature and are ready to give birth by their size. A population of aphids can grow at an alarming rate. Our prevntative measures do not seem to be working.

Under closer observation i was able to identify the species of aphid as a glasshouse-potato aphid, they have long legs and the mix of parasitoid wasp that we were releasing were ineffective at ovipositing their young into the aphid. I ordered the correct parasitoid wasp, opened the bottle in the room and gently tapped it releasing the wasps around the plants. I noticed a difference within days.

The parasitoid wasp injects (oviposits) its fertilized eggs into the aphid which will live inside the aphid in its larval stage and will emerge from the host aphid as an adult. The aphid dies but its body remains intact but in a mummified form which is a pale colour.

Ripening tomatoes 08/04/08

The tomatoes have begun to ripen, the green chlorophyl in the fruit begins to dissipate allowing the red pigments to show through. As well as red pigments coming through, i noticed some yellow speckaling. It is not well understood why this occurrs but it is known that increasing the difference between potassium (K) and phosphorous (P) from nitrogen (N) will reduce the speckaling. I added a bloom boost additive that is made here called vitalink buddy, i applied it at 1ml per litre then added my general bloom nutrients till i reached the correct EC.

Hormones control the fruits ripening process, a hormonal gas called ethylene is released as the fruit ripens, this gas promotes ripening in the plant. As more fruit begins to ripen more ethylene gas is released and so becomes more concentrated until there is a flury of ripening fruit. Bananna plants release alot of ethylene gas and are commonly used in commercial fruit crop production to speed up the ripening process. We have our own bannana plant in the greenhouse and it seems to be doing the job.

In the later stage of ripening sugar production (brix formation) is concentrated in the fruit. The sugar attracts water to the fruits cells by process of diffusion, this causes the fruit to become ripe, juicy and sweet tasting. As the fruit matures, the pectin which holds the cells together begins to break down, the cells are not so structurally strong and so the fruit feels much softer.

This bunch of tomatoes are fully and evenly ripe, they are big, colourful, sweet and juicy.

Chilli and Pepper Training 23/03/08

The chillies and peppers have grown to a decent height now and will need to be supported. The reason most chillies and peppers need supporting is because they have been selectively bred for the heaviest fruits despite not being able to support themselves naturally.

When supporting chillies and peppers i use string made from polythene as it doesn't absorb or hold any moisture. This quality prevents any micro habitats for bacteria and mould to breed in increasing the likelihood of plant infection.
I start off by looping the string around the stemp of the plant just before the bification of the stem where it splits into two. I tie a knot around the string itself rather than tight up to the plant. This way of tying allows the loop to expand without coming loose. This means as the stem thickens the loop will not restrict growth.

The other end of the string is tied to a beam at the top of the greenhouse. The support lines are strung up in a 'v' shape, this means as the plant branches out towards the top the foliage will not cross over each other and become a dense canopy. I've strung up two support lines for now but will increase this to four as they grow bigger. Like the tomatoes i will use the plastic clips to train the branches along the support lines as these will bear the weight of the large fruits.

Tomato training 20/03/08

With day length, sun light radiation and warmth increasing as the season moves into spring, the plants in the greenhouse have had explosive growth rate to say the least.
The picture of the floridity tomatoes in the NFT system shows how vigorous the growth has been. In order to cope with the rate of growth from the plants they need to be maintained and trained.

When the tomatoes have grown too tall for their support they are lowered by releasing the spool of string they are attatched to for support. A plastic clip is attatched to the string at the hinge and clips around the stem to support the plant without being too tight restricting the expansive growth of the stem.

As i lower individual plants i also move the support spool to the next hanging site. In effect this causes the plants to coil round at the base. With the lowering of the stem foliage at the bottom of the plant builds up at the base of the plant, this foliage is removed by cutting leaf stems as close to the main stem as possible, this will allow the plant to heal most efectively reducing the risk of infections.