04/26/2011

Our plants are still doing very well.  We noticed our water had gotten a little bit low but the plants still looked healthy.  We will be uploading a updated picture soon.

4/7/2011

We are seeing a lot more progress with the lettuce and it seems to be growing more each time we see it.  The third cup is still behind but we hope to see it take off soon.

Lettuce

04/05/2011

I don’t have a photo for our blog fans, but we did see quite a bit of growth in all 3 cups! I think the additional lighting has increased returns dramatically. I’ll post a photo of our progress tomorrow.

03/31/2011

Other class members (who share our lighting area) noticed how much more growth there was in the other growing area. We checked the timers and found that the other light was on for 17 hours a day while we were scheduled for 12. We also have a light that moves on a track system, so one can argue that lighting is not as efficient in our area. (We’re located in the middle, so I think we’re okay.) I changed the timer to 18 hours per day. There was some advice that more than 18 hours a day of sunlight has diminishing returns and/or negatively impacts plant growth. I hope this makes a significant impact in our results. We’ll update on Tuesday. Have a nice weekend!

03/31/11

We are still seeing much better progress with the growth of our lettuce in two of the three cups.  I tried pressing down the seeds further in the third cup in case they were too shallow.  Hopefully we will start seeing lettuce growth in the third cup by next class.

03/29/2011

Today we saw definitive growth in our lettuce plants! Nice. However, we don’t have a sprout yet in one of the cups planted on 3/22. Bummer. We’ll act accordingly if we do not see any action by next class. We did not test for pH, nor did we add nutrient solution. Things look okay.

Our lettuce is showing signs of life!

03/22/2011

Our basil has shown only limited growth since its planting. On Thursday 3/17 we planted lettuce seeds in our 3rd container which had no basil growth. Today that lettuce sprout is taller than both of our basil sprouts. The basil has turned black and would appear to be rotted or dead. Based on some additional research we discovered that the water culture system is best for lettuce, and not many other plants. This is due to the high water content provided by the water culture hydroponic system. We decided to make a change and plant lettuce. We added nutrient solution and tested the pH. The pH stands at 7.5 and we estimate that we’ve used about 2 gallons of nutrient solution since the project began. We’ll report back on the progress of our lettuce on 3/29. We hope all goes well!

We're worried our basil is underperforming! Photo taken: 03/17
Lettuce is in the background. Dead basil sprouts to the left and right. Photo taken: 03/22

Last Thursday (3/17/11) we decided to plant Lettuce in the cup that wasn’t showing any signs of growth of the Basil.  Today when we came in (3/22/11) we found that it has already grown more then our Basil had and we planted the Basil at the very beginning of the project.  Our Basil was also turning dark and did not look like it had survived. We made the decision after more research to remove the dead Basil plants and plant lettuce in our Water Culture system since it is a plant that thrives on plenty of water. Hopefully we will see more progress in the future.