Looking Grim

After harvesting our plants last week and refreshing our system, things seem to take taken the turn for the worst.  It has now been a week since our first harvest and we haven’t seen any new growth.  In fact, the plants appear to be dieing.  To my knowledge our harvest went well.  Other than that, all we did was clean out the system an put new nutrient solution with the propper pH in it.  Maybe the plants were out of the water too long?  They were only out for no longer than 15 minutes.  Anyway, here are some pictures of what we are dealing with.

  Looks dead and wilted

Maybe some life left

Fresh Start

It has been two days since we harvested our lettuce and the plants haven’t changed much since then.  We figured it would be a good idea to clean out the system to give our plants the best chance to regrow.  We carefully removed the plants and dumped out all of the water.  Once it was empty we wiped down the inside of our system with paper towels to make sure we got rid of any type of residue that may have been building.  We also mixed up a new gallon of nutrient solution.  After making sure the pH was around 6 we filled back up the system and put the plants back in.  In a few days we hope to see some new growth, providing some promise for another harvest down the road.

Harvesting!

As we checked on the plants today we observed even more growth, which is good because we had planned on harvesting today.  At the beginning of class we topped off our nutrient solution to give our plants until the end of class to soak.  At the end of class we got the plant trimmers and started cutting.  We left a good 1.5″-2″ of the main stem in hopes of another harvest.  The lettuce looks tasty and I can’t wait to get it hope and put some balsamic vinaigrette on it.

Before Harvest

 Trimming

Whats Left