DAY 19

After coming to class today Joe and I have found that all our plants are dead. We are really not sure what went wrong or what we could have done differently to help the plants grow. Our solution of reducing the size of the rockwool did not help either.  Does anyone have any suggestions on what they think would have been a solution or why our plants started out good then just died.

Day 18

Today we got to class after our weekend, only to find another dead plant, and half of the other plant dead.  Neither of us can come up with a good solution to our problem.  The pH and temperature both seem to be fine, and the rockwool is still saturated, so the plants aren’t drying out.  All of the plants around ours seem to be growing too, so we doubt that there is too much light.  I had a thought in class today though.  Our rockwool is very thick, more so than most of the other groups, so I thought that maybe if we cut the rockwool in half and make it thinner, maybe the roots will be able to grow better.  We also planted new seeds in the rockwool.  There is not enough time left in class to really grow much, but we’ll see what happens.

Day 14

Our possible solution to the problem of the meslcun not growing did not seem to help much.  Our plants do not look very unhealthy, but they don’t seem to be growing at all.  There is definitely something wrong with our system, so if anyone has any suggestions, please let us know.

Day 12

Today we got to class for the first time since last Thursday, May 26.  We expected the mesclun to have grown significantly, only to find out that not only had some hardly grown, but two of the plants had been dead.  We tried to find anything wrong with the system, so we checked the pH and the temperature of the water.  The temp was around 77 degrees F, and the pH was around 6.5, which are both ideal for our plants.  The only thing we were able to find was it seemed all of the nutrients separated from the water, and sank to the bottom of the tank.  We decided to dump the nutrient solution out of the tank and refill it with refreshed nutrients.  After we replaced the nutrients and cleaned out the tank, we added an air stone to hopefully circulate the nutrients better.  We also made sure the temp was about 78 degrees F and the pH was around 6-6.5.  We are hoping that our plants continue to grow and stay green for the remainder of our observations.  If anyone has any suggestions as to what may be wrong, please feel free to comment.

Day 12 progress...2 dead plants removed

Day 7

This post is a little late, but when we left for the weekend last Thursday, May 26, our plants were doing ok.  They didn’t seem to be growing too much and though some were wilting a little, the others were still very green and growing well.  We checked the pH and the drip system itself.  The water was dripping fine, but the pH was somewhat high, around 7-7.5, so we added some solution to bring it down to between 6 and 6.5 pH.  We expected that the system would work well over the weekend and not provide problems like last weekend.

Progress on day 7, May 26high, around

Day 6

Day 6 Progress

On day 6 we came into class and seen that our plants had grown a little more and are still a bright green.The plants are about 2 inches tall.  We then checked the ph of the water and seen that we were still holding a consistent 6.5 ph. We also have a good water level yet and the drip system seems to be working great.

Day 5

Day 5 Growth

Result of water in a powerstrip…

On Thursday, May 19, we filled our hydroponics system with nutrients, and planted our mesclun.  Our system was running properly when we left for the weekend.  When we showed up to class today on day 5, our system was unplugged, and the power strip that our timer was plugged into was smoking.  Apparently a screw fell out of the PVC and the water sprayed everywhere, and emptied our tank.  After filling the tank back up with nutrients and swapping the screws with bigger ones, we started our system back up with a new timer.  We also placed a bag around the system to keep the water from spraying everywhere if something were to happen.  When we left class today, everything was working properly again, and the nutrients were dripping on the mesclun.  Our plants grew about a half to three quarters of an inch, so our system seems to be working as it should be.