Month: December 2012

We are having a problem with our tomatoes growing so tall that they are starting to fall over. This is happening because the tomatoes have no where to anchor their roots into, like they have in the ground. So to fix this problem we added wooden post on top of the system for the tomatoes to be tied to. This way they can grow straight.

The lettuce needed harvested before I left for the weekend. It was starting to grow into each other causing crowding to the tomato plants. Since it is so crowded on top of our system, our tomato plants have started to fall over.

With the last days of our class coming to an end, we are noticing browning on the leaves. What we have figured this is from is a low nutrient level in the solution or the roots are becoming over populated and can not grow properly in our smaller system. We have also notices that the plants are drawling a lot more solution than normal due to the fact that the roots have started to grow down into the solution. This is not necessarily a bad problem because then the plants roots can grow as will, and hopefully solving the problem of brown leaves.

For the first week of december our plants seemed to be growing well. The lettuce will soon need harvested again so that it does not become over crowded and choke out the tomatoes. I had to come up with some times of rigging system because our tomatoes are starting to fall over because they have grown so tall. 

When we returned to class after thanksgiving break we were surprised to find that our lettuce plants had multiplied and grown rapidly after harvest. When I took measurements on the 28th of November our tomatoes were grown over a foot tall. The water level was a little low, so I added solution to the what solution was there. On top of our system there was a salt like material that seemed to gather around the down pipes on our system. I still have not found out yet what that is from. But there was some brown spots on the tomato leaves, so I checked the ph level and that was normal at a reading of 6.3 PH.

Before we left for thanksgiving, Erica and I decided to harvest our plants. We did this the week of November 12th through November 17th. We harvested that wednesday November the 14th. The harvest we had was three large handfuls of lettuce.