Month: March 2012

The first photo is of the spinach. It is still slowly getting bigger.

Second photo is of the radishes, they are doing exceptionally well.

The fish are doing well. The water level was checked and refilled a little to accomodate for the weekend. I had a video taken to show more about the system but it will not load.

The light that is being used is on a minute cycle. It slides along a track so it is not constantly on the plants. We believe this is a good cycle and that the plants will continue to do well with it this way.

Everything seems to be working fine and all of the adjustments have proven to be better. Hopefully on Monday there will be more growth to talk about.

The first photo is of the top step, it is of the spinach that was germinated in the paper towel and then planted into the rocks. We believe the rocks will give a better support when the plant gets taller.

The second photo is of the radishes on the second step, these were planted in the rock wool from the beginning. They are proving to be the better growing of all of the plants in the system. There is one radish that the base looks dead but the leaves are still full and green.

The third photo is of the spearmint on the third step. The spearmint was planted in the rock wool from the start, it was planted twice due to being washed out the first couple days due to the water flowing to much over the top. When planting we knew that the spearmint would be the longest to get a desired amount, due to time limits.

Today we checked the pH, we needed to take three samples due to inaccurate readings. They were 12, 7, 8. We didn’t change anything today because of having two of the readings close to or on 7, we thought that the 12 was just a fluke. We fed the fish a small amount of food today. The water level was checked again, it had only dropped a quarter inch five days leaving plenty of water in the system and for the fish. We are happy with the new basin compared to the old one and realized that the pump needed a larger supply to work properly.

This photo is of the spinach that was germinated in the paper towel. They were added into the system. we planted this batch on the top level and in the container we are using rocks instead of the rockwool.

After spring break we decided to turn the system into aquaponics and we added two fish that I had already had in a fish tank. We are hoping for better growth with this and to have a pleasant system to listen to and to watch.

The first photo is of the new base. It will slide apart so we can get to the new basin. the basin adds three inches of water level to the system. This is going to help keep water longer over the weekends.

The second photo is of the radishes. Three of them are doing really well but the fourth one the leaves shriveled up and fell over. The base of that radish still looks healthy and hopefully will regrow. We’re hoping this only happened because of the change in light/ moving of the system to my house for spring break.

The third picture is of the spearmint. Two of them started to grow, and they may be little now they are still a big thing because we haven’t been able to get any of the spearmint to germinate.

The spinach still hasn’t shown any signs of sprouting yet.

Today is the one week mark on the plant growth. The radishes are doing exceptionally well. All four are about an inch tall. The one is about an inch and a half with half inch leaves. The spinach and spearment still haven’t shown anything, last post I said I thought about seeing something but there wasn’t. I planted new seeds in a paper towel and hope I can get them to sprout in that, and then transplant them into the system. The water was low again after two days, but I place the end of a pen cap on the water line causing the flow to cut back significantly, hoping this will cause the water to stay in longer. It did cut the amount of water in each tray, this is a good thing because the rockwool is still wet but is not over done. We tested the pH today, we were lucky and had it right on 7 without changing anything.

1st picture is of the pen tip that was added to control the water, will soon be switched to a valve

2nd picture is the pH test that was taken, result was a 7.

3rd picture is of the progress of the radishes.