You can almost watch it grow
Merry Christmas 2011, Everyone! Hope you’re having a special day with friends and family.
Our Turkey’s on and I have a little time to post this amazing picture of our Humble Seed Black Seeded Simpson and Red Oak Lettuce, which will be the corner stone of our Christmas dinner salad tonight. During the 12 Days Before Christmas, since December 13th, when we posted our last picture of our Humble Seed Lettuce, this lettuce has grown almost up to our grow lights.
It's almost touching the grow lights.
Before heading off to Houston last week to see children and grandchildren, we made our first Humble Seed Black Seeded Simpson salad; and it was really delicious. The lettuce was really crisp and tasty so our experiment to see how well Humble Seed Lettuce grows in an aquaponics system has been completed with glowing results.
But as I explained in my last post, we’re going to have to run another test on our Humble Seed Romaine Lettuce because our LED Grow Lights have turned out to be a disappointment. The lights are not growing the Romaine Lettuce varieties we planted at all. That Grow Bed is a wimpy, wispy shadow of what a Grow Bed full of Romaine Lettuce should look like by now. We’ve found another source for LED’s and will be running another test on our Humble Seed Romaine Lettuce soon.
When you're in the Lab, things sometimes go wrong.
In the picture below, you’re seeing the back side of our Grow Bed #3 with the Humble Seed Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce growing in it. Above the Grow Bed, mounted to the wall is one of the three air circulating fans we added about two weeks ago. We believe these fans have helped our Lettuce grow and thicken as much as they have in the last 12 days.
It's important to keep the air circulating in an enclosed growroom.
Our Water Heater and the stainless steel ring that’s double wrapped around the inside bottom of the 320 gallon fish tank is working really well to both heat the water and the room. The water is staying right around 80 degrees F; and the room stays around 78 degrees F right through below freezing nights. It’s so humid in this Growroom, I have to shoot these pictures really fast before the camera lens fogs up.
The only metal you can use in an aquaponics system is stainless steel.
Our 320 gallon fish tank is 81 degrees, which is perfect for breeding.
It’s time to get back to preparing Christmas dinner. Enjoy the Holidays. There are many more interesting posts coming in the very near future as we’re off to Tucson AZ tomorrow to install three of our Food Forever™ Growing Systems in three Tucson elementary schools. We’ll be posting all about it so stay tuned.
Thanks for Visiting, Grace
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hi, i have read your articles, i immediately need help in knowing why is the lettuce germination spindly when planted in hydroton. In india we have summer most of the year , what precautions do i need to take and what do i need to do right in order to get a healthy germination before i transfer it into the main system.
Spindly lettuce has to do with many things. Ours wasn’t receiving enough light or air in the Growroom. We’ve changed to LED’s and installed fans. As for what you need to do before transferring your lettuce into the main system, make sure you have viable seeds germinating. We just planted some lettuce seeds that are looking long and spindly in the seedling tray. I’m going to have to start over. Healthy seed germination makes for healthy lettuce when it grows out.