u/moose8420

My new bear roots keep growing and looking good. I likely should puck the flowers, but i just feel to guilty to do it. Getting some runners to propagate a few of my empty holes due to loses.

My existing plants are still struggling, but im starting to see some positive improvements. Im getting some lighter green and full size leaves shooting out. It really looks like im going to be without berries for a while since i don’t have very many successful flowers.

Ive made a few adjustments since the last update. I added a micro Venturi to my reservoir. Its seems to be helping increase my DO. I tried adding a O3 generator, but it made my whole garage smell like a pool, so i don’t think thats going to work. It was pushing 100mg/hr.

I have also started my dehumidifier on a timer so that it turns off in the evening and my humidity splijes to 70-80% at night while the humidity drops to 60 or so during the day.

I was spraying my leaves with water as the lights turn off to try and increase my humidity at night, but now that i have automated the dehumidifier, i haven’t been doing a evening walk about. The dehumidifier on the timer has my VPD ranging from 1.0 in the day to 0.6 at night.

Im hoping some of these changes help get my strawberries back in gear in short order.

Got two fresh heads tonight. They were hiding in the back of my system so i let them go a little longer than I should. Still pretty sweet so will be great to cook up.

Carrots are still going strong and some of the roots are starting to turn the traditional carrot color.

The tap roots have really started to grow in the past week or so. The net cut is roughly 2” for size reference.

So i decided to try my hand at outside hydro this summer. I have a strawberry tower the i filled with coco coir. The strawberries are just off the shelf from Home Depot. I have a couple extra bare roots from my nft indoors that i added to the bottom level.

I set up a little pump and drippers to cycle nutrients . I know ill need to cover things up, but want to make sure its working.So pump sends water to the top drippers and works its way down. The bottom tower drains back into the bucket reservoir.

Im sort of getting concerned that the 1/4” drippers might get clogged over time. I may need to modify this system. I was hopping to run the drippers for a few hours a day, and let the rain do the rest of the work.

I have a few crowns i was trying to propagate. The first crown had no roots when i separated it from a dieing crown. The top seems to be struggling but the roots look good.

Im moving it from my kratky incubator to my nft. Roots should be long enough to reach the nft stream. Hopeful the better light will jump start the top growth.

Carrots are getting talker, tops are threading through the shelving. I took a peak at ghe roots and im starting to see some real carrot roots developing. Looks like the sleeves worked a little, but lots if roots growing through the netting.

So have been working the last week to increase my dissolved O2 and after high false reading i was able to increase my O2 to roughly 9-10mg/l using a home made Venturi. I also did measure some return water and noticed i had a 1mg/l drop from the reservoir to the return line.

My new plants are really growing quick they are already trying to flower and i will say the new roots are looking amazing compared to past attempts. I always say I’m going to clip the first flowers, but then i feel so guilty about cutting flowers.

I have noticed a little more brown tip burn and I’m not quite sure what perimeter could be the culprit. My room temp has been rising recently, now in the low to mid 60’s. Maybe my ec is low, but I’ve been keeping it at 1.2-1.4 and ph is 5.9 or so.

Still getting a few nice berries, but looks like a number of flowers and buds are turning gray or not developing once open.

The blown leaf in the photos is an older leaf. Not sure if my P is low and need to hold back on the N.

Is this broccoli head still ok with the few brown flowers? Are the brownish colors the flowers starting to open?

So my carrots are off to a strong start. My germination rate this time around appears much stronger. Looks like im down only 10 starts this time, thats about 50% less than last go around.

I also just put on some socks to hopefully keep the carrots mor separated. Im debating getting a deeper tote, now that some of the roots are up to 18” long. Im hoping with the socks, the main carrots will be less likely to be pulled and strangled by their neighbors.

Hopefully in another month or two I’ll be harvesting. Im turning on my fane to try to stiffen up the greens.

So i got my new lights to set up over my new starts in my nft. Finally have dimmers and a digital timer.

I end up getting ac infinity evoIII lights. So far out of the box they have been easy to set up and get on the timer. They do put out quite a bit of light even as high as they are, im still in the 300-600 ppfd with the dimmer at 70%.

I do wish it was easier to daisy chain the together, but its nice they can at least share the controller.

I really had no idea that my old fluence lights were as dim as they are. To get in the 300ppfd range i had to drop them supper low. Im checking one to see if i get some better growth with the higher ppfd.

My albion bare roots showed up yesterday. I had a really late night last night proceeding and installing the plants in their new home.

I ordered 50 plants, but after cleaning all of them, and installing 60 or so plants, i still have 40 plants left. I gave 25 to a neighbor, but not sure what im going to do with the rest since there is still 12” of snow outside right now.

Filled out my new co nft, 40 plants, set up some temp lights and replace another 20 or so plants in my old nft that were struggling.

I took some photos of my cleaning steps. I forgot to photo my final set up, maybe ill update tonight. Photo 3 shows washed roots, photo 4 is my was bucket, photo 5 is the H2O2 soak bucket. Photo 6 more cleaned roots.

I got my channels set up for my next level. 4 more channels should give me close the 40 new spaces.

Found a few issues with my old system. First is a pex water line is not opaque enough to keep algae from growing in the line. Found it with my expander tool. Will need to insulate to block light either with a foam or foil.

I will be switching the clear 1/4 pe tubing for black as soon as it arrives. I am also going to cap my pipe intake to reduce light.

This should get me functional if my new bear riots show up this week.