u/moose8420

Harvested my carrots from my second run in 2026. If i can turn around my system quickly i may be able to get one more trial this year.

For Trial 02,
63-days from sowing the seeds, about 55-days from seeing the first green shoots. I believe the varieties i have are between 50-60 days to maturity. I imagine they would still get bigger if i let them go a little longer.

I started with 35 seeds and have about 12-15 that survived. I seem to have an issue early in the growth stage where a lot of the plants wilted and i could not get them to come back.

I did lower the cal nitrate in this batch to try to cut down on the excessive top growth i had in the past and that seems to have worked.

I would say the taste is still great so happy with what i got. Now the kids have eaten them all in one sitting. Need to expand my system if i want a continuous supply. I would likely have to use 3-4 totes succession planted.

The biggest carrot is just bigger than my thumb and about 6+ inches long.

So i had a marathon planting operation last night. I order 100 plants a week ago or so and they arrived while i was out of town. So i rushed last night to process, sort, sterilize and install in my nft’s. Out of 100 or so bare roots, i was able to salvage and install 88 plants. I doubt all will flourish so i will likely need to order a second batch in a week or two to fill out the remaining spots and replace dead plants.

I have one rail set up with hydroton to test and see if an nft filled with hydroton will do better than an empty pipe. With the slope and flow rate, there is about an inch of water in the bottom of the gutter. Im using an empty net cup as a veiw port to monitor the water level/flow in the channel.

My starting ec is 1.25 and ph is about 5.5 so hopefully its good enough to get them started. My garage is in a heat wave with temps in the 80’s and humidity up in the 80’s as well, so i turned on my dehumidifier during the day to drop my daytime humidity down to 55-60. My poor dehumidifier works overtime to dry out my huge garage space, and it also adds a bit of heat to the space. Hopefullly in the next couple of days we will get back to our normal 50F days soon.

Hopefully i can stay on top of my calcium issues on this trial.

Man i thought i was going to feed an army with my peas, after shucking i might have a meal for the family. Can you guess which veggies are hydroponic vs conventional soil?

So quick update with some photos. I have a few plants starting to send up new growth so hopefully it continues going well.

Soooo, it has been a while since i scrapped my last batch of plants due to spider mites. Since then if have set up a trial rain gutter nft system that is filled with hydroton. Added water to it tonight and it seems to be functioning well. Needed to throttle back the flow to keep from overflowing the channel, but i think i got it dialed in.

So i have been waiting almost two weeks for 50 bare root plants to arrive. After about a week in transit i had little hope that there would be much salvageable. They arrived today in a half opened box and felt like they were almost 80 degrees. After pulling the bundle apart and cleaning the roots with a hose, i think i got maybe 50% of the batch to have some potential remaining. Its tough living in alaska.

Not only was-the transit long, but there were likely a half dozen or so plants that actively had spider mites. I decided since im trialling a system i might as well try to see if i can kill them with a H2O2 bath. I let them soak for at least 30-40 min with two caps of H2O2 in about 3-4gallons of water.

After rinsing i placed them in the gutter to see if i can get it to work and maybe have less of an issue than the traditional nft with bear roots above the nutrient film.

So my second trial of carrots is still progressing. It’s been about 42 days since planting seeds. The tops are really starting to grow. A few weeks back i worked to get my net sleeves back on my net cups. The larger reservoir seems to be working. The roots are doing well, but im wondering if i put the sleeves on too soon to keep the tap root from growing through the netting. That will severely reduce my carrot size if thats the case. I imagine its due to the water level being higher than the bottom of the screen.

I did seem to have a number of starts fail this go around. They would sprout up, but shortly after wilted no mater if fully wet or allowed to dry out.

Did i let it go too long. I think this head is one of the largest i have grown so far. I think it is going to be close if not north of 500 grams.

So i got some gutters and started filling one with hydroton looks like i can try out one before completely committing. Turns out i dont have enough hydroton to fill a whole gutter. These are 5” wide. I feel like they are on the small side. I ran my gutter long through the downspout fitting and used an end cap. I drilled a bunch of 1/4” holes at the fitting. I also put some netting in there to help filter. I likely don’t need the netting with the way it set up
Now

I have 80lbs of hydroton ordered, so hopefully that will be enough.

Do they make 8” or 10” gutters? That would seem to be a little better and more space for roots.

I did run some water through it and it seems to drain, but i will need to watch my flow to make sure it does not back up and overflow.

I made the tough decision to start all over today. Working on cleaning up
My system to hopefully start fresh next month. I need to make sure my spider mite friends are all gone.

I made the decision since my plants were struggling and i just had way too many mites. I may try a new system on the bottom shelf. Ive been seeing hydroton troughs and that may be something i can easily convert and run concurrent with my nft channels in the same system. I found it from a recent Hoocho video. It may allow me more flexibility with number of plants and gets away from the net cups. I plan to run the system like a large nft trough with a continue flow. Almost like sloped flood and drain table.

So i removed a broccoli plant from my nft this morning. As i was pulling out the roots, a large clump made it down into my sealed pvc return line. I tried to fish it out with what i had on hand to no avail. So i had to open the line and find the plug. Only one trip to home dept later and looks like i got a good repair. Now my upper rail is detachable in the future.

What is happening to my developing strawberries? Plant is flowering, but berries have this white coating as they begin to develop, and once the white coating is there, they don’t seem to continue to develop.

I find it amazing that you can grow multiple cabbage heads form a single root stock. I think i have harvested at least 4 if not 5 heads on this stock in at least three rounds of harvest. Not only that, but its still going. Its in a single dwc container that i might have filled 6- months ago.

I got some nice new heads of broccoli this week. Very sweet so must be doing something right.

So its been a while since my last update. Life finds a way to pull you in too many directions at once.

Over the last few weeks i have been working to help my plants regain their vigor and i think it is finally starting to pay off. I have been methodically taking plants out of the system to clean the root systems with both water and H2O2 soaks. I have been pulling any loose roots off. I do see some improvements in color with just a high pressure rinse. One item that was pointed out to me is that over time, nutrient salts can collect on the top of the root mat, effecting the ability of the plants to transport water. With the rinse/soak/rinse process i think i have been able to rinse so of that salt away.

I have also been spraying my crowns with a foliar cal-mag water supplement a couple times a week just after the lights turn off in the evening. I also have some plan water misters that i run for 1 min after the lights turn off occasionally throughout the week. I need to set up a better timer for it.

I have been doing is changing the environment a little as well. I have my ac turned on to try to keep the air temp in the garage between 68-75 max. I have the dehumidifier running at 50% during the day and off-at night. And i have been trying to maintain my ec around 1.2 with a ph range of 5.5-6.0.

I think that all this work is starting to pay off since my new growth appears to be healthy and with less or no signs of calcium deficiency.

Now i need to tackle the spider mites more methodically.

So off to a promising start, got my first few seeds to germinate over the past week.

So i have now seen that when my lights are off during germination, the rock wools stay very moist. As soon as i turn on the lights, the rock wools stay starts drying out. Now i have to go spray the tops until the roots reach the water so they don’t dry out.

So i got my next trial of carrots started this morning.

The big change is i started them in a deeper container, hoping this will let them grow long/larger as the water level falls.

I plan to add collars to the tops to cut down on light.

I also put a submersible pump in the center with no pipe on the outlet, kind of like a fountain. I think it might be too much, but may turn it back one as the water lever drops.

Indoor sunflower just opened up over the last few days. Is a brush enough to pollinate or should i use an electric toothbrush. When should i do it before its too late?

I did some limited system cleaning last night. I started pulling plants out to wash the roots and try to trim back to open the crowns and remove stunted growth.

Definitely dealing with some plants with root issues, but others still look clean.

I found one with webbing, but i think this may be a spider vs spider mite. Im going to keep a close eye on other plants, but i tossed the one just to be safe and it was one that was struggling so i was less concerned with losing it.