by Tony
Lettuce & Peas at 70days
4:00 pm in Completed Window Farms, posts with pitcures! by Tony
Besides my fungus gnat problem (http://our.windowfarms.org/2011/01/04/borer-type-bugs-in-my-peas/), my second WF is doing well. We have been picking lettuce leaves off around the edges to eat. The lettuce has two plants in it now. At first I sprouted about 5 and have thinned it down to two. I never like thinning plants out. I know if this was in dirt outside I would have thinned to just the one. I just wonder since there should be less competition for the nutrients, how many plants can you get away with in each net pot?
The first pea is almost ready to be picked and more are on the way. The pea is on the bottom and has three plants in it. I have added dowls through the bottles to form a trellis. Since it was on the bottom, the root have traveled down into the resevoir and it has turned itself into a deep water culture. Since I had an extra port on the air pump, I added an aeration stone into the resevoir to give it some more oxygen.
A good question here is which plants naturally have short roots and which prefer longer roots. I wonder what would have happened if the lettuce and pea were reversed…
WF at 70days
Peas Flowering
Bibb Lettuce
Here are some more pictures of sprouting the seeds. I sprouted them directly in the rockwool in a makeshift terrarium and then moved them into the WF when they were big enough.
Sprouting Peas in Rockwool
Sprouting Lettuce in a Terrarium
Lettuce first placed in WF
How do you start your lettuce?
I started mine in a ‘starter box’ with soil where I seeded with one seed in each ‘tube’, then when they were ‘large enough’(about 4″) I removed them from the starter box, cleaned the dirt off the roots and transplanted them to my WF, one plant to each pot.
No problem wih thinning.
You have 3 pea plants in a pot?
You may be able to keep one or two more in a pot.
I have about a dozen pea plants in one pot.
(pure jungle above it. Completely impossible to use the pot above it… )
Not getting too many pods, but it’s an occasional snack.
(I probably should have limited the number a bit. It’s possible they’re too many for the amount of moisture in my pots)
I didn’t use any form of trellis, though. The pea plants were quite capable of holding onto the chains my pots are suspended in, or the other plants for that case…
I also started about 8 or 10 beans in one pot…
(Mung beans, started with about a dozen seeds in a glass jar and water, then moved them over to my WF soon after sprouting)
Two died off pretty soon. Probably too far away from the drip and with too short roots to get much moisture, I guess.
(My ‘pots’ are 9cm across, slightly over 3.5″, and deeper than the net pots used in the standard setup, so they can accommodate more plants)
They didn’t survive Xmas, though. Probably didn’t like the extremely low humidity(15% or so) and low temperature. (I left most heat off, and ran my het-pump in ‘Frost Guard’ mode since I was away for over a week)
They too may have been getting too little moisture for the number of plants. Probably won’t do more than 6 next time…
Your lettuce looks much nicer than mine.
Which type is it?
(Need to order some seeds anyway… )
@gadgetman This is Bibb lettuce and sugar snap peas. I started both in the net pot directly in the rockwool and put them in a recycled clear snack container (cheese balls). It makes a good terrarium. Then when they were large enough with some leaves, I put them in the WF. No transplanting required.
The WF sits in a bay window in our home and it gets cool. Depending on the temperature outside, the window temperature is in the 50F’s or 60F’s which are good temperature for peas and lettuce.
I added the seeds sprouting pictures to the post so take a look.