Thoughts about plants
10:48 am in Completed Window Farms, Plants by Mikko Mattila
I have a WF that has a column, and a tall reservoir with space for four separate plants on top of it. Take look at this post for details.
I have planted tomatoes, basil, parsley, rucola, coriander, strawberry, chili, and lettuce so far, and I’ve made some observations. Since my design only has one airlift, and the reservoir pot has much more rockwool, than the small pots in the column, the benefits of hydroponics are not as obvious in the reservoir pot. The plants in there are growing ok, but only about as fast as stuff that I grow in traditional methods, in soil.
My conclusion is that the amount of water flowing through the growing medium does matter. It’s not enough that the rockwool is moist all the time, there must be flow. The flow pulls in fresh oxygen for the roots allowing the plant to grow faster. What I’m planning to do is switch the plants in the reservoir pot to herbs and other stuff that I’m not using in such large quantities.
Tomato growth is absolutely insane in hydroponics systems. My 2 month old plants had grown to about 70cm tall, that’s more than 1cm per day! I had to take the plants down from the WF and plant them in soil for two reasons:
1) The plants were supporting themselves against the window, resulting in trunks that were too thin to support themselves on their own
2) The plants were shading the window so much that the growth of plants other than tomato would have suffered.
I intend to grow tomato ..for eat
. This is working for you, or not?
regards from Bulgaria.
Hi Mikko,
Checked your farm and it looks pretty cool.
I have one too, started it last year, it kind of worked but the plants were not doing so great.
What kind of nutrient are you using? I am in Tampere, could you give an advice where to buy the right kind please.
Cheers,
Dmitry.
Hi Dmitry,
I’m located in Tampere as well. There’s http://chilitarvike.fi/ that has a store in Tammela. Check it out. I used GHE’s FloraMato and FloraMicro.