It’s only been 12 days since my last post, but things got a little more interesting this morning .  http://our.windowfarms.org/2011/07/11/jalepeno-at-6-months-and-vacation-survival/

Big storms went through here overnight and we were awoken by our water sensor in the basement at 3am telling us we were taking in some water.  Nothing major.  Normally, I wouldn’t mention this type stuff, but it is such a strange coincedence that later in the morning one of the tubes between the levels on my window farm plugged up and I had a mini flood in my window.   I hardly ever clean out the algea so shame on me.   So, in cleaning up that mess looking closely at the plant I noticed that I had spider mites. 

I was not completely surprized by this because last week I had noticed that my strawberry had mites.  I dealt with mites on the strawberries last year.  http://our.windowfarms.org/2010/08/01/strawberry-5-month-update-spidermites-other-bugs/  Last year I only sprayed the leaves off outside with a hose every few weeks and eventually they went away.  This year though I have purchased some neem oil and soap.  I gave the strawberries a good soaking last week.  Today, I sprayed off the japaneno with the hose and then gave it a spray with the neem oil.  So 11 days ago I had not noticed any thing and today they were all over it.

This is actually the first time I had the jalepeno out of the WF so I got a picture of the roots.  I have noticed that some plant roots like to travel out of the net pot and other don’t.  The jalapeno, strawberry and lettuce roots had been very content in staying put.  Both the peas and beans tended to roam.  http://our.windowfarms.org/2011/03/29/green-bean-roots/ 

So far I have been very happy with the jalapeno and it is producing well with at least one a week.  A couple fell off while hosing it down today.

Enjoy the pictures!

Spider Mites

Neem Oil & Soap

Jalepeno Roots

Jaleneno Harvest

 P.S.  I just made some jalapeno poppers out of these for lunch.  Yum!

I’ll be posting some information on my second WF hopefully by this weekend, but I wanted to throw this out to see what you think.  I have peas on the bottom level and lettuce on the next level up.  The peas are about 60 days old now and doing well, and these small bugs just showed up!  They look like some type of borer. They have a white/clear body and a black head.  Any ideas what they are and how they might get here?  On the seeds? In my rock wool supply? In my rain water?

Am I the only one with bug problems?  At least my spider mites are gone now…

Bugs In My Peas

 A big THANKS to @samenrahmen for knowing what these little buggers were.  Knowing what you are dealing with is half the battle and it all makes sense now.

To document this a bit more, I am adding a few more pictures to this post and changing the title.   Here is an example of the adult that has been buzing around that I just smashed.  I am surprised that my camera took a decent picture of it as it is only about 1 mm long.

Fungus Gnat Adult

 This now explains the dying leaves on the plant.   The lower leaves are drying out and dying and this symptom is slowly working its way up the vine.  I assume this can be caused by them  feeding on my roots.  Hopefully, I have caught this in time as the upper part of the plant is flowering nicely and peas are starting to grow.

Gnat Fly Leaf Damage

 In reading up on these gnats, I see that they like really wet conditions so I am going to cut way back on the watering cycles.  I had been thinking it was a bit too wet.  I had gotten a new air pump when I started this second WF and have not gotten a good feel for how much water the peas and lettuce like.

Adult Gnat Flies on Fly Paper

I bought some fly paper type stuff from HomeDepot.  It is the darker part of the image above.  It is a long piece of sticky plastic and came all rolled up in a tube.  It is incredibly sticky and does not want to straighten out.  To make it easier to work with I cut it into smaller strips and put it on some yellow construction paper.   It naturally wanted to curl up so I made in into a cylindar and put the tie on it.   I quickly learned to use rubber gloves.  In a matter of 24 hours, there were 12 flies stuck on it. 

I am giving them less water and I have also taken out as much of the rockwool as possible to give them a smaller home.  The majority of the roots on this one are actually in the resevoir below.  It had turned itself into a deep water culture.  I have also tried some hydrogen peroxide since that is what I had already in the house.  

As a side note, everything I have been doing has been with rockwool.  When I first started and went to the hydroponics store, they were out of the small bags of the clay pellets and I did not want to buy the big “life time” supply bag.  So this is what the recommended instead.  The one advantage has been that I can “accidentally” unplug the pump for a day and the plants don’t die.

Here we are at 5 months since building my window farm and want to give a general update.   Strawberries are growing well and have been flowering and fruiting.   The plants are growing in rockwell cubes and lately I have the airpump timer running three times a day for about 3hours at a time.  The rockwool holds alot of moisture.  I have a small fan that runs when the airpump runs to help with pollination.  I had tried hand pollinating for awhile, but I do not want to spend the time.

This last month (July)  I have been having bug problems and want to get peoples opinions on how to solve them. The first I believe are spidermites. I can see the little white bugs and the little webs on the leaves. All I have been doing to control them is to take the plants outside and hose the leaves and roots off. However, a few weeks later they are back.

The second are little white larvae like bugs (1-2 mm long) that I see floating in the resevoir and have seen them on the roots. The photo below shows them and am not sure if they are related to the mites. They apeared around the same time, but I think they are unrelated. Maybe they are coming in with the rain water I am using.  I clean and refill the resevoir once a week and they still show up.

In one of the bottles, I had made a simple net cup out of a yogart cup with holes drilled in it. I think the cup is too small for the strawberries. The roots have grown out of the cup and circle in the bottle cap below.

In the other two bottles, I have regular net cups which are much larger than the yogart cup and the roots have never ventured beyond the cup itself.