High Desert Food

10/10/17 UPDATE after exactly 2 weeks:

On 9/26 I started a nice mix of seeds in a sheet with 200 rock wool cubes:

The missing rows were the seeds that first germinated:

Salad bowl lettuce, lemon basil and mustard.  

I moved them into the grow tub with the fertilizer solution.

You can see the empty pots with some coco coir for the next round of seedlings.  Not sure that was a good idea.

Note the MANY holes I drilled into this lid - as many as I could fit.  Incredibly, the lid is still very strong, no chance of breakage unless you drive over it or something. 

I'm going to grow MANY seedlings and as they get larger, I'll distribute them to lids with more space for the plants and I might try transplanting them into dirt too. And I'll need quite a few for the local testers.

There are numerous seedlings in each pot and I plan to take them carefully apart in the next few days.  If they're too close together, I might let two or three grow or just cut the extras off.   Will have to experiment to see what works best.

The largest seedlings:

Seeds started on 10/4 in coco coir.  

Rock wool is rather pricey and I happened to have an unopened block if coco coir that had been sitting around at least a year.

To my unpleasant surprise, it smelled like electrical burn, melted insulation, YUK!   I don't remember this stench from when I used it before, wonder if it's from sitting in the plastic packaging so long. The entire room reeked for several days, but it's ok now.  Makes you wonder though.

I wish I could grow entire flats for one plant because the seeds sprout at different times, but I need VARIETY and had so many lettuce and herb seeds.  Divided in approximate thirds:

The roots and the fertilizer solution.

On 10/3 I moved the seedlings into this tub with fresh tab water and fertilizer and I'm wondering how this will work without pumps and filters.  Already there's a sheen on the top, there was some stuff from the fertilizer at the bottom and most of the "dirt" is the coco coir that I added to the empty pots in preparation for moving more seedlings over.

I'll do some testing with using grey and black tubs and lids, see how less light impacts.

Looks like coco coir is less than ideal and I'll try peat moss.

My tap water was 228 ppm.

I added 3 teaspoons of the lettuce fertilizer and 3 teaspoons of the Cal/Mag to 4 gallons of water:

1522 ppm and EC 2911 (have to read up on EC, have no idea what it means.)

I added another half gallon of water:

1395 ppm and EC 2950.   As ppm goes down, EC increases?

I should have added a full gallon for 5 gallons total so that all pots are IN water.   I lost a few seedlings when I forgot to water one morning.   I've been watering all the seeds twice a day as it's quite warm in that room on sunny days.   And while at it, I also watered the growbox seedlings as there's not a lot of rockwool in some of the pots or they're not in water.   I think it won't matter once they have roots reaching the water, although the rock wool should probably stay wet too.

So I'll update here later this week with new measurements, some info on fertilizer and EC and of course pics!

As always, I greatly appreciate any tips, don't have to make every possible mistake myself 🙂

11/5/17:

I started to run out of space inside and the plants needed more light.  So we used a hole in the orchard (originally intended to grow mushrooms) for a couple of grow boxes.   It worked very well, they got more light and were sheltered from the horrible wind. 

Of course harvesting is very difficult 2 ft below ground level and I ended up moving the plants to the Collectors Corner in Meadview where I'm now renting a little room to sell plants and supplies. 

1/2 inch hardware cloth kept the plants safe from critters:

At the Collectors Corner 11/11/17:

Update 4/12/19:

I went back to coco coir for the seedling, don't care if a little coir end up in the water.   It works so well to start boatloads of seedling in the 10 / 20 trays and then transplant into the net pots.

It's also nice that I can reuse the coco coir as I shake the seedlings a little and most falls back into the tray.