Fourteenth Week: Discussion

Dear readers,

First I want to thank all of you for reading my blog and being interested in what I have done on hydroponics salad green table project. I kept maybe 10 plants (mostly because they flowered already) and the left were thrown out. There is not any follow up statistical data analysis for this second phase of hydroponics project, since almost all of the plants got hit by ghosting problem and severe tip burn. Professor Michaels suspect that some kind of air-borne disease might be the cause for ghosting problem, since salad greens other than lettuce (which was not part of my project) had same problem. On the additional note, some seeds from the first phase (F1) were planted out in the field during summer 2015. It looked like they were doing great, however, after the mid-harvesting season, all of them collapsed and did not produce any seeds. So, I personally think that if I were to work on this project again, I need to get seeds which are more resistance to the soil and climate in Minnesota.

Thirteenth Week: Volting, flowering, mildew & some selection

Dear readers,

A lot of plants already started to bolt and some of them had flower buds. So I took measurement on a scale of 0 to 1. There was still mild issue with mildew, which I treated with half milk & half water solution. And ghosting problem did not fade away, so I decided to select some of the plants I really like at this stage of growth on a scale of 0 to 2, where 2 is must. Some of the plants looked hardly edible and had issue with severe ghosting and tip burn, thus they were just thrown out and the net pots were cleaned.

Twelveth Week: Tasting

Dear readers,

The ghosting problem unfortunately did not disappear. However, I have to move on so I decided to make note on taste on a scale of bitter to sweet. One of the varieties had taste and texture I really liked which I marked it as *.

Okay, I think these grew out of the seeds I accidentally spilled last time when I planted these plants. And the sad thing is that these are the most healthy-looking lettuce which I could find in the greenhouse...

Tenth & Eleventh Week: Ghosting problem

Dear readers,

I do not what is the problem with these plants, but a lot of them are showing unknown symptom which makes them look very unhealthy and not edible. Professor Michael named it ghosting problem -- leaves are loosing its own color. I will see if time would fix this problem or make it worse.

Tenth Week: Early selection

Dear readers,

Due to mildew damage, tip burn and other not identifiable factors, some of lettuce plants did not look so edible. I wanted to identify which ones looked good so far, so I did early selection based on many different factors but mainly on how edible they looked. Along with selection, I took measurement on harvest and tip burn and death.

Ninth Week: Observation on growth, mildew damage, tip burn & harvest

Dear readers,

Overall, a lot of them did not look very healthy. During the eighth week, I was away for the break so I was expecting them to be fully grown and healthy. A lot of them had mild to severe mildew damage. Some of them had mild to severe tip burn. For mildew problem, I am now suspecting that it is happening because of the weekend watering. (Since they are growing under the hydroponics system, these lettuce plants do not need to be watered on their leaves. However, I am assuming that people who are in charge of it in the greenhouse do it anyway. So, I decided to leave a note so that they do not water these hydroponic salad table anymore.) For tip burn problem, it probably comes from calcium deficiency in the nutrient solution. However, not all of the plants show this symptom so it could partially also be genetic problem. Also, I decided not to account any harvest which did not look edible since the main purpose of this project is to identify edible greens which yield enough.

Seventh Week: Observation on growth & notes on early death and mildew damage

Dear readers,

This week, I took some notes on growth on a scale of 0 to 2, early death on a scale of 0 to 1 and mildew damage on a scale of 0 to 1. Seeing some mildew damage (which is unfortunately hard to capture from my phone camera) is little concerning since they are still at the early stage of their growth. I will see how it goes in couple weeks. Other than that, they all look pretty healthy.

Sixth Week: First observation on growth

Dear readers,

Most of them grew enough for me to take some measurement so I did in scale of 0 to 2. (0=weak, 1=moderate, 2=vigorous). Some of them are growing very fast. I also took note of if each root grew enough to reach the nutrient solution in each bin in scale of 0 to 1.

Fourth & Fifth Week: More thinning & some observation

Dear readers,

Until these lettuce plants grow more, there is nothing I can do much. However, I did two things for fourth and fifth week. For the fourth week, I did additional thinning since there has been more sprouts after the first thinning. I replanted ones which I was going to throw away and brought back to my apartment for fun!

On the fifth week, I noticed that there were some pots which have concerning amount of algae growth in scale of 0 to 2. (0= almost to none, 1=moderate, 2=severe) So, I just took a quick note of it, since it might affect later. Also, I took some notes on root growth (whether root was coming out of the net pot or not) in scale of 0 to 1.