Still going strong…a couple of lessons learned with these plants.
- I have been mixing my base nutrient much weaker and using the CalMg to bring the EC up to desired level. These plants seem to start have BER problems at anything above 2.0 EC.
- These things love foliar spray. The more I spray the more they grow.
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- Front View
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- Some fruits…
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- Under the canopy
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- Fruit Close up with ruler
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- The SCROG from the top
Tags: Blossom End Rot, General Hydroponics Power Grower, Hydro Grow LED Penetrator 345 Test, Hydroponic Roma Tomato, Indoor Tomato, SCROG
I’m really excited about the way this grow is turning out. I’ve never had such a compact Romaine in a hydroponic system. The tips are not browning very much at all (i’m assuming from the addition of calmag).
Tags: Aeroponic Romaine Lettuce, AeroRail, constant light, Constant Production, Hydroponic Romaine Lettuce, In system germination, romaine lettuce, video
I got my seedling bench all setup in my second tent. I plan on keeping this tent as a veg room for sprouting seedlings and growing mother plants.
Tags: Aeration, Flood Drain, General Hydroponics MaxiGrow, General Hydroponics Power Grower, General Hydroponics PowerGrower, Hydroponic Strawberry, Roma Clone, Seedlings, Strawberry Clone, Strawberry Runners, T5, Veg Room, video
Here are some pictures of the Romaine I am growing under constant light. The AeroRail system is also always spraying. So far things are looking great. I’ll post a video of a complete grow-room update that I recorded a few days ago under these pictures as soon as it’s done uploading to youtube. Take special notice of the strawberry runner that I am rooting in sure-to-grow hail, and the Roma Clone that I took from our best plant.
Tags: AeroRail, constant light, Constant Production, Hydroponic Strawberries, Roma Clone, romaine lettuce, Strawberry Clone, Strawberry Runner, Sure to Grow, Sure to Grow Hail, video
Here is the Maximum Yield Link about Hydroponic Root Veggies
Ragnar be sure to read about the Sweet Potatoes having edible roots and leaves 
How about with continuous light?
Sorry for the i-phone pics. Pro Photo-man Chuckie D wasn’t around when I took them.
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- Anyone know what causes this?
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- Under the canopy
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- SCROG canopy shot
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- The largest one so far
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- There are some fruits
There are two reasons this post is week 6.5
First, I didn’t want to stomp on Jonathan’s great post and there seemed to be alot of interest in the potato grow.
Second, over the weekend we had a timer failure in the grow tent so the plants sat in complete darkness for anywhere from 36-52 hours. I’m not really sure because the plants live up at Studio Logic and I don’t spend much time there over the weekends. Needless to say, growing in a tent and having timer failure isn’t like a cloudy day outside. Its complete darkness. Not good for flowering plants. We lost a bunch of flowers due to the darkness and the general health of the plants declined. I was very depressed. Not discouraged but just bummed. I wanted to wait a few days to let the plants rebound.
With all that said, these plants still have more and larger fruit than any other Roma I have grown under LED. This grow will continue and hopefully HydroGrow will let us start another one right behind it to try and improve our results. I have already taken a cutting of the strongest plant and I plan to try to grow one in hydro and one in ProMix in a bag to see if maybe Romas just don’t like Hydro. Although Village farms in Marfa, Texas grows what they call “Roma on-the-vine” plants Hydroponically I am starting to wonder if they are Roma’s at all.
Tags: General Hydroponics Power Grower, Hydro Grow LED Penetrator 345 Test, Hydroponic Roma Tomato, Indoor Tomato
Potato Setup
Ok so my grow area wasn’t quite ready but I had all of the essentials. A couple of late nights over the weekend and the Yukon Gold’s are on their way. First off I built a wooden frame to support the plastic totes. This was constructed from 2×1 furring strips and a lot of screws. It was pretty unstable until I got the corner braces in all cut on 45s and pre-drilled. This was by far the longest part of the initial set up.
With the totes in place seed potato was planted on top of 2-3″ of medium. Each tote contains 5 seed tubers, one in the center and one at each corner. As the plants grow I will continue to add medium. Water and nutrients are supplied from a 60 litre res and through a 315 gph pump. Some 1/2″ pvc provided a make-shift watering device. I’m still not too sure how to best water these things, I’m thinking low pressure sprayers close to the top of the expanded clay. For now watering is accomplished through two lengths of pvc with 12 fine holes drilled in a set pattern. It seems to work ok and has fairly even distribution. The pump turns on for 10 minutes every hour and a half and so far the expanded clay seems to be staying moist between watering. Its likely this will need to be adjusted as the plants grow.
The light is a 250 watt metal halide covering about 6 square feet of space. The temperature directly below the light is about 20 Celsius.
The only thing I’m concerned about at this point is the quality of the seed potatoes. They sat around in a warm shop for a couple of months and have sprouted significantly and I’m not sure if this with have a negative affect on their growth. With any luck I should see some signs of life within 7 to 10 days
Tags: 250W MH, Hydroponic Potatoes, Metal halide, nutrient, Plastic Tote, temperature, tubers, Yukon Gold
I love this…Although I wonder how the garden fares through winter.
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I’ll let Charles do the talking. EC 1.9 pH 6.2
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- Tomato Trees?
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- Rrrrroma Ro-ma-ma, ooh la ooh la-la
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- The Scrog canopy
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- More Toms
Tags: Hydro Grow LED Penetrator 345 Test, Hydroponic Roma Tomato, Indoor Tomato, video
Hi everyone,
I’m new here so let me introduce myself. My name is Jonathan and I am an IT professional from Nova Scotia, Canada. I’ve been doing hydroponic growing for over a year now off and on. So far I’ve stuck to leafy type vegetables such as lettuce and swiss chard. That’s about to change.
The next grow on the go is going to be a little more challenging. If you have done any research yourself you’ll know that there is very little information about growing hydroponic potatoes. That is why I have selected potatoes for my next grow experiment. Originally the grow was going to be 16 square feet but I have since scaled it way down, I’m going to start with a more modest 4 square feet.
Here are the specs on this garden:
- Expanded clay grow medium
- Drip irrigation
- 250 watt MH to start, we’ll see how this works
- GenHydro Flora series
- Yukon Gold cultivar
The grow table will be two 23″x19″x11″ industrial plastic totes. One table will be seeded with four seed potatoes, and the other will have six. Yukon Gold are a determinate type of potato and therefore it has been suggested to plant them more densely then one would with an indeterminate type. In the end this should give me a good idea of where I need to go for both tables to maximize the yield.
Tags: Determinate Potato, Drip Irrigation, GH Flora 3-Part, Hydroponic Potatoes, Hydroton, Member Bio, New Member, Plastic Totes, Yukon Gold
Last time I did lettuce production I tried to follow Cornell CEA’s Hydroponic Lettuce Production Handbook as closely as possible. I had awesome results. The lettuce grew quickly and very healthy, but I did have two problems.
1. Germinating in the Lettuce in one system and then having to move it into another really sucks if you are trying to achieve constant production at small volume.
2. I don’t like bibb lettuce.
So I am trying to develop a constant production method for Romaine. Its the start of a new experiment that I hope you guys will enjoy. I am hoping that the use of the individual humidity domes can allow for in-system germination. I planning on the first 11-18 days being a 24hr light cycle and then going down to a 20/4 schedule.
Tags: AeroRail, Constant Production, Cornell CEA, LED UFO, Romain Lettuce, video
I’m so excited about this grow I could hardly sleep last night! Every day the plants just look better and better not to mention the fact that flowers are opening all over the place and we already have a couple baby tomatoes on the vine. Last time I tried to grow these things it took over 100 days for me to get anything like this going, and that was from a pretty sizable soil transplant. pH 5.8 EC 2.0 Using General Hydroponics Floramato, CalMg+, and Florablend (as a foliar spray). The daytime temps have been a little higher than I would like (max 87 min 75) since one of our AC units at Studio Logic is down. We are trying to use the ultrasonic fogger to keep the humidity around 70% but it ranges from 50-80. Looks like the new intake fan I installed is going to keep it a little cooler right now 80.9 degrees and 58% RH.
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- The First Baby Tomato
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- Check out those flowers!
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- Another couple trusses
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- Leaf health improving
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- The top view
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- Ah! The Beauty
Tags: Baby Tomato, Flowers, General Hydroponics Floramato, General Hydroponics Power Grower, Grow lab, Hydro Grow LED Penetrator 345 Test, Hydroponic Roma Tomato, Indoor Tomato, Leaf, Nutrient Concentration, pH, Relative Humidity, Ultrasonic Fogger
Video update of my growroom. Hydroponic Strawberries, some new starts and a little comparison grow. Leave us a comment to suggest a crop…soy? bok choi? Super-dwarf plants of some sort?
Tags: AeroRail, Hydroponic Jalapenos, Hydroponic Roma Tomato, Hydroponic Strawberries, Hydroponic Thai Peppers, LED UFO, T5 HO, video
Do you want to learn how to build our systems? Do you grow vegetables hydroponically indoors or out? Or maybe you want to learn? If so UHGU can provide lots of help/advice as well as plans to build any of the systems you have seen us growing with. After a year and a half of experimentation and system building we have a lot of things figured out and we are willing to share that knowledge with individuals who share our vision of distributed urban agriculture. The more people we have collaborating on developing proven methods of indoor/backyard/rooftop hydroponic production the sooner the “Harvest” will come. The only current requirements to become a contributor is a willingness to collaborate with us on your grow projects and the ability to post weekly updates on your progress(i.e. internet connection and a digital camera). Beginners and experienced growers welcome. If you are interested in becoming a contributor click here to send us an email.
Tags: Advice, Contributors, Distributed Urban Agriculture, Hydroponic Systems, Knowlege, Urban Hydroponic Growers Union Mission Statement
The growth rate of the plants has definitely increased since raising the humidity in the tent and the rolling of the leaves has improved even further (although not completely solved). The plants are still abandoning limbs a little earlier than I would like to see. We are figuring by Monday the plants will be large enough to begin trellising into the scrog. I am very encouraged by the number of buds I am seeing and even flowers opening.
Tags: Buds, Flowers, Hydro Grow LED Penetrator 345 Test, Hydroponic Roma Tomato, Indoor Tomato, Leaf
So we got motivated today and went even further with Charles’ shade house. We got the frame finished and got some tan shade cloth hung ofter half of the roof. Charles still has to make a decision on the other half. We are thinking maybe some polycarbonate paneling would be nice. Just wait till we get a power-grower 8-pack out under this thing growing some jalapenos, thai peppers and maybe some bhuts!
Hanging some rafters
Setting up the shade-cloth
Tags: General Hydroponics Power Grower 8-pack, Outdoor Garden, Peppers, Shade-House, Topsy Turvy
I haven’t yet talked a whole bunch about the vision that Charles and I share for UHGU. So even some of our regular readers may not be aware of what we mean by “pioneering distributed urban agriculture”. More on this coming very soon. While indoor LED growing for apartment dwellers like myself plays a huge role in our vision, we want UHGU to be so much more. Backyard, Greenhouse, and even rooftop greenhouses all all a part of the future for urbanites who want healthy, pesticide free produce. Recently, Charles was able to help us take the next step forward by obtaining a backyard! We have big plans for his newfound square footage and we made some of the first steps today. We are turning his deck into a shade-house and have plans for a Greenhouse as soon as we can scrape together the funds to make it a reality. Until then, enjoy the comedy of us using my car as a lumber hauler so that we could hang a couple of topsy turvy’s on the back porch until we can get the roof on it so that it’ll be ready for hydro.
Tags: Backyard Gardens, Distributed Urban Agriculture, Greenhouse, Heat Wave Tomato, Rooftop Greenhouse, Shade-House, Topsy Turvy
So after doing loads of research and asking every growing contact I could think of for help with our Roma grow, I found this article on Urban Garden Magazines Website: Plantworks: Part 1 – Humidity and Vapor Pressure Deficit which included this chart:
| Low VPD / High RH | High VPD / Low RH | |
| Mineral deficiencies | Wilting | |
| Guttation | Leaf roll | |
| Disease | Stunted plants | |
| Soft growth | Leathery/crispy leaves |
Since we had 2/4 low humidity symptoms and our daytime RH was only about 45% I decided to take one of my ultrasonic foggers and put it in a bowl in front of the intake fan and see what happened. Low and behold when relative humidity started coming up above 50% and maxing around 65% the plant started to slowly unroll their leaves and look better in general. Getting this right required me to rewire a couple things to allow the exhaust fan to only come on during the irrigation cycle so the temps rose a little bit, but it looks like the Romas are enjoying this new more tropical environment! Reminds me of the first Urban Garden Magazine issue I ever read and Everest was right…environment is everything.
Tags: environment, Exhaust, Hydro Grow LED Penetrator 345 Test, Hydroponic Roma Tomato, Indoor Tomato, Intake, Relative Humidity, temperature, Tomato Physiological Leaf Roll, Ultrasonic Fogger, Urban Garden Magazine, Vapor pressure deficit
So we set out to complete our Roma tomato setup with a scrog screen and some bases to put the powergrowers on. We figured this would be the last change to take the plants out of the tent to do a good nutrient flush so we did that two. I am really happy with the way the screen came out and hope the results are as good. There is no doubt that these tomatoes are growing faster than I have ever seen under LED, especially since they are already starting to bud. The leaf curl seems to be improving albeit slowly since I reduced the irrigation cycle.
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- The Screen of Green (Hopefully)
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- Detail of the screen hangers
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- Check out the buds!
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- The smaller of the two plants
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- Me clipping the plants to their strings
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- All ready!
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- A look under the screen
Tags: General Hydroponics Power Grower, Hydro Grow LED Penetrator 345 Test, Hydroponic Roma Tomato, Indoor Tomato, SCROG
So Charles recorded and uploaded this video from his new iphone 4, but he hasn’t yet remembered to turn the thing on its side before recording video 
Anyway check it out.
Tags: General Hydroponics Power Grower, Hydro Grow LED Penetrator 345 Test, Hydroponic Roma Tomato, Indoor Tomato, Tomato Physiological Leaf Roll, video