Wait, What?

So for the past several months I've been trying a new "organic" nutrient solution from General Hydroponics called Biothrive Grow.  It's even vegan.  I've put up with a lot from this stuff, you can't test it in any way accept for temperature(no PPM/TDS/PH), and the recommended dosage turned my reservoir in to a foamy foul smelling mess that, at one point,  I had to nuke with peroxide.  Seeking a solution to these problems I found this post on the General Hydroponics blog.

So the foaming is most likely caused by the small bubbles made by both my water pump and by the air stone in the reservoir.  A General Hydroponics employee posted a suggestion that a General Hydroponics Product called Bio-Marine, which is essentially fish oil, would help.  Which is supposed to work in the same way that adding a drop of oil will stop a pot of ramen from over-boiling.   This helpful tip, however is refuted, in another unrelated post, by another GH representative stating that Bio-Marine will "funk up" a recirculating system. Sigh.

Later on in the original post, appears this helpful quote:


"While lots of growers are experimenting, at this point, GH is not intending BioThrive to be a base for hydroponics."

Thanks for nothing General Hydroponics

I shall press on.

The Hardware

Here is my current system configuration:

4 Tier adjustable metal shelf from K-mart
American Hydroponics Baby Bloomer w/ Hydroton
180 watt Blackstar LED Grow light from Lighthouse Hydro
Hydrofarm Commercial 2ft 4 tube T5 fixture
Four 4" Personal Fans Two to exhaust heat and the others circulate cool air
Vick Ultrasonic Humidifier
Hard Cider CO2 Enrichment System (the subject of an upcoming post)
all happily wrapped in Mylar

Three plug-in timers:
one for the lights (currently on an 12/12)
one for the water and (currently in a 3 hour cycle)
one for the humidity and air circulation (currently in a 30/15).

This setup is going strong so far. The only downside is that the UFO, which I keep abount in the middle of the box, blows its exhaust air in all directions around it resulting in heated air blowing unto some of the leaves. 

My future upgrade plans are to automate the fans and humidifier with a thermostat and humidistat for greater precision.  Also, I'd like to upgrade to a 54w T5 Fixture.

Perpetual peat pot problems

Note to self: Peat pots are problems o' plenty.  Once wet, the pots hold too much moisture and drown the seeds. After that, they dry out too quickly, sucking the water and life from the seed and roots.  Of the 10 I've used thus far, only 3 or 4 seeds have sprouted. One of them being basil, the world's easiest plant to grow.  The rest have either remained lifeless or grown a layer of green mold, marking what should have been a place of new life into a tombstone  . 

Wonder and Warnings

The good, the bad, the longan

I was walking through the store today and came across a bunch of longan that were the largest that I've ever seen. Pictured above, with a quarter for scale, is a few from that bunch. There were about the size of a large grapes. However, should you come across such longan, leave them where you found them because the taste was horrible. The increase in size came at the cost of flavor.  Longan isn't the best, but watered-down longan is hopeless.  Another reason why you're not reading Longanyum.

Yearly Reading

After finding a really nice copy of The Lychee and Lungan by George Weidman Groff on the Internet Archive. I feel like I've just read it for the first time. Most copies of this text consist of scanned pages that are then converted into a black and white image, while this version is a color scan of the book and I think that made for a much easier, or rather more natural reading.