🌱 Home Gardening with Hydroponics - Seed Starting Update (August 14, 2017)

They grow up so fast... Welcome gardening enthusiasts to my next update on the seeds I started so you can follow their progress as well. It's been 15 days since the last update and it's been 27 days since the seeds were started.

So far the results have been typical to cycles in the past. Most plants are growing as expected, a few have failed for whatever reason, but this is why I start a few extra seeds each time. At this time the lettuce plants are big enough with strong enough roots to be transplanted to net cups and moved to my wall garden. The tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers are ready to move to my garage system for a short hold-over of about 20 days before heading outside.

Lettuce plants in my Hydroponic Wall Garden.

Yesterday I took some time to transplant the strongest lettuce plants into net cups and placed them in my wall garden. Generally I am looking for them to have at least 3 true leaves growing and roots hanging at least 1.5" out of the rockwool medium before I transplant them. This ensures the roots will reach the nutrient water flowing through the rails and be hardy enough to make the transition.

You will notice in the picture, I have 3 older lettuce plants that were leftovers from the previous seed cycle I was able to put in the system after the clean out - we have been able to get some leaves from them over last few weeks. ( Top row far right #6, Middle Row #2 and #6 ) As the new lettuce plants mature and become harvestable, those 3 plants will be removed and replaced with new starter plants. I also temporarily moved the new cucumber plants to the wall garden ( top row left ) since their leaves got big fast and were crowding the tomato plants. They will be moving to the garage in a few days.

2" Net Cup, Clay Pebbles, Rockwool

I gently pull the roots down through the net cups and lightly pack in extra rockwool around the sides to hold it in place, then I put smaller clay pebbles on top. The clay pebbles help to block light from getting to the rockwool which prevents algae growth and also add a bit of insulation to reduce water evaporation. I purchase my rockwool and clay pebbles online from Amazon.com, the net cups come from Morgan County Seeds (Missouri,USA).

Close up of "Green Ice" lettuce to show the size at time of transplant.

The new plants will need 15-20 more days of growing before they are mature enough to support harvesting. At that time we will harvest the oldest leaves from the bottom of each plant as needed, working our way up the stems as they grow. We are always careful not to take too many leaves from any given plant too fast, that stress can cause the plant grow smaller leaves and bolt early.

Tomato plants in the seed starting tray - ready to move to garage system

Pepper plants in the seed starting tray - ready to move to garage system

Cucumber plants temporarily in the wall garden.

This week I will be moving the tomato, cucumber, and pepper plants to my garage system where they will grow for about 20 or so more days before I move them to my outside garden system. This should time out well, putting us past the hottest days of our Florida summer.

I will also be starting a small tray of lettuce seeds, around 6 plants. In 30 days, when they are ready to transplant to my wall garden, the older plants will be done providing and ready to swap out. This will establish my 45-60 day rotation cycle that I will maintain to ensure a continuous harvest.

I will be adding a few herbs to my garden this week as well, Cilantro, Parsley, and Dill - oh my :-) I am considering soil-to-hydro transplants for those to get a head start on them, it will also be a good topic for me to explain about in a post.

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Thanks for reading, now get out there and get GROWING!