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Well it was fun while it lasted. My ultrasonic agitator gave up the ghost about a month an a half ago, I switched to air stones and my plant was perfectly ok with that. Unfortunately about three weeks ago I made a mistake I don’t know what it was or when exactly it happened and it didn’t effect the plant right away but sadly my yellow crookneck squash has died, it made a valiant effort and in the doing it produced 7 very respectable squash, over a dozen medium sized defaults that looked like they were going to be decent fruit but never made it, and nearly a hundred itty bitty babies that never got beyond a the half inch mark. It also produced a plethora of male blossoms that at times made it look like an orange fireworks explosion. Thanks to your advice I never saw a hint of blossom end rot and the only real problem I ever encountered after separating the original group of plants into different buckets was the algae. I knew there was no hope of recovery when I opened the bucket and found bright green algae blooms on the exposed portions of the roots. The lemon balm, and onions are still going strong, however, and I am hard pressed to keep the lemon balm trimmed back I suspect if I transferred it to a 55 gallon drum and left it alone I would have a lemon balm hedge very quickly.
While this does not by any means end this fascinating project it is sort of an important marker. Harvest, that’s right I’ve reaped the first fruits of my labors and it was good. The first fruit approximately 4 inches long and an inch to inch and a half around at its thickest. Raw it has very little taste but is quite crunchy, sautéed with olive oil and garlic salt it is just as good. As you can see by this picture I have several more fruit in the process of maturing I will let these sit on the vine for another week at least just to see how big they get. This plant is still drinking gallons of nutrient water a week and its root mass has reached epic proportions. If this plant were planted in soil in the same size container I’m sure it would not be doing as well nor be nearly so productive. On the other hand the green onion, and lemon balm have developed impressive root systems of their own in their own lake of nutrient and are by far happier on their own than trying to share with the squash.
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Algae is a definite issue with these orange buckets, I switched to Echo Green buckets from OSH and now only my squash has Algae issues but only on the lid which is still orange. In my last update (Week 4 and beyond), yes that was supposed to be under this topic and not a topic in itself. Since then Ive made a few changes and now have two bucket systems one specifically for the squash, and the other for the Lemon balm, and onions, the cilantro is gone some sort of fungus and the Algae just totally rotted out the roots.
Hi, Ya’ll, while its only been two weeks there have been a lot of changes with the plants. I lost the lettuce, I think I let it get too much sun, but the squash, lemon balm, and green onions are going berserk, not so much the cilantro. I’ve tried attaching links to the photos I have but apparently I’m doing something wrong, I’d love to be able to share the progress this bucket has made in the last two weeks. I have learned through research that there were a few things that got left out in class but I don’t think they got left out deliberately I don’t think the length of the class allowed it. PH, Chlorine, and the timing of which nutrients to use and when among other things. Though I did catch that post on adding CAL-MAG to prevent blossom end rot, good catch there. Also where to buy, caus OSH doesn’t carry a single thing other than seeds that’s Hydroponically, or Areoponically oriented though there’s a lot of stuff you can adapt. There are a few Hydroponic specific stores in the area and hopefully they’ll have the stuff I need.
I’ve got several pics of the areoponics system I built in class looks like you’ll have to find them on my Facebook page since image posting doesn’t seem to work here. Ive done just about everything the way you said it should be done and Ive looked up some supplementary material for a larger system that I think I will be putting together soon. I was amazed at how quickly these plants bounced back, though I did have to re-wash the lemon balm, and cilantro plant roots. Thanks for the opportunity to do this and for the inspiration as well.
