Good to hear from you Stan, I was worried you’d left the forum! I did pick my first tomato, albeit rather small (2.29 oz.), it was bright red, the other tomatoes (still green) are much larger. On the reservoir, I’m looking into one of those plastic 55 gallon drums (the blue ones you’ve seen). My neighbor works for the county and got me a steel one years ago for a fire pit, I’m certain he can get plastic ones. I would plan on burying that but will have to make sure the
pump cord is long enough and the pump has the strength for the additional height. On the trellis – I’ve added framework overhead (see pics) to allow trellising out further while maintaining “mobility”. I still have concerns about a bad storm. Also, I have to maintain a balance of visual esthetics and functionality – the wife doesn’t want anything looking “
junk yard”. I’ve learned a
LOT from this and my next bucket design will be radically different, and I intended to incorporate cattle fencing. As for the next batch, I wanted to use the
seeds you sent me in a 5 bucket system, I’m looking around for 3 gallon containers this time (any suggestions?). I’ve not started your seeds in the cloner yet but will do soon. I’m not sure how long I can expect these plants to produce and I was afraid of getting too many going at once. I need to make a timeline predicting harvest backwards (accounting for hydroponics being faster). On the log book, I keep an Excel spreadsheet recording nutes (water) usage, % of nutes, PH and reservoir temp. Since I’ve moved them outside, I notice I have to lower PH – opposite of having to raise it constantly. One thing I have to get better at is the pruning and thinning out. Fortunately I have my neighbor – formerly a farmer in Jamaica – helping. I knew they were
WAY to full and bushy, literally choking themselves, he thinned them out (and removed suckers) filling two grocery bags with “clippings”. It was hard to watch, but I've learned a lot. The new trellising allows us to train branches outward instead of only between the buckets. I’ll keep you posted on progress and new batch.