New guys take on a DWC, with pics.

[PaulF]

Thanks for the encouragement guys. I appreciate it.

As for this week, I hate to sound like a broken record, but, DANG!

This DWC is absolutely ROCKIN'! I am just blown away. I think the plants are probably doubling in size on a weekly basis. And I have to do almost nothing to keep up with them. I have noted a sizable increase in water consumption but that is very easy to keep up with.

The bad news is the space heater, oh my, the space heater! I had been using it to keep the grow room at 75 degrees 24 hours per day. Well, the power bill showed up and guess what? It added 70 dollars to the bill prior! D'oh! So the space heater has been relegated to keeping the grow room at 58-60 degrees at night and the MH lamp keeps the room at 66-68 degrees during the day. So far there have been no ill effects.

I have got cukes coming on like crazy! Probably at least a dozen growing right now. I have had to pollinate them all by hand but all of them took. The peppers have shown growth which makes me think they might work out. The strawberries that flowered I pollinated by hand and they are sporting little bitty strawberries now, how cool! Still not a single flower on the tomatoes, but soon I hope. The tomatoes are putting everything else to shame size wise, they are just incredible. The basement now smells like tomato plants all the time. It is really quite nice.

More to come for those of you following. The pictures below tell the real story.

Now who said that surplus High Bay lights don't work good for hydroponic applications?



My Romaine is delicious! And every leaf is perfect. Caesar salad from my basement? Now this is livin'! How can you beat it? Check out those strawberries too, they are lovin life in my hydro closet.



To give a sense of scale as to how much these tomato plants are growing I put a bottle of Sam Adams in there. Check out the stalk on that plant, unreal! I can't get over how FAST this stuff is growing and how big it is. Look at the size of the leaves on the cukes, and all the flowers!



And finally my standard overhead shot of the tomatoes and cukes. They have gotten so big that this pic has lost its impact. The plants are all just starting to look like one big mass of green!



More pics next week!