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!

[hydrophotobio]

Looking absolutely beautiful! DWC hauls major butt so expect insane growth, especially if you're forcing a lot of oxygen through the nutrient solution!

[PaulF]

Originally Posted by hydrophotobio

Looking absolutely beautiful! DWC hauls major butt so expect insane growth, especially if you're forcing a lot of oxygen through the nutrient solution!

Thank you, the stuff is gorgeous! And to say that DWC hauls major butt is right on the money. This is just unreal.

Originally Posted by biloyp

Beautiful plants, really growing well and I know that light really did the trick. I am hoping your tomato plants don't take over by growing too much. How are you gonna support the tomato plants...cage or stick?? I think you should move the totes some so the cucs have some room. Looks ;like they may just grow down onto the floor which would be ok. I know cucs need lots of water so no problem there ha-ha.I think I need to get a lamp like yours. I am growing lettuce and spinach...spinach not doing too well but the lettuce has provided us with about 6 bowls of salad...But I am in the middle of a home renovation so I can't devote a whole lot of time to my hydro. Thanks for the pics and info.

Thanks for the compliment! Funny you should mention about moving things around due to size concerns. The pics below will reveal that you may have seen into my hydroponics future haha! As far as the support for cukes and tomatoes go I am going to put pieces of wire fencing in the grow room to help hold everything up.

Originally Posted by GpsFrontier

Hello PaulF,
Great looking growth, It won't be long before the taller plants outgrow the space. Are you sure the added $70 is all the heater, and not the light as well?

The light was definitely some of it. But the first month I ran the light it added about $15.00 to my electric bill so the majority of the increase was the heater. But I have to say, without the heat on at all the plants seem to be doing fine.


So, another week and another update. The closet continues to amaze! The growth is exponential. I really could never have imagined it would be like this. Having been a soil gardener for years I was expecting growth more along that type of rate. I guess not!

I had to re-arrange the cukes and tomatoes. The tomatoes were so tall they were shading everything else, and the cukes were running so much that I knew everything was going to get tangled up. So I moved the two to opposing totes and put them on the outsides. Everything is a much better fit now.

Water consumption has gone up drastically on the tomatoes. It wouldn't be a huge problem except the strawberries have very puny root systems and end up getting dried out. In the first picture if you look at the tote on the right the strawberries in the middle net pot are all wilted. When I went down to take these pics I found them like that, I put a gallon of water in and by tonight they will be back up and happy.


On a side note, I am an Air National Guard member and Uncle Sam has seen fit to send me to Europe for a couple of weeks. So there will be no updates for the next three weeks. My wife will be taking care of the garden while I am gone. I can only imagine what things will look like when I get back. Enough blabbing though, onto the pics.


The growth in only a week is just staggering. I thought the stuff looked big last week! I am going to put some wire fence on the out sides of the two totes. I figure it will give the cukes something to hold onto and it will allow the tomatoes support when they come.



I have been wanting to take one of these root system pics since the first day I planted everything! Finally here it is. Notice how small the strawberry root system is. I hope my wife keeps up with the water level while I am gone! Check out those tomatoe roots!



Look at all those baby cukes. I have lost count of how many are growing down there now. I thought it was going to be tough to hand pollinate them. It is so easy. You only need to gently rub the flowers together and by the next day you can tell it has taken by the way the base of the cuke gets shiny. It is really cool!



One of the bigger cukes. I have two or three this size now.



Gigantic Romaine leaves! And look at that healthy strawberry plant, they love it in there.



And the thing I have been waiting for the most! Flowers on my tomatoes. They have yet to open up but soon I hope.



See you in three weeks! Thanks to everyone following along.

[GpsFrontier]

Looking good. Stay safe in Europe, and come home in one piece. I look forward to seeing what those things look like in 3 weeks as well.

[PaulF]

I made it back. I had planned on updating this coming Thursday to keep with my weekly schedule but I thought people might like to see this.

What was waiting for me in my grow room FAR exceeded my greatest expecations.

My wife did a great job taking care of things for me, the tub with the tomatoes drank about 1/2 gallon of water per day. The one with the lettuce and the cukes drank far less. And I think this contributed to a big problem. One of the cukes looked very unhealthy and was quite limp. I lifted the plant out of the tub and found the roots very yellowed and generally unhealthy looking. I figured it was a nutrient issue but strangely all the other plants in that tub looked fine. Out of curiosity I checked the pH level, it was at 4.5!!!! Yikes. So I immediately decided to do a full nutrient change on both tubs. Before I started I checked the one with the tomatoes and it was still at 6.5. I can only guess that the constant addition of fresh water the pH stayed where it needed in one tub and was drastically altered in the other due to the needs of the plants in there, but that is a very amateur guess.

Long story longer, nutrients are now fresh in both tubs now but the one cuke plant is looking like it is not going to make it. I changed to the "Blooming and Ripening" schedule per the GH instructions. It is a shame about the sick plant though because it has a lot of nice thumb sized cukes on it. Live and learn I guess.

Before I get to this weeks pics I want to throw out a couple of things I have learned on this grow purely by accident.

1. The drains built into the tubs were beginners dumb luck on my part. I don't know how I would change out the nutrients without them. The plants and root systems are so big now that lifting the lids and temporarily setting them somewhere so I could pull the tubs out to drain them isn't feasible. Thank God I did that!

2. Having this downstairs with the closest water source upstairs is a HUGE pain in the butt. Each tub needs 17 gallons of nutrient solution. A 5 gallon bucket of nutrient solution is very heavy and easily spilled while going down the stairs. Do the math, it is a lot of trips back and forth.

3. Surplus MH lights rock. Despite what I read prior to doing this the warehouse style light DOES work. I was reading a thread in the lighting section of the forum where someone said that MH will give you tall stringy tomatoe plants. If that is the case then I guess my MH light must not be working right. Take a look at the pics below and tell me what you think.

Finally some pics!

This is what greeted me when I opened the door. I actually laughed out loud, I couldn't believe it! Now those are some bushy tomatoes. And from a warehouse light that isn't even wearing a grow style reflector, how cool is that?



My peppers have finally started to come on. They are looking very healthy.



Blossoms all over the tomatoes! Some have pollinated. But to be on the safe side I took a swab and hand pollinated every one I could find.



Look at the size of that stalk on the tomatoe! These are some HEALTHY plants!



An actual strawberry, there are 4 like this. About the size of raspberries right now, time will tell if they ripen and produce tasty fruit.



And as usual, I saved the best for last. How about those cukes? I am awed at how big these two are. I have another half dozen on the two other healthy plants that are thumb sized or a bit bigger. My first batch of pickles will be coming the next couple of weeks. I can't wait!



More to come next week.

[silkcom]

I guess i don't know, but I bet your cukes could come back now that u've fixed the nutrients. But man, those all look nice (if not a little cramped). Looks like you should eat some salads .

[GpsFrontier]

Hello PaulF,
Glad you made it back. Your plants look like they grew twice as big while you were gone. Ya your right your pH issue was probably due to all the added water if it wasn't pH adjusted first. But the larger plants will take up more nutrients faster as well, and that changes the mineral content of the water, and will affect the pH also. That happens faster with larger plants.

Having this downstairs with the closest water source upstairs is a HUGE pain in the butt. Each tub needs 17 gallons of nutrient solution. A 5 gallon bucket of nutrient solution is very heavy and easily spilled while going down the stairs. Do the math, it is a lot of trips back and forth.

I don't know if it's reasonable with your house layout, but it may be worth considering running a water line downstairs. You can get a splitter for the faucet under any sink, even behind the toilet. Or even just changing it from a single to a duel faucet. Then just run flexible 1/2 inch poly irrigation tubing downstairs either permanently, or temporarily and rolling it up like a garden hose when your done. You can get a couple hundred feet of tubing for about $20. And use a inline ball cock valve to open and close the water flow at the end of the tube. All and all, including quick connect fittings, faucet, and ball cock valve, you could probably do it for $30-$35. If your water source is a water filtration system, same basic idea, though you may need to use 1/4 inch poly tubing instead. And just connecting it using "T" connector spliced inline between the filter, and faucet.

[biloyp]

Beautiful plants, really growing well and I know that light really did the trick. I am hoping your tomato plants don't take over by growing too much. How are you gonna support the tomato plants...cage or stick?? I think you should move the totes some so the cucs have some room. Looks ;like they may just grow down onto the floor whicch would be ok. I know cucs need lots of water so no problem there ha-ha.I think I need to get a lamp like yours. I am growing lettuce and spinach...spinach not doing too well but the lettuce has provided us with about 6 bowls of salad...But I am in the middle of a home renovation so I can't devote a whole lot of time to my hydro. Thanks for the pics and info.

[GpsFrontier]

Hello PaulF,
Great looking growth, It won't be long before the taller plants outgrow the space. Are you sure the added $70 is all the heater, and not the light as well?