micro steps to getting better
I’ve never used grow lights before. So, when I saw these sprouts straining for the light from the door, I figured it would be a good time to test.
Makes for some cool photos. Will be interesting to see if it straightens the sprouts and helps them grow.
Decided to test a simple Microgreens sprouting system to raise some sprouts to feed to the fish.
If it works I’ll investigate scaling.
These are a mache lettuce, sowed 28/03, on an organic felt mat, with aquarium water pumped through at a very low rate.
When I first planted my plants for the aquaculture it was pretty cold, and it was 4 weeks until i got fish.
As a result many of my young plants have issues with their stems, and generally doesn’t stay of life strong. I’m therefore getting rid of the runts (and feeding them to the fish) and resowing a few lettuces.
The new seeds above are:
3 x laitue verte maraîchère
3 x laitue rouge Grenobloise
Planted in floating raft 2, 30th March, water temp 24.1 C.
My Strategy throughout this series of experiments has been to de-risk complete and utter failure by diversifying the range of experiments I’m running.
I want to get through this season with at least a couple of strong options that I can scale next time around.
So with that in mind, we re-poted the tomatoes seedlings (all heirloom seedlings that I picked up from Kokopelli.Com.)
I’m planning to plant these in a raised hugel culture bed in the garden, which I need to get ready ASAP!
I was pruning my sprouts and getting rid of some of the runt sprouts and decided to add it to the fish tank to see what happened.
I took this “before” photo, which already includes bites out of the leaves with the intention of taking an “after” photo.
Unfortunately there was no after photo because they decimated the mache sprouts.
This has motivated me to figure out a way to grow mache sprouts as a high quality feed for the fish.. More to come on that soon.
I added a second floating raft tank to the system to take the remaining sprouts that I have ready.
The second raft tank is connected to the first tank in two places low down in the base, so that water that enters the first tank enters the second tank easily.
The exit point is from the second tank and flows back in to the general tank.
I got the tip from Murray Hallam, to oxygenate the water under the floating rafts.
After les than a week it is clear that the sprouts on the side closest to the airation on the right have grown bigger and stronger.
I’d move the air stones under the rafts but it’s a little too turbulent. I’ll try experiment with distributing the air stones.
