This winter's learning experience.

[Henry Krinkle]

21 days old. All but the cress are at least five to six inches tall. While they are not yet filled out enough to make a full salad, they are ready for selective harvest. We will enhance some bought green with the first bits from the garden for part of our New Year's meal/









18 day old greens, from the last unit started. These greens are ready to star harvesting.

[geoffbot]

Looking good. Someone gave me a psychedelic veg grow kit which looks fun - purple carrots etc. Need to plant.

[Henry Krinkle]

Looking good. Someone gave me a psychedelic veg grow kit which looks fun - purple carrots etc. Need to plant.

Oh. Psychedic coloured...



Actually that should be fun.

[Henry Krinkle]

Day, uh...30(?)...ish. This is the third harvest day, with a harvest every three days since day 21. I think. The first two harvests together gave us enough yield to generously garnish sandwiches for lunch and to make a dinner salad with some salmon.



Before the harvest



After



This will easily grow back in the next three days and may even surpass this growth, when I will harvest again. The yield is more than enough for a side salad for the two of us and this does not include anything from the two other greens upstairs with the herbs.

Taste wise I am really impressed. The arugula, the cress and the mustard greens are all super sharp and firmer than I was lead to believe hydroponic plants would be. Much, much better than store bought, if I could even get mustard greens or cress right now. The real surprise though, is the romaine. It is really, really good and along with the red leaf gives our salads a nice sweet counterpoint to the peppery cress and bitter mustard.

[Henry Krinkle]

Day 42. We have been harvesting roughly every 3 days for 21 days now. The plants are more or less full size now despite this



In fill is rapid. One can see the re-growth within 8 hours of a harvest.



Since my wife and I prefer the cabbage based greens like mustard , arugula and cress and we eat a lot of salads, we have found that a 7 pod unit is probably not quite big enough. The romaine, which is the only lettuce we planted, grows like the dickens though. Next seeding we will likely turn one of the 3 pod units over to lettuces and then have all 7 pods in the big unit growing bitter greens, and maybe some Chinese cabbage of some sort.

Overall, we are very impressed with the first planting and the performance of the units.

[Henry Krinkle]

Those who have been following this thread will know I have mentioned the poor growth of the herbs in one particular unit, one that I underfed. I called time on them last week and harvested what I could. A quick look showed me that the pump was only functioning at about 20%. I called Aero Grow and spoke to them about it. It was well outside the return period. A new pump for one of these units retails for about $10. I was willing to buy a new one for that price though I hoped they would send me one free.

They did not. They are sending me a whole new unit and do not want the old one back! More praise for the wonderful folks at Aero Grow.


So now I have a free set of grow LEDs with a timer on a stand. What to do? How about fill the water tank with media and start a baby greens/ shoots garden?


It is currently jam packed with a blend of radish, arugula and cress. Once they reach about two inches high they will be ready and will pack a wallop in both the flavour and the nutrition department.

And a quick lunch harvest from the big unit:

[Henry Krinkle]

Day 81, that is sixty days of harvesting twice a week. The arugula is starting to slow down and is threatening to bloom, and the mustard greens themselves are slowing a bit. The cress, mizuna, tatsoi and romaine are still going fine and the Chinese cabbage is just wonderful. It can be harvested every other day. So that is now two months of salads, sandwich greens and greens for stir frys and pasta dishes. I suspect I have at least a month of harvesting on most of the plants. The cost of the plants and plant food was under $20. That much salad here in winter would cost more than $100 and would not taste nearly as good.

The greens for the next salad

[Henry Krinkle]

Day 94.



Going strong. I had no idea that romaine was as tasty and delicious as it is.



There are four or five full romaine plants growing out of this 1 1/2" diameter pod. The manufacturer was correct- one can harvest every three or four days or it can be left up to a week. More than a week and some of the plants like arugula start to develop flower heads.



The Chinese cabbage is wonderful. It is extremely prolific and large.

[Henry Krinkle]

Day 118, just shy of 100 days worth of harvests.


The romaine is still growing like a champ, the tatsoi is just starting to head out now and the mustard is just waning. The other plants are definitely on the down side. We are really pretty impressed.



Now that we have a general idea of the relative life expectancy of the various plants we will seed two different units accordingly.

The Chinese cabbage, by the way, is outrageous.

[geoffbot]

Superb work.