New Portable Rubbermaid Stock Tank system about to be born

great08

Alright! Ran around town all morning finding things to prep for the COVID-19 outbreak quarantine time period coming up. Things like... supplies to build a chicken coop... a garden... and to plant more trees. lol

Anyways, I will be able to stay busy when stuck at home.

Also, I planted out the lettuce starts. Those things LOVED the conditions I started them with. IDK if it was the peat pellets, the Aquaponics water followed by rain water, the steady indoor temps, or the fancy/cheap LED grow light I got off of Amazon (or how long/time and distance I set the light to).

Either way... they are now all in the grow beds. Two rows each of Grand Rapids, Salad Bowl, and Black seeded Simpson.

I pulled the Bells out and let the beds fill fully... then set the peat pellets to where they JUST touched the surface of the water. Most of the pellets are out of the water. I will adapt later if needed.

I will say... the all look darn near identical at this point. The Grand Rapids lettuce was only slightly larger... but with roots that were probably double the length... which may make them leap ahead later.

I now only have two rows left of mature lettuce (Black Seeded Simpson). I am frankly very surprised that they are still going considering how old they were when put into place... and the transplant shock they went through. They have been harvested off of many times. The growth you see in the pic below is about a weeks worth after the last cut.

My wife is currently working on the Bibb lettuce that was cleaned out of the other half of the bed.

Pics...

great08

Just thought I would take a moment to check back in.

It turns out that lettuce will totally grow under some gentle grow lights out in the garage even if it is 90F in there! So that is some great news.

Had an aphid infestation take hold and wipe out an entire crop of baby lettuce. I just pulled out the plants and let the system set as new plants were germinating inside the house. The aphids all died off within the two weeks or so. I am back up and running now.

I now have all BSS lettuce and about 36 or so purple coneflower starts going for planting around my fruit trees this Fall.

Also, I decided to space the lettuce plants out much farther. I think I only have 8 or 9 plants in each zig-zagged row and the tips of the plants are still touching. The leaves are bigger this way... and keep getting light. A.K.A. they do not fade to white and start rotting. Which means the lettuce is much less throw-out and much more perfect.

Los Angeles Will

Your lettuce is looking great! It is one of the things that I have struggled with in my systems.

It will usually start ok, and then just wither away. I had two plants make it in my last round. I like the idea of starting them in the peat. I might try it out.

It's interesting that the lettuce performed well in the heat with gentle (I'm guessing low) lighting.

great08

Los Angeles Will wrote:

Your lettuce is looking great! It is one of the things that I have struggled with in my systems.

It will usually start ok, and then just wither away. I had two plants make it in my last round. I like the idea of starting them in the peat. I might try it out.

It's interesting that the lettuce performed well in the heat with gentle (I'm guessing low) lighting.

Thanks! I my lettuce was doing that wither away thing a lot back when I had the system out in the Sun. It did get a lot better when starting in peat plugs and then transferring over when the plants were 3 weeks old or so.

Keep in mind that I only set the peat to where it just touches the water's surface or even just above that. The worms do tend to climb in there sometimes and bust them open.

My bulbs are indeed dim compared to most high-end growing lights. However, they are still pretty darn bright. They just run very cool and barely feel warm to the touch.

Each grow light has four 4foot T8 LED bulbs in the 6500K color spectrum. Turns out LEDs actually have a better color spread than fluorescent by far according to my tests.

Each of those four LED T8 light bulbs are 2300 Lumens and I keep them @ two to four inches above the plants. Still, with a fan sweeping fresh air across them every few seconds.

You can see in the pic below that the lights are still pretty darn bright. However, they are only running about as bright as the light in the attached link when it is set to dim. It is LED too... BUT runs WAY hotter. Even when set on 1/2 brightness. However, the light in the link would be great for larger plants. I use it during the Winter for my potted trees (you can see it on the wood contraption I built in the back wall. I can lower that thing to the floor. lol). Otherwise, the added power consumption really isn't worth it to grow indoors in my opinion. I would rather use the free sunlight with shade cloth when needed.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07CG ... UTF8&psc=1

great08

Tree Clones

I am currently making (100% success rate!) clones of LSU Purple, Negronne, and Violette de Bordeux figs.... and some Shangri La mulberries.

This is with 2 to 3 inch new green growth/cuttings that were just pinched off by hand. These type of cuttings can normally never be cloned! I wonder how many I could do in one year like this? Also, I wonder what else I can clone out like this? Looks like I may start myself a micro nursery. lol

I just purchase a small Smith fig. These things usually go for over $100 each on figibid.com. So... I may end up making several of them this time next year. We shall see.

great08

100% success for cloning!

I just potted everything up.

Observations....

The three fig types just cloned were LSU Purple, Violette de Bordeaux, and Negronne.

The two LSU Purples had significantly different/stronger root structures than the VDB and Negronne. I suspect this to be either because...

1) the LSU Purple is a MUCH larger tree (with more vigorous roots) OR...
2) they were also under about 2.5 time stronger light.

The VDB and Negronne are indeed considered dwarf and great for containers. I now see why the LSU Purple is resistant to nematodes and starting to be used as rootstock for figs in nematode paradises like Florida.

So.... New test.

I have stuck a new Negronne cutting and 3 Black Jack cuttings into the section that has the most light. Before I had the low lights to start... and then swapped them out to the more powerful lights after a while. This time I shall be going full-force bright light from the beginning to see what happens. The cool part about the upgraded light is that I can cut them to 1/2 power at the flick of a switch.

Backyard Aquaponics
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