Apartment Vegetables

Yep, not weed. But hopefully interesting anyway? Water change today, it's been 2 weeks and the 50L reservoir is looking a little cloudy with mild odor but no particles or visible algae. Free chlorine was measured after last change at 1.85 PPM (5ml of 8% into 50L) and then I had topped up 2ml after a week. Plant Observations: Tomatoes are showing yellow spots on older leaves from the center out, I'm guessing a Nitrogen deficiency and increasing my Part1 from 80->100ml / 50L this time. Peppers are flowering well, I'm shaking the tree twice a day and there are about 10 chilli's starting to form with another 30 odd flowers remaining. I have two tomatoes in Black Swallow soil using the hydro water for comparison against the rockwool tomatoes and currently the soil plants look much healthier. Water Change: * Drained 95% of the water * Added 5ml of 8% chlorine bleach to the remaining water * Calibrated Hanna HI981420 Probe * Added water until ~50L total in reservoir * Added 100ml of Green Planet DF Part1 and mixed * Added 40ml of Green Planet DF Part2 and mixed * Added 6ml of Green Planet ProCal and mixed * Added 12ml of Standard Hydroponics PH Down (~8.0 tap) Status: Expected Chlorine: 1.75 PPM (0.05 PPM tap + 5ml into 50L) Measured PH: 5.72 (Hanna HI981420) Measured EC: 1.61 (Hanna HI981420)

Reorganized everything in the 2x4 table for space; Started two new pots with Canna CoCo with plants I cant remember what they are, and 4x new 6" rockwool blocks with habaneros. took a bunch of photos with comments for the setup. Changed water. Put way more calmag in than i intended (10x over last time), I'm gonna leave it and see what happens - the bottle says 1.2ml/l so its probably gonna be fine. Plant Observations: Seeing some leaf darkening so upping the part2 for more phosphorus. Tomatoes are drinking shocking amount of water compared to the other plants. The bubbler I have lets me switch out the pressure regulator for each port, so I've switched out the 0.6gph modules for 2gph modules so I can have one per plant. But generally if a plant is drinking more I can just stab it with another free line. Water Change: * Drained 95% of the water * Added 5ml of 8% chlorine bleach to the remaining water * Added water until ~50L total in reservoir * Added 110ml of Green Planet DF Part1 and mixed * Added 80ml of Green Planet DF Part2 and mixed * Added 60ml of Green Planet ProCal and mixed * Added 10ml of Standard Hydroponics PH Down (~8.0 tap) Status: Expected Chlorine: 1.75 PPM (0.05 PPM tap + 5ml into 50L) Measured PH: 5.83 (Hanna HI981420) Measured EC: 2.01 (Hanna HI981420)

Plant Observations: Overall things look healthy, not seeing any deficiencies on new growth, tomatoes are bushing out and flowering. Peppers have started to fruit hard, I must have about 40 on there right now from the two plants. The little habs in the white topped blocks are starting to look healthy. They're currently being hand watered just a bit, but mostly are consuming the water I initially prepped the rockwool blocks with - they drink almost nothing for ages. In maybe a week or two I'll connect them to a 0.6gph line. Water Change: Res looked fine with no growth or discoloration so I did a very unscientific change, and just topped up to 75L with approximate nutrient percentages. Less bleach this time since there would be residual amounts and then measured the actual free chlorine, which was lower than expected. Status: Measured Free Chlorine: 0.88 PPM (Hanna HI701) Measured PH: 5.86 (Hanna HI981420) Measured EC: 1.94 (Hanna HI981420)

I hooked up the four new habanero plants to water a few days ago and they are growing really fast and developing a nice color - really happy with with how they're going. Getting a lot of tomato flowers fruiting! As a side note, people say you should completely submerge rockwool 4x4/6x6 in water and let them dry out a bit before putting a seedling in, but that's a bad idea from my experience, for starters Grodan changed their binder ages ago so the PH problem that was supposed to address is not actually an issue anymore. It takes like 2 weeks for a hugo to properly dry out indoors. What I've been doing is take it out of the box bone dry, pour in 500ml-1L of reservoir water in and around the hole then shove in the starter block with seedling. They don't need very much for the first 2-3 weeks anyway. Also, the white covers you see on them are totally worth it, I've tried a few different things so far including those hard plastic watering tops. But just spend the 20$ and get a stack of these white sheet things, the block the light perfectly, fit nicely on the blocks, have a small opening. Though, next time I would buy stainless steel stables though, I doubt its going to be a significant issue but the ones I have will rust a bit eventually. Water Change: * Drained 95% of the water * Added 7ml of 8% chlorine bleach * Added water until ~75L total in reservoir * Added 180ml of Green Planet DF Part1 and mixed * Added 120ml of Green Planet DF Part2 and mixed * Added 60ml of Green Planet ProCal and mixed * Added 14ml of Standard Hydroponics PH Down Status: Measured PH: 5.79 (Hanna HI981420) Measured EC: 2.21 (Hanna HI981420)

Had a flood situation earlier in the week, thankfully my 100L reservior is nested inside a massive Xtrays reservior so its impossible to overflow onto the floor of my apartment :D So yeah, had to do an early water change, same sort of percentages though as previous weeks. Chilli's are starting to change color. About 30 tomatoes starting to grow now. Habs have pretty much doubled in size in the past week.

Quick update this week, tomatoes are sprawling out of control, but fruit is growing well. The tomatoes on the back-left pot are showing some end rot, they're in soil and being hand-watered so perhaps its the infrequent watering to blame. The tomatoes on the right don't have this problem and are in rockwool and irrigated on a schedule. I've added a bit more calmag to the formula just in case.