My Final Post!!!

This entire project has been a great experience, and I thank you for reading my posts and following along with me! Even though my plants did die at the end, I still enjoyed the project and hopefully will be able to start the project back up again after Spring Break. I've learned so much over the course of this project. While I didn't have enough time during my TED talk to share everything that I've learned with you, I know have some time for reflections. There are a few important things that I learned.

1. Even though it my not be as interesting, the details are important: This is something that I generally struggle with (If you don't believe me just ask my math teacher). This wasn't necessarily something I didn't know, but in building the system it was reinforced. I was forced to slow myself down and focus on the details so I knew the system would work.

2. The value of hobbies: Here's on that's not all that hard to believe, I spend most of my time studying and at school. While in general this is a good idea, I can forget to slow down and do things that I like. Over the course of this project, as I worked with my plants, I enjoyed myself and had time to enjoy myself.

3. I really like plants: I already knew that I liked biology, but I've always been uncertain as to what type of biology I was interested in. While learning everything about plants I had to for this project, I found myself incredibly interested and diving in beyond what I had to know for the project. I hope that in the future I will be able to continue learning about plants.

Well, that's it. That's what I learned. Of course I learned about hydroponics, and plants, but the things that I thought made this project a success were the lessons I learned above about myself. I know that this has been an important journey to me, so I hoped that you enjoyed reading.

Tour de Plants (vlog)

So it's been a while since I posted the video of me building the system, and you never got to see the working version in that video, so I've created a second (yay!) to show you the full working system and go through my plants. I was having trouble getting it to embed, so the link is just posted below.

https://vimeo.com/209822438 

Interview!!!!!!!!!!

Alright, so in my quest to learn more about plant
growth and various factors that would effect my hydroponic system, I have contacted a number of botany professors looking for answers to my questions. The other day, one of them finally responded (yay!). Prof. Donna Fernandez from the University of Wyoming was gracious enough to aid me in this project and answer my questions. The questions that I asked ranged from the importance of botany, to the way that UV light affect plant growth, all things that affect the success of hydroponic gardens both big and small. Now I'm going into the questions that I asked and explain why these are important things for me to know. I will only include some of the answers here, but will post a link to the full interview transcript at the bottom of this post.

(questions are bold and my reasoning for asking them are in italics)

What are the most vital nutrients to plant growth? How are these incorporated into the plants/how do the plants use these nutrients?

"Plants require macronutrients in large quantities and micronutrients in smaller quantities.  Macronutrients include carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sulfur, nitrogen, calcium, and potassium.  Macronutrients are used to building the "molecules of life" like protein, DNA, carbohydrates, and lipids.  Micronutrients include things like iron, nickel, zinc, manganese, etc.  They are often used as co-factors for various enzymes or vitamins. "

Because instead of gaining nutrients from the ground, nutrients for plants have to be given them directly through the water, it's important to know what nutrients the plants need, and how much they need at different developmental stages. This knowledge allows for the plants to grow healthier, bigger, and (for fruit/vegetables) improve taste and texture. 

Do different plants absorb different spectrum of light? How could using lights on plants specific to these ranges effect growth?

"There are some differences, but most plants use chlorophyll as their primary light absorbing molecule.  That absorbs primarily in the blue and red wavelengths.  Grow lights  are enriched in these colors and that's why they appear purple."

Because all of the light in a hydroponic system is not natural, knowing how different grow lights affect the growth of plants as well as what type of lights to use can affect things like growth cycle. 

In your opinion, why is botany an important area of study?

"Because all life on earth depends ultimately on the capture of solar energy by plants.  They feed the world.  "

I was interviewing a botany professor for my project, who better to ask about the importance of botany?

rest of the interview 
For me, this is a solid step on my way to understanding plant growth and how a hydroponic system will affect plant growth. For any of my questions that she was unable to answer, Prof. Fernandez recommended other places (reputable sources) where I could find more information. So, again, a big thanks to her for all the help.

Pictures!!!

Day 1 of Planting:

Day 3 of growing:

Week 4: Pull the Switch!

Now that my hydroponic system is working (finally) I can start growing real plants in my system (yay!). To be honest with you here for a second, my luck with growing plants thus far in my life has no been the best, so I will need a lot of luck to get this to work. To start the plants from seeds, because you can't buy plants in the middle of the winter apparently. The way that I will do this is by first planting the seeds in rock wool starter plugs. These will act a place for the seeds to be held in the clay media so they don't get swept away, as well as allowing them to have a place to grow there roots through until they are strong enough grip/wrap around the clay media and keep themselves upright on their own. Of course there are other way that someone can start seeds in a hydroponic system (dirt to the hydroponic system) for starting seeds, as far as my research goes, this was the fastest and most effective way to grow these plants. The first three days after I planted my seeds were very traumatic. Unlike in Frankenstein (although the top of my blog post might be confusing) it takes more than a couple of days for the plants to sprout. I spent these three days worrying that all of my work setting up the system was going to be for nothing because my plants weren't going to sprout. Then, three days later, the mustard seeds of all things decide to actually sprout. A couple days later all of my seeds are staring to show signs of life (except for the peppermint). Now, all that I am waiting for is the peppermint to sprout. I find the peppermint seeds very sketchy, however, because they are this small
--->   .

No joke. But this got me wondering...exactly how do seeds work? Seems like a stupid question at first, but think about it. Seeds contain plant food (in the simplest sense) surrounding the plant embryo. This plant then begins to grow inside the seed, forming leaves inside the seed coat while roots begin to extend outside of the seed and into the ground. After the roots are in the ground and the nutrients provided by the seed is no longer needs, the plant sprouts, becoming larger then the seed itself. After this the time that it takes for the plants to mature vary, for most of my plants, it is about 80 days.

So now that my plants of sprouted, its up to the hydroponic system to give them the proper amount of nutrients! This is where it's important that I set up the water at the end of last week. I'll post pictures of the system in a little bit. Wish me luck!

Trouble-shoot Week (Part II)

So it turns out that instead of one day, this entire week will be spent tweaking my system into perfection (or at least as close as I can get). Thus far the silicon problem has been fixed (yay!).

The new batch worked perfectly. The second problem that I had earlier this week was the flooding problem. The clay media was being sucked into the drain, clogging (why can nothing work?). I was able to fix this by putting a piece of tile over the hole boosted up a little, just high enough that the water can get through, but tight enough that the clay media can't get in. This made the system drain much more quickly and kept it from overflowing, but led to another problem - the system isn't draining fast enough. The plan to fix this (not yet fully executed) is to build up more silicon around the outside of the drain, causing the water to drain slower. My next issue that I had to fix with the system involved clay media - I didn't think I had enough. Luckily, after putting in rock wool starter plugs (which I will explain in the next post) the clay that I had was more than enough, meaning no more ordering supplies!
Note: Before putting the clay media in the system, I put all of it in a strainer and washed all the dust/dirt off of it that was also dumped out of the bag the media was shipped in - this will keep this from getting into the water basin and clogging up the filter on the water pump. As for the water, that has yet to be addressed, because before I can starting making the water just right for the plants, the rest of the system needs to be running properly. When I get to planting (hopefully next week) I will go more in depth in everything that needs to be done in order to set up the water correctly once it's in the system.


I've still got one or two fixes to go, but it's looking bright.


During this project I've also been working on a bit of a personal research project involved with hydroponics and have been looking into urban hydroponics and the possible benefits of those. One video that I found reporting on a test system being run in NYC does a great job of outlining how urban hydroponics systems can benefit a city

Weel 3: I am Delayed

This week I was going to try to start my plants in the hydroponic system, but my system had other ideas for what this week should be used for.

1. Silicon. Why?
The issue with the mysteriously annoying, non-drying silicon has been solved (but not really). I still have no idea why it didn't dry, but when I got some new silicon, wiped away the old, and tried that out, it worked! So now the basic construction of the structure should be all ready to go. I tried to assemble the system already. All that I had to do with this was stack the grow basin on top of the other and...BAM! It looks done! But it isn't. I've still got a little way to go.

[Note for those using silicon: you can use your hands to spread out the silicon, but be warned: it does not wash off easily, so try and keep it from getting all over your hands (which I did and sequentially ended up spending 20 minutes trying wash my hands)]

2. Draining. Help?
On the first go around with the system flooding and draining itself (because it's secretly alive) using a self-timing outlet, it flooded, and not the way it's supposed to. Before doing this I added in the clay grow media (fired clay beads that act as a media for roots to wrap around). when draining, instead of actually draining, the clay ended up being sucked into the tube that allows it to drain, clogging it and over-flowing the grow table. when I held the media away from the drainage hole is drained exactly the way it was supposed to, but how to keep the clay from getting stuck without me sticking my hand in the basin for a half hour every day is still a fix yet to be discovered - although I do have some ideas. The first thing (and hopefully the last) that I will try to fix the system will be to put some netting (mesh or metal) over the drainage hole to keep the clay from falling into the drain and getting stuck, hopefully this will be sufficient to fix the problem. (fingers crossed)



3. Clay Media - also an issue 
Despite having already ordered clay media (twice) to try and get enough to fill the grow basin, I still do not have enough. The clay media is only sold in terms of weight, making it very difficult to accurately judge how much is actually being ordered over the internet. Thus far I have acquired six pounds of grow media, and will probably need at least double of the amount for the table to be filled up all the way. At least now I have a more accurate frame of reference for how much I need and what a pound of grow media looks like (I'll give you a hint - it's not a lot). Thus far, buying clay media is adding up to be the most expensive single part of this project just because of the large amount that I need. So before I can put the plants in the system like I want to.  Despite this, I still think that clay media is the best to go with and seems the easiest type of media to obtain for a decent price over the internet.

4. Water (not just water)
Another issue when dealing with hydroponics is setting up the water, because you can't just throw 10 gallons of tap water in and hope that it works out for you. Plants need specific conditions to grow, and these need to be provided through the water. Before my plants can go into the system, the water needs to be adjusted for pH and the nutrients that will allow the plants to grow to be healthy will have to be added (if plants ONLY needed water to grow, hydroponics would be as easy as throwing some seeds in a cup of tap water). In order to accomplish these two things I bought pH up/down (similar to what you would use to change the pH in an aquarium) and hydroponic nutrients (which I bought pre-made from GeneralHydroponics). The pH of my tap water (which I meausred with a pH meter that I just happened to own because I'm the kind of nerd who owns their own pH meter) was around 8, but the goal it to bring it down to about 5, where most herbs like the pH to be. It took a lot more down solution than I thought it would, but I eventually got the water where I need it to be. After that adding in the nutrients was easy-all I had to do was follow the instructions on the bottle. Now it's just waiting until I can get plants into the system and hoping that they don't die.