DisDec 6, 2023
@PlumpCat new answer! Now we've got zillions of plants scattered around the downstairs so we'll see..
Kitchen has the #hydrotower replants and a countertop hydro kit I'm reviewing, the passthrough pantry has cucumbers in DWC (brand new, posts coming), living room has purple lights for the Carolina Reaper on the hearth, plus super bright white in the bay window for the other peppers.
OTOH the impact may be minimal. #snarkhome has always been circadian friendly. Dawn style wakeup lights, automatic blackout shades, color temp shifting accents, etc..

#growyourown #hydroponics #smarhome
Show threadDisNov 1, 2023
Final #hydrotower #garden update (and new project news at the bottom!) There is a lot here.

I got the last #cucumber earlier this week (half-pollinated), but it went bad before we ate it. So our tally is 4 cucumbers, 1 of which was "normal" and 2 of which we ate.

I spent yesterday pulling down and scrubbing the tower for storage. The biggest lesson:
Do NOT Let ANY Light Into The Tower. Full stop.

Just that. It is more important than "check pH". It is more important than "change depleted fluid". The importance of blocking ALL LIGHT from the inside cannot be overstated.

A couple of months back I was getting water leaks from the covers on the empty cells, so I replaced them with clay pebbles in empty net pots. That stopped the leak, but it started letting light into the core. Not very much, but it was enough to start the crash. Around the same time, the foil cover fell off an (unused) fill port on the back, facing the sun. That let a bit of light into the tank as well.

When I took it apart, all of the middle sections had algae absolutely coating the insides except the red ones. (Maybe the red is toxic, maybe it just lowered the light below the threshold.) The end-days pH crash looks to be related to that cylinder of algae as well.

On the good side, I think I can reuse most of the printed parts if I elect to run a second tower. Oven dry them (125F for half a day) and then soak in food-safe varnish to seal them. Conveniently, we have almost enough "stuff" needing varnish to just set up a dip tank in the garage. Done correctly, the dripping varnish shape should even stop the flips and leaks.

Overall, I still don't know how I prefer to control the lights. Most of them are self-controlled, which means they only go 12h and I have to watch power draw to detect on/off. (I also have to 'set' the clock by manually turning it on at the right time.) That works great so long as the power is stable but is a mess to maintain because of the lack of a wall clock.
The lights that are directly controlled by #homeassistant work better, except when #truenas reboots and takes it down. Or when it was randomly turning on the tent's grow lights overnight. (This is a Bad Thing for the tent in flower mode.) I can't do much about the integrated-controller lights, but I think I will code up a basic #esp32 / #esp8266 relay controller to let HA send schedules instead of just on/off. That should give local control with wall-clock scheduling while still leaving HA in charge.

Next up! I am going to take those repotted basil (and a secret hydroponics project) and rearrange the kitchen a bit to put them in a better spot. The grow lights from the tower will become under-cabinet lights for the kitchen herbs, and the "junk spot" will be cleaned and reworked to hold cutting boards and flour and all the other stuff that gets evicted. That should make the whole flow easier; from the usual stations, we will have to cross the walkway to get cutting boards but they will be much closer overall. And it puts two lost stations back into use, which should make it feel larger.

Maybe some pics when it is done.

#snarkhome #smarthome #hydroponics #esp
DisOct 30, 2023
Plants update time!

I got a pocket microscope yesterday and now you won't see me for a week. (But I'll see EVERYTHING!)

Jokes aside, I got a great look at some trichomes on the larger of the Duct Tape #tweeds. Super neat! I'll try to get pics later.

Even though there is lots going on with the primates, I can't ignore the plants. They won't keep waiting for me. The first project is tearing down the #hydrotower. The vine is basically dead, so I harvested the final tiny cucumber last night after all the adventures wound down. Today I'll repot the two basil plants, toss the dead cucumber vine, recycle the used juice into the potted plants and see if any of the (porous) printed parts can be saved. I have hopes that I can scrub/soak the crap out, then varnish it and maybe not have to reprint them next time.

On the #tweeds (#cannabis) front, the Duct Tape threads went brown last week and I got all worried about harvest, but right on time they popped a million new white trichomes (tiny mushrooms full of drugs.) It'll be at while before they are actually ready. I still need to figure out where to put the 2x2x4 drying tent. The planned spot turns out to be 20" wide (I need 24) and it will probably take two people to move stuff.. I'm not exactly eager to ask for her help. (Not mentioned, the remaining Cheetah Piss is fine. She's sativa and a little small, so she's ripening slower. She's also why I can't dry in the grow tent.)

Finally, I need to get out there* and harvest some #peppers today. At least 6 reapers and 8 scotch bonnets are ready, plus they might appreciate a little water. (I don't even count the ripe thai fish peppers because it pops dozens of flowers at a cycle and loves masturbation, so I just pull 6-10 of them every time I harvest anyone else. It is a great constant-harvest plant because the peppers are usable anytime after they turn 'normal' green, all the way through super-ripe red.)

* "Out there" is a bay window, but I do plan to get some away time today, chores and primates permitting. #carolinareaper #scotchbonnet #growyourown #homegrow #garden #gardening #hydroponics #hydrotower #cannabis #marijuana #peppers
DisOct 25, 2023
#hydrotower is still finishing up. The pH keeps plummetting and the algae is winning but this basil just Does Not Care.
Once the final cucumber is harvested, the tower comes down. The two basil go in pots and the hardware goes aside for the next project.
DisOct 11, 2023
The #hydrotower experiment is coming to a close soon. There are a couple of blah cucumbers waiting for harvest, and two super happy basil that I might transplant. (Especially the one I overtrimmed last month. It was producing ridiculous amounts of new leaves but kept touching the light. I accidentally took way more than I should have and it stopped growing until nowish.. It deserves another fancy dinner before it gets moved.)
Oh! And the world's saddest tomato stick was SUPER happy outside and is now 7 feet tall growing 6 fruit in the living room. I'm not gonna hand pollinate (I don't like tomatoes that much) but we'll see what comes off from the time it spent outside.
I'm not done growing though. Next project might be DWC for that lettuce..

Casualties:
- A bunch of lettuce. Like 4 or 5 of them in 3 varieties.
- Cilantro / coriander died later of whatever killed the lettuce but it was briefly super happy
- 2 jalapeno seedlings
- rooted some oregano from the yard. It hung in for a couple weeks, grew a couple of leaves and then just gave up
- 100% of the PTFE printed parts eventually oozed nutes and became crunchy with salt, and everything not crunchy is turning green

Successes:
- 2 whole cucumbers and 3 half developed (under pollinated) plus maybe one more if it grows
- tons of basil for a few months
- like 5 cilantro leaves
- 4 weird lettuce leaves
- have not pumped 4gal of salt onto the wood floors yet

#hydroponics #garden #peppers #growyourownfood #growyourown #cucumber
DisAug 31, 2023

Overdue combo #hydrotower and #weedlings update (no pics don't worrry totally #sfw not even bad language except "weed") Peppers are next.

The #weedlings are no more. I've put off writing but.. they graduated to weed! 😹 They got some last minute training last week, and soon they go to flower. Nothing much to say, pics later, etc. I need a better dehumidifier but as long as the heat holds, the exhaust fan + house AC keeps up.

The #cucumber is growing tons of female flowers! 5 or 6 popped up literally as I was making a Hard Choice about a rebuild. Unfortunately, zero males survive. I think I got a couple pollinated but it is just comical at this point.
Not comical is the #basil which gets more vigorous every time I harvest. (Every few days I have to cut the stem back because it is leaning on the LED again and turning yellow.) It is just HAPPY. Cut down all the front-facing leaves? Enough for homemade XL margarita pizza today and tomorrow there is enough new growth for a nice sauce.
1/2

DisAug 5, 2023

#Weedlings got topped yesterday and seem very happy about it. (I also moved the light up a bit. It will only get dimmer as they get bigger anyway.)

More of my dashboard than usual here. It still needs work but I use it. (Those thresholds on the plant card are questionable at best, but that is OK because so are the sensors..)

On the #hydrotower front, we ate the fancy half-cucumber. It was fucking delicious, but only enough to garnish 2 side salads. Coincidentally, a second fem flower has started swelling up. My cucumber machine is .. slow, but steady. Slow.

Tower is a hard lesson in several aspects of #3dprinting. It is super hard to waterPROOF something, esp without post-processing. And I'm getting fatigue-related sagging that is gonna be a Big Problem eventually. Plus water just doing water things in a naive design (cutouts cause it to 'flip' forward, stuff like that..)

#growyourownmedicine #cannabis #homegrow #weed

DisJul 28, 2023

Today's #weedling and #hydrotower combo update:

The tower is waiting for Cal-Mag because @WordenPond is brilliant. (It also explains what keeps happening to our squashes in the yard.) Other than the deficiency, it is doing OK and the one cucumber continues to grow in it's odd gherkin-water-balloon way. Lots of male flowers but only a few fem still. 🤞

The weedlings are happy, and I finally found the spare #switchbot switch to replace the #securifi peanut on their grow light. That should make it MUCH more reliable.

The securifi plugs do have some serious bugs, but once set up they were generally reliable for years. Recently they have been suffering the increasing instability in the #homeassistant #zigbee2mqtt stack, exacerbated with HA's visceral hatred of "retry that obviously failed command". I'll likely reuse them in places where on/off is less critical, or as always-on power sensors.

#GrowYourOwn #GrowYourOwnMedicine #cannabis #hydroponics #snarkhome #gardening

DisJul 25, 2023

The #hydrotower #cucumber is getting spots and some crispy edges here and there, so of course I ran to the internet in a panic. Some random article that looked human-written suggested too much water, so I turned the water schedule from 15m every 30m down to 25 every 60.

Within 2 hours the cucumber got irritable and started to wilt. So here I am back on the internet in a panic. (Not really, the cucumber isn't likely to up and die or anything.)

Any #hydroponics peeps out there with advice? Is my schedule too low? I kinda settled in there by accident when stuff stopped dying.

It is just a hollow tower and a bucket of GenHydro 'bloom' mix with some extra green bottle. The fluid is almost a week old but I'm hoping to go closer to 2 weeks per change. Not sure what else might impact it. pH is "set" at (poorly-calibrated) 5.7ish and slowly climbs to 5.95 before I push it down with pH minus or (as needed) more fluid.

#hydroponics #GrowYourOwn #gardening

DisJul 23, 2023

#weedlings moved to bigger accomodations. Been warm in there today but not enough to hurt them. Tons of good roots under the seedling tray.

I also moved the world's saddest tomato from the #hydrotower to soil. Hopefully it survives.

#marijuana #growyourown #growyourownmedicine #esphome #homeassistant