Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I had a experiment. I am testing transplantation from soil to hydro. Naturally this comes with some risk of infestation or infection of external sources that are not sterile. However I usually do bathe the plant tops in bleach and wash it very well then sterilize the roots with Hydrogen Peroxide.

However I must have not done a good job with my last plant. Spearmint was transplanted. It had a supreme number of what I can only guess are aphids or spidermites. However they are NOWHERE on the grow medium or other plants. Is it possible that plants that are heirloom and high quality seed are able to fend off pests?

I have no way to explain this but they were confined to a single plant everywhere but no where else?!?! Please help me understand this.

By the way some of my tomatoes were touching this plant too.


Note: I have not had one failure in soil to hydro transplant even if that involved chopping pruning roots to make it as soilless as possible.

However they look very bad for a few weeks then just ram home and grow huge fast. I transplanted a pepper plant that was 1ft tall now its about 5ft tall..... inside 4 months... Not leggy either!

Some plants, and some cultivars of some plants are naturally more resistant to certain pests. That's why they tended to get passed down and retained in the gene pool.

I sometimes suspect that newer cultivars are developed with less sensitivity to disease/pest resistance because we have those lovely pesticides to rely on.

This does make perfect sense. Breed weakness to sell a product.

Would love to see some pictures of your hydro setup Slicer.....

I just learned of a new technique that Crop King is promoting and I believe many of the Canadian commercial growers are using. They are basically grafting high production lo resistance plants to high resistance low producing root stock.

They are getting the best of two worlds.

I am afraid to show my small system... People would call me insane

Density to the max...

I have 10 tom's in a square foot LOL they are trimmed pruned and out of control.. My mustard greens and parsley grow under the canopy.. As well as eggplant. I have giant brusselsprout plants competing with broccoli as well as bean bushes and more tomatos.

Imagine a 1ft row 8ft long with 83 plants... Thats my density here.. 14 tomatos, 2 bean bushes, 6 eggplant and a partridge in a pear tree!

Density is so high.. I have supplemental grow lights in full sun.. Full New Mexico desert sun..

Mild View
http://idisk.mac.com/slicerdicer/Public ... gstuff.jpg
INSANE view
http://idisk.mac.com/slicerdicer/Public ... sanity.jpg

Please do not laugh...

OK.... now I want to see it even more mate .... but having trouble loading the pages.....

Maybe you haven't finished uploading yet

They are uploaded give it a go each image is 1.5mb or so to give quality pictures.

btw remember this is my first first experiment with growing.. Being a city slicker and all I know nothing about plants other than Begonias. I figured if I could grow them I could grow anything I did not know about them either till I started that just kinda felt my way along.

Still can't load either page.... can you download the "Resizer" tool from the download section and the post them (as an attachment) for us??

Once the "resizer" tool is installed you select your photo(s) and right click.... select "medium" - 800x600 .... will create a copy of xx.jpg as xx(medium).jpg..... attach the "medium" pictures.

Try now same links they are shrunk a bit and the file size is 500kb.

Aint anything to laugh about there Slicer.... looks mighty fine to me....

Not bad for an experiment

PS... can see images now

Yeah there is fruit all over the place... I do not know if you can pick them out of the pictures but there is somewhere to the tune of 30 tomatos and 28 peppers.

And if you look closely in the first picture I am doing air layer cloning of my pepper plant

What have you got in the hydro channels Slicer?

Gravel about 10 gallons of it.

The channels are cheap PVC gutters that cost 3 dollars each for a total of 9$ YAY!!

Then it has a consistant flooding over it done by tubing for drip irrigation without the drippers.

Just as well with the drippers..... if you connect the fish tank up, the solids will block the drippers quick smart.....

Even with just 3mm-5mm tubing you could have a problem after a while.