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Space Vegetables #9 : "Huston, we have liftoff"

feiticeir0

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Hi everyone ! Hope you all be safe.

This weekend, Sunday to be more specific, was the time to transplant the seedlings to the hydroponics and start the process.

At the time I didn't realize, but, boy, what a work... image

 

Preparation

Before moving the seedlings, the conditions in the hydroponics system had to be the ideal:

  • Nutrients inserted and the TDS values between an ideal range
  • PH of the water to be 6 .

Nutrients

For now and until a know a bit more, I'm going to rely on the instructions of the Nutrients box. I'm using liquid nutrients from GHE - Flora Series

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The instructions are clear and there are values they recommend on a weekly basis, according to where the plants are in their growing phase:

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When my TDS sensor arrives, I will do things differently.

 

PH

For the crops I'm growing, PH of 6 is the ideal. To start, I didn't use tap water, because it contains chemicals that may be harmful to the plants. Instead, I've used distilled water, with a PH of 4.5.

From there, I just increased the PH until it reached a value of 6.

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I already have a PH sensor and will added to the inputs of the Automation HAT in the coming days.

 

With everything set, let's start the transplantation.

 

Moving to Hydroponics

 

The plants now go to a small plastic vase and then they go into the hydroponics kit. At first, I was going to use expanded clay balls to hold the plants in place, but a problem arise:

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The freaking vase has big holes on the "sides" and in the bottom - the clay ball would just fall off. My solution (for a brief moment) was to use 2 vases together to make the holes smaller and find big clay balls for the bottom...It worked, for the bigger plants.

 

The following one is a bean sprout

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First, I got them from the small greenhouse I set up to let the seeds sprout. A small cleaning (rising with water) and to the vase it goes

image

imageimage

 

Since I only had 3 beans sprouts, everything worked fine with the vases and the clay balls... Until the smaller ones:

image

It seems fine, but it will go throw the hole ! image

Then, I remembered that the kits came with small sponges right for this task. Let's use them. They are so small that I had to use tweezers .

imageimageimage

 

After a few hours work, this is the result

imageimage

 

And the project is a go.

There are still a few kinks to workout in the code, but you can follow the project (beside here - still a few more posts to go with code and schematics and progress) using Twitter and ThingSpeak, where all the environmental parameters are being sent.

 

Twitter for Space Vegetables

The twitter updates are every 4 hours with a photo and environmental parameters

Here's the Twitter page

 

ThingSpeak

You can also follow the project using ThingSpeak. All the values will be there:

image

 

Remember: There's still some kinks, so, the values will not be real (not all, just some) until next week.

 

Happy coding and good luck with your projects.

Parents

  • Cool projcet. Hope everything turns out well. I tried hydroponics myself several time. The most difficult was to find a good nutrient solution. Many times the young plants looked great, but suddenly the leafes got brown edges and died. Must have been the nutrient solution (I used several ones) as the temperature and lightning looked good.

     

    All the best for your project

Comment

  • Cool projcet. Hope everything turns out well. I tried hydroponics myself several time. The most difficult was to find a good nutrient solution. Many times the young plants looked great, but suddenly the leafes got brown edges and died. Must have been the nutrient solution (I used several ones) as the temperature and lightning looked good.

     

    All the best for your project

Children