Sustainable Farm Journal

Today, I harvested half of the trial hydroponic basil. The weight was just under 2.5 pounds. I delivered the basil samples to a potential customer for evaluation.

The hydroponic basil that I started in January has taken longer to mature than I expected. I've also discovered that stacking the tarys on shelves will necessitate artificial lighting as the basil on the bottom shelf is growing the slowest, and on the top shelf the fastest.

In my comparison of using a seed starting mix and Oasis cubes for germinating seeds, I have found that the Oasis cubes far outperform the seed starting mix. Not only is damping off not an issue with the cubes, but there has been a greater success of germinating pepper and tomato seeds with the cubes. It remains to be seen if the advantage of the cubes continues on to transplantation. It may turn out that the cubes simply do not measure up to a root ball of seed starting mix when it comes to putting them out either in the garden or into hydroponic media.

I am experimenting with cut flowers in a hydroponic setup. I have planted 8 gladiolus bulbs in 4-inch net pots. As these grow up, I will build a flood and drain table to keep them moist and evenly nourished.

By the second week of June, the raised bed garden and the row section nearby have yielded more produce than we can eat. Harvests so far include: Squash - scallop, yellow, crookneck, zucchini and lemon Tomatoes Eggplant - the soil crop yielded before the hydroponic crop Swiss chard Kale Collard greens Carrots Beets Onions Garlic Cucumbers Chamomile Basil Cilantro Chives

I've now harvested the first zucchini, squash and tomatoes (Punta Banda and Texas Wild), along with continuing yields of kale, Swiss chard, collard greens, carrots and beets. From the hydroponic Dutch buckets, I've harvested several bell peppers, banana peppers and a tender squash. So far, the crops grown in soil yield more abundantly than the hydroponic crops. I will increase the nutrient concentration in the Dutch buckets to see if I can improve the yield of the soilless crops.