My first garden, the airstone powered one, is now a week old! The basil seems to be pretty happy, all three pods sprouted (and 5 of the 6 seeds came up). I’ll thin them to one plant per pod once they get a little taller.
The oregano on the other hand is not happy. I think things are too soggy. The bottom of the rockwool is touching the water, and I think that plus the airstone is just saturating things too much. I turned the pump off for the day, and man that thing is noisy.
Garden #2 hasn’t sprouted yet, but it’s only been a few days. I figured out that a lot of the dripping water sound was coming from a loose connection to one of the spray heads, and now that it’s fixed garden #2 is actually pretty quiet. Especially compared to the air setup. I still don’t like how tall the whole thing has to be though, it looks a little silly.
The light I ordered came in on Monday. After looking around at DIY options I decided it would cost me about the same to build a much uglier adjustable height lamp, so I got this one off Amazon for $25 (free shipping!). It takes standard bulbs, unlike the other grow lights I could find, and isn’t hideously unattractive. The side flaps are a little under engineered, I had to stick something in the hinge to get them to stay up.
It casts a nice unappealing blueish tint, which is supposedly what plants like for promoting vegetable growth. I like the lamp enough that I ordered a second one for garden #2.
That thing looks really sweet. We have no hope of our coming out that nice–no laser cutter–but we hope ours sprout as well as yours have. Great work!
Demented