OK, wild. Our lettuce/kale seeds in the starter trays are germinating *after two days*. The packets suggest that it would be 7-14 days at least.

Vertical farming startup Plenty files for Chapter 11
https://www.producebluebook.com/2025/03/24/plenty-files-chapter-11-receives-20-7mm-in-debtor-financing/

I have finally set up my trial hydroponics area! After a year of wanting to give it a go, it was finally time to put what I've learned from here into practice. So thank you #hydroponics and #solarpunk for giving me the oomph to get this over the line!

Now let's hope the lettuce don't mind the miniscule setup and will grow up yummy

I planted some coriander outside this morning. I am not having as much success with it inside in my hydroponics set up as my other #herbs Basil is still the best growing herb for #hydroponics

My coriander has gone to seed. Too much light. I did not keep an eye on it this time. Will restart today and use my timer instead of manually turning the light on and off. I did get some leaves off this batch early on. But so pretty!!! #hydroponics #bloomScrolling

I love my little indoor garden. In my isolated life, my plants are my only tactile contact with other living things; they're good for my spirits and mental health.

However, I'm not producing food in meaningful quantities. It's a joy-giving hobby, nothing more.

If anyone has successful set up indoor gardens to produce significant amounts of food, I would love to hear about what you're doing. My stress would be lower with a bit more food independence.

Heirloom Plants, the Global Seed Vault, and your local Seed Library - a blog post from my local library:

https://www.librarypoint.org/blogs/post/heirloom-plants/

Think I'll start up another discursive space...

I don't think we have a hydroponics group in town. We DO have a lot of folks who do hydroponics, but I'm not sure if we have a group around it.

I'll look around first. If we do, I'll join them. If not, I'll start one up.

Discursive spaces are easy to create, easy to maintain, and have low or no overhead.

Basically its a place to exchange knowledge, swap items, and find comradely.

It's also a great way to connect folks to other initiatives. So having a hydroponic group could feed into the free fridge with their extra produce, for example.

I should write up a blog entry on how to create a discursive space.....

Behold the bounty of #sprouts I grew in 6 days with nothing but a mason jar with a screen in the lid, sprouting seeds, and water. Oh and 12-24 hrs of sunlight on the last day.

The nutrient beginning with an “S” is supposed to be good for people with #MECFS although I don’t have any study on hand regarding this.

I’m just so excited about this because in New Hampshire we have a very short growing season, I live in an apartment so my space gardening is very limited, but if I can grow sprouts on my counter my life is better for it.

Regarding indoor hydroponics...

Most of my power consumption is through my grow lights (still way cheaper to grow than to buy at the grocery store).

I've thought about solar panels and batteries etc... but that costs a lot of money (I havent found a non-scam solution - still researching, but let me put this down for a second).

So I started thinking... instead of lining my roof or side walls with solar panels to power indoor LED grow lights...

...why not just install light collectors outside and funnel that light directly into my house and on too of my plants with fiber optics?!?!

Basically run cabling through my house to wall literal light sockets. And attach further cabling from there to my plant shelves and setups. I could still have LEDs for augmenting the grow space if needed or during stormy days for example... but even then there is light to be collected. Anyhow!)

Turns out other people have the same idea!

Here is a gentleman going a into detail on the math and science of it with a DIY project: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DN8GXTmR6RI

There are even some companies that do this!

Here's the basic idea (I stole this pic from https://www.solarreviews.com/blog/guide-to-fiber-optic-solar-lighting):

I see at least one very large salad in my future…
#hydroponics #gardening

anyway, with the fun new fuckery of "maybe your loved ones won't have access to the SNAP benefits they rely on to eat!" in play--I need to get my ass in gear re: indoor gardening since I'm still on the waiting list for a community garden plot.

does anyone have resources on indoor gardening and/or hydroponics that they really like and trust? I'm mostly wanting to know about what kinds of supplies (specifically grow lights) to get. I think I'd prefer to grow things in soil because that makes it easier to transplant if/when I do get access to somewhere outside and I know more about how to amend soil, but curious to read more about hydroponic setups as well to see if that might make sense for me.

Mai avuto il pollice verde. Con questo sistema Plantui si cominciano ad intravvedere (da quella altina davanti a dx): aneto, maggiorana, basilico, coriandolo, melissa, origano. È la seconda fase, dove la lampada imita il sorgere e calare del sole con cicli diurni. Prima aveva una costante luce fucsia calda probabilmente per imitare quando i semi sottoterra ricevono i primi stimoli. È passato un mesetto, spero crescano di più.

#hydroponics (a forza di stare con Cal non poteva che andare così)

Big shout out to @tinker for helping me save my hydroponic kale & celery. They've recovered beautifully after getting hydroponic-specific plant food. Thank you!

If you are interested in #hydroponics or #MutualAid don't already follow them, you are missing out.

Now that I have more confidence that this is going to work, I expect to ramp up my production. If it goes well, I'll have more than we can eat!

Had a chance to document a bit about my hydroponics setup from last year. It's on the solarcene gitea server so will be offline in an hour (but back tomorrow obviously!)

https://git.solarcene.community/smallsolar/solarcene_community_setup/src/branch/main/hydroponics

Fun #gardening thing: One of my reservoirs stopped working in my Aerogardens. Pumped and pumped, finally pulled it up and--the ROOTS had GROWN INTO IT

I could only pull out half, not sure what to do with it? It's mostly in the final plastic tube that goes into a slot in the garden, but I think the plastic is glued to the rubber hose so I don't want ot break it free just to pull out roots if I can avoid it.

Tips and ways to avoid that?

Ok so let's not throw out a good idea just because we didn't invent it - who's working on our #StarterPacks right now? Is there a hashtag for nominations?

Cause just for starters (haha) @tinker should go on the Hydroponics starter pack, for instance. @hydroponictrash too, presumably, though his recent feed hasn't got much organic content that I can see ;->

I could come up with a number of others I'm pretty sure, and I would really like to see who else is in that #hydroponics category.

As we slip into winter, I'm thinking it could be fun to get into #hydroponics this year. I miss having access to lettuce in the winter. But I have no idea where to start. Anyone out there with some easy ways to onboard myself into this world? My #garden is ready to be put to bed but my love of #gardening needs a little more time (and my table needs proper salad).

LEAF Mission Seeks to Grow Plants on the Moon - Credit: Space Lab
We have seen a recent surge of interest in whether it’s possible... - https://hackaday.com/2024/11/06/leaf-mission-seeks-to-grow-plants-on-the-moon/ #hydroponics #greenhacks #space #moon