Category: Winter gardens

Although we’ve had warm weather off and on, it only served to pack the snow tightly to make it harder to melt on warm days like yesterday. 

Dry steps from the deck let me get to the garden to see if the mache was showing any growth and it was not.  Friend Margaret thinks it’s a problem with the variety and recommends “Vit”.  I think I’ve tried it with the same results but may try it again next year to be sure.

Lifted the glass to remove the snow.  A little more light can’t hurt.  Not that there IS a lot of light.  This time of year our warm days come from the south and are usually overcast.

Inside, under the lights, I’m finding that the pea shoots, harvested as baby greens will put out a second growth.  Probably not as robust as the first, but still another serving for me.

You can see a bit of my passive humidifier, water over glass stones.  It doesn’t work terribly well in the cool basement but better than nothing.

I’ve purchased a new, larger light and I was hoping to have pictures of the new, more permanent basement setup.  Between poor design and construction skills, it’s not ready yet.  So here is a quick status, with pictures, instead.  Click on the pictures for a bigger view.

The older lettuces are showing signs of stress with more tip burn on the outer leaves.  I was not sure how long they would last in 2″ soil cubes.  But there’s still plenty to harvest from them.  I will probably harvest and throw away about half of the older plants to make room for the second planting which is approaching maturity. 

Some of the picked lettuces developed brown tips in the lettuce keeper after about a week in the fridge.  This is not the bad stuff, which happens on the inner leaves of growing plants.  However, it gives me something to improve upon.  While the simple cause of tip burn is not enought calcium uptake, it seems that its not a problem that can usually be solved by making more calcium

old lettuce plants

available to the plant. 

Low light sometimes contributes, but too much light will, too!  I’ll try to compile a some of the resources that I’ve found or that friends have sent me in a different post, specifically about this issue in lettuces. 

The basil is getting two hours of low speed “wind” a day from a fan to, hopefully, strengthen the stems.  This is in addition to being on a heat mat.  And it’s still growing exceptionally slowly.  Growing warm weather plants may not be worth the energy; hard to measure since I’ve mixed them in this temporary setup. 

Also trying to get more variety by starting micro greens.  It was a package of mixed greens and that may be a mistake. 

When you are working with such short development cycles, if one green is a few days behind another it creates problems.  And you can tell these would like to have a bigger share of the light.

My goal is to blaze a trail (if feasible) for us northern gardners who have a spare bedroom or some unused basement space and who want to extend their growing season inside with LED lights.  I don’t find many others in my research; the most help is coming from greenhouse growers.  But here is yet another innovative business trying to grow under LEDs for commercial use:  Podponics.

I picked some of my first batch of lettuces last night from under the LED lights.  I had them tested by Everiss Labs and since this was the first time I’d ever seen tissue test results, I was a little concerned that the nitrogen levels were a little high and the calcium levels a bit low.  Although I had no direct way to tie these percentages to the ppms that are used to measure the nitrates/nitrites when scientists talk about the issues of low light lettuces, I thought this might indicate that the plants had a problem with high nitrate/nitrite levels that would make them unhealthy to eat.  However, when I asked for clarification from the lab, they said absolutely no problem, not to worry.  The averages weren’t meant to delineate healthy ranges, just averages from plants over the years and my marginal variations weren’t significant.

I had wanted a worst case analysis for the testing, too.  I’d fertilized them 24 hours before the test (Scotts Miracle Grow again).  I don’t think they really needed it; this was part of the test plan.  And since I read that nitrogen levels go higher at night, picking my sample first thing in the morning would have helped make it worst case, too.  From now on, I will not fertilize for a week or two before harvest and always, only the minimum necessary.  The second batch, already under the lights, is made with a combination of ProMix and compost; I’m hoping that will have everything the plants need.  And I’ll harvest in the evening, after a full day of light; the lettuces may be sweeter that way.

To the right is a shot of the sample that I sent to the lab (bottom), and remaining plant.  Notice the strong root structure; air pruned because of the soil blocks.  I expect these may bolt a little earlier than lettuces with all the root space they need but we’ll see.  With a new flat started and a pot of basil to go under this same light, I am at or above the space limit so some of them have to go, anyway.

Another possible, very low level symptom of high nitrogen stress, that I actually had to look for, is leaf tip burn.  What I found was on a couple of the older leaves and when it’s really a problem, I read, it’s on the inner, newer growth.  But it is related to low calcium in the tissue.  Low calcium uptake is associated with the low light (high nitrate/nitrite) issues of lettuce, and while this is so marginal that it’s not really a problem, I thought I would post a picture.  Since most of us are judging plant health from observations, it’s good to know what to look for.

From seed to the table in eight weeks is a happy outcome, in my opinion.  I’ll stick with leaf lettuces for now but work on more variation in my harvests.  And probably smaller batches so that I have a few plants ready at any point in time.  For more information about timing and processes, see the category LED light growing or ask a question in your comments.  Sharing is half the fun.  The other half is eating!  Fresh and healthy from “the farm” to the table.