Starting Gardening in Early March - Hydroponic Journal #19

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Hello everyone and all members of Hive Garden Community, how are you today? I hope all of you are always healthy and happy in carrying out all these jobs and routines. Every Monday, I always keep a quiet journal of my gardening activities. I have five years, gardening with a hydroponic system. While I'm writing on Hive, I try to share stories and tips about hydroponics.

Last Monday, I didn't write about hydroponics. That's because I was going through phases of being lazy to do something like writing. This time, I want to make up for my laziness and rewrite my hydroponic journal.

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My Hydroponic Garden Condition

This week, the condition of my hydroponic garden has returned to normal and is starting to be well conditioned. I've tried growing some of the vegetables I'm sowing. It seems, I will be busy again for the next few days to prepare and complete all the hydroponic installations that I have.

This week has been a busy week for me. That's because, I have to repair and rearrange my plants. I started by sowing some vegetable seeds that are in demand by the market and consumers. Some of the vegetables that I sow such as spinach, kangkong, pakchoy and mustard greens.

One of the conveniences when we garden with hydroponics is the easy and clean seeding process. In the hydroponic system, we sow and plant using rockwool. Rockwool is a growing medium used to grow vegetable seeds. Rockwool has a texture and shape like foam, and usually this material is often used for silencers / music studios or engine sound absorbers.

For seeding kangkong, there is a different trick with other vegetables. Kangkong must be sown with waterlogged conditions and the most ideal planting medium for a hydroponic system is to use cotton or dacron.

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Moving to Plant Sweet Mustard
Transplanting is the process of transferring the seeds that we have sown to the Hydroponic Installation. In general, we will sow vegetable seeds about 10 days before we move them to our Hydroponic Installation.

This time, I transferred about 100 sweet mustard seeds that I had sown. I use hydroponic liquid fertilizer with a concentration of about 1000 ppm. This concentration is still ideal for sweet mustard, because according to the literature I read, mustard greens require a concentration of 1000-1400 ppm.

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Pakchoy Development

As usual, pakchoy is a vegetable that I always grow in my hydroponic installation. This week, I planted about 400 pakcoy seeds and they are about 14 days old after sowing. I use liquid fertilizer with a concentration of 1000-1100 ppm, this is very suitable for pakchoy conditions in the early weeks.

The ideal concentration for packhoy is 1000-1400 ppm. For the first week of planting, we do not need to use a high concentration of liquid fertilizer. In addition to savings, excessive use of liquid fertilizer does not provide the required effect for plants. It is better, we use fertilizers with minimum standards in the initial phase.

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Lettuce Development

I grow lettuce on the second floor balcony. In general, lettuce is grown in highland or mountainous areas. To grow lettuce in lowland areas, we must condition it in a cool place but still get enough sunlight.

The lettuce that I planted is about 30 days old, and it looks like I will harvest it this week. If the lettuce is harvested too old, usually the stems of this vegetable will enlarge and make the leaves unable to grow wider. Lettuce is a vegetable that is often eaten raw. Lettuce is usually used for salads or fresh vegetables.

Okay, this is my gardening story this time. Hopefully friends are not bored and can provide inspiration for all friends.

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