Aeroponics Outreach – MIT City Farm

SONY DSC    In our on going search for awesome projects and leading technologies in aeroponics, we found MIT City Farm.  Their goal is to bring aeroponics to the forefront of agriculture and change the way food is grown on a large scale.  Caleb Harper, the Founder and Lead Researcher showed us the systems they use and the technology they are creating to improve and analyze it. They also believe that open source is the most efficient and most effective way to achieve the optimal solution for farming.  Tribe Awesome agrees. Continue Reading →

Aeroponic Tomatoes- Update

_DSC3179We have an aeroponic tomato plant update!  We have been harvesting our very own aeroponic tomatoes.  They taste really good!  Maintenance of the tomato plants has been manageable.  We have had to keep their water levels up and making sure they have had enough nutrients.   While we were on a trip for 10 days, we encountered a small problem.  The water in our system was replenished every few days but  we decided to have our plant caretakers not add new nutrients while we were away.   This caused a lack of calcium and resulted in blossom end rot in a couple of the tomatoes that were growing at the time.  The tomatoes still tasted good, but there was a part that had to be cut off.   After replenishing the nutrients, the new tomatoes looked much better.

Happy tomato eating!
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Growing Aeroponic Tomatoes

DSC09408We are growing tomato plants in our aeroponic systems, and they are doing awesome!  However, we have discovered that the plants use a lot of water and nutrients.  We end up replacing the water and nutrients about once a week.  When we first planted the tomatoes, we used the normal set of nutrients (25mL FloraGrow, 15mL FloraMicro, and 5mL of FloraBloom).  After reaching three feet, we changed the “recipe” for the nutrients to 15mL of FloraGrow, 25mL of FloraMicro,  and 15mL of FloraBloom in 2.5 gallons.  We changed this to slow the leaf growth and focus on the flowers and fruiting.
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Aeroponic Beans

aero-bean3Yesterday, we harvested a bunch of aeroponic beans.  They looked and tasted great!
If you are looking for another set of plants to put in your aeroponic garden, beans have worked very well for us.
We are growing bush beans, not pole beans.  Pole beans grow like vines and would spread on the ground in the Awesome Aeroponics system, which is not ideal.

Happy bean growing!

Calcium Deficiencies in Squash

Squash in need of calcium

This post is for those of you who are growing squash in your aeroponic garden (or are planning to, or just want to read it :D).

Our squash plants are growing like crazy!  Unfortunately, this means that the plant used up a lot of the nutrients in the water.  The ends of the blossoms on our zucchini plant were colored darkly.  We realized that the plant had Blossom End Rot.  That basically means that the plant doesn’t have enough calcium.  We added extra calcium in that bucket, and so far the zucchini have been doing better.

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Hot Weather Care

SunThe weather is getting warmer! That means you need to be more aware of how your aeroponic system.

Heat can hurt your plants.  If your plant looks wilty or if it is a warm day, you may want to move your plant into the shade.
To give your plants a treat, put a couple ice cubes in the root chamber. The plants will appreciate it!
The fogger in the system adds heat to the root chamber. The roots that are normally in cold ground are receiving extra heat. This makes your plants extra susceptible to hot weather.

Good luck!