New Year - Shutting The Farm Down

It is a new year, and I have resolved to shut down my indoor vertical farm. For those who have not seen what the original setup was like, check it out here. The reasons this time round are twofold: There is an ongoing aphid infestation that is not addressed by my ladybugs. Also, I have a bad case of unexplained eczema which I suspect may be related to the aphids. A good time as any to have a hiatus.

Along the way, there have been learnings and reflections from maintaining this farm, and I will share them here. This is mainly an unstructured mental dump for documentation of findings, musings and future actions, so be forewarned.

Ladybugs

The piece de resistance of late 2019: Ladybugs. (Not to be confused with Asian Lady Beetles, which have a bit of a bad rep for being an invasive species and with some nasty malodorous defense mechanisms.) There were some very interesting learnings concerning these critters:

1) They are the gardener's angels of death - Adult ladybugs are absolutely voracious and can denude entire stalks of their aphids within a matter of days. They'll just keep moving up the line and wiping out everything in their path.

2) Their babies are even greater angels of death - Then the ladybugs make babies, and these will proceed to outdo their parents with even greater hunger. They start off really really small and you wonder what they will become, then quickly molt into menacing crocodile-lookalikes that feed like there is no tomorrow. If you see them, they look like the exact sort of thing you want away from your plants, but I assure you that they are essential workers.

3) They shag like amorous Volkswagens - If you ever see a Volkswagen mount another and proceed to shake from side to side as they run around everywhere, you've got a mental image of mating ladybugs. It is an adorable dance, before orange egg clusters start showing up in the most unexpected of places and crocodiles start appearing all over the farm.

4) They are lazy as heck in winter - Then this part I did not count on: While some ladybugs are indeed active in winter, most of them are simply trying to hibernate and the active ones seem to be on a diet. Simply put, despite the healthy population, the ladybug squad was failing to manage the aphid infestation the way they did in the summer.

5) They are clumsy. Really clumsy. - The wheels of my chair go round and round, especially over a ladybug that was clumsy enough to fall from a plant and unfortunate enough to land in the path of a computer chair wheel. This happens a lot, thus culling the unlucky from my herd. It did little to improve the quality of aphid management, sadly.

Veggie Independence

I found that my Kratky hydroponics setup at home was actually able to yield approximately 40% of all my vegetable servings. Which exceeded expectations. Actually, I was unsure what to expect so I expected nothing. That unexpectedly made it easy to exceed expectations. There were other learnings however:

1) Hydrogen peroxide has uses - I did not anticipate that H2O2 would have a use, but it turns out it not only improves root health but also reduces some microbial growth in the nutrient solution. This has also helped to manage biting gnat population.

2) Biting gnats can breed in root systems - Biting gnats were a surprise, and came from some contaminated organic soil I used in a separate grow before going Kratky. I read that these bugs never breed indoors and require "swampy" conditions to propagate. This is untrue. It seems they are perfectly happy breeding in the root balls of Kratky grown plants, and this problem will persist despite changing the nutrients and rinsing out the root balls.

3) Aphids can feed on roots - If you wash the aphids off the plants, sometimes they wind up going into the net cups. They do not simply climb back up, however. Sometimes they decide that air roots are a perfectly good option to feed off of, and you wind up with root aphids.

4) Bok choy varieties matter - Bok choy has been my staple vegetable crop mainly because it is remarkably easy to grow and produce a reliable crop. The original variety I chose (Yuushou F1) was also well sized to fit within my Ikea Hyllis grow setup. However, I wound up trying the Arax variety, which was both too large and delicate. While moving the plants in and out to clean bugs off and to replace nutrients, I wound up losing a bunch of leaves to breakage.

5) Chillies are doable - I had no real expectations of being able to grow chillies, let alone Jalapenos and Anaheims. Turns out chillies grow just fine indoors with the current setup. The chillies grew nicely, and that was unexpected considering their home climate.

6) Tiny Tims are adorable - My initial attempt to grow Black Cherry tomatoes was ill advised because the indeterminate plants turned out to be massive and way oversized for my grow setup. However, Tiny Tims are small and productive. They will yield tomatoes from the tiniest plants, and they propagate well from cuttings. In fact most tomatoes do!

The Nursery And Future Plans

The most significant triangulation of the 2020 grow period was in the optimal way to operate the nursery. My initial nursery setup was less than optimal in that it took up too much space and was adversely affected by low germination rate seed packets. I found that if I loaded 8 plugs of rockwool in a single dish, I could have at least 24 seeds in germination while 12 plants were growing in waiting while the main crop area matured for harvest. This allowed a steady cadence of young plants while consuming minimal space and nutrient resources. There were some interesting observations -

1) Seeds are best deployed away from open windows - In general germinating seeds are done in a covered system to keep them moist and maintain a steady temperature. However, the covered germination chamber took up too much space so I resolved to germinate my seeds right on the grow shelf. This was not the brightest idea as the particular location was right next to a window I keep cracked open for ventilation, which not only led to suboptimal low temperatures that slowed germination but also caused excessive evaporation which required regular refilling of the germination dishes.

2) Cadence matters - Taking into account the time to maturity of crops significantly helps establish a rolling stock of young plants to replenish the harvested ones, and to help offset seedling losses. The timing of germination also matters, because that will need to be factored into the planned cadence.

3) Backup cuttings - When affected by pests, some plants may become diseased and this adversely affects their yield. It is therefore useful to prepare cuttings beforehand as backups to the main plants. Plants thus far that yield viable cuttings with minimal effort are the mints, basils, thymes (slow), tomatoes and peppers.

4) Timers are everything - The single greatest improvement to the setup thus far is from automation. By rigging all the relevant lights and the humidifier to smart switches, I was able to get everything running at the right times without having to specially wake up to push some buttons. This also helps when going out late and not wanting to leave the lights on.

5) Neighbours get worried - This was a somewhat disturbing development, when I got a knock on my door by one of the housing association's committee members. Turns out that a neighbour has accused me of shenanigans and made up a tall tale implying that I was growing weed indoors. This was readily debunked, though it was an odd thing to make up a story over. After all, if the lights disturbed them, they could have simply commented on it.

Future plans - Right now the farm is shut down in order to purge the area of aphids. This will include cleaning and spritzing the area with substances incompatible with aphids' continued existence. I expect to let the farm lie fallow for a month or so to let the wandering adults die out, before restarting with some trial crops. With the learnings from the 2020 MkI grow, I would expect to reset with a more suitable and vigorous crop, and perhaps increase the proportion of my vegetable servings coming from the apartment farm. This has been a most worthwhile experiment, and I look forward to seeing what the future holds.