Hydroponic Bananas
OK...I don't think this will be a daily blog now, but once or twice a week is likely. Where possible I will insert links to information but if there is any terminology you don't understand, let me know..
I have some pictures that I think demonstrate the speed of growing using NFT. For more info on NFT see here:
I have some pictures that I think demonstrate the speed of growing using NFT. For more info on NFT see here:
http://forums.greenleafsystems.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=10
I bought a baby banana plant on ebay recently...about 6 weeks ago. I wanted to grow it in a Nutriculture Multiduct MD200 plus we have on display in the corner of the showroom. I have the luxury of a large space with 5m ceilings and wanted a "triffid" of some sort. I'd tried growing a Gunnera Manicata in the same system, a type of giant rhubarb found in Chile, but it had suffered from an outbreak of spidermite while still very young and a treatment with Bio-Bizz Buzz Off, a gentle treatment, was too much shock and killed it off.
I looked around for something a bit hardier and settled on a dwarf red banana plant (musa "dwarf-red") which grows 6'-8' and has been aclimated to this country. Bananas are monocarpic, which means they will fruit and then die back. They are also not a tree, as many think, but herbaceous...like a big grass.
They are also parthenocarpic, i.e. do not require pollination to fruit. Consequently, it is very rare to find seeds in a banana and most cultivars grown for their fruit will not contain any. This means you have to propagate them by taking "sucker" cuttings; these are little clone plants that grow off the rhizome, appearing as offshoots from the main plant.
So that was the plant choice...now how to go about growing it in an NFT system and not a pot system which, to me, seemed the obvious choice.
I settled on a hybrid system: I cut the bottom out of a 7.5L plastic pot and made a pot out of capillary matting inside the plastic one. I filled it to 1/3 with Canna coco peat, dropped the plant in and filled the pot with more coco. A hole for the pot was cut in the correx tray top, the pot inserted and the system run as any other NFT system would.
If you have ever used coco, you will know that it takes a while to charge it up with nutrient. It feels far more like soil than hydro in the beginning because any changes you make to the nutrient schedule take a week or so to kick in. The benefit of this is that the coco acts as an excellent buffer against overfeeding and, once charged, will feed the plants exactly to their requirements but it is best to start with a well developed plant. Young plants can struggle feeding, even at very high EC readings.
I started the nutrient off at pH 6.0 and at an EC of 1.2 using Canna coco but had to keep adding nutrients (up to EC 2.6!) to get it to feed. Here is how it looked at 2 weeks:
A little pale and wan but it still managed to double its size in two weeks and thick, creamy white roots had started to show on the tray. Now that there were some decent roots, I decided to feed as I would ordinarily in an NFT system...with Ionic Grow Nutrient at EC 1.4. I dropped the pH to 5.8 to encourage Nitrogen uptake (to green it up a bit). It has responded very well and this is the plant now, 4 weeks later:
And here's how the roots are doing, they've made it into the reservoir now:
Bustin' out the pot! And it's already started to throw out suckers....here's one trying to break loose:
I'll cut and root this when it is a bit bigger. There's another poking its head through too. You can see that I am using artificial light, a Canatronics Hydrolux 400 watt. If you're feeling generous around Christmas, I could do with a shop that has a conservatory/nursery....hell, even a big skylight would do. Lighting is expensive but I still need to demonstrate the lights in the shop and I have susbstituted the shop strip lights with HID and Envirolites to offset the cost a little. It isn't too drastic, in total it averages out to about 20 Kwh / day. Just under the cost to run a 1Kw lamp 24/7 and about 1 1/2 times the cost of running all the flos that used to be here.
Next time - Chillis
I bought a baby banana plant on ebay recently...about 6 weeks ago. I wanted to grow it in a Nutriculture Multiduct MD200 plus we have on display in the corner of the showroom. I have the luxury of a large space with 5m ceilings and wanted a "triffid" of some sort. I'd tried growing a Gunnera Manicata in the same system, a type of giant rhubarb found in Chile, but it had suffered from an outbreak of spidermite while still very young and a treatment with Bio-Bizz Buzz Off, a gentle treatment, was too much shock and killed it off.
I looked around for something a bit hardier and settled on a dwarf red banana plant (musa "dwarf-red") which grows 6'-8' and has been aclimated to this country. Bananas are monocarpic, which means they will fruit and then die back. They are also not a tree, as many think, but herbaceous...like a big grass.
They are also parthenocarpic, i.e. do not require pollination to fruit. Consequently, it is very rare to find seeds in a banana and most cultivars grown for their fruit will not contain any. This means you have to propagate them by taking "sucker" cuttings; these are little clone plants that grow off the rhizome, appearing as offshoots from the main plant.
So that was the plant choice...now how to go about growing it in an NFT system and not a pot system which, to me, seemed the obvious choice.
I settled on a hybrid system: I cut the bottom out of a 7.5L plastic pot and made a pot out of capillary matting inside the plastic one. I filled it to 1/3 with Canna coco peat, dropped the plant in and filled the pot with more coco. A hole for the pot was cut in the correx tray top, the pot inserted and the system run as any other NFT system would.
If you have ever used coco, you will know that it takes a while to charge it up with nutrient. It feels far more like soil than hydro in the beginning because any changes you make to the nutrient schedule take a week or so to kick in. The benefit of this is that the coco acts as an excellent buffer against overfeeding and, once charged, will feed the plants exactly to their requirements but it is best to start with a well developed plant. Young plants can struggle feeding, even at very high EC readings.
I started the nutrient off at pH 6.0 and at an EC of 1.2 using Canna coco but had to keep adding nutrients (up to EC 2.6!) to get it to feed. Here is how it looked at 2 weeks:
A little pale and wan but it still managed to double its size in two weeks and thick, creamy white roots had started to show on the tray. Now that there were some decent roots, I decided to feed as I would ordinarily in an NFT system...with Ionic Grow Nutrient at EC 1.4. I dropped the pH to 5.8 to encourage Nitrogen uptake (to green it up a bit). It has responded very well and this is the plant now, 4 weeks later:
And here's how the roots are doing, they've made it into the reservoir now:
Bustin' out the pot! And it's already started to throw out suckers....here's one trying to break loose:
I'll cut and root this when it is a bit bigger. There's another poking its head through too. You can see that I am using artificial light, a Canatronics Hydrolux 400 watt. If you're feeling generous around Christmas, I could do with a shop that has a conservatory/nursery....hell, even a big skylight would do. Lighting is expensive but I still need to demonstrate the lights in the shop and I have susbstituted the shop strip lights with HID and Envirolites to offset the cost a little. It isn't too drastic, in total it averages out to about 20 Kwh / day. Just under the cost to run a 1Kw lamp 24/7 and about 1 1/2 times the cost of running all the flos that used to be here.
Next time - Chillis
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home