sorry for being gone so long....Christmas light season has me going 24/7. so here's the low down.
I've likely been struggling with root rot from the go , roots will grow then die and this has been the story from the start...solution..use bleach in the resevior at .5ml/galon to as much at 2ml and maybe up to 10ml/gal.
I had/have root aphids! I had to take all plants and litteraly brush their roots with a stiff bristle tooth brush ...the plants can take just about any abuse as long as they get a little moisture...I could cut off the whole root system and they would grow new roots from the lower crown...so as long as they get a white root out and just a little water they are A OK.
so after bushing them of aphids and rinsing them of root rot and dead root...I hit them with 115 deg water for 5 min. I wanted 120 as I hear that kills aphids but 115 was all I could muster. then I raised the water temps from 55deg to 75ish to boost metabolic activity and changed from flood and drain to bubble aeroponics. works pretty nice!
next i went and got some Bayer advanced systemic insecticide... yuk...but when it comes to bugs or no bugs i chose no bugs. still working on that "no bugs" thing apparently, but their numbers are slim to none currently. i hope to find them all dead within 3 weeks as i only applied several days ago.
some of the plants got thrown back over to soil..being roughly 50/50 peat to coarse sand and the plants seem to love that! I almost planted them all out in that but i still have the root aphids and i like to watch the roots big time. plus with all the new events in the garden Im actually getting so good sustained progress in the hydro garden....with root branching and stuff.... so its been about 1.5 weeks of slow white growth since i started scrubbing and bleaching and got the bubbler going. I think 2ml bleach per galon was a tad high and the insecticide wasn't helping so I cut back to .5m bleach/gal and just some minute amount of systemic insecticide and we are looking good...with the rare exception. If i can keep the existing white roots going we might be in business...maybe.
I would really like to try 2 inch net pots ....that might help but it might not...so I stay vigilant , comes natural to me...
but the plants over in soil are just happy as #$%^#$% @#$%.... if i have another serious root die off everybodies going over to soil and then getting blasted with some big time light. I think they will grow fast cus soon as some of these plants that have been balled up for weeks on end hit soil they open up...can't beat that.
I will up load some pics in a bit.
