Hydroponics Garden

 

We started a hydroponic garden today, something that I've always wanted to try out.  You can see Mom carefully placing the tiny seeds into the different pods.  Step one is filling the tank there with water, and a carefully measured amount of nutrients.  The plastic baskets contain these soil cones, and next you see Mom doing the placement of those lettuce seeds.  We're doing three different kinds of lettuce and some arugula, some easy items to start out with when trying this for the first time.

Next step is covering the openings there to limit the light into the slots there, because more light will cause the growth of algae in the nutrient-rich water below.  And then there's the plastic caps that help contain humidity and heat as these little seeds start their growth.  

"Just make believe... you're a tiny little seed... a tiny little seed that's reaching up to meet your need..."  I was at EPCOT for the opening season in Orlando, and I remember visiting the pavilion for "The Land," and I'll always remember the hydroponic plants there and thinking how cool it would be to do that in our own house. 

Anyway, you can see the gauge that shows the water level here, and of course the light setting is on for seed growth.  That light is programmed to show for sixteen hours, and it turns on and off automatically each day at particular hours.  There's a phone ap that helps you keep up with the progress, lighting and so forth, and so here we go!  We'll have fun looking at these plants grow the next few days.

So Maddie was with Nate's family today, celebrating Nate's grandfather's birthday.  She got back later on tonight as we were re-watching some of the series "Ahsoka."  Earlier, we had the Braves game on, and we watched Atlanta win yet again, which meant that they won another series.

I'm still climbing Mt. Everest, virtually of course.  But in the meantime, the medal from my last virtual walk just came in the mail.

Pretty cool stuff!  It came with a smaller pin, one celebrating the fifth of these medals total.  This makes six now:  Scooby Doo, Thanksgiving, Elvis, Forbidden City, Dublin, and the Moon.  This trek up Mt. Everest continues, made even more fun when watching some of these Mt. Everest episodes.

We've had such a huge amount of birds with us on the back deck.  We've had a lot of fledglings there.  There's been a fledgling robin that's been with us, but our favorite lately has been this really, really young bluebird.

That's the bluebird family.  And here's that fledgling robin that also just dropped by. He's been here for about two weeks now, so he's getting older.  But he's still welcome here at the back deck!

It's been a great day.  We closed things down with several pages from "Snuff," that Discworld book.  Commander Vimes has saved the day again, or possibly - there's some smugglers to chase after, and of course a terrible villain to hunt down.  

We said our prayers after reading, and it was time for bed.  Got to get up early for church tomorrow!