12:19 pm

Moderators
October 27, 2010

Hello All,
The following is the link to the picutures of my garden.
https://picasaweb.google.com/s.....directlink
GG and other experts,
Please take a close look at the capsicum plants. Is it a nutrient deficiency or a viral attack or something else?
Thanks,
Srikanth
Thanks,
Srikanth
12:43 pm

June 9, 2011

Wow! Its just brilliant. Very inspirational I would say. Keep it going. You seem to have lots of space. I am jealous. You have a good range of variety in the veg garden. About drip: Are you using the pump/timer mechanism with a reservoir or you just connected it to a tap and you operate it or you have a solenoid and a tap setup. Looks cool. You seem to be having fun! How much time do you spend in a day? Weekends? I was talking to someone in the corridor yesterday and the discussion was if you love doing something, time spent on it will increase and I gave the example of the garden I have - the watering started with one spray gun bottle and soon I had to make two visits to the tap to fill it up and this morning I took a full bucket with a cup to the garden. Anyway.. Keep up the good work and post progress and pics. We are all listening - atleast me.
3:34 pm

Moderators
October 27, 2010

These pics have been long pending. I was too lazy to make notes of the various stages of the plants (dates of planting, transplanting etc). The only thing I am now doing is to keep track of the quantity of the produce. (For example: I got 2 Kgs of Brinjal in the last 15 days in four pluckings).
I am currently using digital timers ( 4 x 10 mins) for watering the plants. The timers keep resetting on their own once in a while. vrraju, a forum member from Hyderabad, who visited my place few weeks ago has offered to give me a timer with real time clock with usb programmable functionality. Isn't it great to have an Embedded Systems specialist as a gardening enthusiast who is also ever willing to help me ! I might get the timer in the next week.
Time spent on this hobby:
Daily 30 minutes on an average - activities performed
- plucking and picking the fruits of labour
- Transplanting seedlings
- Occasional pest control
- Change of Nutrient Solution
- General housekeeping (which is very poor by the way)
Bi-Weekly Activities - Time Spent 2 hours
- Preparation of various Nutrient Solutions
Bi-Monthly Activities - Time Spent 4 hours
- Purchase of Fertilizers, Pesticides and Nutrients
Thanks,
Srikanth
10:12 am

Moderators
October 27, 2010

Hello All,
The one major problem we face with container gardening in Hydroponics is the exposure of the cocopeat to the atmosphere. During summer, the heat evaporates the NS causing high EC while rains bring in the problem of leaching. Added to this there is always the problem of leaching. So, I thought up of the following solution.
I have updated the album with the following pictures.
Cut a piece of thermocol the size of the container and make a wedge to slide the plant.
Put the wedge to close the gap.
Tape the thermocol.
Thanks,
Srikanth
Thanks,
Srikanth
Srikanth said:
Hello All,
The following is the link to the picutures of my garden.
https://picasaweb.google.com/s.....directlink
GG and other experts,
Please take a close look at the capsicum plants. Is it a nutrient deficiency or a viral attack or something else?
Thanks,
Srikanth
Srikanth,
Those are fabulous plants and veg; particularly impressed with the brinjals. Some of my plants have the same problem as your capsicum leaves: chillies, money plant and african violet. If you get any advice or find a solution, do post it in the forum.
Regards
Jeanne
11:37 am

Moderators
October 27, 2010

Thanks Jeanne.
There was remarkable change in the size of the knolkohl in just one day. I am eagerly waiting for it. In case I get a good crop I plan on planting more of those shortly.
I have always had good look luck with Brinjals and moderate sucess with Tomatoes.
GG's PC has crashed hence he is not able to respond to the queries. In case I do not get an advice in the next one week, I will be spraying DIAFENTHIURON (A broad spectrum insecticide).
Thanks,
Srikanth
8:55 pm

Thanks for the pictures. Have a few questions and suggestions
1. Reg capsicum, was the plant directly exposed to nutrient solution?. I have the same expericene with my malabar spinach but that was due to concentrated neem pesticide I used to control aphids and mites. If you dont notice any pests, most probably they are due to micronutrient deficiency. Does adding vermicompost to the coco peat help?
2. Brinjal and capsicum yields are awesome..
3. For preventing evoporation, I use cardboard mulch. Just wet some (brown) cardboard and layer it on the soil. leaching during rains is another matter. Adding some compost might help.
4. How long does radish take to get to full maturity? Is it ok to have more than one per pot? How much do the roots spread sideways?
5. Any experience in controlling leaf miner problem? Any other pests?
10:29 am

Moderators
October 27, 2010

Hi Camaroon,
Let me answer by the points in your post.
- I am not sure what you mean by direct exposure to NS. The NS is fed by drip. As I use to closed system of Hydroponics (recirculating the NS) I do not add any our fertilizers (organic or inorganic). I do not notice any pests but the problem can still be attributed to either nutrient toxicity, nutrient deficiency (both micro and macro) or virus or something that I am not aware of.
- Thanks.
- Mulching will not help in preventing leaching of NS due to rain. Again, adding compost is of no use in a closed Hydroponics systems though I can use it for my other pots that are growing plants the traditional way.
- Only one pot of the radish seems to be growing good. It is getting nutrients from the hydroponic NS tank. The rest that are using traditional fertilizers are leggy and some have already bolted and started flowering. Generally radish should take around 40 days to maturity. Being a short duration crop it should be OK to grow multiple plants in one pot if you ensure there is sufficient nutrients when you started off. There is an excellent blog post by GG on growing radish. Look it up for more information. I haven't pulled them out, so I do not know how the roots are spread out.
- I really do not bother much about leaf miners. They generally tend to attack the plants every now and then but if you have sufficient nutrients in the medium then you can ignore them and instead focus on more serious pests. In case you want to get rid of them then any insecticide that can be used to kill ants can be used. For me the major problems are aphids (strong spray of water and kill all ants), powdery mildew (spray wettable sulphur), mealy bug (Rogor - dimethoate) and spider mites (miticides or neem oil). So far all my efforts with neem oil have been only partial success. I finally end up using some chemical. I generally spend about 1/2 hour every day inspecting the plants. As and when I see some signs of infestations, I squish the bugs by hand and then spray a mild insecticide (neem oil or a broad spectrum insecticide). One needs to keep track of the day of spraying the insecticide and color of the label (green, blue, yellow or red) so that you give sufficient gap b/w spraying and harvesting.
Thanks,
Srikanth
8:14 am

Moderators
October 27, 2010

Update.
Added two photos of a 190g round brinjal.
https://picasaweb.google.com/l.....directlink
https://picasaweb.google.com/l.....directlink
So far in the month of July I had a yield of 6.9 KG of Brinjal and 250 g of Knol Khol that I picked today.
Thanks,
Srikanth
10:23 am

December 17, 2010

9:55 pm
July 8, 2011

9:22 pm
April 16, 2011

5:57 am

Moderators
October 27, 2010

Nextgeek,
I guess you meant "good and clean Garden" and not "good and clean gardener" though I wouldn't mind such compliment :).
I might have to create a more generic album name in picassa and move all hydro photos into it. The photos are now no longer from July 15th.
A big thanks to all those supporting me. For the first time this season I am faced with eggplant fruit and shoot borer (EFSB). Now the hunt for pheromone lure has started.
Thanks,
Srikanth
Thanks,
Srikanth
8:03 pm
May 1, 2010

9:52 pm

Moderators
October 27, 2010

camaroon123,
Heck no. Out and out chemical. Hydroponic to be precise.
GG,
Thanks for reminding me. PCIL is closer to me than http://pheromonechemicals.in. They had a stall in January in the Garden show this year. Hopefully, they will have one in August too. In Hyderabad we have a horticultural show by AP Horticulture and Agriculture department in the weeks of Jan 26th and Aug 15th every year.
Thanks,
Srikanth
5:16 pm

August 19, 2011

Srikanth said:
Hello All,
The following is the link to the picutures of my garden.
https://picasaweb.google.com/s.....directlink
GG and other experts,
Please take a close look at the capsicum plants. Is it a nutrient deficiency or a viral attack or something else?
Thanks,
Srikanth
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