Learning to Grow Lettuce Plants in Water by J.Q. Rose

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Terror on Sunshine Boulevard by J.Q. Rose

Mystery, paranormal

Click here to find mysteries by JQ Rose at BWL Publishing

Learning to Grow Lettuce Plants in Water by J.Q. Rose

My husband and I were in the floral and greenhouse business for nearly twenty years, so I was familiar with the term, hydroponics. According to Dictionary.com, hydroponics is "the cultivation of plants by placing the roots in liquid nutrient solutions rather than in soil." 
In the spring of 2017, hydroponics became very real to me when Gardener Ted decided to try growing lettuce and a few other plants by building a system of pipes to grow plants in water. 

He has grown lots of vegetable and annual plants as well as foliage plants, mums, glads, and Easter lilies in our commercial greenhouses, and he plants a vegetable garden which produces delicious food all summer for our family in Michigan and a small garden in winter in Florida for us. Yes, he gardens twelve months out of the year. A dream come true for him.

Lettuce and other plants growing in Gardener Ted's  hydroponic system
Photo by J.Q. Rose

He's always experimenting with new plants and new ways of raising them. But learning how to grow healthy plants in water is definitely not like raising plants in soil! Figuring out how to move the water through the pipes, adding nutrients to the water, and keeping the pH at the right level led to huge challenges for him. He soon learned the weather conditions affected the nutrients in the water. Warm, cold, wind, humidity, etc.affected the growth of the plants. Gardener Ted knew how to deal with weather conditions when plants grew in soil, but figuring out what to do to keep his plants healthy when their roots were only in water was a puzzle, at times frustrating. But he triumphed over the unknown and developed a working growing chamber which produced healthy plants.

Delicious speckled lettuce grown using the hydroponics system
Photo by J.Q. Rose

He followed through on producing lots of lettuce grown hydroponically, but the garden lettuce seemed to grow faster. I liked the hydro lettuce because it was clean when he cut it, whereas the garden lettuce had sand and soil on the leaves. 

This spring of 2018 he made improvements to his system and his plants are growing beautifully. We are enjoying a delicious, as well as, a pretty salad every day. And one other perk when gardening, he enjoys sharing his harvest with neighbors, friends and family.

Are you a gardener? Do you have experience with hydroponic growing? 

Click here to connect online with J.Q. Rose

Rushing Strawberry Season by J.Q. Rose

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Terror on Sunshine Boulevard by J.Q. Rose

Mystery, paranormal

Click here to find mysteries by JQ Rose at BWL Publishing

Gardener Ted's answer to getting strawberries sooner.

My dear husband, Gardener Ted, is trying to fool Mother Nature this year. He wants the strawberry plants in our garden to come early, so he erected this unique growing chamber to warm up the ground and get the plants to take off. Michigan springs are rather temperamental having cold days, then having beautiful sunny spring days. 

Close-up of the growing chamber

The plastic keeps the frigid winds away from the plants and helps warm them up when the sun shines. If it's too sunny, he simply grabs the plastic and rolls it up and clips it to the pipes for air to circulate through. 

Strawberry blossoms

Just looking at these strawberries in bloom makes my mouth water for strawberry cake or pie or a bowl of Cheerios topped with the delicious beauties. But, for now, I can only anticipate those sweet treats.

Gardener Ted prefers growing June-bearing berries rather than ever-bearing berries. We get a lot more berries from June-bearing. So, hurry up, June, so we can enjoy strawberries fresh from the garden. Fingers crossed they'll be ready a couple of weeks earlier this year!

Waiting for this season's tasty berries. Yum!

Do you love strawberries? Let us know in a comment below. Thanks for visiting.

Click here to connect online with mystery author J.Q. Rose.

Writing is Like Gardening by Connie Vines

Gardening and writing are all about the big picture

Now one thing is certain – both activities require a great amount of planning if you wish to be successful.

Gardens are made with planning in mind, especially if you happen to be a person who likes the visual arts.  Writing a novel, short-story, or an article carries the same care, understanding, and patience to gently usher a new life from the soil and see it grow and bloom in the light of day.
Much like lawn care requires trimming and hedging, weed control, and careful gardening, writing requires information gathering, sifting through data, facts and rumors to forge the ideas from all of this into something coherent and easily repeatable by all who read it.

The little details shared between both.

There are plenty of small details to worry about with small seedlings struggling in rain, wind and sunlight to grow and thrive in the light, possibly becoming large and strong plants as time goes by.
Just like this, writing possesses the same attention to detail needed to make sure your works thrive in the long run. Depending on what kind of writing you do, your articles, books or stories will also need to extend their roots toward the very ground that feeds them – the human mind.

Much like plants, your works may one day blossom to become a center of human attention, basking in the sun of popularity and giving fruit for those around them, spreading their ideas like seeds.
Patience is key to growth

Much like the tender beginnings of seedlings need patience, care and love, writing your own work requires the same approach.

The scenes you create, the information you share over the course of time will help become the food for thought of the final form of your work, just like all seedlings need care to become majestic plants. To reach the destination at the end of the road, you will need to walk that road first.
The goal is the fruit of your labors.

You can’t always control the outcome of what you do; it is much the same with writing as it is with plants. Your works won’t always flourish, the conditions may not always be right for them to grow and some will wither and die.


It is inevitable, such is the circle of life, such is the circle of ideas and information around the world. Keep that in mind, keep working hard and even as you fall sometimes, pick yourself up and remember that the end of the road holds the biggest prize you will ever have – your own success.
My latest lesson involved tomatoes. This year I’m trying to grow the Heirloom variety. I’ve never succeeded in growing them in the past, but I so love their colorful, crunchy addition to my salads that I keep on trying. This summer, my Early Girl tomatoes are growing in abundance.  But I’ve again watched helplessly as a late cold snap in May (unheard of her in So. California) turned the health green leafage into curling yellow leaves and the promising green globes into not-so-healthy appearing offerings on the vine.

I asked my local ‘plant guru’ and consulted past journal scribbles (yes, I keep notes about everything 😊).

I planted too early.  I planted too late.  Heirlooms don’t do well in this area.  Go back to planting Beef-Steak tomatoes.

So many suggestions.  So many paths.

What does this have to do with writing novels and short stories for publication? Or with life in general? Everything.

We often believe that, if we have a goal and work hard at it…we should expect to succeed. But in life, as with gardening, events over which we have no control may either enhance or stand in the way of our success.

For tomatoes, if the soil (never plan in the same location year, after year) or weather aren’t right (or disease, vermin, or insects attack the plant), the plants may not develop healthy fruits. I can try to solve the problem, if I ever discover what it is. But I also might be wise to vary my crops in the hope of coming across another vegetable that I can successfully grow with a lot less trauma.
New writers often start out having a vision of a particular story. If that completed novel, novella, or short story doesn’t get snapped up by an agent and immediately sold to a publisher—the author may be tempted to either give up on writing altogether, or spend years agonizing over revisions of the same story.

A senior editor at a major New York publisher once told me that her best advice to novice writers was to, yes, be persistent—work on your craft daily and keep submitting—but experiment with a variety of genres and styles of writing. Because we just don’t know what we’ll be good at.

Besides, we can’t stand around forever, mourning those rotting tomatoes or underappreciated stories.
Much like plants, your works may one day blossom to become a center of human attention, basking in the sun of popularity and giving fruit for those around them, spreading their ideas like seeds.

Keep writing.

Keep gardening.

Keep working hard and even as you fall sometimes, pick yourself up and remember that the end of the road holds the biggest prize you will ever have – your own success.

Happy Reading and Writing,

Connie


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