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

Hello and welcome to the BWL Publishing Insiders Blog!

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

Gardener Ted's Spring Vegetable Garden and Hydroponic Gardening by J.Q. Rose

Cozy mystery author J.Q. Rose

Dangerous Sanctuary available at the Books We Love bookstore

Writing stories has been a pastime for me since I was seven years old. Making up characters and setting them in different situations has always been so much fun and satisfying. I enjoy  conjuring up novels today on my laptop as much as I did when I was a kid with pencil and paper stretching my imagination and sharing stories with friends.

My husband's lifelong pastime is gardening. He loves growing plants. So much so that his starting seedlings in a hobby greenhouse set us on the path to becoming business owners with a flower shop, garden center and greenhouses. Now in retirement, he is living his dream of gardening year round. He has a small winter garden in Florida and a very large garden in the summer in West Michigan.

Let me introduce you to Gardener Ted and his 2017 spring garden. 

He is always experimenting. 

This year, he is trying a no-till garden. No roto-tilling. In the photo you see all the dead-looking grass? That was rye that he planted in the fall. He digs a trench in the dead rye grass and plants his seeds.

In this photo he is watering the green beans (string beans) he just planted today, May 15. 

Next to it is rhubarb which comes up every year.

 You can see the baby pea plants are just getting a good start.

The onions are finally getting some growth. We have had pretty cool nights and days this spring, so the plants are waiting to grow. But once it warms up, there will be a big growth spurt.

 This morning he cut rhubarb for the first time and cooked it. Do you like rhubarb? I can eat it in a strawberry-rhubarb pie, kind of, but he loves it "stewed" in a pot. Just rhubarb with LOTS of sugar, no crust.

 This is the best results we've had for our strawberries in the past couple of years. 

Look at all the blossoms.

My mouth waters when I think of those delicious red berries coming on in June. If every blossom turns into a strawberry, we're going to be gorging ourselves, the family, and the neighbors on lots of strawberry shortcake and pie. Oh, and don't forget the strawberries on ice cream. Mmmm...

This winter Gardener Ted designed and constructed a hydroponic growing system. The dictionary defines hydroponics as "the cultivation of plants by placing the roots in liquid nutrient solutions rather than in soil."

This is the first system he built in Florida and raised delicious, clean varieties of lettuce.

For his spring garden, he has completed his new and improved system, including doubling the growing capacity of the Florida one.

The plants' roots are in the water to extract the nutrients out of the water flowing through the pipes. Gardener Ted carefully monitors and controls these factors every day.

The water is pumped out of this big gray container, through the large pipes, and then returns to the container to be pumped through again.

This system produced the best tasting, crunchy lettuce we've ever had.

Cleaning the fresh pulled lettuce heads from the hydroponics growing system is a dream. The heads are so clean, I just run them under the kitchen faucet, and they're ready for the toppings and dressing for a delightful fresh salad.

Besides working in the garden and having the satisfaction of eating the delicious veggies, he loves spending time with our grand kids and sharing his gardening knowledge with them. They love chomping on the vegetables as they help him harvest the crops. Someone said how much sweeter a pea is when eaten in the garden.

🥕🍅🥗🌶

Are you a gardener? Vegetables? Flowers? Why do you garden? Wishing you sunny skies and plenty of rain!

Connect online with J.Q. Rose here.

Photos by J.Q. Rose

THE FATAL CARROT (Almost)

The best laid plans gang aft awry, or whatever the exact quote is. I had a plan for this October, because I’ve had borderline too many commitments to handle, among them, a plot this year in our town's community garden. I was lucky to get a space in this gold-plated community effort, for once my town decides to do something,  it is all-the-way luxury class. We have an electronic gate, a sturdy fence, and the township supplies aged compost and sturdy raised boxes. We’ve had a chilly autumn, so this senior waited for the stillest and warmest day to finish up. I’d watched Weather World faithfully--predictions from the Wise Men at the Penn State Department of Meteorology. An upcoming Monday and Tuesday would be the last hurrah of Indian Summer, warm and still. Perfect, I thought, as this was the drop dead-week for clearing up.

In the meantime, I was eating vegetables, both my own and those of generous garden plot neighbors. On the day of near-doom, I’d enjoyed a delicious lunch of green peppers stuffed with beans, of Brussels sprouts and bright orange winter squash. I'd finished the meal with a fresh apple—a crisp, yet sugary Empire--fresh from the tree.  The coup de grace to this high fiber orgy was an mid-afternoon snack consisting of a big, crunchy, raw-from-the-garden carrot.

(Oh, and there is a backstory. Significant portions of my gut are gone after a long illness followed by two Trekkian "cut and sew like garments" surgeries.) 

By 5 p.m., I knew I was in trouble. By midnight, the pains were child-birth-big. It was time to head to the ER for the ritual of vein piercing and hydration. Afterward, I was a sad-sack hunk of flesh, still breathing only because of attentive nursing and good old Ringer’s Lactase solution.   Needless to say, I was in hospital during those two perfectly warm days during which I’d planned to make my final harvest, haul dirt, and "put the ground to bed."

Still standing were two four-foot foot plus stalks of Brussels sprout and a bed of kale and one of beets. Only the beets, after my release from the hospital, were still on the menu—at least for the next few months, they said. After that, caution was advised regarding how much fiber I attempt to put through my system.  My kind neighbor was happy to receive the sprouts. The dino leaves of Lacinto kale went into the freezer for some distant dish of Colcannon.

It was sobering to realize that ingesting a raw carrot could, in my case, become a flirtation with death. I'd confused a desire "to live normally,” with what was, in cold reality, possible. Simply "eating what I wanted" had wandered into the Kingdom of Denial. The episode was one of those humbling -- but inevitable -- reality checks that are part of aging.

~Day of the Dead Altar, Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian~

 Juliet Waldron

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004HIX4GS       Amazon Author Page

http://www.julietwaldron.com                            Website

https://www.facebook.com/jwhistfic                 Facebook Author Page