This thread is for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers.
Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.
If you want to be pinged with a reminder asking about your project, let me know, and I'll harass you each week until you cancel the service
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Notes -
My first thought is "brilliant; I'm going to buy some watercress seeds now and see how they grow for me", so thank you. How big do you let the plants get before you harvest?
My second thought is that there are a ton of pros and cons for outdoor hydroponics, and I'm not sure where they balance out.
On the one hand it could be better than soil planting because you have full control of pH and nutrients and drainage and you shut out weeds, and better than indoor hydroponics in most locations because you get free full-intensity sun and natural airflow and insect pollinators.
On the other hand, you don't get any more control over temperature and diseases and pests than you do with soil planting, and if it's hot enough in your location then you probably need to keep an eye on your water tank more frequently to account for extra evaporation, so you lose a little of the benefit of not having to water as often.
I guess the big question is how much you want to grow versus how much space you have in full sun. If you have a bunch of ground that's not needed for anything else, you might as well put up a raised bed and plant there. If you don't have that, but you do have a nice south-facing wall or fence, I think I'd much rather go vertical with a hydroponic system than with traditional hanging planters.
Psychologically, I think the extra work in setting up an outdoor system might make a big difference to me. When I bury a bunch of seeds and half the crops grow great but half the crops die off, it feels like a fun experiment. But if I'd built a big hydroponic system instead of a few raised beds, losing half of the result would have felt like a failure. I can't always get good output from indoor hydroponic plants, but since the "growing season" is very long and the "cleaning season" is far shorter than even our mild winter, I can just replace underperforming plants with new plantings and that doesn't feel like a failure either.
For watercress? It doesn’t have to be transplanted, I just put a few seeds in the media and harvest as it gets crowded. Some of the plants get big others don’t. It’s not a picky crop when it’s in water.
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