Here’s a farm update.  After two years of research, planning, testing, set-backs, building, and rebuilding, our first hydroponic system is up and running.  For the trial run, we’re growing three varieties of tomato, two kinds of lettuce, cucumbers, and cauliflower.  So far, the seedlings for spinach and peppers haven’t sprouted, though one of spinach plants looked promising this morning.  Right now, the young plants are growing well and all is working as it should.  Hopefully, in the next couple of months, we’ll have our first harvest of fresh, organic veggies, just as prices begin to skyrocket.

The thing I love about this system is the simplicity.  It’s an easily repeatable design and functions quite nicely.  We won’t know if it fully works until we get a harvest, but so far, the lights seem to produce ample spectrum; the grow chamber floods and drains the way it should; and the plants have shot up quite a bit in one week.  After watching them flourish so quickly, I’m more convinced than ever that indoor growing is the future of farming, especially as weather patterns become more and more erratic and more and more extreme.  The indoor environment is more stable, more efficient, and more controllable than outdoors.  Long-term, indoor production will be the solution to farming.

I’ll continue to post updates as the plants mature.