I have sprouts in the wicking bed!
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Sprouts for bok choy, lettuce, bell peppers and broccoli all popped up today. Very cool. Also planted were basil, onions, carrots, peas, cabbage and tomatoes. Kind of a shotgun approach. Just plant a bunch of stuff and see what works.

I jumped the gun and planted the seeds while still dialing in the vent/heat timing cycle. It got pretty darn cold in there a few nights, like 50F or so. Not the best conditions for germinating seeds. But the water in the system is over 70F and the room the last few days was kept pretty warm, so I guess I didn't kill everything. Warm water flowing through the system must have helped a lot.

A dehumidistat should be delivered Mon or Tues, so that will be the next step in dialing everything in.

In the ebb and flow bed, I put in a ton more of the garlic cloves. The greens from them are delicious and grow incredibly fast. The green onions too - they grow about an inch a day.

Some interesting stuff:
We put 3 baby bok choy plants in there directly from the supermarket (we didn't take any leaves off before planting). They looked good for about a week, then two of them suddenly looked real bad. I yanked them out and the stump had no roots at all - just a clump of brown, nasty gunk. They got tossed into the forest. The other one looked great with roots growing, new growth up top, etc. This morning it looked awesome. This evening it was totally wilted and laying flat on the clay. WTF? Weird. Again, into the forest.

I had a few lettuce heads get the same brown gunk on the bottom and not grow roots. Others took off and are growing well. I guess it just depends on what you get at the store as far as age, quality, organic vs. non-organic, etc. I know some veggies get sprayed with a chemical to prevent sprouting and root growth while at the grocery store, so organic stuff is what you should buy if you plan to plant it eventually. I forget if the bok choy/lettuce I got was organic or not.

The cilantro I tried was a complete fail, as predicted. I have some in a glass of water now to let roots grow first, then I'll put them in the ebb and flow bed.

I also took a head of romaine lettuce, stripped off all of the good leaves for eating, sliced about 1/8 inch off the stump and put that in a glass of water to see if roots will grow. It seems to me that going directly into the bed would be better, but why not see if it grows some roots this way first to jump start the process.

Oh yeah, our electric bill went up about $10 since starting this whole deal. I thought it would have been more than that, so that's good. If I can make this all work, it will pay for itself. I'll do a ROI analysis eventually. I've saved every receipt for everything I purchased for this monster.

Irving: as far as the moisture level in the soil and stuff, I'm still learning about it all. Some folks say you should pull the stand pipe and let the whole bed drain for a day or two to allow some O2 in and prevent anaerobic crap from starting to grow, which makes sense. The frequency of this is debatable. My guess is that the plants are pretty freaking smart and will spread their roots out along the barrier between moist and saturated in a way that benefits them best in between the drainings.

The experiment continues....