For a while I’ve wanted to have a go at growing on cuttings and and baby plantlets emersed, to get larger and more robust plants quicker and with less maintenance, than trying to grow them on submerged. My inspiration was watching several YouTube videos of how Tropica and Dennerle do this commercially:
Then inspired further by @Courtneybst’s excellent thread (Buce Box) I asked the family for some kit for Christmas:
So that’s the kit, a heated propagator on the left, some grow lights, ultrasonic misters and mini DC pump in the middle, and an aeroponics propagator on the right. I won’t use the latter until I have larger plants with some decent initial roots, so this thread will focus initially on set up the shallower heated propagator.
For the growing medium I went with the Easyplug rather than rock wool, simply because they claim to acidify the water. I was concerned they may start to disintegrate when saturated, but fortunately they don’t, and they hold together pretty firm.
I expected that I was was going to have to make some modifications along the way, and the first issue I came across was the the planting tray is typically designed to sit on the base of the propagator.
I needed more depth below the tray as a) I wanted to ensure sufficient circulation of the water to ensure that additional nutrients added later on would be evenly spread to all plants, b) I also ensure that only the lower half of the tray was submerged, and c) I needed sufficient depth of water for the ultrasonic mister to work properly. So I made up some little stand-offs at work to lift the tray up about 30mm:
That resulted in getting the planting tray to a better height:
Next up I wanted to I wanted to get the pump working to circulate the water. I’m not sure how important this is on my scale - the commercial growers appear to pump their nutrient rich solution to all the growing tray, which makes sense given the size of their green houses, but I thought I would try and replicate in miniature.
The pump is a tiny 12v 1amp unit, but surprisingly powerful for its size. This is it operating on the lowest of its three settings - the other were too powerful:
Unfortunately I ran into issues getting the pump to fit under the growing tray, so had to remove the corner growing cube to accommodate it. However this also gives me easy access for dosing once set up.
I must caveat all this by making clear that I don’t have a single green finger. I have managed to successfully kill almost every house plant I’ve had a go at keeping. This whole propagator effort is an experiment and a nice little side project. Hopefully I’ll end up with a propagator bursting with robust healthy plants, but equally I could end up with a pile of soggy mush. Let’s roll the dice . . . 😂
Then inspired further by @Courtneybst’s excellent thread (Buce Box) I asked the family for some kit for Christmas:
So that’s the kit, a heated propagator on the left, some grow lights, ultrasonic misters and mini DC pump in the middle, and an aeroponics propagator on the right. I won’t use the latter until I have larger plants with some decent initial roots, so this thread will focus initially on set up the shallower heated propagator.
For the growing medium I went with the Easyplug rather than rock wool, simply because they claim to acidify the water. I was concerned they may start to disintegrate when saturated, but fortunately they don’t, and they hold together pretty firm.
I expected that I was was going to have to make some modifications along the way, and the first issue I came across was the the planting tray is typically designed to sit on the base of the propagator.
I needed more depth below the tray as a) I wanted to ensure sufficient circulation of the water to ensure that additional nutrients added later on would be evenly spread to all plants, b) I also ensure that only the lower half of the tray was submerged, and c) I needed sufficient depth of water for the ultrasonic mister to work properly. So I made up some little stand-offs at work to lift the tray up about 30mm:
That resulted in getting the planting tray to a better height:
Next up I wanted to I wanted to get the pump working to circulate the water. I’m not sure how important this is on my scale - the commercial growers appear to pump their nutrient rich solution to all the growing tray, which makes sense given the size of their green houses, but I thought I would try and replicate in miniature.
The pump is a tiny 12v 1amp unit, but surprisingly powerful for its size. This is it operating on the lowest of its three settings - the other were too powerful:
Unfortunately I ran into issues getting the pump to fit under the growing tray, so had to remove the corner growing cube to accommodate it. However this also gives me easy access for dosing once set up.
I must caveat all this by making clear that I don’t have a single green finger. I have managed to successfully kill almost every house plant I’ve had a go at keeping. This whole propagator effort is an experiment and a nice little side project. Hopefully I’ll end up with a propagator bursting with robust healthy plants, but equally I could end up with a pile of soggy mush. Let’s roll the dice . . . 😂
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