Ok, lets not exaggerate too much, autumn, autumn is coming for them.
My cucamelon plants started drying off about a week ago and before that there have not been any new flowers for a while now.
The newer growth is still green but I can see it's starting to turn.
I've decided to remove the plants and harvest all fruit that have reached maturity. Got another bunch of plant material that needs to be composted. I'll give them a couple of weeks to dry some more before hand though so I can remove the plastic netting they grew on.
I got a pretty good parting of ways harvest which I will pickle. My last effort turned out great, the little cucamelons were far better pickled than the lemon cucs so this time I will put a few jars just with the little ones; I've got a few requests from friends who tried the pickles so I will give most of them away.
Now as a bonus have a look at how the root system developed in my system. This is from a nasturtium plant I cut off about 10 days ago because it got way too big and I couldn't keep the black aphids that started munching on it under control. As you can see the roots found their way into the drainage pipe.
The roots are looking pretty good considering the plant has been dead for a while now. They're still mostly white.
The roots managed to get through my roots filter/blocker, it was expected to be honest and they were slowed down enough that they didn't block the drain pipe in any way.
The great thing about having this sort of a system is that the buckets are ready for a next crop immediately if needed. Just remove the pebbles, put new ones in and it's good to go. I will reuse the clay pebbles from this season, but I will give them a good clean before hand. I will probably also use some peroxide or maybe even a weak bleach solution to kill of any bad stuff that might be in there.
Alright, that's all for now.
Cheers for reading!
I'm wondering if burning the dried roots with pebbles would be a good way to recover the pebbles and disinfect them at the same time. I find it to time consuming picking out the pebbles when the roots are still fresh.
I guess it would work but I think it would also have the effect of covering the pebbles in soot and maybe blocking some of the pores.
But once the roots are dried they're pretty easy to separate and the veg matter floats to the surface if you drop the pebbles in liquid.
Those little cucumelons are pretty cool!
It looks like your hydroponic system works pretty well for you. I haven't tried any hydroponics yet. I've done some aquaponics experiments but the results are fairly mediocre, I probably don't have enough fish in the water to generate the necessary nutrients. The problem is that if you do have enough fish, and the pumps stop for some reason, fish can start dieing before you're aware of it.
Are you using deep water culture, or some other method?
I really like the cucamelons! They look great, have a really satisfying crunch and are wonderful for pickling.
Can't really complain about my system, I haven't had any major issues so far. I thought about doing an aquaponics one but I would have struggled with the space, especially if I wanted to run 20+ buckets on it; I would have needed lots of fish I suppose. It's my first hydroponic build as well and I didn't want to complicate it too much having live fish in it.
It's not a deep water culture, I'm not quite sure what category it would fall under. It's my take on the dutch bucket system. The buckets hold about 2 inches of water at all times and are watered on a 15min on, 15 off schedule during the day. I've got explanations for the system here and a bit here.
Cheers!
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