Plant the Moon with Team Rainbird! EP 5

  • 3 years ago
Welcome back and happy Equinox… we’re officially in Spring! :D This week was pretty exciting, our plants started showing some super strong growth this week, and are getting a lot of buds on them too.

This is a pretty exciting development, even if these are likely to mostly drop soon rather than develop into actual tomatoes. Regardless, it’s a pretty cool step to see and it’s exciting to know we’re one step closer to actual tomatoes grown in lunar soil simulant. Considering this project lasts for 10 weeks and these tomatoes are expected to produce tomatoes between 7 and 12 weeks, it’s entirely possible we’ll have actual fruit before the project is completed. Fingers crossed!

The squirrel in the beginning of the video is a little nemesis of mine. We tried to lure him away with tasty treats in another part of the yard, but he would come and just take A SINGLE BITE out of a bunch of tomatoes, corn, and other vegetables in the garden. Little monster! Hopefully we can successfully distract him this year.

We also got some chili pepper seeds in the mail, which is super exciting! We can’t wait to start this new project, but stay tuned about details on how we’re going to do it. In the meantime, check out the Space Chili Challenge here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/SpaceChileChallenge/

The temperatures our grow tent was getting for daytime highs was starting to creep toward the upper limit (29.5C/~85F). This is pretty worrying to me because right now, my house is sort of chilly on account of cold weather, but once it really starts heating up in the coming months this temperature might become difficult to keep down. I’ve made a small fan to run if it begins approaching the higher temperatures to aid in the exhaust of hot air from the top, hopefully pulling in cooler air at the bottom near where the plants are gently and with no turbulence.

The fungus gnats are really frustrating to have in your home, I’ve had to deal with infestations in the past and it can get out of hand very quick. Considering they have a 30 day lifecycle, you can think you’re out of the clear but then some survive and start another generation. So far, I haven’t seen any others but I’ve still put a ton of sticky traps on every plant I own just in case ☹

If you want to name one of the plants, leave a comment with the name below and we’ll assign it to one!
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Preparing for this experiment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8W0csI-fUn4
Check out our Instagram! https://www.instagram.com/rainbirddelalune/
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RainbirdTeam
Plant the Moon Challenge (#plantthemoonchallenge): https://plantthemoon.com/
https://sciences.ucf.edu/class/simulant_lunarhighlands/
Buy us a coffee! (small payments in support of the project): https://www.buymeacoffee.com/rainbird

DEALING WITH GNATS:
Colorado State University factsheet on fungus gnats: https://extension.colostate.edu/topic-areas/insects/fungus-gnats-as-houseplant-and-indoor

Category

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Learning

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