Strawberry hydroponics Y6 W -1. Off to a bang this year with plants being delivered end of this week. I’m starting a few weeks early to extend my growing season a bit this time around. Picking up from where we left off at the end of year 5, details within.

We're just about to kick off into the sixth year as we approach this weekend. Plants (208 quantity) are due to arrive on Thursday or Friday, and the predator insects are coming early next week. Plant variety this year is almost exclusively Albion with a handful of another variety (nursery's choice) for better cross pollination.

Table 5.7 is still the general batch I'll be adhering to since last year's return water and tissue analysis tests gave really good metrics. I have some potassium nitrate on hand this year as well to top up with half way through each nutrient reservoir change (based off of lab analysis data last year). Iodine experimentation last year also yielded positive results for further calcium intake, so we will continue this year.

New this year are two probes into the grow bags. One is an EC and water concentration meter while the other is a pH meter. These are fed back into the PLC which controls the grow, and watering cycles will now primarily be run off of a delta of these three metrics rather than on a set time as the previous five years. There will still be a fallback option for a set time just in case, but this will likely be once every two days rather than twice every day (pending new data off of all of these devices and ratified by lab analysis to confirm accurate sensor data).

Further humic acid experimentation to my orchard outside this summer has yielded more data to help me lock in a better application for all my plants. I also now have a better liquid blend for my hydroponics rather than a pelletized version meant more for outdoor soil applications.

The plants will be alternated every 7 days with a foliar spray of a weak sulphuric acid solution and a weak potassium bicarbonate solution (14 day cycle) as in prior years for the first ~6 weeks. This really helps the powdery mildew situation for the whole year's grow hitting them early like this.

Lighting has not changed from the last year. I'm being a bit lazy here as I could optimize it a little better, but the ease of which I can access every plant is ahead in importance. Besides, during peak cycles, I have enough strawberries for my family every 3-4 days to freeze a bunch as there's too many to fresh eat. Works for me!

Updates will come as noteworthy events arise, or enough time has passed since the last one! As always, thanks for following along.