Journal July 11, 2013

The tomato cuttings I placed in the aeroponic cloner on July 6, 2013 have started growing roots, in only 5 days; lots and lots of roots.  It is pretty impressive, as I am only using plain water out of the tap. The olive cutting in the single plant unit looks healthy and shows no signs of wilting or stress. 

I am using different spray patterns in the cloners; the unit with the tomatoes has six 360 degree stationary spray nozzles, while the unit with the olive cutting has a fogger/mister spray head. Today, I built a three plant unit, which I will use with a rotating 360 degree spray head.   I will compare the performance of the different types of spray heads on different types of plants.

As seen in the unit above, I have added a fluid level indicator to each of the units as a further refinement.  All of the parts are interchangeable: pumps, spray heads, covers and inserts, so I now have one, three, six and ten plant units.  And, as it is not necessary to have a cutting in an insert to prevent it from leaking it makes them even more flexible.

The out of pocket cost for the above unit was $1.18 to purchase the top at Wal_Mart, so all three units were built for probably around ten dollars each, excluding the pumps, which I already had.

Recently, my wife purchased a blueberry bush for our garden that is fantastic, in  terms of having plenty of large blueberries about the diameter of a nickle.  To test the rotating spray in the above cloner, I took three cuttings from the blueberry bush and placed them in the cloner.  If they root, we will have three nice blueberry plants for free.