Page 3: The Growing Progresses 
Lettuce grows best in cool temperatures, so we tried to keep the temperature
at around 50 degrees F at night and around 70 F or a bit lower during the day.
The computer, however, did not fully cooperate, and we recorded temperatures
anywhere from 40 F at night to 100 F during the day. Colorado has a very wide
temperature range, and a greenhouse will heat up very quickly in the sun without
the fan running. From acquired reading we learned that the Salina lettuce cultivar is
somewhat tolerant of high temperatures and resistant to bolting from the same.
With some creative computer setting adjustments and a close watch on the crop we
still had temperatures from 40 F to 100 F during the growing period.(graph) We used a 15-15-15 Cal Mag fertilizer injected at 200 ppm. A special thanks to Sam for
setting that up. Watering was performed daily for approximately 5 minutes. Fertilizer
was injected with watering every other day.
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Growing Fast
These photos are 10 and 14 days after the previous page. The plants in the coir exhibited uneven growth. This was due to unworking water lines. Fertilizer and water must be made readily available to the plant during its early development for maximum growth potential. We installed extra lines and checked them regularly. The plants in the rockwool were relatively uniform in their growth. There were also lines that didn't work, yet the smaller size of the slabs seemed to help with the distribution of the water/nutrient mixture to all the plants. |
Differences become apparent
 
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5th and 6th Weeks
At the fifth and sixth weeks the plants
began to really explode in growth. This plant is on the
coir side. 
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