This week's update includes a major re-arrangement to our growing room, brought about by the success of our plants.

Our tomato plants have grown well in the aeroponic TurgoGarden. Very well, in fact.  They've grown from tiny seeds to almost 4' tall.  This got to be a problem, however...

The tomato plants had grown so tall that they were within inches of the 400W HPS (High Pressure Sodium) light bulb.  Since they were so close, they were starting to become scorched.  We realized that we needed to expand our PVC lighting frame, in order to give them room to grow.

We added a new section into the middle of the frame, you can see it below.  It starts at the "crossbar" and is approximately 20" tall.  It makes up the "top" third of the vertical sides.  It now sits directly on the floor (rather than on a table) in order to get the extra vertical room.

The newly enlarged frame actually offers quite a few advantages.  Since it's so much larger, it gives us many more attachment points for our supports and guides.  This helps quite a bit, as the tomato plants were starting to form a "canopy" that blocked light from the smaller plants, like the strawberries.  You can see our support lines on the "back" side of the TurboGarden (above).

Additionally, you might notice that the room looks a bit different.  We cleared the room our completely, and we covered the walls with a reflective paper.  The paper serves two purposes:

• Reflects light from the lamps, in the hope of increasing yield from energy expended
• Protecting the wall from water splashes

The paper that we bought is a highly scientific hydroponically inclined product.  It's really special, magical, expensive stuff.

No.  Not really.

It's dollar-store silver wrapping paper.  But guess what?  It's reflective.  We're not asking a lot out of it, so cheapness was a real blessing.  It should keep the walls protected, and hopefully the reflection will be an added bonus.

The aeroponic strawberries are almost ready.  Here's a picture from this morning.  There are only about 10 of them thus far, but the plants are also young, so that makes sense.  Looking good. 

We moved the MegaGarden (our wheatgrass and lettuce bed) to the other side of the room (mostly because I wanted all-sides access to the TurboGarden).  The MegaGarden gets lots of good reflection in its new corner, and things are growing well.  The wheatgrass and lettuce are both pretty happy.

Also, we've started using Organocide. Some aphids found their way into our plants, and were really being quite obnoxious.  We wanted to stay organic, and the Organocide spray seems to be killing them.  We think they arrived on the strawberry plants, as they were transplants from the outside world.

Lastly, a followup on the Milwaukee pH meter...

Although this one doesn't seem to be "defective", it's still terrible.  It requires frequent calibration, and it's more of a pain-in-the-ass to use than the simple (and much cheaper) color-change kits.  I recommend to everyone to avoid Milwaukee meters.  It's just not worth the time and effort to make it work right.  I have to give credit to their customer service, as they handled the return quickly and courteously.  It's just their products that suck.  I'll give it one final chance this week, but then it's going on eBay.

I cannot say anything about Hanna products, as I haven't tried them.  I'd be willing to give it a shot.  Make sure to leave a comment if you have any experience with either Milwaukee or Hanna.  I'd love to hear that I'm wrong, because I'd be really happy for a decent digital pH meter.