Tag Archives: growth

growth (post_tag auto created by Wordpresser)

plants, wordpresser

My plants are 1 month old

It is now 1 month since I first ventured into growing a few plants, starting with a hydroponics kit with six slots.
Last week, two of the plants have outgrown the kit and now live in their own vase. Their slots have been occupied by two mystery pods – I do not know what will grow from them, if anything at all, because the pods were missing labels, by mistake of the seller.

The starting kit included the following plants, here listed with their original labels, including each plant’s sprout window and if it they are “tall”, “medium” or “short”:

  • Thai Basil (sprouts in 4-7 days) Tall
  • Genovese Basil (sprouts in 6-12 days) Tall
  • Dill (sprouts in 8-21 days)
  • Mint (sprouts in 6-10 days) Medium
  • Thyme (sprouts in 7-14 days) Short
  • Curly Parsley (sprouts in 21-28 days) Short

The two plants that have outgrown the kit and now live in their own vase are the “Thai Basil” and the “Dill”.

Here are the Portuguese names for the plants:

  • Thai Basil = Manjericão da Tailândia
  • Genovese Basil = Manjericão de Génova (cidade Italiana)
  • Dill = Aneto
  • Mint = Hortelã
  • Thyme = Tomilho
  • Curly Parsley = Salsa encaracolada

The idea of growing these plants is to learn, to experience a bit of hydroponics and plant growing, and then use some as food!
I think the Thai basil and the dill are big enough to survive a small pruning, so I Googled for related home recipes.

For Thai basil:
https://www.yummly.com/recipes/fresh-thai-basil-leaves

For dill:
https://www.tasteofhome.com/collection/fresh-dill-recipes/

Finally, here are six sets of three pictures each; capturing three different stages of growth of the original six plants. From left to right, the first picture is on 2019-06-25 (“planting day”), the second on 2019-07-06, the third and final on 2019-07-26.


curly_parsley_evo20190625_20190706_20190726.png
https://arturmarques.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/curly_parsley_evo20190625_20190706_20190726.png (image/png)

curly_parsley_evo20190625_20190706_20190726.png


diil_evo20190625_20190706_20190726.png
https://arturmarques.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/diil_evo20190625_20190706_20190726.png (image/png)

diil_evo20190625_20190706_20190726.png


genovese_basil_evo20190625_20190706_20190726.png
https://arturmarques.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/genovese_basil_evo20190625_20190706_20190726.png (image/png)

genovese_basil_evo20190625_20190706_20190726.png


mint_evo20190625_20190706_20190726.png
https://arturmarques.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/mint_evo20190625_20190706_20190726.png (image/png)

mint_evo20190625_20190706_20190726.png


thai_basil_evo20190625_20190706_20190726.png
https://arturmarques.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/thai_basil_evo20190625_20190706_20190726.png (image/png)

thai_basil_evo20190625_20190706_20190726.png


thyme_evo20190625_20190706_20190726.png
https://arturmarques.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/thyme_evo20190625_20190706_20190726.png (image/png)

thyme_evo20190625_20190706_20190726.png
Technical Details
plants, time-lapse, wordpresser

24H of plant growth in 60 seconds (2019-07-19)

Here is another ridiculous project of mine.
I bought a starter hydroponics kit and decided to track the plants’ growth.
The kit holds six plant pods, the set immersed in 2.1 liters of water, with two teaspoons of liquid plant food (to be administered every 2 weeks). Each pod is a simple plastic structure holding an argil substrate with the plant seeds. The substrate sucks the water, the water reaches the seeds, hopefully the seeds grow, a plant appears and its roots will feed by drinking the water with nutrients.

To track the spectacular growth of the plants, I bought a small POE (Power Over Ethernet) Chinese camera. The camera arrived one week too late, but is the perfect small size. It delivers great video, but poor time-lapse captures. The poor time-lapse results are due to the effect of the artificial sun light in the camera sensor. The effect is inoffensive in real time video, but becomes obvious on interval snapshots, because the lights and/or the sensor itself are/is irregular in radiation distribution/capture, hence some strips will appear in the videos.

These plants are growing on an 18 hours cycle, meaning they get 18 hours of artificial sun light and 6 hours of whatever natural light I have in the kitchen.

One of the reasons I embarked on this project was to show my kids how kinetic plants are. They move a lot! I intend to regularly publish 24 hours of plant growth footage, smashed in less than 1 minute.
The stripes on video are annoying, I know. Moreover, the video may feature kids’ hands playing with the plants :), or adults’ hands cutting off leaves for cuisine purposes!