TERMINATED: Chijimisai REBOOT

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2024-01-27: Day 0

Seeds: Baker Creek Chijimisai
Planted: 4:30 PM
Aerogarden: 6E+
Location: North 40, office
Water: tap, filtered, Big Berkey
Grow Medium: Park Seed sponge
Preferred pH: 6.0–7.5
Preferred EC: 1.5–2.5 (based on what Tatsoi likes)

Nutrients:
1.0ml CALiMAGic
8.0ml AG nutrients
5.0ml 3% Hydrogen Peroxide

Nutrient mix pH: 6.0
Nutrient mix EC: 1.0

CONCLUSION: Grew well, tasted great, very prolific, just like Tatsoi, but I didn't like these greens quite as well as the Tatsoi for juicing. The plants are even wider, and mine got around 18" wide, so they were trickier to harvest as easily as the Tatsoi because the leaves overlapped. I don't think I'll do two in a single AG unit again. I might leave these seeds for trying outdoors next spring.

THE END

Chijimisai is a cross between Tatsoi and Komatsuna greens. I’ve neither eaten it nor grown it before. Seeds were similar to Tatsoi and easy to plant, I dropped two seeds in each sponge.

Starting out with AG nutrients and will see how things go. Might switch to MaxiGro later.

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2024-01-29: Day 2
I see green in the pods! Sprouts incoming! 

It's interesting, they are listed on the seed packet as 10-14 day germination, but obviously the ideal conditions of the Aerogarden speeds that up considerably!

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2024-02-21: Day 0: REBOOT!

Although I saw green in one pod, it never developed a sprout. The other pod had two sprouts that accidentally grew into the grow dome. Both were lanky. I removed one, the other flopped over. This may be completely normal for this plant. At any rate, I wasn't in the mood to deal with it, so I let the one plant grow a bit and it did develop and the greens were tasty. It had close to an 18" tap root!

Today I cleaned the reservoir bowl, which had a fair amount of brown muck around the bottom. Might be the fact I used AG nutes. It cleaned up easily enough with a brief vinegar soak, but I was expecting a cleaner bowl so will try MaxiGro for the reboot.

Nutrients:
1.0ml GH CALiMAGic
3.4g GH MaxiGro
5.0ml 3% Hydrogen Peroxide

Nutrient mix pH: 6.0
Nutrient mix EC: 1.1

Given that I had to toss grow baskets after the Tatsoi in this garden, I'm using the vintage "Grow Anything" baskets, because they come apart in two halves and if the plants get a large stalk like the Tatsoi did, the baskets can hopefully be saved for reuse. Old baskets, which fit the old gardens better than the new baskets, are a finite resource! I have a lot saved, but I don't want to be tossing them with each grow.

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Day 2
I see a bit of green! But only in one pod, so I hope this isn't a repeat of the first try, though if the other pod does not sprout, I will jump and reseed it sooner this time. Which reminds me to take that grow dome off that pod so I don't have any sudden surprises with sprouts growing into the dome like last time.

EDIT: And now I'm laughing at myself! I last looked at the garden maybe an hour ago, and only one bit of green showing. Well, I went to take off the grow dome and see green in both pods now, so I've removed both grow domes. Funny how fast plants can move!

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2024-02-29
Thinned the seedlings a couple days after they sprouted, all is going well, these two seedlings look nice and stocky compared to the lanky one I had earlier. The first true leaves are appearing.

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Yow! I saw a tiny bit of edge damage on a cotyledon on one plant, so I checked pH, it was around 9.0 at a guess! I've added some pH Down and will check again in the morning.

Otherwise, the plants seem OK and hopefully I caught it in time.

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2024-03-09
Rinse and refill. One seedling is ahead of the other, possibly because of the high pH drift incident. But both are growing.

Nutrient mix (per gallon):
1.0ml GH CALiMAGic
3.6g GH MaxiGro
5.0ml 3% Hydrogen Peroxide

Nutrient mix pH: 6.0
Nutrient mix EC: 1.2

And no pictures, because my hosting site is offline at the moment, so even though I took one, no uploading joy.

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Last night's picture now that vgy.me is up again:

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It's a good thing I kept it to two plants, the Chijimisai looks to be a larger spreading plant than the Tatsoi, which was not so wide this young! I may harvest a leaf or two today for salad from the plant on the left!