Apartment Vegetable/Herb Garden: Transplanting

In this third part of the ongoing series: "Apartment Vegetable/Herb Garden", we investigate the transition from a soil-based paradigm to this new hydroponics system.

This is an idea of where I was starting from. I had cilantro, basil, sage, rosemary, and had newly planted thyme and oregano.

I had bought these originally at the store and moved them to larger 6" diameter pots. They rested in the tub and it was filled with about an inch of water...some soil leaked out and the water turned black, but it was a pseudo-hydroponics system in spirit. The basil plant was the main shower here and you can see how the roots were growing into the water.

There was a crazy amount of roots growing in this pot. They were wrapped around the soil and a bit fragile. I tried save as many of the roots as I could while gently removing the soil, but I suspect I lost over 90% of the roots in transplanting it into its new hydroponic-friendly net-basket (only 2" diameter).

You can see that little bit of a dangling root remnant. Well, fast forward two weeks of hydroponic growing and nutrient addition via miracle-gro and here is what that basil plant looks like now!

I had just trimmed this a bit for some dehydration preservation spice cabinet action so it was a bit sparse, but look at those new roots!

 

So things are looking great. We'll see what things look like in another month. I have also planted some jalapenos and tomatoes, but they will take months to bear fruit which sucks because I can bear arms right now. Stay tuned for more!