Greenhouse Fun

So in order to break up the monotony of washing dishes and picking up after the residents of Mctown in general, we DAs are periodically tasked with an odd assignment every so often.

It can be something unexciting as shoveling the snow off the steps around station (not to be knocked though, as it gets you outside), to todays task: working in the sweet-ass mctown greenhouse.

Working with the greenhouse maven, Karen, we sorted and harvested the lettuce that was ready (ripe? can lettuce be ripe?) into big trash bags to be served at tomorrow night's dinner.

All items in the greenhouse are grown using a large hydroponic system. Film feeding is the way the plants receive nutrients. Meaning that the plants roots are being constantly washed by a thin film of neutrient rich water solution fed up to one end of the long 15' PVC pipe by pumps and gravity runs it past the whole row of whatever plant they happen to be growing at the time.

The solution is checked and corrected as needed, several times daily by Karen to ensure that the PH is right (4.9-7.9 or so) and in some of the troughs, that the temperature is right. The various stations are kept full of water by a main water tank that delivers water as needed though a system of tubes, pumps, and manifold stations.

Misters keep the humidity up in the rooms, as the plants would wilt and without proper healty leaves, the plants would crash and die. But even with the misters, the leaves still wilt some so it is a little tedious.

Anyway,
it was a very welcome diversion to the everyday actvity here. Check the usual photos and videos at Flickr and UTUBE for more.