Monday, June 4, 2018

Final Post

Hello everyone,

This will be my last post about HydroLoft or the Plant Tube since we are wrapping up Greengineering projects and cleaning them up. Even though I won't be taking the lab version (in the workspace) of this class, I still think someone could learn from my experience and carry on my work. So in this post, I'll talk about what I learned and a possible future path for this project.

What I learned:
I am talking about what I learned in terms of how to grow plants efficiently. I designed and built two systems: Plant Tube and HydroLoft. Both have the purpose of growing the most plants in least space and least resources. The one on top is HydroLoft, and below is Plant Tube
They both managed to grow plants. However, Plant Tube produced much more yield in less time, with less work to create it. (The parsley hasn't grown because it was planted only a few days ago). So why did the Plant Tube grow better?

I don't know for sure, but using my knowledge of plant biology, I can hypothesize. Plant Tube works by being constantly filled with water, which is maintained at a certain level so that the grow cubes the plants are in remain wet. This means that when the seeds germinate, they are surrounded by a semi-inundated environment, so they are unlikely to rot. Important: this only works for some plants! It did not work for growing squash! 

When the roots grow, they will also be engulfed in water, so their roots are absorbing water once they have matured enough to grow outside of that semi-inundated environment. They are now able to absorb the most water without rot. I didn't photograph it, but when I took the cups out of the tubes, the roots were much, much longer and more developed than the roots of the plants in HydroLoft.

This actually makes sense. In nature, plants grow on river banks, which are semi-inundated. The ones that do grow in water, however, grow in still or slow-moving water. Lily pads, for example, typically don't grow in rapids. HydroLoft flooded the tubes and then drained, creating a semi-inundated environment through Van-der-walls forces (the water stayed in the gutter foam due to it simply being stuck to it). However, since the tubes are empty after the fact, the plant roots wouldn't be supported in the same way a flooded but still-water environment would be

Possible future path:

The only problem Plant Tube has is that in order to expand, it would need to do so horizontally, which takes up space. HydroLoft is space-efficient because it takes up space vertically. So how can this system be run vertically?

We can look at how it would be done in an automated manner (not requiring frequent checking). After much thinking and redesign, here is my proposed design:
It might appear to be like the original HydroLoft design, but it has two important modifications: the GroCube and the drainage.

I guess Mr. Deets was right all along about using a GroCube to best grow plants. It will make the semi-inundated environment certain plants need to grow, and the drain will ensure that it only starts filling up the level below when it's full. You would have to measure how much water is lost from the system per day to judge how often the pump would need to be active in order to keep the water at a suitable level.

Unfortunately, I will not be in the Greengineering lab next year, so a student will have to take this over for me. I hope that they find my reports valuable, especially this last one.

Thanks for reading,
Ben