Hello Steemit. An update on the application of beneficials. I planted lettuce, new snow peas and harvested a second batch of rhubarb. Pepers still very much green :(

New Lettuce

I had to make some space for the new lettuce, I'll be comparing the growth to the same lettuce growing in soil. There are also some new snow pea plants at the sides. The peas are supposed to be planted early spring, I don't know what they will give in autumn. The mug in the middle is beer to catch slugs. Working great so far. The big leafed plant is physalis.

Below is the before picture, I pulled some tomatoe plants and harvested the rhubarb to make space.

Beneficials

Lets talk biocontrol. I have been applying a mixture of bacteria and trichoderma to stave off the disease my cherry tomatoe plant was showing. This proofed to not be effective in the end. My oldest plant suddenly wilted this week, I'm sure it's not because of temperature or nutrients. All the other plants are doing great. I do have some cherry tomatoes and they are still ripening but the vine is pretty much dead now.

The slug control by way of beer in a mug is working great on the other hand. I already caught one slug, some flies and no lettuce leafs were eaten

Aquaponics is vacation right at home :D

Nutrients

I switched to adding calcium carbonate instead of kalium hydroxide for a week. I'm back to kalium now, I seem to have eyeballed it really good because calcium is now at an ideal 200 ppm. I had to add a big spoon each day. You need quite a lot of calcium carbonate if this is your sole ph up. Nitrates crawling higher at 40 ppm. I'll maybe add a bit of phosphor again. Also the latest strawberries are forming normal again. High hopes they taste better compared to the spring ones when nutrients were pretty anemic across the board.

Element	My values	Typical hydroponic solution
N	40	210
P	5	31
K	>45	235
Ca	200	200
Mg	30 -40	48
Fe	0.8	1 to 5
Cu	0 (smallest I can measure is 0.1)	0.05
NO2	0.2	0

Thanks for reading, any question feel free to ask.