Wall of Lettuce

[Oliver]

I thought it was time to upload and show this image taken back in Feb 2015. This is an 80 degree wall with 4 kinds of lettuce growing in it, Butter (Bib), Red Oak, Green Oak and Romain at the far end.

The wall is 16 feet long and 7 feet high with 8" x 8" plant spacing in vertical ducts, NFT style, 10 plants per row, 24 rows (columns).

Oliver

[Jason]

That is one nice wall of lettuce you have there Oliver. How long did it take to grow to fill in that space?

Jason

[Oliver]

The seeds were sprouted in an indoor spouting flood and drain table under mostly Red LEDs for about 3 weeks. They were then moved to horizontal DWC ducts under either Induction or Multi-color custom LEDs, not sure which were where but it is in the log, for about 3 more weeks. Then transplanted to the vertical wall and the picture was taken somewhere between 2 to 3 weeks after final transplant. In the picture, they are not quite ready for harvest as a straight-on picture would have shown gaps between the plants. Once fully filled out they were then harvested between 3 and 4 weeks.

This was in February and the daily sunlight is only a few hours and later in the year, like now (late April), it will be shorter time to harvest. The wall is south facing. Also, we keep losing our nutrient rich water with multiple plumbing problems that continue to happen, mainly due to a sticky float valve that causes an overflow in the middle of the night. That will be fixed soon.

We are currently moving a crop directly from the sprouting tray to vertical as the vertical system is currently empty and no need to buy electricity for in-door stage one. Also, the Romain lettuce doesn't do well going from horizontal to vertical after 3 weeks and we lose lots of leaves in the process, so we have to do stage one grow-out in the vertical as well as stage two to harvest.

Oliver