Page 17 - SV 3 2024

Growbags – mess-free, productive and irrigated indoors by our Tray2Grow system
Peep show – oooh-la-la – mess-free grown lettuce showing lots of leg roots
Lettuce rejoice – in the lettuce cultivator
R&Dical approaches
Mess-free growing at AutoPot HQ
Ever keen to devise more convenient, more accessible ways to grow, we at AutoPot keep a thriving, year-round, indoor garden for research and development purposes. This garden, perched atop our Farnborough HQ, is full of nifty new bits of kit paired with
our power-free, fully automatic plant watering systems. For 2024 our focus in the R&D garden has been on mess-free grow media and how it can enable new and established growers to do more with much, much less.
Most eye-catching amongst our
current mess-free experiments is surely the prototype lettuce cultivator for our Tray2Grow system. This brilliant add-on
is ideal for use with grow cubes. It allows you to get fresh lettuce, straight from a live plant that can continue to grow and yield indefinitely.
You simply set up Tray2Grow and place one or two lettuce cultivators on top. Then drop Jiffy or propagation cubes containing young plants through the holes in the cultivator onto the capillary mat in the Tray2Grow. Any size of cube up to 50mm is okay.
Each lettuce cultivator can support up to 20 plants and two cultivators will fit onto a Tray2Grow. So, a maximum of 40 planted- up cubes per Tray2Grow if you please. Switch on your system and wait for your greens to emerge - thrusting out, trained and spry through the holes in the cultivator. The genius part is that, if you wish, you
can even do your initial propagation on the
Tray2Grow.
Kudos to Alwyn Williams and Medwyn
Williams MBE who first devised the growing technique using sections of drilled-out drainpipe on a Tray2Grow.
Their efforts with fresh butterhead lettuce are already the toast of North Wales’ restaurants, and with good reason. You’ve got year-round, on-demand availability of fresh crops, grown cleanly, power-free with low-maintenance watering and feeding via the Tray2Grow. Like your salad leaves a tad more petite and punchy. Check out our latest mess-free cultivation innovation for micro herbs.
Our new Micro Herb Training Tray takes the somewhat Dickensian point of view that a little hard work instils character. And strength. And the capacity for regrowth. Not to be mistaken for the Micro Herb Tray in which the seeds are actually sown, the Training Tray sits on top of germinated micro herb seeds and forces them to work harder to develop. As the seeds push up, they lift the tray, effectively weight-training the stems. Then we generously remove the Training Tray and allow the plants to green up.
If that sounds a little cruel, please bear
in mind that we have every intention of scything the herbs down in their prime, greedily devouring the spoils, and allowing them to regrow. Before reaping once more!
Here the mess-free element is the paper towel ‘grow media’ we’ve used in the Microherb Tray when combining with Tray2Grow. Inexpensive, disposable, and
available in eco-friendly options it’s proven to be a great improvised bed for our seeds.
‘Fine’ you may say, ‘but what about actual, fully-fledged plants?’ Well, at the risk of changing the rules halfway through, sometimes there’s slight trade-off to be made. Especially when the size and yield dealt by that trade-off is so immense. So how about a ‘no potting’ option to close the show?
Growbags are a great alternative to pots if you want to keep things neat and tidy. As luck (?!) would have it we’ve a wizard trick up our sleeves for irrigating and feeding these not-so-dirty pillows too. Whether you’ve seen the magic in action before or not, our latest trials with Tray2Grow in ‘grow bag configuration’ are well worth a look.
Since September 2023 we’ve had growbag grown Sungold tomatoes on
trial in Tray2Grow and the development
in just over eight months has been truly staggering. The plants are over 20ft in total height right now. We’ll continue to monitor plant behaviour and water consumption for future R&D projects and you can rest assured that we’ll continue to monitor the flavour of the fruit - which has been off the chart!
So, there you have it. Delicious and bountiful harvests cultivated mess-free!
For more on our continuing R&Dicalisation of AutoPot growing techniques follow us on insta @autopot_global or Facebook @AutoPotSystems.
Sungold tomatoes in a Tray2Grow irrigated and fed growbag – all this development in just eight months
The new hole food aisle. Lettuce cultivator allows you to get fresh lettuce, straight from a live plant that can continue to grow and yield indefinitely
The micro herb sowing tray paired with Tray2Grow
Simply Vegetables 17