My Right as a Woman to Change My Mind

It’s always a woman’s prerogative to change her mind. I’m changing mine in a big way. If heretofore I was known as the carnation lady, let me be known henceforth as the rose lady.

I can hear the gasps of all you carnation lovers out there! What is she doing? Has she lost her mind? How did it happen?

Well, as I wrote to you last week, I had just planted all my carnation seeds, two per rockwool cube, and waited for germination. Well, through circumstances beyond my control (or divine planning) most of my carnation seeds turned out to be duds.

Yes, zilch, nada, forget-about-it. At the same time, as if by magic, I was invited by a mutual friend to visit a basement rose growing operation, in a room not much bigger than my basement rec room.

I was enthralled by the roses, which were just about ready to harvest in anticipation of Valentine’s Day. That day is a huge sales day for rose growers the world over. And some of the prices they fetch!

I came home to a grow room full of dud seeds and a few carnation Mother Plants, which could have continued to produce flowers until they were 18 months old. I donated my Mother Plants to a friend who’s continuing to grow carnations, and said adieu to my carnation growing operation.

What’s so great about growing roses? Aside from the exquisite beauty of the flowers, there is something to be said for marketability. Specialty roses sell for many times the price of carnations.

It’s a new challenge for me. I was getting kind of sluggish, winning prize after prize with my Dianthus caryophyllus flowers. That’s just a fancy name for carnations, you don’t have to go running for your dictionary.

Am I insane? Starting to grow roses in the dead of a Mississauga winter, missing out on the Valentine’s Day bonanza, having had zilch experience where the propagation, nurturing, and growth of these delicate flowers are concerned?

I am determined to become the best floriculturalist for roses possible. This means doing reams and reams of research on the Internet and in the Library. I have already started and this will probably take a few weeks. I’ll keep a step by step journal and share it with you week by week on this blog.

My first smart step was to call the technical help line at Advanced Nutrients. I’ve been talking to them frequently about growing carnations, they were surprised to hear that now I am planning to switch to roses.

Your Drip Irrigation hydroponic system should be fine for the roses, the man informed me, but your feed rate will probably change. Can I continue to use my basic 3-part fertilizer, Micro, Grow, and Bloom? You should be able to, since it is the best choice for many plants and flowers.

At various stages, you can vary your nutrients with just those three products, higher veg for structural, higher bloom for blooming.

First up is the pH question, which is the most frequently brought up issue on the Advanced Nutrient help line. The basics are well known. A pH of 7 is neutral, meaning you have a completely balanced acid-alkaline mix.

It is advisable to grow most plants in a more acidic environment, since the nutrients are more available to the plant in an acidic solution. As to the exact pH that is recommended for roses? You’re going to have to do diligent research on that, said the man.

It’s not that easy to find the exact pH required for hydroponic roses, when punching up the topic on Google yields hundreds of thousands of hits. I tend to favor the academic sites, since I presume they know what they’re talking about. There are too many amateurs posing as experts on the Internet.

I will report back as soon as I find the definitive answer to that question. Also, the issue of humidity is all-important, since roses tend to be plagued with viral and fungal diseases such as Black Spot and Powdery Mildew.

With regard to these diseases, Advanced Nutrients recommends using Barricade in your nutrient solution, a spraying regimen of Scorpion Juice, as well as Piranha and Tarantula as foliar sprays. You have to alternate these products and spray at five-day intervals, since the effects of one are cancelled out by the other.

I thought I would be smart and choose disease resistant varieties, but when it comes to choosing roses to grow, the types and varieties are endless. I know exactly the type of look I want (Hybrid Tea Rose) but inbreeding has killed the scent of many of these varieties.

The more I research, the more I think I’ll have to grow two different types, one for appearance and one for fragrance. The fragrant types I’m drawn to at the moment are the Bourbon varieties, that first appeared on the isle of Bourbon in the Indian Ocean in the 1800’s.

They come in colors that range from white, to deep pink, to scarlet and possess a very heavy fragrance. The drawback is that they’re bushy and grow big. You couldn’t fit too many of them into my limited size basement grow room.

So you see, the choices are not as easy as all that. I will have to continue for my search for the perfect rose that looks like a Hybrid Tea rose with a very heavy fragrance, is disease resistant, and doesn’t grow too large.

It seems that in order to have the best choices, believe it or not, mail ordering them from a large catalogue is recommended. However, since I don’t want to order roses with any soil attached, I would have to order bare-root plants, which are only shipped during early spring while they are dormant.

I have gotten rid of all traces of my carnations (not without shedding a few tears, mind you) and have flushed my hydroponic system with pure water over and over. I am using Advanced Nutrients Wipe Out to clean all my trays, tools, and utensils, and then to wipe the walls.

I’m even wiping the light fixtures (I have six 600W High Pressure Sodium lights with ballasts), I am so careful not to transmit any viral, bacterial, or fungal infection from my carnations to my future roses.

I hope I don’t have to wait too long to put in an order, but it’s best to be sure than to make a mistake. This is a huge change in my life, and I figure if it takes a few weeks to implement it, then so be it. Wish me luck.

Starting from Seeds, Germinating, Nurturing

The deep freeze is on in Mississauga, Ontario. The other day it was minus fifteen Celsius (in the daytime!), but with the wind-chill factor it felt like minus twenty-seven. This is more like Winnipeg, than a suburb of Toronto.

For the past week I’ve been planting and nurturing seeds. As you know, I grow over 400 carnations each grow and bloom cycle in the basement recreation room of my suburban house.

I use a Drip Irrigation Hydroponic system under six 600W High Pressure Sodium light fixtures and I recently harvested my prize-winning blooms, which were delivered to select stores in the area. I’m glad to report that they sold very quickly.

This is more of a hobby-grow operation for me, since my divorce settlement left me not rich, but comfortable. I have always fantasized about growing flowers—specifically Sims carnations, the long-stemmed, single bloom variety. What better way to recover from a divorce, than to make one of your major dreams a reality?

In addition to pure, filtered water, I nourish my carnations with a basic nutrient and some supplements from a Canadian company, Advanced Nutrients. They are very helpful and their technical advice line is very reachable.

I grow my plants in rockwool slabs, but my germinating seeds need special care. Using a chopstick, I very carefully make two holes in the centres of 400 rockwool cubes. I insert two carnation seeds of different varieties, chosen for their color or disease resistance or novel appearance.

The reason for two seeds, instead of one, is in case one does not germinate, there is always a back-up. If both germinate, I only keep the stronger one and discard the other.

Germinating seeds need light above all—as much as possible. I use special grow-lite fluorescent tubes that I hang just a few inches above the rockwool cubes. Some growers keep the lights on for 18 hours a day--I keep them on for 24 hours. I find that it doesn’t hurt my seeds to have an abundance of light.

I keep my growing cubes in plastic trays with transparent plastic covers to keep the moisture in. I water the cubes in the morning and let them dry out by nightfall. You have to take the cover off for about an hour at night, in order to allow the moisture to evaporate, before the chill of night sets in.

Temperature is a very big consideration. If you’ve ever been to an agricultural show where a whole bunch of eggs are hatching, you know that they do it under heat lamps to maintain an incubator-like temperature.

So I set my oil-based rads at full blast and also hang a number of heat lamps above the trays. Even with so many sources of heat, the temperature in the trays never goes above 55º to 60º F, or 10º to 14º Celsius. You want to make your seeds comfortable, you don’t want to bake them.

If you’re germinating in hydro, small rockwool cubes are a good idea. If you’re growing in soil, small peat pots should be used. Some growers say the smaller the better. It doesn’t hurt to have your seedlings root bound. That goes for transplanting, too.

When you get the first set of true leaves, it’s time to transplant. By this time I have dipped my seedlings into their basic fertilizer, Micro and Grow, and after the transplant I treat them with Advanced Nutrients No Shock and Jump Start, two excellent products designed to minimize the stress of being moved and give a grow boost to your tiny plants.

I generally take the root-bound rockwool cubes and cut openings for each one in my rockwool slabs, which are two to three inches thick. It’s better to have thicker slabs, in my experience, since they retain moisture better.

Somewhere along the line, I also tend to treat my seedlings with Scorpion Juice in order to impart induced systemic resistance to many pathogens and pests.

The rockwool slabs rest in large, three by six foot trays that are situated under the lights and the drippers of my hydroponic system slowly soak the nutrients, along with root colonizers, supplements, and additives, into my grow medium. The trays are at a slight slant, so the excess nutrient solution goes to one end and is retrieved and recycled back into my reservoir.

My seeds are germinating as we speak. This time I’m trying a deeper tray for my rockwool cubes designed to retain moisture a little bit longer. You don’t want too much excess moisture, since this is the time for that dreaded seedling disease, Damping Off. Mold or Mildew can also form in the atmosphere in the tray is too humid.

I have a friend in British Columbia and she told me that her crocuses and daffodils are starting to break through the surface of the soil in her garden. Seems they have balmy temperature out there. I’m afraid Ontario will stay wintery cold for quite a bit longer.

But indoors, in my very own basement garden, seeds are starting to sprout shoots and new life is beginning. I find seed germination a very exciting time and it always gives me new hope for the future.

It is magic, if you think about it. How does the old adage go? From tiny seeds, mighty trees grow, or some such. All the color, beauty, fragrance, and design of my carnation flowers are contained in every little seed.

I read on the Internet about terminator seeds and the global fight to stop the multinationals from foisting yet another greed-motivated disaster on us. These seeds are genetically engineered to be infertile. If allowed to spread, they would in effect make it impossible for small farmers to harvest and store their own seeds for the next planting season.

These giant corporations want to patent the very basic life patterns of seeds, so that they can profit from selling them to you each year. The case of Monsanto vs. a courageous Canadian prairie farmer was covered in the media a couple of years ago and it made me very angry.

Deep Freeze, Bloom Harvest, Electrical Conductivity

I’ve been adding Overdrive for the past two weeks, and now it’s time for the final flush and Final Phase. Yes, it’s almost harvest time, and I’m looking forward to cutting and bunching up my exquisite blooms and delivering them to select florists in our area.

I was watching Conan late last night and saw that temperatures in New York City are in the seventies. People are shedding their coats. When that happens in Canada, I start seeing shorts and T-shirts on the streets.

But, alas, the deep freeze is coming. I checked the long-term forecast on the Weather Network online and we are currently going down into the minus 8-10 Celsius range. That’s not all—on January 17th, the thermometer is supposed to dip to –11 degrees in the daytime and –22 degrees C at night.

That’s only five days from now! I checked my oil-based radiators to make sure that they are working properly and also the main gas-fired furnace for the house, which I had cleaned and maintained back in September.

Thank goodness, the solar panels have been installed on the roof and have been tested out and are working properly. We’ve had a whole number of overcast days, but the sun is due to come out soon, so the batteries will get fully charged in order to kick in in case of a power failure.

As you know, I use a drip irrigation hydroponic system in my basement recroom to grow circa 400 single stem Sim carnations each cycle, with extra cuttings in between from certain Mother Plants that continue to produce flowers for up to 18 months.

Every sixteen weeks I harvest all the remaining blooms and start most of my flowers from seed. Only the Mother Plants survive this excision and only as long as they continue to produce marketable flowers.

I checked the Nutrient Calculator on the Advanced Nutrients website, and double checked the quantities of ingredients that I have to mix in to my new batch of nutrient mix. After I flush with Final Phase I harvest my flowers and empty my reservoir.

For the Medium Feeding Bloom cycle, the Electrical Conductivity in my tank went up to EC 2.28 or 1600 parts-per-million (PPM). It always starts off lower during week 1 of the 8-week cycle, then gradually goes up to the maximum, only to descend again before the final week.

During the Vegetative cycle of my carnations, the solution goes up to EC 1.71 or 1200 PPM during week 4 and up to EC 2 or 1400 PPM during week 8. Then it drops back to EC 1.42 or 1000 PPM during week 1 of the flowering stage.

I’ve become much more conscious of my EC meter ever since I had a talk with a tech guy at Advanced Nutrients. He said that EC is a better measurement to use, than parts-per-million. In fact, different EC meters give different conversion from EC to PPM.

The one that Advanced Nutrients uses is made in New Zealand. It’s called the Bluelab Truncheon CF/EC/PPM meter and it converts EC 1 to 700 PPM.

The accuracy of my readings determines how rich the diet is that I’m feeding my flowers. For instance, during the eight weeks of vegetative growth, I am mixing in a total of 993.6 mL of Micro, the same amount of Grow, and 185.04 of Bloom, in order to make sure that the NPK ratio is at an optimum level for my carnations.

Other ingredients during vegetative growth include 1412 mL of Mother Earth Super Tea Grow, a total of 836.8 mL of Grandma Enggy’s Humic Acid, 792 mL of her Fulvic Acid, 3832 mL of B-52, 118.48 mL of Barricade, 2800 mL of Scorpion Juice, 3912 mL of Sensi Zym, as well as a total of 112.64 grams each of Piranha and Tarantula, and 541.6 mL of Voodoo Juice.

All those ingredients in my reservoir solution add up to a value of EC 2 or a measurement of 1400 PPM. Electrical conductivity in a solution is measured by inserting two probes and measuring the strength of the current between them. Not the resistance, just the flow of electricity, much like a voltage meter.

If you add more ingredients or subtract some, you should alter your quantities to maintain the proper EC. Also, don’t forget to take pH readings each time you mix up a new batch of solution. The desired pH level for hydroponic growing is 5.6 pH.

Aggressive Bloom Boosting with Amino Acids

I’m still bleary eyed from watching all those movies last week and also from having had one too many Martinis on New Year’s Eve. No, there’s no man in my life, I went out with a girl friend.

My carnations are my sole preoccupation at the moment and I love it that way. I’ve been adding Big Bud Liquid to my reservoir. This bloom enhancer has to be added during weeks 2, 3, and 4 of the flowering stage of my carnations.

I did this same regimen during the last cycle—I wound up with the biggest, most fragrant flowers imaginable! Was I ever excited!

This time I decided to read up on what I was feeding to my sweet-smelling, colorful bread-and-butter crop. Yes my divorce settlement paid for the house and the overhead, but a girl still has to eat, doesn’t she?

I use Big Bud in addition to my basic 3-part fertilizer, Grow, Micro, and Bloom. Big Bud doesn’t add any more Nitrogen, per se, but it does add 19 essential and non-essential amino acids, which are being used almost as a reduced form of Nitrogen, since they contain some molecules that embrace Nitrogen in their structure.

Besides, plants when they flower need more Phosphorus and Potassium, which Big Bud does contain. It also has Magnesium, another element that plays a major role in bud formation.

Amino acids are the basic building blocks of protein. Among the 19 amino acids in Big Bud are L-Tryptophan, L-Lysine, L-Glycine, L-Proline, and L-Alanine. The specific rates of these ingredients are designed for aggressive heavy-feeding of greenhouse and hydroponic crops.

When used in conjunction with Bud Blood and Overdrive, Big Bud builds the flowering sites, while Bud Blood helps to initiate flowering and Overdrive adds weight, girth, and density to my flowers.

They are definitely not meant to go into your reservoir all at once. Were you foolish enough to do that, you’d fry your crop to a crisp, according to the tech guys at Advanced Nutrients.

This time I’m also mixing in Bloom Booster Pro, since the very informative Advancedepedia says that if I reduce the weekly amounts of my basic fert, thus cutting back on the NPK ratio, I’m allowed to mix in this additional bloom enhancer.

Check with the Nutrient Calculator when performing this manoeuvre, since you have to be careful not to exceed the recommended EC reading. EC stands for electrical conductivity and it has to do with the strength of your nutrient solution and how all the molecules interact.

I prefer Big Bud Liquid, since it’s very convenient to use. If I wanted to be more economical, I could use Big Bud Powder, which contains the same bloom boosting ingredients.

One must not neglect the root colonizers every third week or so. Piranha, Tarantula, and Voodoo Juice have been beneficially invading my root systems for the past three harvests and the health of my flowers below the rockwool slabs determines the size of my blooms above the slabs.

The blooming process entails a veritable eruption of alkaloid and protein synthesis, and the amino acids in Big Bud are the building blocks upon which this biosyntheses is performed.

Blossoms, colors, and fragrance are the result of these biological processes and that’s why I swear by Big Bud, even though some of my grower colleagues believe that I’m being too aggressive in going after gigantic blooms.

However, when they come up against me in the flower shows, I’m the one who walks away with the ribbon or medal or whatever they happen to be awarding for best-in-show.