The scallions tasted so good in that Amaranth Soup I mentioned in the previous post that it seemed like a good idea to learn more about growing them hydroponically. Not wanting to wait a month to start from seed, I bought a bunch at the supermarket with roots still attached.
Several gardeners have posted comments on various gardening forums about how easy it is to grow new scallions by just cutting the bottoms off the ones they bought at the grocery store. Not finding any pictures, so I decided to try it and take some photos to post here:
In the first test I planted just a few tips in a very small container. "Planted" on December 13, this is how they looked after a couple weeks. Happy with this result, I bought several more bunches and put all of the tips in a shallow container of hydroton rocks:
Here the inner container is shown draining between a couple of table knives. To the left is a container marked with the date started, a drain line, and a fill line.
The drain "water" is a weak solution of General Hydroponics Flora series nutrients in the ration 3:2:1 (Gro, Micro, Bloom)
I premix the solution in 1 liter Smart Water bottles, and, as necessary, pour in new solution to bring the water level up to the drain line, then lower the inner container back down slowly until the solution reaches the fill line. Since this is a simple manual ebb and flow system, doing this at least once a day keeps everything clean and provides enough oxygen to the roots to make these plants happy.
In the past, I had not kept scallions on hand as often as we would have liked because we don't use up a whole bunch that often and I hate for them to go to waste. This way we will be able to add a little fresh organic scallion flavor to soup and salad at will, without any fuss.
Over time, I expect to figure out new and better ways to do this, but for now, this is an exciting enough experiment for starting out the new year.
