Knowing exactly when to start a new seed of your favorite plant can be tricky.
Too soon, and the plant you intend to replace won’t be ready.
Too late, and you’ll have an empty slot on the Gardyn or a plant you’re not using.
By following 3 easy steps, Gardyners can know the best time to start refreshing their old plant.
- Determine the total growth time of a plant, meaning how long the plant grows well in the individual, unique home environment. Variables like air temperature, humidity, tank cleaning frequency, and light can impact how long plants are good for.
As an example, let’s assume we grew our Butterhead lettuce for 10 weeks before it started going bitter.
- Determine the plant’s individual “ramp-up time". This is the time it takes to grow the plant before we can start harvesting.
In our Butterhead example, it takes about 1 week to germinate and another 2-3 weeks of growth to get large enough to harvest, so our total ramp up time is 4 weeks.
- Subtract the ramp up time from the total growth time to see how many weeks in we should start the replacement.
For our example, we have 10 weeks of growth, minus 4 weeks of ramp up, which means we should start growing a new Butterhead after 6 weeks of plant growth.
Another example: tomatoes.
- Growth time: 25 weeks
- Ramp up: 9 weeks
- 25 - 9 = 16 weeks. When the tomato plant is 16 weeks old, it’s time to start a new one [if the assumed growth and ramp up times are correct for specific environment]