Day 2

Ok, so I picked up the screen and a staple gun at Home Depot after I dropped Doug off at the airport this morning. I was really wishing I was going back to Palmyra. I looked at all my photos from last summer yesterday and it made me incredibly nostalgic. I really wish I was going with them...

Instead I went out to the greenhouse and figured out how to best keep the sand from leaking out of the pots. Turns out if I cut four long strips and wrapped them around the inside of the pot and stapled them down above the holes that does a tolerable job. However, it also causes the pots to have spiky staple protrusions. Surprisingly I've only cut my palm once so far moving the pots full of sand. 

I washed all the dirt off the roots of 9 Pisonia plants and potted them up in the sand test pots. That took a long time. Tim and Blaine are on a mad greenhouse reorganization and cleaning mission and I kept getting told to move different places. I always try really hard to be careful with plants when I'm handling them, but it is difficult to remove all the dirt from a rootball without feeling like you're inflicting some damage. 

Virginia Walbot came out to the greenhouse and she seemed really surprised and happy to see me. We talked about the experiment and she had some helpful suggestions. One of the things she offered was to show me how to use her spectroradiometer so we could record the light spectra in the greenhouse used for the experiment. Apparently it's not that difficult and it gives you an idea what's going on as the device is capable of 1 nanometer resolution from UV through near Infrared.

Setting up the test watering system was a bit of a labor. Initially I accidentally added the final desired concentrations of calcium nitrate and potassium phosphate. When I was measuring the conductivity the mistake became obvious, so I had to go back and make sure the concentrations were at the Stock Solution levels (dur...).

Right now the nine test plants are all set to be watered twice a day. Once at 8 AM for three minutes, and once at 1 PM for two minutes. I don't really know if that's enough, and I won't be able to go out to the greenhouse until tomorrow afternoon so I hope someone keeps an eye on them.

Tim probably will. His influence pervades the complex. 

Difficulties today: No weighing boats or papers, difficult to find scupula. Nothing to mix the solutions with. Calcium nitrate had a hard time dissolving at high concentration.

Here are today's calculations:

Calcium nitrate (tetrahydrate) Ca(NO3)2 4H2O
Molecular weight: 236.15
H = 60 x10-3 x 236.15 = 23.62 g/L
M = .23615 x .1 = 2.37 g/L
L = .47g/L

Potassium phosphate KH2PO4
Molecular Weight: 136.09
H = 10-3 x 136.09 x .6 =8.17 g/L
M = .081654 x .1 = .82g/L
L = 10-3 x 136.09 x .012 = .16 g/L

For 18 L of solution:
[Nutrient]                   Ca(NO3)2           KH2PO4
H                                 425.16                   147.06
M                                 42.66                    14.76
L                                  8.46                      2.88