Lessons learned about nutrients and pest control

Well, it's been a few weeks since my last post. I'm sorry to say that I did not do my due diligence in researching the addition of nutrients to the growbeds in conjunction with the use of organic home made pest control measures. Due to some iron deficiencies in several of my plants, I decided to order some chelated iron to add to the fish tanks and to spray on the plants. I also, experienced some issues with red spider mites on a few of my plants, some on my Cilantro, and Stevia. After mixing up a home made remedy of garlic pepper tea, I decided to attack the red spider mites with a spray bottle of my home made concoction. This appeared to work, so I decided to spray all of my plants...no big deal or so I thought until I sprayed them afterwards with the iron chelate, which was a little to strong. As you can imagine the garlic pepper tea opened the pores in the plants leaves/stems and the iron chelate, being a little too strong, did the rest. By the next morning I had tons of black leaves on most of my plants and within a few days many had died and / or the leaves were severely burned. I am glad to say those plants left have recovered fully, and are growing once again. I even have a few new tomatoes on my plants.  I also had to pick a few cutter type worms from some of my swiss chard, so I have ordered some organic BT and Neem oil spray to treat the pest in the future.This will also help with any fungal problems I might encounter in the future. Lesson learned, follow the instructions to the letter on the label, or from the source of the information. A setback...yes, but not the end of the world.

Here are a few pics of the disaster.

Finishing up on the floor in the Greenhouse and installation of the solar attic fan

After much debate on which type of material to use on the floor of the greenhouse, I decided on using mostly Mulch due to cost and ease of maintenance. I put down 14 - 3Cu. Ft. bags of hardwood Mulch along with 20 - 12x12 pavers on top of  weed block underlayment which was subsequently stapled to the bottom girt of the greenhouse. This effectively created a block against unwanted weeds and pest within the greenhouse, while providing good aeration and drainage...here a few Pics of the sequence in which it was placed.

  Here are few pics of the Solar powered gable mounted attic fan. This one puts out 500CFM per minute, not quite enough, but if I add another solar panel it will bump it up to 1000CFM. Even with this fan and floor mounted box fans, I'm still not getting enough ventilation in this 100+ degree heat. So I'm going to have to add more cross ventilation on the south and north sides of the building.