R&Dical Approaches – Mess-Free Growing At AutoPot HQ

Mucky ducks, get your beaks out! Wild and foul with your substrates? This one’s not for you. If you’re the kind of pondlife (probably a bit strong) who likes a plant room liberally seasoned with loose grow media then waddle back your dirty lair! We’re growing clean in the R&D room this month. Mess-free media ahoy!

In all seriousness, whilst we love soil and coco as rich havens for bio-activity, potting the stuff does have its drawbacks. There’s the heavy sacks, the risk of spills, and the regeneration before reuse. We’re also well aware that a lot of our growers are set up in confined spaces where preparation areas are a luxury and bags of grow media take up precious floorspace. 

Add to that the difficulties of disposal plus the continuing questions of sustainability and occasionally one is bound to ask, ‘is it worth it?’ In our opinion; it absolutely IS worth it. Nothing else really compares. But is it worth trying other means of growing too sometimes? Why ever not?

Most eye-catching amongst our current mess-free experiments in the R&D room is surely the lettuce cultivator for Tray2Grow. This brilliant add-on is ideal for use with grow cubes. It allows you to get fresh lettuce, straight from a live plant that can continue to grow and yield indefinitely.

You simply set up Tray2Grow in ‘capillary mat configuration’ and place one or two lettuce cultivators on top. Then drop Jiffy or propagation cubes containing young plants through the holes in the cultivator. Any size of cube up to 50mm is okay. 

Each lettuce cultivator can support up to 20 plants and two cultivators will fit onto a Tray2Grow. So, a maximum of 40 planted-up cubes per Tray2Grow if you please. Switch on your system, and wait for your greens to emerge – thrusting out, trained and spry through the holes in the cultivator. The genius part is that, if you wish, you can even do your initial propagation on the Tray2Grow.

Kudos to Alwyn and Medwyn Williams who first devised the growing technique using sections of drilled-out drainpipe on a Tray2Grow. Their efforts with fresh butterhead lettuce are already the toast of North Wales’ restaurants and with good reason. You’ve got year-round, on-demand availability of fresh crops, grown cleanly, power-free with low-maintenance watering and feeding via the Tray2Grow. Like your salad leaves a tad more petite and punchy? Check out our latest mess-free cultivation innovation for micro herbs.

Coming soon, our new microherb training tray takes the somewhat Dickensian point of view that a little hard work instils character. And strength. And the capacity for regrowth. The training tray sits on top of germinated microherb seeds and forces them to work harder to develop. As the seeds push up they lift the tray, effectively weight training the stems. Then we generously remove the training tray and allow the plants to green up. 

If that sounds a little cruel please bear in mind that we have every intention of scything the herbs down in their prime, greedily devouring the spoils, and allowing them to regrow. Before reaping once more!

The training tray is not to be mistaken for the regular microherb tray in which the seeds are actually sown. We commonly use the regular sowing tray in a couple of different set ups when germinating. Either it can be placed on a Tray2Grow, again with the capillary matting laid on underneath. Alternatively we’ll place a regular microherb tray on a root control-covered CocoMat with the CocoMat placed in a garden tray. In this instance the garden tray is either irrigated by hand or using an easy2GO Kit.

Here the mess-free element is the paper towel ‘substrate’ we’ve used in the microherb tray when combining with Tray2Grow. Inexpensive, disposable, and available in eco-friendly options it’s proven to be a great improvised bed for our seeds. Similarly the CocoMat used in the garden tray setup is a great way of growing quickly, cleanly, and sustainably. 

‘Fine’ you may say, ‘but what about actual, fully-fledged plants?’ Well, at the risk of changing the rules halfway through, sometimes there’s slight trade-off to be made. Especially when the size and yield dealt by that trade-off is so immense. So how about a ‘no potting’ option to close the show?

Growbags are a great alternative to pots if you want to keep things neat and tidy and, as you’re quite possibly aware, we’ve a wizard trick up our sleeves for irrigating and feeding these not-so-dirty pillows. Whether you’ve seen the magic in action before or not, our latest trials with Tray2Grow are well worth a look.

Since September 2023 we’ve had growbag-grown Sungold tomatoes on trial in Tray2Grow, fed on easy2grow liquid feed. The development in just over four months has been truly staggering with the plants well over 12ft in height right now. We’ll continue to monitor plant behaviour and water consumption for future R&D projects and you can rest assured that we’ll continue to monitor the flavour of the fruit which has been off the chart!

So there you have it. Neither ataxophobia nor regular non-scruffiness need disqualify you from cultivating delicious and bountiful harvests! For more on our continuing R&Dicalisation of AutoPot growing techniques subscribe here and follow our feeds.