Bob’s Garden Update -- June

Last month I mentioned that it was getting too hot here in Central Florida for growing cold weather crops such as lettuce outside. However, I can still grow lettuce and other plants indoors using hydroponics.

There are two methods of hydroponics that I have used to grow lettuce, dwarf tomatoes and other plants indoors under grow lights.

One is call the Kratky method. I fill up a coffee container with water and mix in some nutrients. My dwarf tomatoes seem to do well using this method. I've tried growing lettuce using the Kratky method, but my plants have not done as well.

The second method is called "Deep Water Culture" or DWC for short. My lettuce plants love the DWC method. The main difference is that you use an air pump to supply oxygen to the roots of the plants. Plants need to breathe and without oxygen, they will drown. With the Kratky method, you leave some air space between the water level and the plant. The root system that develops between the plant and the water are known as "air roots" and that is how they breathe. But if you fill the container too full, the plants will die because they cannot get any oxygen. I can guarantee that from personal experience. I have killed several of my Kratky plants by filling their container too full.

My peppers growing outside are doing well. The tomatoes that I started outside in February are finished. I have replaced them with cherry tomatoes and some heat tolerant slicing tomatoes. I have not had a lot of success with growing slicing tomatoes here during the hot, humid summer months. Hopefully, these heat tolerant varieties will hold up better.

Blessings,

Bob

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Too Much Grace
by J. F. Strombeck

One who says, "I believe in grace, but I do not think it should be emphasized too much because that leads to careless living" has failed to understand God's work of grace on behalf of all He by grace has saved from wrath.

Even among those who accept grace as the only means of salvation, exclusive of any works or merit on the part of man, there is regrettable neglect of emphasis on the fact that the spiritual life can be sustained, developed, and brought to perfection only by the operation of the same grace. Growth in spiritual life comes only by the grace of God. Peter admonished, "Grow in grace" (2 Pet. 3:18).