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Garden Pictures (and a question, of course!)
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Posted by plantboy_grower (My Page) on Mon, Feb 4, 08 at 22:57
| Please check out my first hydro setup and my first crop, two weeks in. Please be honest and let me know if you have any advice or constructive criticism!
I have one focused question though. Please look at the pictures of the roots, and notice that there is some water that stays there that the roots are in. I think my water is pretty oxygenated and I add some H2O2 every few days, but I wonder if this could be a problem with basil/lettuce, and my next crop, which will be tomatos.
Right now I irrigate once every three hours, for 5 minutes. 5 minutes is the time it takes to flood the tray to almost having to use the overflow, but then it goes back down. If the roots are in water like this on the bottom of the tray, is it acceptable to irrigate even less, or do I still need to irrigate for the sake of the other higher roots?
Put it in slideshow mode and go for it... and please let me know what you think.
http://picasaweb.google.com/richard.eric.crawford/Hydro1?authkey=jXCsFSXkTn4
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Follow-Up Postings:
RE: Garden Pictures (and a question, of course!)
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| You can toss some gravel under the roots but. I would not expect root rot from it as the water never really stagnates. |
RE: Garden Pictures (and a question, of course!)
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| Cool! I like it. Don't be concerned about the higher roots being in the dry as it is a humid environment and they need the air anyway. Some roots in NFT never touch the water. |
RE: Garden Pictures (and a question, of course!)
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If you put some kind of medium (rocks, clay, coir, etc) in the flood tray it will retain moisture a lot better and you won't need to flood as often and probably not as long.
Also, the air stone in the reservoir isn't necessary as oxygen is pulled into the root zone as the tray drains.
Other than that I think it looks like a nice system.
Not sure why the temperature gets so high though as you're only running fluorescents. What height is your thermometer set at? It should be sitting at the same height as your plants. If you're going to use a fan to cool the area, make sure you have an opening up high to let the warm air out. |
RE: Garden Pictures (and a question, of course!)
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| Thanks everyone. Yea I've realized that with the black/white poly covering everything, it is a humid environment under there, and there is even plenty of puddles just sitting there until the next irrigation, no doubt keeping the humidity high. Actually I think with the humidity and the roots having a lot of air time, and being covered on top, my system is sort-of similar to this, in concept:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBy3Cshs7ww&NR=1 I don't think I need to put any rocks or anything in the flood tray because that cover conserves moisture so well that puddles are still there from watering to watering... I'm even considering cutting back from every three hours to ever four, and seeing how it goes from there. Right now I flood every 3 hours, for 5 minutes (5 minutes is how long it takes to flood just to the top of the overflow. I thought that an air stone was needed in the reservoir just to keep the water fresh... maybe not? It always stays around 72 degrees F. The closet gets hot because of two reasons:
1) This is the hot room in the house.
2) I don't have a good ventilation system in place to move what heat there is. This room is the office where I work, and I am always frustrated at the temperature; so the other day I went through the house and in the rooms that are always too cold or could be slightly warmer, I closed the vents completely or just slightly. Since then the entire house has been more evenly cool and this has really made it a lot easier to regulate the temperature in that closet. I have also added a fan on the floor - it blows air directly up, and this has kept the temperature consistently at 80 deg. F or under, which is great. It's on a timer so it only runs during the hot time of the day. I have also added a jar of yeast and sugar water and put a pipe out of it up right behind the little fan that blows over the plants. I wish I could measure what its doing but don't have a CO2 meter. Thinking of keeping this lettuce going one extra week because I see the heads really starting to form now, and, I realize that I should've given the seedlings 14 days instead of 7 before I put them into the system... |
RE: Garden Pictures (and a question, of course!)
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if you're not going to place media in the trays, you should place your plants a lot closer together. the plants get their moisture off the medium during the dry spell (between flushings). Notice very little root is growing out of the pots. I believe, with what you're growing, you could cut your spacing in half and double your production.
your CO2 factory probably won't have the results you are looking for. CO2 is heavier than air and so it won't rise in the pipe for the fan to circulate it. you two choices are a) create a vacuum pipe similar to how an airbrush works or b) point a fan down at the yeast brew and let the air force the CO2 to circulate. |
RE: Garden Pictures (and a question, of course!)
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| Yes this is just my first trial run, the "try out hydroponics" test run. Instead of four lettuce and two basil, I calculate that I could actually grow 12 lettuce plants in here - we eat lots of salad so that's ok, and/or sell some heads cheap to relatives. As I get the feel for the size of each crop I will be able to space much closer together. I agree with you that 98% of the roots are all sprawled out on the bottom of the flood tray; only a few have taken advantage of the humidity and the less frequent moisture higher on the net pot. But if I am going to put a growing medium in the entire tray, what's the point of the net pots and me using black/white poly to cover everything? Hmm... I wonder if this is something I missed when looking at the setups in the local hydro store. I wonder how easy it is to get the plants and roots out of a gravel tray vs. having the net pots you can pick up and dump out. That can surely be bad for future crops if you leave roots behind, right? It just sounds like I missed something really basic here, any help would be appreciated. (What I'm saying is it sounds like a big pain to take the gravel out and clean it up, vs. the small amount that fits inside a net cup) Oh but wait, you said the key was to put more plants in there, closer together, in pots - hmm, yea I'm confused if you can help clarify..... I'll have to read about what a vacuum pipe is... thanks for the tip. Maybe a better option would be a container with a wide opening in front of the fan.. CO2 has got to flow out over the opening eventually I'd think. I could perhaps put the end of the tube down in a glass of water to see if it really is pushing air up and out or not... |
RE: Garden Pictures (and a question, of course!)
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if you just fill the thing with stone you don't need net pots. You're right about not wanting to leave the roots. but whether its the entire container or just net pots you still have to remove and clean/disinfect the stone.
The hyrdo store builds their system the way they do so they can sell you more stuff.
What I was saying is that 90% of the lettuce roots are contained within the medium (within the pots). Not on the bottom. you root system will develop better if the entire area had medium for them to grow into.(net pots not required), but if you're going to stick with using net pots, place them closer together. |
RE: Garden Pictures (and a question, of course!)
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| Ok, thanks. My thinking initially was that if the grow medium was contained in a pot, it is much easier to lift the pot out of the tray and clean the pebbles in the pot. However I see the advantage of giving the roots more room to grow by either: 1) partially or completely filling the tray with medium
or
2) trying to find really big pots such that it would pretty much be just like filing the tray with growing medium. I think that the second option would make for much easier maintenance. Also perhaps this is why a lot of the drip irrigation systems use a drip ring instead of a single dripper, in cases where rockwool is not used - so that a medium like clay pebbles, which does not absorb water hardly at all, will more evenly saturate the plant's growing area. But this sysem is ebb and flow: So two more questions..... 1) Yes I agree that a larger pot / more growing medium would give the roots more space to grow in, which results in bigger plants... 2) But in a clay pebble medium like this, wouldn't I have to irrigate more frequently to take advantage of the roots growing out into that medium? Don't clay pebbles lose their moisture quickly? I figured the reason the roots were growing on the bottom was because a little water pools there in between floods. |
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