Time to put in a new floating lettuce crop.

See a pict of my first crop in 2008, same subject inthe test forum. This will be crop #5.

Want to talk about experiences?

It is a simple plastic lined scrap wood box and styrofoam board with ketchup cups to hold plants.

With mircle grow or equiv for NUTES.

No fancy oxygenation or NUTE replacement.

I use a plastic gasoline siphon (~2.99) and a bucket to extract solution from this bed and distribute it to other potted plants. (Excellent for injecting into my hanging strawberry sausages.) Then just add replacement water if needed.

I added a plastic tent cover to keep out leaves, rain and control temp .

Later crops spaced furthur apart to avoid overcrowding.

We usually pick single leaves as needed.

With this 2X8 foot design we easily fill a large salad bowl nightly for 3-5 weeks. But since we can ony eat so fast sometimes its better to pull whole plants yeilding large remaining.

Since red lettuce is the easiest I plant only that now.

I now have a bunch of seeds from a few plants that overwintered in the garden and flowered this year.

Bugs, slugs not an issue. Although anything placed near trees is a place to hide.

I can plant spring, summer, fall. Havnt tried winter.

In summer I need locate in shade to keep water temp low.

If it gets hot alge will grow and roots start to brown.

Just pick it all if this happens. Water should feel cool.

Oh I guessthere is one thing I know I did wrong. The styro board is too thick for my ketchup cups. They should touch the water and are about 1/8 inch above it when starting a crop. So I need to dunk the board down to keep the media (Coco peat BTW) in the cups wet during germination.

I have started the lettuce indoors or directly with cups in place. When covered the bed acts as a cold(warm) frame.

Oh. of course thee are little holes cut inthe cups for roots. I stasrted out with small holes thinkingthe media will escape and cause mess. But the roots are hearty and will fill whatever hole you make.

All in all the styro board was the most expensive part at ~$20.

The gap in the picture was spinach which did not grow.

Other varieies are green leaf,butter and red.

What else?

Cleanup. Siphon off all solution (about 30 gal) into buckets and feed everyone else. Bleach, hose and brush and its ready to be refilled.