Hydroponics — the weedless garden

Is This a Terrific Hobby or What!?
latest update 8/22/2007 NOTE: NEW SITE ADDRESS http://home.comcast.net/~schneirj/hydro.htm
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Time for a Break .. We're Hitting the Road This Year

5-25-2007 I know that a lot of folks come to my web site to see what is going on this year. But keeping a hydroponics system going over the Summer takes a lot of attention and this year my wife Jessica and I are planning to take a road trip. We're not exactly sure when we are going to start, but the idea is to drive down the East Coast and visit some of the sights. If we see a green house or a hydro operation as we go we're likely to stop in and say "Hi" and ask about what's going on. School is out now. I'm working on my class prep for next year. A college professor is always running through new ideas to cover the latest material and try to make it as interesting and absorbable as possible. Right now the plan is to make a leisurely drive and visit some things we've wanted to see. I want to visit "The Fighting Lady" U.S.S. Yorktown for example. My dad used to show the documentary to the family and we'd all sit around and watch it and eat popcorn. It will be neat to see the ship where most of the footage was taken. Stay tuned -- we'll be back growing the PERFECT TOMATO this time next year.

Summer X -- "Over and Under" Revealed

5-25-2007 Summer 10 is now long gone. When I get the chance I'll put up some pictures of it in full bloom. It was successful but I had a lot of trouble with the plants in the "over" channels because they lacked proper support. I had originally thought that perhaps a netting would do the trick and as the plants grew I tried to intermingle them with the netting I'd draped over the high channels. It worked a little, but not enough. As the plants grew heavy the strain on the stems caused some splitting and that made them more prone to disease than if they had not been stressed. Even so I got reasonable yields but the plants in the standard "under" channels did better.

5-17-2006 Summer 10 is shaping up. I was so lazy that I left Summer IX's overhead structure up all winter, so the first task was to take all that stuff down. This year I wasn't going to make the same mistake I did last year -- failing to sterilize my channels, so I swabbed out the four channels I was going to use vigorously with a mop dipped in a strong Clorox solution. The tomato plants for the system were begun under a grow light back on April 17th. They've grown for a month and are pretty tall now and ready to go out into the system.

Building Summer X (10) occupied me today. The system consists of four channel, each one of my standard 10' PVC 4" pipes with seven 3" holes drilled on 17 inch centers. "Over and Under" refers to the fact that this year, for the first time, I'm going to try dispensing with an overhead structure for half the system. The idea is to grow the tomatoes down a netting which will drape over the two High or "Over" channels. Just in case that doesn't work too well, I'm incorporating two "Under" or Low channels in the traditional set up that I've used. These will have an overhead structure with the usual strings hanging down. It will be very interesting to see how the whole thing works out.


Tomato Plants Waiting to go into Summer X	"Over and Under" Just Built -- the High Channels are 5' Off the Ground and the Under Channels are approximately three feet off the ground. Netting will be hung draped over the high channels and the tomatoes will grow down the netting.

Summer X -- Coming Attraction -- "Over and Under" Design currently underwraps!

1-22- 2006 Summer 10's objective is to grow BIG TOMATOES. Oh, there will be some venturesome cherries -- but the focus will be on slicing tomatos. As Jessica says "A real tomato has to cover the hamburger bun." Well I've taken that to heart and we're going to grow four varieties of good size tomatos and also an interesting cucumber hybrid. The seeds are on order. The sketches have been done -- it's in the works! You heard it here first!

Summer IX -- the Big-E

1-22- 2006 The Big-E is history now. It was a fun Summer but disappointing in some ways. The Big-E worked wonderfully well, but the brain-dead owner had not sterilized his channels and quickly (for the first time) acquired a tomato blight -- maybe several -- and then I battled the micro-critters all Summer using hydrogen peroxide and nutrient dumps to manage the problem Still it killed off a good many of my plants early in the season and kept the rest from yielding as well as they usually do. I fully expected to get something like 280 pounds of tomatoes from the system and only ended up with only around 80 pounds. So that was disappointing. The high point was the peppers. Like last year I grew two kinds of peppers -- the Serrano Chili and Jalapeno peppers. The results -- great! The peppers seemed immune from the blight so they florished while the battle went on. I have a whole new concept for next Summer that will test whether I can replace my overhead structure with a simpler support system. Tune in next time.

5-17-2005 I've just spent the last couple of days leisurely setting up Summer IX, yes nine years doing hydroponics systems. This year I thought I'd make a larger system than last year and spread out. The Star System and the Star Burst are dense systems with a lot of tubes close together. Because they are radially configured the tubes get closer together as they approach the tank. This is just fine early in the season, but as the season continues the jungle becomes a tangle of plants near the tank. I made that a little less of a problem last year by putting some of the peppers near the tank since they don't spread out as much. But the huge tomato plant jungle nearby robbed them of a lot of sun and cut down the pepper yield. I still had more peppers than I knew what to do with especially the Serrano chilis which it only takes half of one of those little devils to really zing up a pot of soup. The Big-E is shaped like well a Big-E -- it has five tubes and I've laid it out with all tomatoes and peppers this year. The center tube is all peppers. Big Boys are in the bottom arm of the E and French Donas, one of my favorite tomatoes, is in the top arm. Bush Early Girls and Bush Goliaths are in the top vertical and the bottom vertical respectively. Near the tank are cherry tomatoes -- Super Sweet 100's and Tumbler hybrids. We'll have to see how this works out. The first picture of the Big-E is shown below.

Big E Summer 9

The Big E -- May 17, 2005 and Ray admiring his Jalapeno's -- Look at them Serrano Chilis!

Summer VIII — The STAR BURST

8-4-04 Summer VIII (continued) I thought you might want to see what a 1/3 Star Burst looks like so I'm putting up a couple of pictures that show it at two different times: 1) the first is when I was just getting started in late May or early June -- not sure of the date, and the second picture is 2) the system as it appeared a couple of weeks ago. At least in the first picture you can see the three tubes -- by July 25th, the date of the scond picture the tubes are all but invisible. At this point I've taken no tomatoes or peppers off the system to speak of, but I've taken 47 cucumbers with more coming. So far the hit of the system is the Jelly Bean grape tomatoes which look terrific. I'm sure to add a picture of those little beauties when they start to turn red. (Note: the color balance between these two pictures is due to the first having been taken by a 35 mm film camera and digitized at Walmart while the second was taken with a digital camera -- the second's colors are somewhat more accurate.

Summer8-early

7-20-04 Summer VIII, yes I've been doing this eight years now. Unbelievable, I've been having so much fun. This year I've throttled back a little from last year's magnificent system, although it's somewhat catastrophic end left its potential not quite fully realized. I pondered how to top the Star System but didn't really come up with anything obvious. Six channels seemed like all that you could fit into the end of the tank so increased capacity hardly seemed possible. Besides, on a hot day with the whole Star populated it was draining the tank. But still more channels seemed like something worth thinking about. I came up with the Star-Burst concept which involves 3-sets of three tubes each joined with a triple connector and spaced 120 degrees around the tank. Nine tubes for the total Star-Burst -- would that be cool? Absolutely. But one doesn't like to rush into these things. So maybe what we should start with is a mini-Star-Burst. So this Summer's system is a Star-Burst/3 -- one third of a full Star Burst. I have a diagram that shows what the plan form of a Star Burst would look like. It doesn't get any better than this. Each arm of the Star-Burst is a triple tube subsystem with the two outter tubes at a 90 degree angle and the center tube bisecting the right angle. The combiner means that each triple has only a single return into the tank so it is easy to put three around the tank.

Right now I'm running one-third of this system by the back yard door. It has 4 pepper plants, 4 cucumber plants and the other thirteen channels have various kinds of tomato plants -- Jelly Bean cheeries, Super Beefsteak, and Big Boys. I've taken 27 cucumbers off the system already but the tomatoes and peppers are not ripe yet -- although I expect to have a few peppers any day now. This is a GREAT HOBBY!

Summer VII — The STAR

9/18/03 I am Isabel -- Feel my Wrath! -- That's what my son said on the phone when he called. The picture above is phase one of the carnage, channels #1 and #6 are down at the time of this picture. We went out and picked up the tomatoes and found 186 little green beauties amidst the wreakage. Later in the evening after it got dark the wind came up even stronger and currently all but one of the channels is on the ground and the overhead structures are down and bent. Tomorrow we'll try to salvage what we can. I'm currently researching green tomato recipes -- and other applications. I will undoubtedly have at least a couple of hundred more tomorrow. I weighed each one lovingly and built the histogram above to memorialize them. Onward -- to the hurricane immune design? -- well maybe that would be too hard. Not sure how I'm supposed to hold back all that force without building some serious staking down.

8-2-03 Late as it is the plants are flourishing. Almost all the tomatoes now have blossoms and many have fruit. The largest fruit are only about 2" in diameter thought. The jalapeno peppers are yet to flower but the two cucumber plants are climbing up the string and casting their searching tendrils out to spread further.

7-24-03 Thought I'd add a little to the web page. The cucumber plants are flourishing, as there are only two of them that is good. The peppers are doing well also. Since I was late getting started things are not as far along as I'd like, but all the tomato plants have flowers and the cucumbers are taking off so things are not too bad. The picture above is from 7-18 with the red kiddie pool in the background. Today the pants are at least twice as tall. I'm running the system at a CF of about 22 -- which is a bit light, but I don't want to kill the peppers. I've been staging up the CF from a starting point of 10 and I expect to run it up to about 28 over the next couple of weeks. I have the system topping off the water automatically every evening from 7 p.m. to 7:04 p.m. and I have not yet installed the automatic doser. I expect to get to that soon, but I have a talk to give at MythCon34 in Nashville on Sunday

6-27-03 Well today I dropped the strings down. I put the overhead structure up two days ago. You have a couple of weeks from getting the plants going to when you really have to have the overheads and strings up. Even now I could probably go another week. The picture immediately above shows the system as it is today -- the thing sticking up from the tank catawampus is the feed structure which is a 6-way manifold. There are two pond pumps connected to it down in the tank giving 100% redundancy in case of pump failure -- no help for power failure. System is currently running at CF=18. I'll probably take it up to about 25. I started at about 10-12.

6-10-03 Dateline: Harrisonburg — Setting up a full STAR! It doesn't get any better. This year I'm building the full Star -- six radial arms feeding back into a single 32 gallon tank. I'm going to try to integrate it really nicely. I also have the Microponic II, an update of the original Microponic system which I reported on as a fun hobby doser in some earlier articles. But I did have some feed problems with it due to its principle of operation -- using puffs of air to force liquid out of the storage bottles. Differences in density or path or slight kinks in the path could vary the dose. That was a defect, but even with that defect the peace of mind of having the doser was hard to beat. This year I'm way behind schedule because of the continuous and torrential rains. I'll try to get pictures of the system up as it comes along. Currently all the tubes are in place but my plants, also started late, are waiting to be put into the system. I'm building on the success of conduit as a great and extremely simple support system. It can hardly get any simpler, although I've started thinking about how I could reduce the amount of materials further.

Summer VI — The Return of the Conduit

Early Pictures of Summer 6 -- the Victory of Diversity

4x7 in a new STAR configuration and 8x6 with a new platform, and for the first time the Rubbermaid TUB Float systems 5 sites per float and currently 6 tubs for a 6x5 at Tub Central. The floats are nice because they require minimal maintenance.
The adventure of Summer VI has begun. This year I decided that I was tired of cramped, hard to get into systems so I created the StarHydro System, the open plan, easy to set up, wonderfully fun system based on my experience with using thin-walled conduit last year as a support mechanism for both the tubes and the overhead support for the plants. This year the system is set up as a sub-populated hexagonal star with the PVC pipes radiating from the central tank. Since I'm only using four tubes it is only a 2/3 star since a full star would require six tubes and would cause Jessica to declare me persona non grata for taking up the whole backyard with hydroponics systems. But four tubes is enough to demo the system and play around.

What makes it nice is that it's so open. You can get to all the plants, both sides and that is something you can't do when the system is all parallel tubes fairly close together. The key to this little beauty is the pedestal mounts. Each tube is mounted on only two uprights formed by thin wall conduit, a piece of 3/4" hammered into the ground as a guide, and a piece of 1/2" forming the pedestal. On top of the pedestal is the platform, which is a piece of wood with a carriage bolt through it which fits into the 1/2" conduit to form a support for the PVC pipe. (see pedestal detail above)

Mid May pictures of 8x6 and 4x7 StarHydro with pedestal mount

In addition to the StarHydro system, I built two platforms which I perched on top of the saw horses from System IV and on the platforms I'm running two other systems: 1) a varient of 6x8 from last year, but mounted on the platform and sawhorses, and 2) Float Central, a bunch of Rubbermaid containers with Styrofoam floats in them in which I'm fooling around with strawberries, lettuce and herbs. Except for the late frost that killed about half my plants before they even got fairly started, things are going well. The tomatoes shown above (picture taken yesterday 6-28-2002) show that things are progressing nicely.

First Look at Summer V —
(7-8-2001) Summer V is out there now in two systems. One system is 4x7 -- four 10' PVC 4" tubes set up on a U-shaped platform composed of thin-walled conduit. The other system is 8x6 -- a set of flat American Hydroponics channels set up on last year's PVC platform. Both systems are now fully automated with auto-dosing, 4x7 is using last years doser, and 8x6 is using the Autogrow doser. I just got that running today and am excited to see how it goes. nxm BTW refers to n=number of channels, and m=# of plant sites per channel. So 4x7 has 28 plant sites, and 8x6 has 48 plant sites. The first picture here was taken when I was stringing up the support structure for 4x7 on June 17th -- which also consists of thin walled conduit. The picture shows me putting up the netting for the cucumbers to climb. The second picture was taken on July 4th -- the cucumbers and the tomatoes are taking off!

Seeding Summer V —
(7-8-2001) Once the Winter III system was going well I could just about forget about it. It just hummed along churning out little plants. I decided to use it to get a head start on Summer V -- but because we had a trip planned I didn't get started until later than I wanted some time in late May. But as you can see below the plants came along nicely. In fact I let them go a little too long before taking them outside and getting them going in System V. In fact the plants were in such a tangle that I had some trouble getting them separated. There are all kinds of plants there -- about fourteen different tomato plants in four varieties, some egg plant, a cantelope, a bunch of different cucumbers and even some beans, peppers and squash. Didn't get the plants out until about June 10, 2001 -- which is very late. I usually put plants out on May 15th -- the first date here in the Shenandoah Valley when there is no threat of frost.

Winter III (System VII) -- the indoor NFT system -- Basil and Lettuce
(4-7-2001) Today was the day that I took the remaining plants out of the downstairs indoor baby NFT system. During the course of the Winter I've growen basil and lettuce quite successfully. I'm looking forward to writing an article for The Growing Edge about the adventure. I'll be doing that in the next few weeks as I start figuring out exactly what to put out in the backyard for Summer V. I've got some great new technology to try out. I want to revisit the Salad Machine idea with better lettuce growing and hopefully avoid the disease problem that pretty much did in my tomatoes last year. The cucumbers, all 200 + pounds of them, were spectacular though. I also have some seeds for crook-neck squash. That should be interesting. The Winter system has addicted me to basil. I've been trotting down to the basement in the morning and nipping off a couple of leaves to chop up into a cheese and bacon omelot every morning. The wonder of it all is that the plant just keeps making more leaves so I've had the impression I could do this forever! As soon as I scan a picture -- I'll pop one up here of the Cart-NFT system of Winter III (it would be Winter IV but I took a Winter off last year).

Summer IV — The Salad Machine (System VI)

(7/30/00) Summer IV is upon us and this is what the system looked like a while ago towards the end of May or early June. Last year's disastor led me to create a more robust design using 1 1/2 " PVC pipe (don't laugh, it's cross braced with those scoundrel furring strips that let me down last year.) There are four tubes in the system and they all feed into one tank which is equipped with a Microponic doser set to EC=28 -- at the time of the picture I had only started some tomatoes and cucumbers. The tomatoes can be seen in the picture growing vigorously. As I write on 7/30/00 the cucumbers have taken over the system and I'm growing the most beautiful cucumbers that you've ever seen. There are only about three tomato plants in the system and I'm struggling with Septoria Leaf Spot, a fungal disease that attacks leaves. The tomatoes are the most affected -- the cucumbers less so. I've also been trying to get lettuce to grow in the down spout with very limited success. I'm keeping detailed records the way I did last year, so I'm expecting to be able to compare this year to last year. The doser has been a terrific addition. No more daily measurements and pouring concentrate into the tank. The doser does all that for you. All you have to do is keep the doser supplied. I've had some minor difficulties keeping track of the dosing rates between the two supply sides of the doser, but that's not a very big problem. You can just see the net I put under the system using the plastic fencing material used for gardens. The net keeps things from falling through the system. I originally put it in with the thought of letting the cucumbers recline on it, but then I thought better of it when they started coming in and I strung a netting from the near overhead down and ran strings to it from the far overhead so that it fell vertically about where the cucumber tube was. (that's the second tube from the top).

My problems with lettuce have been almost all with getting it to germinate properly and then flourish in the gutter downspout channel. I had two very nice lettuce plants early in the system's life, but then had difficulty getting others to the stage where they would do well in the system. I've run a couple of experiments and now have about six or seven lettuce in the system and am growing baby lettuce on a membrane (we'll see how that works out -- they sure germinated well there) -- I'll put some more pictures up when I get the chance.

You can see the EC meter on the left side of the system. I've mounted it inside of a plastic dish with a clear, tight fitting cover (about $2 at WalMart) -- it's attached to the system with my favorite attachment technology, bungie cords. The doser is the white rectangular thingie handing on the RubberMaid transcan tank. I still need a little work on my tube termination technology -- I'm using those black runoff things and some downspout plastic in the case of the lettuce channel. The fourth channel was added as an afterthought since my daughter Ann Marie brought up some pepper plants that she wanted to put in the system. To get that channel fed into the tank I used a piece of rain gutter and ran it to the tank. To keep the algae growth to nothing, I've covered the top of the tank where substantial light could get in using the black plastic porous film that is on the ground. That works great!

Summer III (System V)

This is the payoff from Summer III — oodles of delicious tomatoes!

(7/12/99) Well System-V is well underway. I seeded a whole bunch of rockwool cubes with all manner of tomatoes way back on about April 19th to get them going. I kept them out on the side deck sitting on a plastic serving tray which had about a half inch recessed surface so that I could maintain about a half inch of nutrient to keep the rockwool cubes in contact with nutrient. This summer I put up two systems similar to last year's but the tomato support structure was much more appropriate.

To review the architecture: Each system consists of two 4" PVC pipes with 3" holes cut in them about every 17 inches. There are seven holes per pipe. These two PVC pipes are then mounted (holes up of course) on two saw horses. This year I have added some steel saw horses of the kind that fold up. The pipes are capped at the high end and have elbows at the low end. High and Low are differentiated by about two to three inches so that nutrient pumped to one end will run down hill to flow back to the nutrient tank. The tank in each case is a plastic trash can of about 32 gallon capacity. You may have to be careful if you do this. The trash cans that I bought this year were not very reliable and one leaked. So far the other has been fine. A pond pump (mine are I think Little Giants with about 720 gallons per hour flow) is submerged in the nutrient tank and connected via 1/2 inch hose to the other end of the pipes where there is a splitter to let one pipe feed two tubes.

To make the system easier to use I put in a splitter at the water faucet coming out of the house and connected each hose to a float valve. In principle this means I could keep the tanks filled automatically all the time. In fact the valves seem to leak a little so the tanks tend to overflow and pump nutrient over the side ever so slowly, but ever so certainly -- so I don't leave them on continuously. They are great for filling the system though. You just turn it on and you can putter around and work until they are filled, add the nutrient concentrate to the tanks and only then turn off the faucet at the house.

As I write this, the tomatoe plants have grown until they are about five feet tall -- so they are getting to the height of the support structures. I have a lot of green tomatoes, but none have turned read yet. I'll put a picture here as soon as I get the chance.

(1/9/99) Planning begins for the coming Summer system which will be System-V. Winter-II has been pretty successful so maybe we should try some more wick systems outside. They are certainly forgiving. I'd like to try a wick system with styrofoam floats. That seems like an interesting system for plants that are light, maybe lettuce and strawberries or something like that. I've taken a lot of pictures of Winter-II so if you're interested, come back in a few days and take a look. By the time I had it all wrapped in super-insulation (space cloth) it looked like a space satellite.
Tomatoes for Christmas
Well here are the promised pictures (1/10/99) -- they were taken back in mid-December, so we really did have tomatoes for Christmas!

Winter 1998 The Cone of Light

(1/2/99)
The Cone of Light is what I call Winter-II (System IV). It is a modification of System II which was last year's winter 1997 system-Winter-I. System IV continues as a wick system, but with some changes to the grow pots to promote the extension of the root system into the nutrient. This year I've made some lighting improvements. The system incorporates a more permanent mounting of the flourescent lamps in a conical configuration surrounding the nutrient bath in which the tomatoes are growing. Light containment was the theme of this winter's system. Two varieties of tomatoes have been flourishing since I started the system in October. I've harvested a number of beautiful French Dona and a bunch of Sun Golds and have been generally impressed by the growth. These plants are all about eight feet tall and spreading along the roof of the basement. When I get a chance I'll put up a picture of this rather unique system. It's given me some new ideas for this summer's outdoor systems. I think I'll try some more wick systems outdoors this year.

Above is System III early in the Summer with blossoms and baby Sun Golds!

The Summer of 1998, System III is no more!

Peering into the innards of System III the backyard NFT system for the Summer of 1998. The little green tomatoes are Sun Golds which ripened into a real treat later in the Summer. The system is now history as I write, but it created some of the largest tomatoes that I have ever grown. Two pound Giant Standards that were absolutely delicious. Readers can get the details in an uncoming issue of Growing Edge magazine. Making your own NFT system to grow tomatoes or whatever you want is not very expensive and it's great fun. This Summer was mostly devouted to tomatoes (Is that a surprise?), but I also grew a couple of egg plants just to see if it could be done. They grew rather dense and without enough sunlight since the tomatoes overwhelmed them, but they cooked up just fine and tasted good.

What is Hydroponics Anyway?

Hydroponics is literally "water work" from the greek. It is the art and craft of growing things without soil. In the place of soil a nutrient solution is formulated and flowed over the plant roots which are either captured in a medium or allowed to freely float or rest in the nutrient solution. Hydroponics is very productive because all the plant's energy can be turned to growing. Very little or none is required to fight for moisture, nutrients and combat predators and other biological forces.

The Office System (System II) as it appeared before it was taken down in late May 1998

An article about the Office System was published under the title, "Winter Tomatoes at the Office" in the Growing Notes feature of the July/August 1998 issue of Growing Edge, Volume 9, Number 6.

The Office System was run from the Fall of 1997 until just recently. It consisted of a 9 gallon capacity plastic tub with four grow pots, two with tomato plants and two with peppers. The system was a wick system with manual nutrient replenishment. The system ran with a mere 310W of light and while somewhat anemic produced quite a lot of tomatoes and peppers and gave me something to do in my home office when I wasn't working. This Fall I'm going to try some variations to see if I can up the yield. A blow by blow account appears later in this article.

The Adventure of '98

6/12/98

Last year I did the deck (see below) and this was followed by the Office System which is briefly documented below. This year I'm banished to the back yard and have started up a two tube 4" diameter PVC system mounted on saw horses. This system DOES NOT LEAK (see more on leaking in the text below). So far I've only got the plants (all tomatoes BTW) growing a little bit ... i.e. they are all only about 4" high, just peeking their little heads out from the holes. I will try to get a picture to make it all more fun when I get the chance.

The system is composed of two ten foot long tubes which are mounted on saw horses using pipe straps and drilled about every 17" with seven holes per tube. Adjacent to each hole is a 5mm hole drilled to take a drip connector. 1/2" drip feed line runs to the back of the system from a 30 gallon trash can (plastic) which holds the nutrient and two of the drip connectors at the end of the pipe are actually connected. The 1/2" pipe is attached to a small pond pump which runs continuously immersed in the nutrient. The plants are in 1" rockwool cubes just set into the holes. A blow by blow description of progress will evolve as the adventure continues. I'm always happy to entertain e-mail from hydroponics interested parties with a sincere interest.

6/29/98
Over the weekend I made a few improvements. The plants have all generated large streaming roots which extend down the channel. They are all about a foot tall or so (yeah I know it's late in the season for them to be so small, but I got started late...) anyway -- the nutrient solution flow is tending to drag some of the plants a little way down the channel and bend them over. Plus they are getting a little big so I put up an A-frame to hang strings from and tied them all up over the weekend. There are 14 holes and all are occupied, but one has no plant ... so I tried to start yet another tomato. I also added an additional feed line at the feed end to each channel since they have been getting clogged up every now and then. I'm hopeful that that will tend to keep the flow up even if one of the channels gets clogged. The only probable single point failures are now the electricity and the pump. I'm thinking about adding a second pump in parallel, but I have no fix for electricity failure ... would need a battery backup and some kind of alarm. Actually, personal computer UPS's would probably do the trick quite nicely. Since I was scatter-brained about planting my seedlings I have not a clue what kinds of tomatoes are in the channel holes ... there are about six varieties represented and they are going to surprise me as they grow. Next time I'm just going to have to make little flags on toothpicks or something. I seem to have a pepper and something else, maybe a cucumber in two of the cups. All are doing fairly well.

7/14/98
The tomatoes in the NFT system have been growing like mad. They are now about three feet tall with luxurient growth and tons of flowers. The cherry tomatoes have lets of little green balls growing bigger each day. I started taking pictures of the system once a week with a little sign on the system to reference the date. The nutrient feed tubes for which I used the 1/4" garden tubes with the little plastic inserts, the opening is only about an 1/8" -- these are set into 5mm holes in the 4" PVC where they fit snuggly. Unfortunately the algae that gets into the nutrient, not much but some, seems to like to collect at the holes from the feed tubes and then slowly builds up and clogs the tubes. I spend a few minutes each morning unclogging the tubes, but it finally got to be such a pain that I installed a second nutrient feed system using the 1/2" plastic tube and a second fountain pump in parallel with the first. Now I have NUTRIENT flow ... big time. I'm curious is the higher flow rate will cut down on nutrient uptake. But as far as I can see the plants are transpiring a lot of water. I started taking daily nutrient tank depth measurements and it looks to me like I went through about 4 gallons of water yesterday. That seemed like a lot to me. I do have a lot of plants though. There are 14 holes in the system and 12 are filled with tomato plants, but some have more than one plant, since I didn't cull the rockwool cubes that had two seeds, both of which germinated. The root systems extend down the channel and run into the top of the nutrient tank where they look like Greybeard's beard coming out of the pipe end. Meanwhile I've been harvesting tomatoes from the rejuvenated office system tomato plants which had a big head start since they were first planted last October. They are delivering nice red tomatoes. Tonight I took three off the plants, a 6 oz, a 7 oz, and an 8 oz tomatoe ... all nice and red. There are 20 or 30 green ones turning red. So I'll have tomatoes while I wait for the NFT plants to ripen. The EC has been running about 2.2 to 2.6 mS/cm. I finally used the last of the Steiner solution I mixed last October for the Office System and yesterday mixed up a new batch of concentrate. The amazing thing about hydroponics is how easy it is when you get it all down. This year I've had no problems whatsoever except the algae clogging problem which is pretty minor. The only thing that can really go wrong is to lose power and not notice it until the plants are in trouble.

10/15/98
Today was the final day for System III the Summer of 1998. I picked 12 pounds of tomatoes that were various shades of pink and green. Since it went below freezing last night I figured that it was time to go off line for the Winter. The new Winter system, System IV has been set up and has four vigourous tomato plants about a foot tall in them with blossoms already. The Winter system plants from last year are still on the side of the deck with tomatoes on them, but they will be dying soon with the frost. They are too large to bring indoors and rather abused when their root mass was truncated bringing them outdoors from their Winter in the office. I was amazed that they did as well as they did. I'm sure I got forty or sixty or so tomatoes off them, just a huge bounty from plants that started with eight foot of vine length and had lost a square foot of root mat. It just shows I guess that plants are survivors.

Meanwhile in Australia . . .A quick visit to Australia to David Court's System (Click here to see David's Web Site)

I wrote an article about David Court's system which is in Perth, Western Australia. I met David on the internet and we wrote an article for Growing Edge magazine together across half a world. That is really neat and impressive. As I write this, it is Winter in Australia and David is having a time of it keeping his tomatoes alive. To visit David's homepage just click on David's Home Page -- but it doesn't work any more so he must have moved.

Meanwhile the NFT system is going strong. The cherry tomatoes are new to me this year, but they are growing in long chains of about 12 to 14 tomatoes each. As soon an they turn red I'm going to take a picture of them. The one thing that has surprised me a lot is how much transpiration I've been getting. My plants have been transpiring about 10 gallons of water a day. Since I'm only running two ten foot NFT tubes, that surprised me. Of course I probably have too many plants in the system and it's all beginning to look like a jungle again.

In the Beginning ... the Adventure Starts Below (i.e. 1997)

In Search of the Perfect Tomato

I have begun this year (1997) to try to grow hydroponic tomatoes using the NFT (Nutrient Flow Technique). I built an apparatus for the experiment which consists of a modified A-frame structure with three six foot long nutrient trays which will circulate the nutrient to about twelve tomatoe plants as well as a variety of other experimentally grown plants -- notably iceberg lettuce. This place will be the place of record for data on the experiment. So far the A-frame is ready and I am working out the compounding of the nutrient solution using Resh's book: Hydroponic Food Production, as a guide. Click on Image to See David's Web Page.

A Blow by Blow Description of the Deed

Currently (4/28/97) all is in readiness. The trash can which will ultimately hold the nutrient solution has been charged with water and the immersable pump has valiently pumped and the water has recirculated. All is in readiness to lay out the channels with plastic and capillary matting (planning to use Bounty paper towels). The plants have been developing in their individual Jiffy-7 peat bags -- six Early Girls and six Super Beef Steak. A bunch of iceberg lettuce plants have also germinated and produced young shoots. Getting the nutrient solution just right is a challenge. This Saturday perhaps, 5/3/97 will be the launch date.

The launch date went well enough. Problems with the plan of using thin plastic transbags to line the channels didn't work due to relatively high winds. The solution was to cover the channels with a vinyl edging-like material. I did that, mixed the initial nutrient solution and set thirteen plants into a system with a capacity of 18. As I write this on 5/6/97 only the mature plants seem to be doing at all well. Currently I am ascribing the less than stellar results to cold temperatures, overnight lows in the thirtys -- the seedlings are lying down and probably dying. As things "heat" up, quite literally, we'll see if there is any improvement.

Plan B or The Consequences of Planticide

The seedlings are doing rather poorly, so it is not too early to contemplate Plan-B. I bought some Rockwool insulation and am trying it as a plant starter medium. I also broke down and actually ordered some commercial Rockwool cubes in both the small starter cup size and the 3" growth size for tomatoes. I've also been rolling my own nutrient solution using Miracle Grow for Tomatoes, hydrated lime for Ca, Potassium Chloride (Muriate of Potash) for a potassium boost, Epson Salts for MgSO4, and a little HCl to provide pH down. The Cl- ions have me a mite worried, but most of my problems I think are due to the cold temperatures. I have also ordered some professional nutrients, which I will turn to when they arrive. At. least I'm enjoying myself.

5/10/97

The two tomato plants in the system are still alive (5/10/97) but at least one has substantial leaf yellowing. I'm suspicious that the amount of Chlorine in the system may be causing this, although the overnight lows are still harsh -- 37.5F and 43F the past couple of nights. I need to get some better chemicals which are hydroponically more forgiving. Specifically NO3 based Nitrogen instead of Ammonia based, no Chlorine based stuff, and more Potassium, plus making sure I have the micronutrients covered.

I started a pot with a wick based system. The medium pot contains a layer of industrial Rockwool insulation, the a mixture of perlite and vermiculite. The wick is an old t-shirt which reaches down into a 3 gallon pot and up through a cover into a smaller pot with the medium and one of the original six purchased tomato plants. So far so good! Meanwhile, since all the babies died, I have started 14 more tomato plants in 1" growool cubes and I want to try that system in the NFT trays -- I have 8 3" rockwool cubes waiting to receive the baby plants if they ever grow.

5/20/97

The new baby seedlings in the rockwool cubes are doing fine, about 2" high with their baby leaves -- I am going to wait a while before putting them in the larger rockwool cubes and installing in the NFT system. I seem to have a little algae in the system, but not too much, so I'm not doing anything about it. I discovered when I bothered to run the calculation that I was way over N'ing the NFT system using Peters 20-20-20 as advertised -- that produces at least 3X too much N -- meanwhile I received the right stuff -- Flora-Micro-Gro-Bloom and shifted my tank to that nutrient formulation in the recommended tomato mix -- 2-1.5-1.5 -- the result has been great. The NFT tomatos have greened right up and no leaf burn, a lot of new growth and the appearance of buds -- meanwhile the the wick system is doing well as are my control plants in pots. I started 9 Silver Queen corn seeds in rockwool and I'm thinking of trying to grow them hydroponically.

6/12/97

Put the rockwool cube seedlings outside in a plastic dish a week or so ago and had two inches of rain which drowned them. Luckily some of the same seeds had been put into industrial rockwool and left outside the whole time and they didn't drown. I now have six tomato plants from an original buy -- 3 in potting soil in pots as a control (being fed with nutrient and doing well), 2 in NFT system, and one in a wick system. I have five seedlings planted: 2 in NFT system, and 3 in a Smart Valve system, for a total of eleven tomato plants cranking along. The three cucumber plants have a vigorous couple of leaves and are growing. The chives are doing well. (Cucumbers and chives are in the second wick system -- 4 pots) Of 4 corn in the NFT system, two died by having their stems broken (handling), I still have three in industrial rockwool which I could put into the system. My lettace plants are still in industrial rockwool but seem to be thriving so I'm just letting them go and giving them nutrient ever so often. Finally, I planted some bananna peppers in rockwool cubes (the ones the tomato seedlings died in) and I'm looking out for little pepper seedlings. The older tomatoes all have nice flowers and I'm expecting fruit set anytime now. So to sum up the great hydroponic experiment of 1997: 6-old tomato plants, 5 young tomato plants, 3 cucumbers, a pot of chives, 3 lettace, and 9 peppers and about 5 corn. Jessica says I'm banished from the deck once this experiment is over.

6/20/97

Vala! Yesterday littly tiny tomatoes were first observed on the plants in the NFT system. Perhaps there really will be tomatoes before long. In the Smart Valve system the three plants from the seedlings are now 7" high, an inch higher than their compadres in the NFT system. The tomatoe plants in the potting soil, watered with nutrient are almost as big as the two mature plants in the NFT system. In a couple of weeks I will switch to a nutrient solution richer in potassium and calcium for fruit development. The other plants are doing OK -- lettace just lying around in rockwool being watered with nutrient keeps growing, the cucumber and chives in the wick system are getting bigger. One general problem is giving the plants enough support. The vertical string wound around the plant seems to work well with the tomatoes, but it's hard to find a reasonable place to attach the bottom of the string.

6/30/97

Finally got the ebb 'n flow system working without leaks and with plants yesterday. I put three bananna pepper plants and one rogue tomato plant that had seeded itself in the potting soil control pot. Each plant was put into a solo cup about half filled with industrial rockwool and then filled with perlite. I put the plants in their rockwool starter cubes (the peppers) into a plastic open pot (kind used with clay pellots) and opened a spot for them in the perlite and shoved them in. Also began the cut over to Resh-C from Steiner solution. Topped the system from 13 to 21 gallons addling 8 gallons of Resh C. This transition will probably take another few days. The NFT system is still the system with the most and best tomatoes -- both plants have several. So the summary is: 3 controls in potting soil, doing well but no tomatoes, 1 tomato plant in a wick system, a bit anemic with lots of flowers but no tomatoes, two in NFT huge growth and with tomatoes (these six started at the same time), then there are 3 in a smart valve, 2 in NFT and just yesterday one in ebb 'n flow -- all seeded about the same time.

7/13/97

Nothing terribly new to report. The NFT tomato plants have some huge tomatos on them and a lot of smaller ones too. The wick system has a few tomatoes (3 right now), the potting soil pots have a few tomatoes but the NFT tomatoes the most and biggest at this point. The tomato plants that were planted as seedlings into the NFT system have shown flowers and one has a very tiny tomato on it -- so they are coming along a lot faster than the originals due to several factors -- I think the originals are big boys and the new ones are early girls, also the originals got a lot of nitrogen burn when I was over Miracle Growing them -- full strength Miracle Grow is NOT a hydroponic solution. The ebb'nflow is working well, but the plants are quite small yet, there are three peppers and a tomato plant in the ebb'nflow system. The second wick system is showing great cucumber growth, all the cucumbers are flowering --- a lot of root travel into the nutrient makes this more a root-in-nutrient system than a wick system. The smart-valve system is now being operated manually since the smart valve was flooded. When I get a chance I'll go in and fix it, but for now it's just too much trouble. The worst aggrevation currently is that the NFT system is leaking about 1gallon an hour -- most of this leakage is being caught in two 14 quart containers (buckets) and a large 15 gallon container -- so I recover almost all of the leakage and pour it back into the system about every twelve hours -- what a pain though. I probably could jury-rig something to catch the leakage and drain it back into the system, but that's a pain too. The new system will definitely not leak! The things I'm waiting for are (1) harvesting red tomatoes and weighing them in, and (2) eatting them. That will be my favorite report-- when I can report on the harvet and the consumption.

7/30/97

The first ripening tomato, actually turning red, has been under observation the past couple of days. It's on one of the first plants planted in the NFT system in channel 2. The tomato is about five inches in diameter and looks pretty good. I've been having some prolem with BER (Blossom End Rot) the past week or so, especially with the Early Girls, although a few tomatoes on the older plant in channel two have it also. Resh says it's a calcium deficiency and due to stress -- temperature, too much nutrient (salts in solution), too little nutrient (which is what I think my problem is!). The system is still leaking but I seem to be catching the vast majority of it in buckets and tubs. The ebb'n'flow system does not seem to be operating as reliably as I think it should. The plants are a bit anemic looking. (3 peppers and 1 tomato). I've added the remaining peppers to the NFT system a couple of days ago. We'll see if they catch up to the ebb'n'flow system. Meanwhile I have to look at that and see if I can figure out what's happening. Maybe perlite is clogging the nozzle or something. I'm in some anticipation since I think the tomatoes are going to start rippening all around here shortly.

8/25/97

Harvesting

Well the proof of the tomato is in the eating thereof. In that regard things have been going quite well. Besides tomatos I've eaten corn, chives and cucumbers, all with great gusto. The tomatoes are the most fun. I've had several that weighed in at three pounds or more, big and juicy. What's a little mysterious is that they are not all about the same. On the very same plant I'll get others that are differently shaped and not nearly as large. The smallest I've had is about eight oz. and the largest in the three pound range, but that seems like quite a variation. I had a problem with the ebb'n flow system, the tomato plant's roots grew down into the pipes and clogged them up so that the nutrient pumped out the top of the pots. I pulled the tomato plant out and transferred it to it's own private nutrient bath which I am replenishing as required. The tomatoes have created so much vegitation that the whole rig looks like a jungle. All the tomatoes are shaded by the plants, which I think has been helpful in keeping them from splitting. The gutters are so full of roots that they are filling up with nutrient and spilling over on occasion. I'm catching drips from the system in buckets and putting it back into the system. I've put about seven pepper plants into the system, three in the ebb'n flow system and four in the NFT system, but so far no peppers. I think I see signs of them coming though so I'm still hopeful.

Plans for the Future — The Office System of Winter 1997 — Winter I, System II

I'm getting ready for the end of Summer. I'm working on a wick system to run indoors using a 500W haligen lamp to try to get tomatoes for Christmas. So far I have the lamp floating on bungie cords and a four location wick system cut out of a plastic laundry hamper --- what fun!

9/16/97

Adventure Continues

Well the 500 W haligen lamp burnt out in eleven hours (filiment type) probably from overheating. I am still going forward with the indoor system however. The new system includes two flourescent fixtures, each with two 40 W growbulbs in them and one 150 W sodium vapor lamp which started out life as an outdoor security lamp. This is a gas bulb and shouldn't have the temperature problems of the filiment haligen. At any rate I've mounted the flourescents vertically to create a partial "tube" of light which a tomato plant might enjoy. Meanwhile, outdoors I am starting baby tomato plants and jalapeno pepper plants to take the four spots in this "wick" system. The wicks are composed of four strips of T-shirt material about 1.5"x16" pulled through a hole in the bottom of the pots and then the pots are filled with granular rockwool (industrial grade). The plants are being started off in little rockwool cubes. Meanwhile I've taken down the NFT system leaving me with 20# or so of green tomatoes. The wick, smartvalve and pot systems are still going, so I expect to have a few more tomatoes before the end of the season.

10/28/97

The plants have been growing aggressively for several weeks and are now about eight inches tall. They show no signs of not having adequate illumination, although the total wattage is only about 310 W -- 4 40W flourescent grow tubes and one 150W Sodium Vapor security light. The whole thing is running 12 hours on and 12 hours off in my office. I hardly ever have to put my office lights on since all that light gives me plenty of illumination to work. The A-frame system has been taken down and Jessica is bent on recovering the deck for family use. As soon as I get all the miscellaneous pots and plastic vessels and gallon containers off the deck she will reclaim it for the family -- meanwhile, I have two 10' 4" diameter PVC pipes ready for next year's system. Tomatos UBER ALLES!

12/18/97

The tomato plants and pepper plants have been flourishing in their little plastic tub down in my basement office. They are now four feet or so tall and overwhelming the efforts of the flourescent grow lamps to illuminate them (since they are now taller than the lamps). The tomatoes have had blossoms for a few weeks and now have several tomatoes each growing. The largest is currently a little over an inch in diameter. The pepper plants have recently blossomed, but no sign yet of peppers. The whole experiment is a great success so far -- I only have to replenish the nutrient solution every few days when it goes down a gallon or so. I don't know when the tomatoes will ripen -- probably in late January or early February. (I'll keep you posted!)

1/18/98

Tomatoes and other good things

Well the system in my office continues to flourish despite a lack of some the the hydroponic "essentials" like root oxygenation. I have four tomatoe plants fairly loaded with tomatoes and two pepper plants with a bunch of peppers. The first tomato has started to turn red, so it can't be too much longer before I can eat some of them. I've already eaten one of the peppers. I'm not a big banana pepper fan, so I'm no judge, but it was OK. I'm really growing peppers just because I had the seeds, it's the tomatoes I care about -- I have to type softly or the peppers will hear me and go on strike. It's been remarkably easy to grow these and on not all that much light. I'm rather fascinated with the implications for indoor harvests of fresh veggies in the dead of Winter -- like now! The nutrients have been no problem. I've been keeping a log, but I only add water every few days and I've been adding it with nutrient. I check the dissolved salts with my "dipstick" and so far there has been no sign of salt build up, although I have no way of checking the "mix" of nutrients. More when the harvest in in. I'm getting ready for Spring and my next NFT system which will use large diameter PVC pipe and some saw-horses. Stay tuned!

3/9/98

Tomatoes In February

Well the beat goes on! It's early March and I've eaten all the tomatoes that are red and am waiting for the next bunch of green ones to turn. The peppers after being on the vine a while turn a lovely red, which was a surprise to me because the ones I did last Summer never got a chance to get that far. I picked and ate them too soon it appears. They were good green, they are even more interesting red.

The plants continue to grow and put fruit out. The peppers in particular appear very healthy. The tomatoes have been small, 3-4 oz. instead of the 8-16 I've come to expect. I am speculating that the problem is root stress from being confined in a rather small pot. Other possible problems could be light, salting up (although I don't see signs of that -- I can't tell for sure), no oxygenation, and who knows what. My plans are to seed all new tomato plants for both outside conventional growing and outside hydroponics and then to update the office system to provide less root stress and more oxygenation leaving the lights as they are -- then we'll see.

6/11/98

After eating tomatoes on and off through the end of May as well as a ton of peppers which just kept coming no matter how I abused the pepper plants, the plants finally just outgrew the office and I decided to sacrafice the system since it was now warm enough to go outside. But my daughter, Ann Marie Seay protested that those tomatoes had worked hard for me all those months and deserved to have a chance to grow in the sun instead of the miserable 310W of mixed sodium vapor and flourescent lamps that I had provided the Office system. So being an ole softy, she and I took the plants out to the side of the deck and strung'em up -- eight feet of vines Ladies and Gentlemen -- EIGHT FEET they'd grown in the office as they put out quite a few tomatoes, but not enough to keep me from eating them faster than they grew. If you've gotten this far you have demonstrated an interest in hydroponics that is truly remarkable -- so go back to the beginning where the current adventure is beginning! :) Hydroponics is simply a terrific hobby! :)