Strawberries Plants In

Planted 18 strawberries plugs, or the center two tubes. Also threw in in two impatients or fun.

Vertical NFT Tubes Up And Running

Decided to buy a pump from from my local hydroponic store instead of Lowes. Fill up the nutrient tank with water. Connected the new pump to supply line and dropped it into the tank. Fill up all the tubes perlite. Turn the pump on and began looking for leaks. Almost ran the tank dry before any water started returning to the tank. Did not realize how much water the perlite would retain. In this case, about 8 gallons water. Added another 6 gallons of water to the tank. No leaks were found. Will be putting strawberries plants in this Saturday.

Vertical NFT Will Need A New Pump

Connected nutrient tank to the vertical NFT system today. I was going to use the pump I had on the Hydro buckets last year. Ran a simply test on the pump to make sure it was still running OK, but found it only has a pumping head height of 4 feet. I need 7 feet. So starting up of the vertical NFT will have to wait until can buy a new pump. Been using pumps purchased from Lowes. However, this year they switch to a different brand. Which I'm not sure if like the style of yet.

More Photos

Rhubarb, cucumbers and zucchini

Current Photos of NFT and Hydro Buckets

Here are current photos of both the Hydro Buckets and NFT tubes. Most of the plants have more than double in size.

First Rhubarb Leaves

First leaves on the rhubarb are visible, just three days after placing the plant crowns in the bucket.

Planted Rhubarb and Cucumber

Place three rhubarb root crowns and four cucumber plants in Hydro Buckets today.

Fired Up The Second Set Of Hydro Buckets.

Turn the pump on my second set of Hydro Buckets today. This one has no water filter on it. This way I can compare the operation of both sets of buckets to each other.

Water Flow In Hydro Buckets Slows Down.

Check the water flow in the first set of hydro buckets thus morning and found the flow had almost stopped. This is the set with the filter on it. Found the filter closed to being fully clogged. This tells me the filter will need to be cleaned out twiced weekly, was hoping to only clean weekly. This explains why last season the drip heads I were using always plugged up in couple of days.

Tomatoe plants added in the late afternoon today.