I have been so inspired by my gardening hobby I have decided to start a winter garden in an (partially) unused closet. I have a 4'x2' space, planning on 2x NFT tubes side by side and 1 gallon smart pots around the periphery and under the tomato canopy.
The NFT tubes will be running Blue Planet Nutrients 3 Part. The soil containers will be running the full line of Blue Planet Nutrients organics.
Much thanks to our friends at Blue Planet Nutrients for the sponsorship!
Here is a drawing of what is planned:
I built a better mount for my sunblaze strips:
So I pH'd some water to 4.5, added 2 capfuls of 3% H2O2 and soaked my rockwool cubes for a couple hours. I took my started tray, put 2 air wands under it and poured the starter solution till it overflowed. Then I placed my 12 cubes in the starter tray and placed one seed in each cube. The whole thing is in a clear shallow sterilite tub to contain humidity and heat. So after a couple day I hope we will be seeing some sprouts!
You can see the seed packs around the edge of the tub - We have Early Girl, Health Kick, Sun Sugar, Stupice, Bloody Bucher, and Zinfandel tomatoes. Some are determinate and some are indeterminate, the indeterminates will have double the space of the determinates which I plan to grow "single truss" style. What that means is after the first set of flowers form you trim the growth shoot, the plant immediately starts to focus on producing fruit on that one flower set then is discarded and replaced with another.
You can see below the NFT taking shape, with the lessons I learned in my other system I am building in a system that can be fully disassembled, will not drain completely if power is lost and will not flood. To this end I have included lots of threaded adapters and instead of a bottom feed it is side fed through a 4" to 2" to 1.5" adapters, that means 1.5 inches of water should stay in the tubes if power is lost.
I am also considering adding a flushing tube in the center with just a couple of slots so I could move the plants over to get a good flush before taking the fruits. I have to look around and see if this is done with tomatoes.
The NFT tubes will be running Blue Planet Nutrients 3 Part. The soil containers will be running the full line of Blue Planet Nutrients organics.
Much thanks to our friends at Blue Planet Nutrients for the sponsorship!
Here is a drawing of what is planned:
I built a better mount for my sunblaze strips:
So I pH'd some water to 4.5, added 2 capfuls of 3% H2O2 and soaked my rockwool cubes for a couple hours. I took my started tray, put 2 air wands under it and poured the starter solution till it overflowed. Then I placed my 12 cubes in the starter tray and placed one seed in each cube. The whole thing is in a clear shallow sterilite tub to contain humidity and heat. So after a couple day I hope we will be seeing some sprouts!
You can see the seed packs around the edge of the tub - We have Early Girl, Health Kick, Sun Sugar, Stupice, Bloody Bucher, and Zinfandel tomatoes. Some are determinate and some are indeterminate, the indeterminates will have double the space of the determinates which I plan to grow "single truss" style. What that means is after the first set of flowers form you trim the growth shoot, the plant immediately starts to focus on producing fruit on that one flower set then is discarded and replaced with another.
You can see below the NFT taking shape, with the lessons I learned in my other system I am building in a system that can be fully disassembled, will not drain completely if power is lost and will not flood. To this end I have included lots of threaded adapters and instead of a bottom feed it is side fed through a 4" to 2" to 1.5" adapters, that means 1.5 inches of water should stay in the tubes if power is lost.
I am also considering adding a flushing tube in the center with just a couple of slots so I could move the plants over to get a good flush before taking the fruits. I have to look around and see if this is done with tomatoes.