Help with growing Marrows and pumpkins
 

I desperately needs information on growing marrows & pumpkins in a NFT system. Present system is 110mm diameter by 3 meters long. But I can change to any other suitable system . What size/space is needed for the root system? Which is the best medium, perlite, gravel,bark or gravel ??
PH & CF for marrows ??

Any info will be appreciated

Thanxxxx

Chrisvis

Well I don't know what a marrow is, but I grew pumpkins last year in a bubbler system in a aprox 1' by 2' by 1' deep rubermaid tote. I think it was a 12 or 15 gal size and it completely filled up with the root system. It started probably 10 to 12 pumpkins but when the first two got about softball size, the rest died. I had two large pumpkins that I trellised over a 16' livestock panel and hammacked the pumpkins. It worked pretty good except keeping the nutes cool was a huge pain. I built a homemade chiller for it and that worked pretty well.
If you are putting them in a pipe, I would go with at least a 10" or 12" inch one or you will just get root bound. If I do pumpkins again it will be in a system like "barrel ponics" where you cut a 55 gal barrel in half. I had really good sucess growing zuchinnis and cantalope that way. Posting some picts so you can see what I did :D Hope this helps get the ideas going...

chrisvis
What is a marrow plant? I only get links to bone marrow when I try and look it up. I wouldn't go with anything less than 5 gallons of root space for large plants like pumpkins (each plant). I would use a drip system for large plants like that as well. I prefer coco chips for growing media myself. But if growing in buckets/containers rather than using individual baskets, I add some rock/gravel at the bottom of the buckets/containers for added drainage quality's.