Thread: Third system
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Old 11-27-2009, 08:58 PM
OChydro OChydro is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2009
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I feel like I am getting up to speed. Thanks very, very much. Hopefully I may be able to answer questions in the future, not only ask.

Quote:
I will be using 4 inch square tubing and 3 inch baskets, so the holes will be just smaller than 3 inches. Yes, the water level can not rise above where the holes are cut or it will spill out. The placement of the holes is important, they all need to be level with the rest because the water level can only go as high as the lowest one. The baskets wont be completely submerged but the bottom corner will be. That will be enough to allow the growing medium to wick up the moisture and saturate it. Especially because I plan to use the coco chips and they hold moisture quite well.
Makes great sense, a question though. There are a number of different ways you could start the dormant strawberries.

1. Plant them in the net basket with the cocoa chips, place them in the tube and run it as an ebb and flow. This would require the chips to wick the solution throughout the basket because like you said only the lower corner would be in the solution. Do you think this would be enough to get them going?

2. Start them in rockwool and after a couple of weeks, move them into baskets with chips and into the tube using ebb and flow. If one did it this way would they continue in the ebb and flow mode or would they switch to NFT after the roots are developed and hanging down from the net basket

3. Or, would you do it completely differently, please digress.

I bought an air stone today. It was a big sucker, it you beaned someone with it they might not get up for a while. When I hooked it up to my GH air pump, which is pushing air for my drip system it really didn't do shit. When I turned closed the stop cocks on 3 of the 4 outputs it did a great job. Gee, spend more money.

I experienced they same root situation with older nursery plants, just couldn't get off that much of the dirt without tearing up the plant. If I was able to buy younger plants in the six packs, the majority of the dirt washed off.


Thanks for the bleach tip on taking the plants out before. This I did know but it still made me crack up. I'm in the healthcare field so I know 10% sodium hypochlorite would slaughter the plants. I do hope it saves someone the bad day it would be should they bleach their crop.
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