Bobby down at ToyLex in Rockledge donated these! They were just laying around up at his shop and we thought they would be a nice step at the head of the greenhouse. Casey took the project with a little of Sherry’s help. Good work team!

This project took a few days. We decided that since we were using the bob cat to spread the floor, it would be best to wait till after we were done with that to get the posts in for the frames of the systems. Since the ‘rock’ was only a couple of inches deep, wasn’t that big of a deal. Once we got the posts in, we ran 2 x 4′s between them and then across to get the supports. Copy and paste…

Now that the floor is down and leveled, it’s time to get the roof on. We purchased a roll of 6 mil. poly sheeting from greenhousemegastore.com that is 30′ x 100′. We cut it a little longer than 60′ and set it up on the peak of the east side of the green house. Couldn’t have picket a windier day either. It was coming out of the north with 20 mph gusts, maybe more. This worked out to our benefit when it came to rolling the south side out, but made taking it down pretty rough. Had to make sure we were as straight as possible and get it pulled tight at the same time. Took a few hours, but we got it up with little trouble.

So we’ve been keeping you up to speed with how awesome the NFT is doing on the back porch, now time to give you a little behind the scenes. We couldn’t be happier with our first run and growing on a large scale and we were doing it the easiest way we could think of.

Typically with a hydro system, you want to change your reservoir every week. It is recommended to you RO water (reverse osmosis) which should have a ppm (parts per million) of 0. Tap water generally has a ppm of about 200. When you use tap water with a ppm greater than 0, what this means is there are particles in your water that might not necessarily be beneficial to the plants, or even worse, could be harmful.

How did we do it to start? We took the garden hose, running city water and stuck it in the system. After we filled it up, we through some nutrients in and made sure that our ppm’s were around 800 (accounting for the city water). We let it rock out, and just monitored the ph every day. The ph climbed every 24 hours, so every morning we had to dump in some ph down to keep it at the level that we wanted. When the water level got low, we put the hose in then adjusted our ppm’s. That’s all we did, and you’ve seen the growth we got.

6 weeks in to our growth, and we decided to actually change the reservoir over to RO water. We did 35 gallons of RO water and then 25 gallons of rainwater (which usually has a ppm right around 0; if it doesn’t register that’s good). Then, we added our nutrients. We’ve been using the Dutch Master A and B for this first run, with a little bit of Liquid Karma and some Hygrozyme. Once we had our water at 60 gallons, we added 500mL of the A and 500mL of B. (After you add a nutrient, it is important to check your ppm. Let the system run. Since this one is a large system we give it a few minutes, but smaller systems should register faster.) We then added 300mL of the Liquid Karma and 300mL of Hygrozyme. After checking our ppm we were sitting at about 600 which is between quarter and half strength.

So for supporting the poly roof, we decided the best way to go is PVC. As I mentioned before, we were originally planning on doing a hoop house with the PVC, but we didn’t measure the center post up with the arc of the PVC hoop before we cemented the center posts in. Needless to say, we came up too short. Our solution was to take some 1″ PVC end caps and screw those in to the center and the perimeter supports. Once those were all screwed in we slipped the 1″ PVC in and strapped it down on the 2X4 supports.

I’m thinking we should do a little garden snapshot each week. This is the first one. I picked my favorite green in the garden, the Okinawa Spinach (Gynura crepioides). We got this plant from Rockledge Gardens over a year ago. It has been neglected and brought back, it has survived multiple trips in the back of the pick up, it is a very hearty plant and is absolutely delicious. Though we haven’t propagated it yet, from what I have read, that is the only way to reproduce this plant. Apparently the flowers are sterile (i.e. they don’t seed). The purple underside adds a nice look to any salad but if you cook it, it turns all green (just a heads up). Researching it a little, it seems to be very popular in Florida and no where else. It does grow in Hawaii, but it almost seems to be a Florida native. If you have any info, please feel free to add. Plan on propagating it soon, however, it roots slow in the winter so we may have to set it up inside. I’ll keep you updated!

Happy Gardening!!!