We were out at the Avenues last night with great success. Come join us every Tuesday 3p till 8p in the courtyard by the Pizza Gallery. Hope to see you there!

NFT is the style of system that we use in the greenhouse for all the lettuce’s. NFT stands for Nutrient Film Technique and describes the feeding system for the plants. We fill the reservoir with rain water or RO (reverse osmosis) water which is the purest water with a TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) of around 0 ppm (parts per million). It is important not to have any elements in the water before adding your nutrients as it will be unclear to what is already in the water. (For example: tap water is full of chlorine, fluoride, and numerous pharmaceutical drugs as well as toxic waste, all which are poisonous to our plants, as well as us!)

Once we have filled our reservoirs with water, we then add the nutrients. For the lettuces and herbs, we use a Grow formula which is high in Nitrogen which plants require during their vegetative (or growth) state. Since lettuces and herbs do not need to flower for consumption, we only need to use this one formula, we just increase the strength as the crop grows bigger. We did purchase a crop specific nutrient from the manufacturer of the system, American Hydroponics, but have not begun to use it yet. We’ll update you when we do.

Back to NFT, now we have our water and nutrients mixed and the system is running. Nutrient Film Technique sort of speaks for itself. The water/nutrient solution is pumped to the “top” of the system and then uses gravity to flow down the gutter. This creates a “film” at the root zone soaking the media (we use rockwool, as this is the most efficient media for the NFT system). The water then flows into a gutter at the “bottom” of the gutters and drains back to the reservoir, creating a recirculating system.

We were there on the first day of this new market and the response was awesome! Big thanks to Barbara for getting us out there. We will be out at the corner of US1 and 192 every Saturday from 10am – 3pm. Stay tuned as in a couple weeks we will be out at the Avenues in Viera for an even bigger market. The Viera market runs Tuesday evenings officially from 4pm – 8pm but there are vendors set up as early as 1pm! Come out and support us at these two wonderful markets! (Give us a couple weeks to ge out to Viera. Our target start is February 16.) Thanks to all of Pam’s friends that stopped by from Lou’s Blue’s in Indianatlantic! And special thanks to grandpa for stopping by too!!!