Tuesday, October 21, 2008

My version of the Aerospring garden - phase II

Well it is not pretty, but it works. I should say it sprays the nutrients around within the reservoir, and it does not leak. As to living up to all the praise I have read over the years; that remains to be seen. In any event, investing fifteen dollars to build one beats the hundred and sixty dollars to buy one.

I thought it best to use 3" net pots, but I would have preferred 4" pots. The cover has a recess in the center for the Rubbermaid trademark, and I wanted avoid any problems with leaks caused by the pots being uneven.

It seems like a big waste of space to grow six plants. In the same area on my grow table I can grow almost three times as many plants in an ebb and flow system.

My main area of concern is clogging of the spray heads. Just the small amount of debris that fell into the PVC tee from tapping the holes for the heads clogged them. That is why the spray pattern in the previous post was not a full 360 degrees.

Another consideration is that it is necessary to run this system 24/7. Although the pump is a small 130 GPH unit and does not use a lot of power, I keep comparing it to the ebb and flow system running only six fifteen minutes cycles per day.

Unfortunately, it will be awhile before I can test grow in this system. It is my plan to grow some super fast growing oriental lettuce, or cabbage, but I want to complete an experiment with nutrients and Swiss chard first. This particular experiment really has my interest piqued.





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