Even though Emma, my four year old, and I woke up sick this morning, we still went through with our transplanting for today. How could we not??? I have been waiting to plant things into the DWC for a couple weeks! Now that the water has set out over night to let the chlorine evaporate, Heather and Emma added a half nutrient serving to the water.
And rinsed out the grow rocks($15 for a large bag)
Then I checked the PH of our water/nutrient solution. It came out to about 6.5-7, so I added just a bit of PH Down, then rechecked.
It looked a little closer to 6 the second time around, which is where I wanted it. So, onward to the planting!
Ah, and here is the bag of grow rocks.
I placed my 2" air stone in the nutrient reservoir(tote) through one of the net cup holes. Then I turned on the pump.......and it works! The water in the reservoir started bubbling away nicely!
These are those original basil cuttings I was attempting to clone. Since they are growing roots nicely and not wilting, I decided to put them in the system along with the lettuce.
Emma was a big help placing the stones in around the rockwool cubes in the net cups.
Once all my little plants were in place, I slid the tote under the light bank and sent it some pleasant thoughts
So, this is day 17 for my lettuce seedlings, and day 1 with them in the system.
Cool blog. It answers a lot of the questions i've been having. Thank you! One more question though. I have the same rockwool, hydropots in a rubbermaid tote setup, but am unsure about the water level. Is the idea that the rockwool stays mostly dry and the roots should hang in to the water, or should the rockwool stay wet? Right now the roots aren't long enough for this to matter, but later i'm wondering if i should drop the water level so the base of the lettuce stays dry and helps prevent rot? Do you have any insights?
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