Chorca's Blog

A quick recap of my adventures in gardening...

2020 - Start building some planters and mess around with a few plants, drip irrigation, and grow some pretty tasty things!

2021 - Realize that plants don't live forever, even if they're given a chance. Annuals like to die off and perennials need to get some cold to properly work. Switch up some plants, till under some things, and try the whole container thing again

2022 - Hydroponics! After having realize that plants also don't like their roots getting too hot during the summer, try out some NFTs (Nutrient Film Technique, not the crypto thing!) and dutch buckets! The dutch buckets work well, the NFTs, not so much. Turns out sealing up things not designed to carry water, from leaking water, is difficult.

2023 - Got lazy. After the previous somewhat successes, and a few failures with the hydroponics and learning a lot, I sort of took a year off and let everything disintegrate. Decided to wait til the next season to start working on the next iteration, which leads me into...

2024 - Now! The NFT has been rebuilt, the dutch buckets are on standby, and I've been messing around with new seed starting strategies.

Current setup

So my current desire has moved away from large, difficult-to-maintain plants and moved towards leafy greens. We use more of them, they're delicious, there's plenty of varieties that will tolerate heat, and the NFT is much easier to maintain in it's new configuration.

I've also built an easy way to dispense the nutrient solution I'm using (a 3-part General Hydroponics setup): A set of peristaltic pumps that dispense the solution in the desired recipe and even add the proper amount of water. It's been working great so far, but it really needs a better enclosure and a second revision.

Currently I'm working on starting seeds direct-sow in net cups; an interesting idea. Usually for NFTs, net cups are used to hold either a sort of seed starting medium like rockwool, or a cloning collar that keeps the plant held in position within the net cup until it gets large enough for it's roots to hold onto the cup and NFT trough itself. What I wanted to identify is if it would be possible to direct-sow into the net cups, and instead of starting seeds in a medium like coco coir, moving them to a net cup in a rooting container, and then moving them into the NFT once the roots develop, utilize a two step process of seeding into the medium, and then moving from the growth and rooting area into the NFT quickly after.