With our system now working, we are starting to see some plant growth. Some of our plants have died and we have replaced them with newer sprouts. One has continued to grow taller so Chris wrapped wire to around it to help it grow straight. We changed out some of the clay material and replaced or added rockwool and perlite as well.
Our radishes require a pH of around 5.8 – 6.8 using the type of nutrient solution we are using right now. The pH was too high so we have been adding pH down to make the solution slightly more acidic than what it is now.
The nutrient solution that we are using for our radishes has been giving our systems some problems. We seem to be accumulating nutrient build up around the tubes and the caps on the bottom of the bottles. We’ve been using pipe cleaners for the shorter tubes and today flushed out the longer tubes with water to get rid of the residue.
Here you can see our hydroponic system in action and how the water cycles and travels up through the tubes and then drips down through the net pots to recollect at the bottom into the reservoir.
In this video you can see how our system is able to aerate the water by using an air pump without the need of using a water stone.
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So we finally finished building our system and actually included a little bit of fake vegetation to make our system more aesthetic. Our system has been running for a few weeks, and now, we are starting to notice a build up possible nutrients in the tubes. Today, we took the time to clean these tubes with some pipe cleaners which were provided in class. Mostly all the plants are showing signs of positive growth. Unfortunately, we had to remove one of the plants because it wasn’t looking health and had crinkled up leaves.
After checking our pH for the first time we drew samples that were showing levels 7.5-8. We are trying to achieve a pH level of 6-7 so the addition of a pH lowering chemical was used in our reservoir.
Here is a photo of our original reservoir. After some design changes we had to use a reservoir that held more water. We ended up using a five gallon water jug as our reservoir because the extra water created more water pressure which would allow our airlift pump to work properly.
About four days into seed germination the tap roots start to sprout into growing radish plants. These bad boys are ready for planting.
Here is the first day after seeds were placed in a wet paper towel for seed germination. It didn’t take long before the tap roots were visible.