Here's Part 2 of the build. Going pretty well so far. I may actually make the 2nd bed a wicking bed instead of ebb and flow. We'll see. I realized that I say "awesome" a lot after a few beers too.[LOL]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ho8kj2Fkw0Y
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Here's Part 2 of the build. Going pretty well so far. I may actually make the 2nd bed a wicking bed instead of ebb and flow. We'll see. I realized that I say "awesome" a lot after a few beers too.[LOL]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ho8kj2Fkw0Y
Thanks for the mention. Why not just lay a 2'x4' or two across the bottom of each mixer box lengthwise? Could even toe them in so they are flush, or use a Kreg job (can borrow mine).
I'm impressed with you literally taking stuff from the fridge and having it grow in there. It makes me miss aquaponics for sure. I wouldn't be surprised if that garlic actually grows bulbs like normal.
Finally, thanks for the mention.
I could throw some 2x4s in. That means removing all the rock and stuff. If I did it all over again I would. Moving the standpipe took about 5 minutes, so it was easy.
I think I will go with a wicking bed on the left side. That will make starting seeds easier and I know some stuff just grows better in soil. It would be cool to have both types going.
I want to put a small raft in on the water also for lettuce. Apparently, that's the ways to go for lettuce.
The fish will probably eat the roots of the lettuce, but I'm sure you're researching all that stuff.
Can you give a short break down of what a wicking system is?
A wicking bed is a thinner layer of lava rock with a thicker layer of potting soil or compost on top. There's a barrier between the rock and soil: perlite, weed blocker, etc. You keep water trickling into the bed and you have drain pipe buried horizontally just above the lava rock. The soil wicks water up and it stays perfectly moist all the time. You control the amount of moisture by adjusting the flow of water into the bed. No siphon or anything. It just constantly trickles in and out. Slick.
This will be better for starting from seed, for both transplanting outside in the spring and for some stuff that just does better in soil to just stay there.
Interesting. This would be a perfect Science Fair type of experiment if you grow the same thing on each side. I agree that it is easier to start seed in soil, so that makes sense. When I had mine, I'd start from seed in a little dirt cup. I believe I got a piece of pvc and pushed it down into the clay pellets to make a hole, tried to gently knock all the dirt off the roots, slid the whole plant into the pvc pipe in the pellets, then gently pulled the pipe out and held the plant in place. It worked well enough, but I'm sure there is a better way.
Is the drain pipe above the barrier between the rock and soil? How does the water get into the drain pipe? Couldn't you just drill holes in the base of the tray under the rocks? I assume the barrier between the rocks and soil serves the dual purpose of keeping the soil in place, and being just permeable enough to allow the water to slowly drip through, like a coffee filter?
My biggest problem was that I didn't have adequate lighting. What is your light set-up? I'll go look to see if you have a video about the lights right now so no answer necessary if you already covered that.
Using a piece of pipe to plant in the clay is genius. I'll be using that.
The drain pipe is toward the top of the rock. Theres just a little rock over the top of the pipe. The barrier is over that. And yes, the barrier is to prevent the soil and rock from mixing and it lets the water seep up.
You don't want holes directly on the bottom of the beds. You need to have some water depth there to allow for the wicking action, so you put the drain pipe a few inches up. The pipe just has a bunch of holes drilled in it so the water flows in.
For lighting, I went with a 4 foot flourecent fixture with 4 T5 grow bulbs. For the square footage I have, this was better than LEDs as far as cost and wattage used. LEDs are better for a smaller footprint.
The bulbs I have are for vegetative growth which is all that's needed for the leafy stuff. I will probably plant some fruiting plants (peppers, tomatoes, etc.) in the wicking bed. If I need to get another fixture for that side with different bulbs I will.
I've heard that LED isn't there yet for growig, which surprised me. I used the hood of an Aerogarden. It worked well enough to grow a jalapeño from seed. It grew forever and wouldn't flower. Someone on here told me that I needed to start shortening the light to trick the plant into flowering. I did that and it worked almost immediately. I got two small jalapeños, then couldn't get it to grow again. At some point one of the bulbs in the Aerogarden quit so the plant just maintained.
The LEDs are great for small applications, but that's it for now. And I saw a few experiments where even the same brand had wildly different lumens between the same model of lights. They'll get there.
Yes, light cycle is important. You're basically fooling the plant into thinking it's fall, so time to fruit, with a shorter "day". I got skilled with this years ago when I was growing, ahem, something else. Back then I had two 1000 watt HP sodium lights. It was a rather large operation. Filled a whole bedroom wall to wall. Did all that 20 years to early.
I have a buddy that was looking to get rid of some commercial grow lights a while ago. I think it was just the lights, and not the bulbs though. Want me to check to see if he still has them?
No thanks. I still have my old lights in the crawl space, but they're way to big for what I've got going on.
Copy. He probably threw them all out by now anyway.
So things are going good. As predicted, I have to address the humidity problem. The windows and sliding glass door of the "shed" are continuously covered with dew and the wood frames of those windows and doors are moist to wet. This will lead to problems so I need focus on that now.
The shed is insulated pretty well. The options I've thought of so far are:
Vent: put a bathroom type fan in a window on a timer and just vent the room for 5 minutes every hour or whatever it takes.
Advantages: it's fairly easy and would use little electricity. Just get the fan, mount it on plywood to cover the opening, insulate with foam board and that's it.
Disadvantages: the loss of heat and material cost (wood, foam board, etc.) plus effort.
Dehumidifier: just dehumidify the room. Maybe pour the water from the dehumidifier back into the fish tank (doesn't dehumidifier water get pretty skanked up though with bacteria and shit?).
Advantages: it's plug and play. No cutting wood, buying material, etc.
Disadvantages: cost (kinda high) and.more electrical use.
I'd love to hear any other ideas.
Hmmm, definitely a problem. A dehumidifier could certainly help retain your water level, but I'd have similar concerns about cost. Not sure about drain line water quality. I wonder how much covering the bottom tanks would help. Probably not enough.
I'm leaning toward a direct vent to the outside. Replenishing water to the main tank is pretty easy. Just drag the hose over and fill it up. I'd just have to see how bad the heat loss will be.
I do plan on wrapping the main water tank with insulation, so that will help keep some heat in there.
FYI...I modified the wicking beds drainage. I wasn't getting quite enough actual wicking, so after a ton more research, I found that just having a standpipe is good for this kind of setup. Think of a bell siphon with just the standpipe and media excluder, just no siphon. It just continuously drains slowly. Other wicking setups use the horizontal drain pipe.Quote:
Originally Posted by Irving
So I went from this:
Attachment 73504
To this:
Attachment 73505
It seems to be wicking much better now. I planted a ton of seeds in there the other night. We'll see what, if anything, germinates and grows.
The completed wicking bed:
Attachment 73506
The water is introduced to the system the same way as the other bed? Are you expecting the soil to become increasingly more dry the further you get from the source pipe? Or, is the wicking action slow enough for the water to reach all the corners before it drains?
Yes, but the water trickles in slower than the ebb and flow bed. It gradually wicks through the whole bed. It took a few days, but seems pretty uniformly moist now. The standpipe is dry fit, so you can adjust the height if necessary. If the top of the soil is soaked, just cut an inch off the standpipe. Too dry, put a longer one in.
ETA: in the wicking bed, the water fills from the bottom up, unlike the ebb and flow where it pours in from the top.
I'm very interested in what results you get out of this. I'm under the impression that the reason you can grow food in water only like with the clay pellets, is that there are periods of water, and periods of no water. Kind of like forced breathing for the plants. I'm curious to see how the plants deal with constantly being wet. My guess is that certain plants will grow better in wicking bed than other plants.
The idea is to have the upper part of the soil perfectly moist for growing, instead of wet. Down below in the rock and lower soil it's saturated of course. This is where adjusting the stand pipe comes in - move it up or down until you get it perfectly balanced. This is all a fun experiment for me. We'll see how it all works out.
So the idea is that some of the roots will be submerged, but not all of the root at all times? That makes more sense.
I have sprouts in the wicking bed!
Attachment 73535
Sprouts for bok choy, lettuce, bell peppers and broccoli all popped up today. Very cool. Also planted were basil, onions, carrots, peas, cabbage and tomatoes. Kind of a shotgun approach. Just plant a bunch of stuff and see what works.
I jumped the gun and planted the seeds while still dialing in the vent/heat timing cycle. It got pretty darn cold in there a few nights, like 50F or so. Not the best conditions for germinating seeds. But the water in the system is over 70F and the room the last few days was kept pretty warm, so I guess I didn't kill everything. Warm water flowing through the system must have helped a lot.
A dehumidistat should be delivered Mon or Tues, so that will be the next step in dialing everything in.
In the ebb and flow bed, I put in a ton more of the garlic cloves. The greens from them are delicious and grow incredibly fast. The green onions too - they grow about an inch a day.
Some interesting stuff:
We put 3 baby bok choy plants in there directly from the supermarket (we didn't take any leaves off before planting). They looked good for about a week, then two of them suddenly looked real bad. I yanked them out and the stump had no roots at all - just a clump of brown, nasty gunk. They got tossed into the forest. The other one looked great with roots growing, new growth up top, etc. This morning it looked awesome. This evening it was totally wilted and laying flat on the clay. WTF? Weird. Again, into the forest.
I had a few lettuce heads get the same brown gunk on the bottom and not grow roots. Others took off and are growing well. I guess it just depends on what you get at the store as far as age, quality, organic vs. non-organic, etc. I know some veggies get sprayed with a chemical to prevent sprouting and root growth while at the grocery store, so organic stuff is what you should buy if you plan to plant it eventually. I forget if the bok choy/lettuce I got was organic or not.
The cilantro I tried was a complete fail, as predicted. I have some in a glass of water now to let roots grow first, then I'll put them in the ebb and flow bed.
I also took a head of romaine lettuce, stripped off all of the good leaves for eating, sliced about 1/8 inch off the stump and put that in a glass of water to see if roots will grow. It seems to me that going directly into the bed would be better, but why not see if it grows some roots this way first to jump start the process.
Oh yeah, our electric bill went up about $10 since starting this whole deal. I thought it would have been more than that, so that's good. If I can make this all work, it will pay for itself. I'll do a ROI analysis eventually. I've saved every receipt for everything I purchased for this monster.
Irving: as far as the moisture level in the soil and stuff, I'm still learning about it all. Some folks say you should pull the stand pipe and let the whole bed drain for a day or two to allow some O2 in and prevent anaerobic crap from starting to grow, which makes sense. The frequency of this is debatable. My guess is that the plants are pretty freaking smart and will spread their roots out along the barrier between moist and saturated in a way that benefits them best in between the drainings.
The experiment continues....
Organic doesn't mean the veggies haven't been sprayed with anything. For example, potatoes at stores have growth inhibitors, no matter the marketing label. It doesn't always work so results will be unpredictable. Garden centers sell starts for many veggies (onions, potatoes, etc) that will give more consistent results.
How well has the barrier in the wicking bed been working so far? Meaning, have you noticed any sediment building up in the fish tank at all?
I tried to put worms in my clay pellets. I don't know if it did anything, but I figured if any escaped it'd just be a treat for the fish.
Sounds like you've got good results so far. Looking forward to seeing how full those beds are in about three months from now.
The barrier works well. On start up, the water got a little stained but it cleared up after a few days.
I'll put some worms in it beds eventually.
I had a few cabbage sprouts pop up over night. 😁
Radishes grow unbelievably fast like that. Like two inches tall before other seeds even sprout when they were planted at the same time.
Update:
I hooked up a dehumidistat to the vent fan and that made a huge difference (thanks to whoever suggested that!). The humidity is now under control and stable. Even with the below zero temps here lately I had little condensation on the windows. I did have to have the heater running more than normal but that's to be expected. Today it was almost 40F and I had no condensation at all and the heater back to the normal 1/2 hour on and 1 hour off cycle.
Every type of seed I planted in the wicking beds sprouted, some better than others. The bok choy, lettuce and broccoli went totally nuts right away. I'll definitely have to thin the herd there. The cabbage is going awesome now. Yesterday the carrots and onions sprouted, and there are lots of sprouts. I only got 3 tomato and 1 bell pepper sprouts, but I have more seeds so they'll go in soon. 3 of the 4 pea seeds sprouted also.
In the ebb and flow bed, I've had awesome basil, green onion and garlic greens production. We eat a ton of this stuff so this is good. For the basil, I just got a few "living basil" packages from King Soopers, rinsed off the roots and planted them. I've cut them down 3 or 4 times now and they are growing like crazy. Basil is money at the store. It's amazing what they get for a few leaves of a plant.
The baby bok choy was a complete fail. 2 of the 3 heads I planted got nasty brown crud on the root stump after several days and just wilted. The other head looked great and had awesome roots growing. Then one day it was flat on the clay and completely wilted. Weird.
I had similar results with lettuce. Some will regrow well, some just get the brown crud and don't work. I'm trying another way to get lettuce to go, so we'll see how that works.
I was just about to ask about an update. Sounds like both beds are working so far. Is the wicking bed the preferred bed so far, or is that just the way I read your post?
I really can't say what is the preferred bed. I'm a total noob to all of this and it's all a big experiment. That's why I did one ebb and flow bed and one wicking bed. We'll see what works best.Quote:
Originally Posted by Irving
My guess is wicking bed for most stuff. Plants naturally grow in soil, so wicking beds seem obvious. Some plants do better in ebb and flow or even raft beds (lettuce), so I'll go with that for them. For example, my basil grows so fast in the ebb and flow bed that I'm trying to give some away, so I guess it likes it there.
I'd really like to have another small garden inside to grow herbs again. They are so expensive at the store.
I made this basil pesto this last summer with my own Thai basil and garlic from my garden and it was insane! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-dOZezSwwM
Holy crap, I have to do this. Looks awesome.Quote:
Originally Posted by Irving
So when are you going to turn this into my ultimate dream project by throwing solar into the mix and running the entire building off grid? Get your kid to wire up the solar, take a bunch of pictures and you'll have a GUARANTEED science fair victory.
I know a guy that does solar thermal he likes beer and may be me....
find a couple take off panels to heat the water bam save the whales and grow some whales
It woud be fun to try something solar but I never did a damn thing with solar except wear a watch that charged itself. I'll have to start looking into it.
DFB: By takeoff panels, do you mean used panels? And hot water solar panels right? Not PV.
I installed a solar panel on the roof of my van to help me keep all my electronics charged when I was working in the field a lot. It's basically just a mobile charging station. That's for another thread though.
I originally wanted to build a small, mobile generator and ended up just building it onto my van. I still may end up getting chickens and the plan is to power the coop with solar, but just because I want to, since chickens don't really need power. I figured I could power some lights and maybe one of those small electric heaters that keep the water from freezing.
You could automate the coop door too.
So I went to subscribe to your channel tonight and you have a lot of subscribers (IMO)! Well done. Your homemade quail feeder has a ton of views as well, which makes sense since that is exactly the kind of stuff I look up all the time.
Thanks! Fun stuff.
Here's a weird thing. I had a pretty bad humidity problem when I got this all up and running: ice on the windows, water dripping down the windows and soaking the frames, etc. So I got a humidistat and a fan and it worked fine. I set it at about 50-55% humidity and it would cycle on and off as needed. My only concern at first was that it was on A LOT. Too much is what I thought. It seemed like every time I went out there it was on.
For the last week or so, it has hardly come on at all and the humidity is constantly at 50-55%,. What the heck? Outside temps have been all over the place too, so that's not a reason. The only thing I can think of is that the humidistat/fan were drawing off all of the moisture from the other crap I have in there (carpet, insulation, tents, camping gear, fishing stuff, etc.) and now it's dried out and stabilized the humidity.
Not complaining...less fan = less electricity. Am I missing something?
Very sound reasoning and highly probable you are correct.Quote:
Originally Posted by GilpinGuy
Have seen same situation with flood cleanup in homes and basements. First 4-8 hrs not alot of improvement, next 12 hrs substantial change as air has been dried and moisture in materials in room begins to evaporate.
If you're unarmed, you are a victim