Nutrition

It is hard to tell what the right effort level is. As mentioned in the last post, there are three levels of cleaning: refresh , sterilize , and deep . It would be nice if they were documented a bit more consistantly rather than picking and choosing the bits that seem to apply from each (and not assuming knowlege from the other). Added recomendations from a user, Tracey Mertens, that has posted her process, which has evolved from September in Gardyners to November in Gardyn. See my process below. Overall:   I found little biofilm, mold, or algae. There were a few bits of roots on the ypods and in the towers. I should have run a timer. I think it took more than the expected 40 minutes. Not sure how much more effecient it will be next time. See below for before pictures of roots. Afterwards: This deep cleaning video  has me thinking I should have just wiped the ypods, instead of trying to figure out how to do the roots. Clearly it uses the water from the tank to hold the pla...

It was suggested I buy collars to keep the light from reaching the rockwool once fertilizer was in the system. This is to prevent algae. (bonus  algae vs biofilm ) Can they go in the diswasher? In the meantime I had created a rather ragtag offering from brown paper bags. The ones that were less than an inch square were less likely to be displaced. The bigger ones caught in the breeze from the fan and sometimes fell off. Today some collars were in my mailbox. Since I did not have enough for all my plants, I prioritized  those where I could see lots of rockwool. The first candidates were the sweet peppers and jalapenos which were recently added to the system without any cover. There seemed to be a big requirement among the herbs. Some of the leafy greens were doing a good job of starting to cover with vegetation. Did not have a slit in the paper around the mint. It had grown enough I had to cut it off. Below the dill, I found white fuzz on one of the papers! :(  I had alr...

Get a new toy, the Gardyn, and join a bunch of facebook groups: there's one for the product, one for the users, one for recipes, one for pets - stopped before this. A user James has been gone a step beyond with videos, documents like  Ph ,   and meetings. I started populating an Amazon list with extras based on his notes too. I tried to go high tech and got an inexpensive electronic device for measuring ph.  Mixed the powders with distilled water and calibrated it. It showed tap water as 7.3 and gardyn water as 6.8.  Not sure how often this needs to happen. May as well just have the strips  - similar to running a hot tub. James suggested I drop it to 6. I asked if I should do this with ph down or GSE  (grapefruit seed extract). Tracey has this regular process to clean and rehydrate with h202, fertilizer, and and hydroguard.   GSE is a powerful anti-parasitical, anti-bacterial and anti-fungal compound.  James allowed that the GSE would lower t...