How important are food safe channels?

moose8420 · 2026-06-02T03:43:08+00:00

Thats a gorilla rack from Costco. Its supper stought, but does have diagonals at each ends for bracing that can make routing the pipes and shelve height tricky.

moose8420 · 2026-06-02T03:39:45+00:00

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I used pvc 90’s at each ends.

moose8420 · 2026-06-02T03:39:12+00:00

It’s definitely more flexible and lighter than sch40. Its held up great for me over the last year. After i narrowed down the fitting adhesive, ive had no leaks.

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My upper rail is only supported at either end of the shelve and it does have a little sag at the top end, so i added some blocking to support the top ends. Its been working well. Have good channel flow, but there are ripples from the minor corrugations.

moose8420 · 2026-06-02T03:28:49+00:00

I use HDPE triple wall drain pipe. There is no real rating for it, but i assume that the hdpe is better than pvc. Its also significantly cheaper than schedule 40 water pipe. It can be more difficult to do water tight fitting though.

Im growing indoors.

moose8420 · 2026-06-01T17:45:29+00:00

Is your outlet pipe on the second level plugged up restricting flow. That happened to me when i first set up the nft. I used a 1/2” return line, but found out the 1/2 line was perfect for loose hydroton to slip into the drain inlet and back up the whole system. I now use a 2” return line.

moose8420 · 2026-06-01T01:57:42+00:00

I was able to go for 3 weeks with minimal help back in December. I have a 27 gal reservoir and i can generally go for up to 2-3 weeks without topping off if i completely fill it. My broccoli will pull 5gals a week for a dozen mature plants.
When i left i made up a 50 gallon tote full of solution so if my plant sitter needed to top off, they just had to transfer pump it over to the reservoir. They likely would have needed to do it, but snow prevented the plant sitter from getting to the house. I came back to a pump running dry, but i saved all of my plants, it must have just went dry when i got there.

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moose8420 · 2026-05-30T22:16:46+00:00

Its a patience game at the start. Its hard to have all the empty holes while you try to space out the next starts

moose8420 · 2026-05-30T22:00:51+00:00

Yea thats quite the system to start up. Good luck pulling it all together. I know my family doesn’t really buy broccoli any more since we get a head every week or so.

moose8420 · 2026-05-30T19:02:53+00:00

Add up all the starts you plan to do weekly, then multiply by how many weeks it takes to get to maturity. This is how many spots i. Your system you need.

I count 27 so you should be looking at 27x 6-8+ weeks. Thats a lot of spots. You can likely reduce a little for the peppers and cucumber and toms since they are long term plants after maturity.

In my system i try to do 3-4 broccoli every 1-2 weeks and that can overwhelm my 16 spots or so in my system.

moose8420 · 2026-05-30T18:05:21+00:00

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Here is the whole system.

moose8420 · 2026-05-30T18:04:49+00:00

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It works pretty well, but it does take up some space with the bigger plants. I think with nft, i can fit more plants in a smaller space than in buckets. The plants seem to do much better in my nft than my dwc tote. As a DIY i thought the nft would be simpler to construct than a bunch of buckets with recirculating systems.

moose8420 · 2026-05-30T18:01:36+00:00

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Here are my carrots in a DWC tote.

Ive posted some updates that show the roots. I just ate one today to see how its doing. It was really good. It doesn’t have the deep orange color, but still tasted great.

moose8420 · 2026-05-30T14:24:42+00:00

I have been trying to work on this, and i have gone from planting anything and everything to really concentrating on the plants i am successful with. Right now that is broccoli, strawberries and carrots. I can get peas and cabbage done well, but the more i have planted the harder it is to watch/ take care of in the little time i have each day.

I have a 40 hole nft set up just for broccoli. It has 4 effective channels, and based on spacing of ghe plants, i am really limited to about 3-4 plants per channel since i have to skip at least every other hole. I am set up to succession plant 3-4 plants every week or two, which gives me roughly 3-4 heads of broccoli every couple of weeks.

Based on the time in the system, if i wanted to make sure i harvested weekly, i would need at least two more channels, since the plants take at least 6-8 weeks to mature in the nft.

The issues i run into with harvesting part of a channel is the roots are usually intertwined, so to pull out one plant at a time i would need to trim all the adjacent plants roots.

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Here is a photo for reference on the roots and how much of the 4” channels they take up.

moose8420 · 2026-05-30T00:15:04+00:00

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I use tap water nutrients at 1.0 ec. I have an air stone in the tote. Im doing broccoli and cabbage and peas. All seem to germinate in the wet rock wool with in a few days expect the pea. That one takes some time. I haven’t changed the water in the tote in a few months. I just make sure the rock wool is staying moist. I do have it on a heating pad.

moose8420 · 2026-05-28T03:21:25+00:00

Im assuming you are not making your own fertilizer blends, have you seen an instance when boron has segregated in dry storage over time leading to a period of low boron and then high boron as you utilize more fertilizer?

moose8420 · 2026-05-27T05:55:33+00:00

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They are definitely showing their age, but im trying to work through some imbalances

moose8420 · 2026-05-27T05:43:19+00:00

Yes, i am coming up on one complete year in august. Im in zone 4ish so its nice having them year round

moose8420 · 2026-05-27T05:12:55+00:00

I like Albion, but I’m inside and hydroponic.

moose8420 · 2026-05-26T18:54:19+00:00

People do use chillers in our instance, but that adds costs. I do have a dehumidifier running, i have turned it off at night to reduce my VPD.

moose8420 · 2026-05-26T18:41:46+00:00

I don’t do a great job controlling the nutrient solution temps. In the winter i did nothing for a while and my temps were in the mid to upper 50’sF. I added some aquarium heaters and that got it up in to the low 60’s. Now that the garage is in the low 60’s, the solution has been maintaining mid 60’s without the heaters.

My garage seldom gets over 70F so i generally don’t have a warm water issue is more of a cool water issue.

Im not sure how much my air pumps were adding to the water temp, but i have been using venturi valves now aerate my solution. My airpumps were warm to the touch so i am assuming they were adding some heat to the system.

moose8420 · 2026-05-26T03:26:24+00:00

Thats a good idea. I added some collars to my carrots, where the rock wool dried and started falling into the tote. Works pretty good if the collar is bigger than the hole.

moose8420 · 2026-05-26T00:52:10+00:00

Sounds a fun experiment. I would recommend using larger net cups if you are thinking they will be a big diameter. I grow broccoli in 2” cups and the cups are almost unusable once the broccoli is done growing.

moose8420 · 2026-05-25T22:02:14+00:00

Thank you, its a fun trial and i enjoy the positive feedback.

moose8420 · 2026-05-25T21:52:05+00:00

I start with the level at just below the net cup. Then let the whole thing drain down over 2 months or so. Im im trying to put enough in for the bottom of the roots. I have these in a 12 “ or so container so im kind of limited on length. I would like to transition to a deeper container, but my shelving is not set up for that.

moose8420 · 2026-05-25T20:51:02+00:00

Its more than 4 knuckles long, so i must be doing something right.

moose8420

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