Pumping Down and Replenishment

Well the system was fine but I thought I'd do a pump down so I pumped 3 buckets out and dumped them on the garden. Then I put the hose in the pool and brought it up to overflowing and the CF = 12. So on the strength of expecting 1.5/quarter cup I added 2 cups of concentrate (that's two cups of white and two cups of blue ... if you don't know what that means search on TotalGro or Total Gro and you should get a post where I explain the nutrient thing). Surprisingly the system has only come up to CF =22 when I was expecting CF =24 but that's OK.

Overall I've been quite pleased with this float system. It has ten tomato plants in it. They are all flourishing as far as I can tell right now (we'll see about the harvest), and the system is easier to maintain than my NFT systems by far. I also don't have to worry about power failures since the only thing that will happen is that the system won't have oxygenation for a while. Also it is easy to exchange the nutrient since I have a pump right in the system which I can use to pump over the side.

The only bad thing so far is the support structure. A friend of mine is using these supports with strings to hold up his garden tomatoes. I think the same idea only arrayed around the float pond would work well. Something to try next year. I'm too lazy to try to fool with it this year.