hiya

i've got this unit set up as an nft table, its used for vegging on an 18/6 cycle

Click to view attachment

set up is :-
400w lightwave T5
growgarden nft/flood n drain set up as nft, airstone and additional circulating pump in tank
oscillating fan

i'm perfectly happy with it, as you can see below the roots seem to love it

Click to view attachmentClick to view attachment

however, someone said i shouldn't be doing it this way, the roots should be covered n stuff

this would be awkward as the plants are moved around a lot as they grow, hence why its just the cubes themselves covered (its black n white they're covered with, just turned the other way up as the light curled up the edges when it was white side up, couple of weeks i'll put white side up again)

be very interested to here your opinions on that please?

ta

I'm no expert so i hope you dont mind my 2 pence worth. I've read that covering the cubes like that can create moisture also roots dont really like light exposure so maybe time to pot up? They do look really good though.

Best wishes,
GT.

Roots dont like the light mate.

When Ive done nft in the past Ive used a top lid of correx (sp) ? with 3" holes cut out for the rockwool.

Or even use black n white just stretch it over your tank and tape down then as above cut holes.

They look good at the moment but If Im honest they really need to be covered.

p&q

like this....

thanks goodtimes

they don't actually get potted up, they're put into a multi channel (2) nft table with spreader mat and corex cover

thats how i do the nft when they go in there as you describe above, they are growing on in this table and will be moved when they're ready and the space is available

and, i agree with you, i didn't think roots liked the light also

the black n white wouldn't work here as you suggest as they're moved around fairly regularly

however, when these cuttings went into this table, there were NO roots showing from the bottom

so the roots have made the choice to grow like that

do i need to stop them growing like that - will i damage them in any way by letting them grow like that?

Cant you just lift them out carefully add black n white on top and flower them in that system then? or do you have another tray for them to go into when youve finished using it?

Sorry if ive missed that.

p&q

, no problem

i could do that, but for a couple of reasons i can't

1. there isn't enough room to flower them, and its in my veg room on 18/6, with mums, cuttings n stuff

2. i have another area to move them to when they're ready, there they get 3 square feet each, as opposed to the current 1/2 square foot

Shows my experience

mate, you don't know what pearls of wisdom your mind might throw up, or what path something you say may take me on

thanks sincerely for joining in!

It's obvious that your way of doing it works in practice...but does it work in theory?


There's Dutch greenhouses with plants on overhead conveyors with their roots hanging judas for all to see and those guys calculate growing costs to fractions of a penny. Until it proves itself to be a disaster, I'd leave it as is.

thanks lazi, i agree with you about leaving it

i just wanted to make sure i wasn't doing anything detrimental as someone pulled me up on it in a different thread

thanks for the input guys

Roots like the dark. I would cover them with either correx or black n white sheet. light encourages alga growth which could cover the roots and starve your plants of newts.

i would cover them up cover them up dude

the table gets cleaned every four weeks or so, when new plants go in there, so algae doesn't get a chance to develop, that i already know from when the table was a flood and drain

and as i said above, its difficult to cover the gaps because the plants are being moved around if not daily, then weekly, to make the most of the light

this pic was taken 18hrs after the 1st and you can see already the growth (lights out this time)

i've got to say, they seem to love it

Click to view attachment

so where are the roots ?

i've trimmed some of them down last night as they were getting too long even for my liking!

i could see possible trouble ahead of me, as i have to insert these cubes through holes just bigger than the cubes themselves in the corex which covers the flowering table

in the flowering table there is spreader mat and the actual film is only 1-2mm deep - so possible trouble with the roots not connecting to the nutrient

but that is my particular application and if i cud easily do it so i could put the corex on after the plants have been placed i don't think i would of

(i don't want to take this off topic about whether you should cut roots or not - ta)

i've taken some pics...

first one is showing the roots at the moment, as you can see the roots are still growing into the flow

Click to view attachment

these two pics show first the bottom of one of the plants that hasn't had its roots trimmed

Click to view attachment

and secondly, one that i have trimmed - you can see it straight along where i've cut on the right

Click to view attachment

is the flowering table the same size ?

no, its a larger nutriculture multi duct

they arnt going to produce much mate , with such little amounts of roots

they've been in here nearly a week, got another 3-4 weeks in here

if that was me id pot them into pots of clay pebbles and drip feed the pots for a few weeks , wont cost you much to do and youl get much better results

you can then just take the plant out the pot and onto your flowering table where they will bed into the spreader mate

if you leave them like that they will become root bound in the cubes , they will become stressed

roots do seem to develop faster in the dark...but I have held cutings in the way you are before for upto 2-3 weeks & they seem fine...I cover mine with some extra thick black & white stuff tho I jus cut it around all the plants like slits to slide round the stems hard to describe but not too hard to do using a stanley knife...

also I use a root enzyme to encourage a nice amount of roots by the time it coms to transplanting the bottom of the block usually has about 2-3mm thickness of roots on the bottom...not ideal but the roots do continue to grow once transplanted into final system even if plunged right into 1212..

they do go straight into 12/12 from here

a NFT multiduct table