2023 our new gardening adventure

[jjannie]

It is crazy. No, not really, it's 1 inch PVC tubing going up the center. The nutrients do create some discolored build up and I could also see inside and could see areas where water may sit longer that there is a little of the build up there. The drip holes that it 'rains' from that I could see do not looked plugged at all. Part of the 4-6 month reset process, you do a major cleaning/scrubbing. At that time, you can set aside any growing plants you want to keep in a dishpan to put them back in and/or could restart any seeds as well. 

I pulled out a few of the grow baskets just to see if any of them had any roots coming out the bottoms yet and I could see many were already 2-4 inches long. So come maintenance day on Sunday I'll be trimming them a little bit. 

As expected, the ph test of today was back to an 8.5. Our replacement ph Down has shipped so it may not be very long until it arrives. Tomorrow, I'll give it the last dose of treatment for what it's worth.

I know on my drip irrigation system, they get clogged after a season and have to be flushed and the emitters have to occasional be replaced, so I assumed your system would be the same, especially with the hard water you have there. What sort of tester do you use to check the PH in the water?

That is true. We have had to soaked ours in lime away or CLR to clean them out. 

The test kit they provide with unit - uses 5ml of your reservoir water and 5 drops of testing liquid in the kits, give a little shake to be sure its mixed in well.  Then you compare your result color to a color chart provided - so it's not complicated at all. The rain holes are maybe about a 1/4 inch in size so my guess is they should clog up too badly before you do your reset. When we do ours, I think I'll likely put some lime away/CLR into a spray bottle so I can easily coat areas that have any build up. 

Jeff has a similar testing kit for his aquarium, but his chart doesn't even go up to an 8.5 to compare them. We did compare readings once we had our Farmstand within the range he could get a reading and they turned out with the about same results.