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#kratkymethod

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Continued thread

Alright, let's size out a shelf for us.

Quick centering moment...

This does not and SHOULD NOT be perfect.

Don't worry about maximizing space. Don't worry about making it perfect. Don't worry about being precise. If you're really worried, start small and get a feel for it, then make something bigger the next go around.

Also, don't follow my instructions perfectly. I'm building for my space. But you build for your space. Make it cozy. Make it yours. Make it different. Or do exactly as I do and enjoy it, I don't care, it's your's! lol!

We're putting together a place to hold a bucket of water. It need not be complicated or stressful.

Okay!!! LETS DIVE IN!!! YAY!!!

A couple things to keep in mind while we're choosing a shelving system (system used LOOSELY here):
- How much *floor* space do you have. Whats a good-ish footprint. Width and Depth.
- How tall are your walls / how high up the wall you want to build. Height.
- How much space you want between your shelves. Space for the grow bin and space for the plant to grow above it.
- (IMPORTANT!!!) Ensuring it can handle the weight of all the bins filled with water.
- With that, ensure it can handle getting wet. This should be a utility shelf.

So we're growing in doors. You have limited space.

If you have virtually NO space. Then you can do a single-unit grow bin with a footprint of 6 inches by 6 inches, right? You can find a link to that build in my bio page. But if you have a couple of feet, you can build a shelf.

I like to grow out of 5 gallon plastic (it says its food safe... I dunno...) storage containers. Think the 5 gallon "Commander" storage containers found at various chain hardware stores. The dimensions for these are 16.4" x 12.3" x 8.6". I can fit three of these side by side in a roughly 3ft wide shelf. There are many other options, but consider what you want to grow out in a roughly 3ft by 2ft footprint shelf, right? You pick your grow bins, plastic, glass, metal - but we'll use these bins as the example moving forward.

Ok. That's my footprint. Roughly 3ft wide. 2ish ft in depth. That's what I want any given shelf footprint to roughly measure.

Looking around my house. I have a section of floor space that I can push my clean clothes pile out of the way and make room for 3x2 shelf. Heck. In a corner, I can put a 3x2 shelf facing one direction and squeeze another 3x2 shelf against the other wall and it makes a 5x3 L shape thingy... Cool. I'm doing that. Gonna put my lettuce wall in the corner.

My height is roughly 9ft.... holy shit, that's a tall ceiling. Okay... Anyhow, you sort out how tall your ceiling is. You don't have to build all the way up, right. You can build out along your wall if you want more shelving. But that gives you the max amount you can play with.

Now here's the big thing. You're going to want adjustable shelving. That's key. That lets you set up the distance between shelves to tailor it to your grow bins and plants.

I've found two options (let me know if you find more!):
1) Adjustable Wireframe Utility Shelves
2) Adjustable Wooden Storage Shelves

Frankly, the wireframe utility shelves are your best option. They are generally affordable. They are adjustable. You can attach all sorts of things to it with zip ties and the like (good for setting up your lights). They can hold a LOT of weight.... this is awesome. And the BIGGEST THING!!! While they are generally affordable when bought new, more importantly you can often find these used for cheap or even free via craigslist, facebook marketplace, or dumpster diving. They hold up for a long time and people give these away all the time. Go snag some for free.

But! I live with someone else. And they have veto'd it for the lettuce wall. They're cool with a wireframe shelf in a utility closet or garage, but not next to where we are eating. But they bring about an important point. They associate wireframe utility shelves with work (they were a baker several years ago). And that specifically looks too utilitarian to them. They want more wood and nature in their lives. So! I'm going with the second option.

The adjustable wooden storage shelves.

I can stain them. I can paint them. I can make them really pretty. ( I pointed out that I could make the wireframe pretty too!!! And you can!!! But I don't have personal negative vibes associated with wireframe... I must compromise! And I do so gladly and easily. :P )

Real quick aside and to that point... Aesthetics are REALLY important. You absolutely must make these things look pretty. And you can do so very simply and without a lot of cost. Decorate the shit out these shelves. Whether you're going for hygge, or solarpunk, or cottagecore, or for psychedelic jackson pollock splatterpaint. Make it pretty for you and your's. I'm tired of minimalism... no more millenial beige. You can do that.. I don't mind. But make it to where when you look at this shelf, you smile and your heart lifts and you breathe easier. Make your space a place of beauty.

Ok, back to shelves... The one bad thing that I've found for a lot of the adjustable wooden shelves though, is they CAN NOT hold a lot of weight. Like... the one I'm looking at right now, the shelves sit on little pegs that sit in a hole in the side wood. That's shit. Absolute shit. A little bit of water weight and those pegs will pop right out and down goes the shelving.

So, I'll have to buy some metal brackets to hold these shelves up. The wood of the shelf is good wood (not particle board that can separate if it gets wet) and it can hold weight. The side beams can hold weight. Wood is good in compression. Its just the joints that suck. Alright, cool. I'll use the pegs to get the selves in the right place and then I'll bracket them down.

For me, I'm going to go with the Ikea Ivar special: (not an ad). It's what I have used on my current kitchen garden shelf. And I've liked it so far.

Lastly, how many shelf sections (the flat space to hold your bins) do you need? This depends on how high you make the shelf and how much separation you want between your shelves.

For me, with my specific grow bins, I need around 1ft 10ish inches. That leaves enough room for the height of my bins. The height of the plants I'm growing here. And a little space for my LED grow light strips. With that and my room height, I can get 5 shelves in with the top shelf holding a grow bin and me attaching grow lights to my ceiling. I think my math maths... check me if I'm wrong...

Alright! So here are the dimensions for my shelving system. This is for me. Your's will be different. I'm getting two setups with five shelves each:
Height: 89inches
Width: 35inch (shelves are 33 inches themselves)
Depth: 20inches

I'll need to buy some simple brackets for the back. I'm going to buy some pretty brackets for the front. And some stain for futher prettiness.

That gives me five rows of six bins that grow five plants each.

So that's 150 heads of various leafy greens.

If I stagger it out with a new growth every week and if these plants mature at six weeks (first growth - four weeks second and maybe third growth), that means I can get a first growth of 25 plants each week on a continuing rotating schedule!

I can't eat all that lettuce and leafy greens.

I'm going to HAVE to give away a lot to my neighbors for free.

Continued thread

The Kratky Hydroponic Lettuce Wall will be comprised of a couple of things:

1) A utility shelf with adjustable shelving
2) Full spectrum LED "grow" light strips w/ timer
3) Grow bins

That's it.

The utility shelf can be broken down into the following requirements:
- DANGER!!! WARNING!!! IMPORTANT!!!: The shelves should be able to actually hold the weight of your grow bins. Water is heavy. Many shelves by themselves cannot support the weight of the water and will need support. So check the weight rating on the shelves you get. We'll continue to talk about this further as we built out the shelf.
- ANOTHER DANGER!!! WARNING!!! IMPORTANT!!!: You need a way to anchor your shelves to the wall SECURELY!!! You don't want this thing tipping over. You build it too high and it falls on your kid or dog or cat and they may die. Secure this to your wall. Especially the higher you build it.
- Shelves need to be adjustable to allow enough space for the bin to sit and for the plant to grow
- A way to attach the light strips to the shelf above the grow bin
- Bonus: Make it pretty

The Grow Light Strips can be broken into the following requirements:
- They should fit the length of the shelf you pick and be attachable to it in some way
- You should be able to control them with a timer (either on the light itself or set up with a wall socket timer
- Have a method of increasing the light or decreasing the light (easily add more light strips if needed, or adjust brightness, etc)
- Be full spectrum "grow" light. Note: it does not have to SAY grow light. Sometimes lights are like cakes. A regular white cake is cheap. Add the name "Wedding" to that same cake and it gets expensive. As long as the LED light strip generates enough light for a plant to eat, we're good.

The grow bins can be broken down into the following requirements:
- They should hold water.
- They should be fully opaque and not allow any light into the bin itself.
- They should hold some sort of grow medium to allow a plant to grow on top and provide access to the roots to get into the bin to access the nutrient water
- Bonus: Make them pretty

That's it.

No pumps.
No aerators.
No central reservoir.

Just a place to put a kratky bin and grow lettuce.

We'll tackle how to size and shop for a utility shelf next.

#solarPunk
#indoorGardening
#verticalFarming
#hydroponics
#kratky
#kratkyMethod
#vegetableGardening
#gardening
#postScarcity
#foodSecurity

Oh shit. Gonna build a lettuce wall.

Can't stop. Won't stop.

Design Goals
- Low effort / passive / automated (After initial build, only requires 30 mins of work a week to maintain)
- "Inexpensive" (measured in how quickly it pays for itself compared to shopping at grocery store)
- Small footprint for indoor spaces (uses vertical space as opposed to horizontal space)
- ADHD friendly (you dont have to keep monitoring it. Set and forget)
- Provides entire personal need of leafy greens in continuous fashion
- Provides excess of personal needs in order to continuously share freely with neighbors

(Follow this thread in the coming months to watch the buildout. I'll post design theory and application along. It'll be vendor/brand agnostic. And I'll post up methods to tailor it to your space.)

(Photo below of prototype. It works! Time to scale it.)

Continued thread

Alright! That's the build.

I've planted a couple of seeds directly into the bin. I'm not doing a separate seeding / germination / microgreen growing and then moving it over.

Let's see if it takes!

If it doesn't, I'll remove the rockwool, let it germinate and then move it back in after it's got an inch or so of roots.

I'll update in a couple of days if I see a sprout growing!

Continued thread

Pour water to the top, move it to the location you want, and then add the seeds to the top!

Note, the water might squeeze/squirt through the rockwall if you squeeze the bin. As such, I recommend adding the seeds last.

I plant two seeds at a time in hopes one of them sprouts. If both sprout, you can just remove one and let the other stay.

I'm using open-pollinated non-hybrid seeds so that they produce more seed in the future.

The idea is that one seed can produce a plant that produces thousands of seeds, so if you're running out of seeds, let one of your plants go to seed. Yay infinite seed hack!

Incorporate this with a local seed library and everyone has free seeds!!! Yay!!!

Continued thread

Next, attach the grow light to the back of the bin. This particular grow light cost about $10. (Though you can buy in 10x bulk on Alibaba and bring the cost down to $1 per light). Has a timer on it. And can extend up. Start it close to the opening and then extend it as the plant grows.

I just attached it to the back of the bin with duct tape.

Note it's USB powered, so you can plug it into the wall socket but you can also plug it into an external USB battery if you're doing a solar powered cell charge battery situation.

Continued thread

Next sort out how you're going to hold your plant in.

I like the whole pool noodle thing. (Cheers Mike VanDuzee!!!)

You can grow your seedlings or microgreens and transplant it over. I'm going to use rockwool. Rockwool costs about 7 cents per cube, so that's "expensive". You can use whatever method you like.

My goal in this test is to see if I can just plant the seed RIGHT in the grow bin without a separate need to germinate the seeds. This might not work. If it doesn't work, I'll seed/germinate it separately and then move it over. I'd still probably use rockwool as I know how to use that right now. Later on, I'll find a more sustainable method of growing.

I cut an inch ring out of a pool noodle (a whole pool noodle cost about a dollar at Lowes). I then cut a square out of the center. This fits the rockwool perfectly and let's a bit of the rockwool hang down into the water.

I then put the rockwool/pool noodle into the 2inch square. Fits perfectly.

Continued thread

Ok, the next couple of posts will be a guide on building this thing.

Note... this is a prototype build for testing. I don't know how well it works, if it all... I imagine the final builds will change a bit from this. If we get something working, then I'll document it in a more permanent location.

Okay!

So! We start with a gallon container:

  • It should be a gallon or a little over a gallon (3.75 to 4 litres)
  • Should be food safe plastic
  • It should be fully or as close to fully opaque as possible (so as to discourage algae growth)

I also want it to be VERY CHEAP!

So I'm using a protein-powder bin that I took out of the trash....

You could use a milk jug, or buy 1 gallon buckets for $1 off ali-baba. Or just ask your friend that drinks protein shakes a lot for bins that they just throw away. Big thing is... use what you got. We ain't going expensive here.

Once you have a bin, make a hole in it. I'm using a 2-inch circular hole drill bit.

See pics:

So I really want to grow tomatoes hydroponically indoors and I really want to try it with the Kratky method (no pumps, no aerators).

Problem is, you would need to provide the full amount of water needed and tomatoes take a lot of water, 50 to 80 gallons, depending.

I'm not going to have a 50 gallon water drum just to grow a single tomato plants. It takes up too much space AND its heavy (and can break things).

So I'm going to try a 5-gallon grow bucket, with a separate 5-gallon reservoir that is situated above the grow bucket. I'll connect the two with a tube so the water from the reservoir is gravity-fed into the grow bucket. I'll use a passive float-valve to ensure the grow bucket always maintains 2.5 gallons of water in it.

That should work right?

Here is some research on it: kratky.weebly.com/bigger-plant

I'm going to go grab a couple $3 5-gallon buckets from firehouse subs and get some of the other gear. I'll update this thread as I build it out.

Kratky Hydroponics ExplainedBigger plantsAs we move from smaller plants, like lettuce, to larger, fruiting plants, two major changes happen to the system. Reservoir size increases or a float valve is added. Nutrient needs change for...
Continued thread

Ok, had to make some emergency travel, so just now finally getting to move the seedlings over into the bin.

Note that there is some chlorosis (yellowing of the leaves) and some necrosis (leaves outright dying) - that's because I haven't given them any nutrients yet. Just been giving them water.

The bin has nutrients in it, so hopefully they can heal up. Moving forward, I (obviously) will need to move them over sooner... or just plant directly into the bins (I think I can do that with my set up...). And/or I can add some nutrients to the water just after the seeds start to sprout.

Rockwool with seedlings are being held in the holes by pool noodles.