what works best for growing lettuce,nft,or dwc.

[Craig Hannaford]

Hey A.G.C. friends I've almost got my system built and interested in growing lettuce.So like to know what method works best,the NFT,or DWC.Please comment for your opinion will be apreciated.Thank you.

[Mark]

I am using an NFT setup for my lettuce and it is working very well for me. I have seen other peope use the DWC system and it also seems to work well. I guess it depend on how you set up your system. I am running my water through the lettuce pipe before using the same water to fill my flood and drain plant bed, then the water that exits the plant bed runs through another pipe that has lettuce in it back to the fish tank.

[Jonathan Kadish NYC AA Chair]

Mark, do you have any kind of filtration before the NFT? When I have seen that done in the past without filtration it leads to a build up of organic material in the NFT. Typically if you want to do NFT in an aquaponics set up you need some way to get all the solids out, including the fine solids, but this is also true with DWC too.

Mark said:

I am using an NFT setup for my lettuce and it is working very well for me. I have seen other peope use the DWC system and it also seems to work well. I guess it depend on how you set up your system. I am running my water through the lettuce pipe before using the same water to fill my flood and drain plant bed, then the water that exits the plant bed runs through another pipe that has lettuce in it back to the fish tank.

[Mark]

The water is pulled from the fish tank into a swirl filter, The pump is at the top of the 30 gallon swirl filter and has a sponge filter built into the pump. I just added the lettuce tube on the exit side of the plant box but all seems to be working well . I have a couple of pictures of the system. The rock in front of the fish tank is where the swirl filter and pump are located. The water enters at the top lettuce tubes and then gravity runs to the plant bed that uses a bell siphon that exits through the bottom lettuce tube. The system uses only one pump and one air pump.

[George]

Well Mark, the plants look healthy.

[Mark]

I have to work now on my timing. I can grow year round here, I need to keep planting seeds. I am hoping to get it figured out so that I can harvest at least some of my plants weekly all year long.

George said:

Well Mark, the plants look healthy.

[Craig Hannaford]

Ill be glad when I can harvest some vegestables with my system.Reap from the work I've done...lol