It looks like you are
growing vertically. Is that a correct assumptions?

Here are my questions:

• Indoors or outdoors?
• Type of nutrientes and mixture?
• pH for current solution?

Indoors and vertical. I'm using Dyna Gro Pro Foliage which has a ph of 2.7 ish,, mixed with tap water in the 8 range which balances out to 6.5 ish when in the proper doses. As the ph lowers I add hydrated lime and potassium bicarbonate to bring the ph up.

Hawkeyext,

I have a lot more
questions. I also called up Dyno Gro (800-396-2476 U.S. only) and asked them
about the nutrient solutions. I ended up talking to Rafael who was great! I am
taking a side note to say that they are extremely helpful and can quickly
troubleshoot your system with you.

I noticed that a lot of
other growers were using a combination of their products; however, they said
that a lot of vertical growers just use the Dyna Gro Pro Foliage without any
issues. Here is another list of questions that I am going to dive into. Answer
as you can:

• What light are you
  using (e.g. HPS 600Wx1)? And distance from plants.
• Are the plants
  diminishing in size as the channel goes down?
• What EC are you
  running or PPM? Dyno Gro said that a 1.8 to 2.1 for what you are growing should
  be good.
• What is your water
  temp in reservoir and in the channel?
• How often do you
  change your reservoir?
• I noticed algae
  growth in the top tubes. What have you been doing to remedy this problem?

More pictures are
always welcome as well. Sometimes seeing can answer questions a lot faster than
just straight text.

Hey Jeremiah, good to know! Thanks. I'm using the Pro Foliage on my herbs and greens, and about to transition from that to their Bloom solution for my tomato plants as their starting to fruit.

Here are the answers to your questions:

1. I'm using the Apollo Horticulture 300w LED. It started about 2.5ft away from the plants and now it is 7 ft away.

2. Not necessarily. Not really with the basil, kale or arugula. It's hard to say with the cilantro and oregano because plants where added at the bottom later on.

3. Now my meter shows EC as a four digit number. Not sure if i'm supposed to read it as 3.2 or not? It's a cheap one which I think I'm regretting buying. Reviews said it came calibrated but it didn't come with any solution. Here is the readout:

PPM = 1590

Temp = 70.15 degrees

EC = 3191

4. I have a 54gallon reservoir filled halfway up. I change it out every two weeks.

5. I try to flush the tubes out with water but clearly not as well as I should.

Thanks for your help. Here are some pictures:

I have a setup that is very similar to yours with 8 of the towers and LED lights. I'm growing spinach in mine (in addition to other things) but have just set things up and don't have much experience with it yet. I'm still moving the lighting around and can't figure where the lights should go. Why did you move your lights so far away? I had the LED lights on the seedlings before putting them in the tower and just had them inches away from the plants. They grew great being that close so I put them that close after moving them to the towers and not much is happening. So I'm now trying them at about 18 inches.

Hi David,

I moved mine away because the cilantro was a bit dry. Despite having the LED so far away the basil, oregano, kale, and cilantro kept growing. It was just the arugula and spinach that never really took.

Do your plants get any natural light in addition to the LED?

Here's my two spinach plants. They've just been in the towers for 6 days so far. One has a lot of new grow in it's center and the other one hasn't done much at all. I started everything in rockwool but then discovered the rockwool gets totally crushed by the media getting them into the towers. I think that's why some of my plants haven't done well. There are three sweet basils below the spinach that are doing ok. I'm not sure how fast they should be growing. What do you start your plants in before moving them to the towers?

On my first run of seeds I did half in soil and half in a perlite/vermiculite mix. The ones in soil did slightly better so I've decided to stick with soil since then. I'd imagine if I watered the perlite/vermiculite ones with a liquid fertilizer maybe it would have balanced out. Everything starts out under fluorescent lights. The plants I move to pots (tomatoes, sweet peppers, etc) get flourescent light and my towers get the LED. I was using Bloomsdale Spinach seed from Peaceful Valley in CA. Compared to yours mine look very leggy. I was tempted to give up because several people at Bright Agrotech who make the towers say spinach is hard in them, but you've given me hope. Congrats on your batch doing well!

My basil took longer than normal to grow, which could be because I moved the light away. I did so in part because of the cilantro I mentioned before but also because I thought the basil was getting burned. It turns out it was a disease that I'm still reading up on now. Had to remove three full towers of basil. Ugh...

Any chance you have a video of the water entering the tower? I read 4 GPH is appropriate and I have an adjustable drip emitter but it doesn't say how much is coming out so I'm guessing at the moment.

My towers are part of their new greenwall system and shipped with 2 GPH pressure compensating emitters. So in the video you are supposedly seeing 2 GPH. I'm ending up with a few dry spots in my towers which seem to be caused by the drips not hitting the wicking strips at the top or the middle. I think something with a little more flow, like the 4 GPH you read about, might help make up for some of that and be about right. 2 GPH would be enough if the water actually hit every plant well.

Here's the spinach I'm growing. I didn't have a high success rate germinating the spinach. I think I started out trying to germinate 5 and ended up with those two.

I grew the starts in an Aerogarden 3 that I converted over to take rockwool cubes.

Hey David, thanks for sharing. That is incredibly helpful. Awhile back I was watching some videos on Bright's website and saw a black irrigation tube dangling with a steady stream of water coming out and going into a tower. It was probably 50x what you have going on, which is why mine are set much higher. Maybe they removed the emitter temporarily and I just got the wrong impression. I'm going to try dial mine back to 4-6gph.

I planted 12 spinach seeds and exactly 6 took. I've read it needs slightly cooler temperatures compared to a lot of other crops. Maybe since most people I talk to are growing it with other crops, we all are catering to the others more-so than the spinach in terms or temp.

Let me know how your tower set-up turns out. I was waiting for the Green Wall 2.0 to come out but got impatient and ended up making one of my own. I'm enjoying it so far, just need to fine-tune a few things as you can see.