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March 23, 2018 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
48:21
Food Rising Mini-Farm Grow Box full assembly instructions
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Congratulations on receiving your Food Rising Mini Farm Grow Box.
My name is Mike Adams, the Health Ranger.
I'm the developer of this particular rendition of this low-tech technology, originally based on the non-circulating hydroponics principles taught by Professor Bernard Kratke at the University of Hawaii.
I've updated the Kratke invention with 3D printable parts so you can print your own water level controlling float valve.
And you can assemble it using common parts such as a pencil eraser and a paper clip and so on.
I've also added the computer-controlled router manufacturing accuracy to the lids of these systems.
So now, in this video, I'm going to show you how to assemble your Mini Farm Grow Box.
It's very simple.
It's very straightforward.
You don't need any special tools.
I'll show you how to put it together and how to get it started.
So, let's get right to it.
Alright, let's start by identifying all the parts of your system, and then I'll show you how to put them together.
First, you have a lid.
Your lid might have six holes, it might have nine, it might have four.
Depends on what you ordered or what was donated to your school.
This is the same system that we sell and donate out, so it's an identical system whether you bought it or whether you got it donated to you as part of our donation effort to help teach children how to grow their own food.
So this is the lid.
The lid, by the way, is made out of HDPE. That's high-density polyethylene.
And it is made in America.
We buy it from the Buckhorn Company.
You can actually see their name on the lid.
And then we use a computer-controlled system, what's called a CNC router, to do precision cuts of these holes so they match the sizes of the net pots that are used to hold the plants that you're growing in this system.
So let's set the lid aside.
And show you what else is inside the system.
First, you have your ultra-clean super plant food.
These are the nutrients that your plants need, and these are specially formulated.
I did a tremendous amount of research in my lab using elemental analysis.
ICP-MS is the instrumentation.
It's a mass spec instrument, or inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry.
That can detect heavy metals and elements down to parts per billion.
So I designed this to be extremely low in toxic elements such as lead, cadmium, arsenic, mercury, and high in trace elements that are necessary for supporting healthy biology, which includes zinc and selenium,
magnesium obviously there's calcium and magnesium over here very pure so these are the nutrients that you will use to feed your plants and then your plants have the nutrients that can feed you and so ultimately these nutrients end up in your body and become part of your body right when you eat the plants that are grown with these nutrients that's why it's so important that these are very very clean very pure So set those aside.
You should have, by the way, one bag of each.
Right now this one says lettuce formula, but we obviously have different formulas available.
We have a strawberry formula and tomatoes and peppers and herbs and so on.
So depending on what you are ordering, that's what you're going to get.
But lettuce is the most common and lettuce is the easiest to grow.
So if you're just starting out, I encourage you to start with lettuce.
Now, you're going to have net pots.
These are what hold your plants.
And the plant roots come out through these net pots and extend into the water to grab the nutrients.
And I'm going to show you an example of that.
Here are some lettuce plants that I have grown using this system.
And as you can see, the roots are really fabulous.
Let me see if I can get another light on these.
These roots are incredibly healthy.
Actually, here.
Pull this out and show you.
That's what the roots look like.
Incredibly healthy.
And the net pot is designed just to allow the plant to sprout and to hold it while it actually grabs the air and the water and the nutrients that it needs to feed itself.
Okay, so you're going to have six of these net pots with this particular system because it's a six-hole lid.
Obviously, if you have a nine-hole lid, you're going to have nine net pots that come with the system.
The number of net pots and the size of the net pots will match the system.
Obviously, these go right in the holes like this, and they fit in perfectly because, again, it's a computer-controlled CNC router that makes these cuts.
Alright, let's move on and identify more parts of the system.
This is a commercial float valve.
This one's made by the Carrick Valve Company, and this is an aquarium float, an automatic Water leveling float valve that allows water to come in but then cuts it off once the water reaches a certain height.
Now we include this because it's very, very reliable and it doesn't leak.
So if you want the most reliability, you can install this float valve.
And it works great.
However, it has complex parts.
In other words, it has a metal nut.
It has a metal retaining pin.
And it has this plastic part which I think contains bisphenol A or BPA. And a lot of people don't want to have to rely on parts that come from China, for example, that are shipped across the ocean, especially when we have so many problems with the ports being shut down.
Some people don't want BPA in the plastic.
Some people want to be able to make their own to be more self-reliant.
So, that's why I designed These parts that are shipped in addition to this float valve, you're also getting a second float valve that's made from 3D printed parts.
And I'll explain how that works in just a minute.
But in this separate bag, you should have 10 different parts.
Let me go through them to explain what these parts are.
Some of the parts are very small.
So obviously there is a choking hazard.
If you're around very small children, be mindful of that.
Keep safety in mind.
But let's go over what these parts are.
This is the float adapter.
This is a 3D printed part.
It's printed using what's called additive manufacturing.
3D printers are robots.
They're manufacturing robots.
And I printed this myself on my 3D printing farm in Texas.
And I designed this part as well.
The geometry has a very specific purpose.
And I'll show you how that works.
But this is called the float adapter.
The function of this part is to fit over the lid of the vitamin bottle, which is the actual float of the system.
This is made out of HDPE also, high-density polyethylene.
The float adapter simply attaches right onto the lid.
This is the float device that replaces, or I should say mirrors the function of this float bulb That comes with the commercial floats.
So these two have the same function.
And I encourage you to experiment with this one.
Versus this one, try them both.
See which one you like the best.
If you have problems with one of them, you have a backup.
We include both of them for this purpose.
Let's continue with naming the parts.
This green part here is called the float valve receiver, and this receives the drip hose here on the nozzle like this.
It attaches like this, and it also has a hole On the bottom side, that I hope you can see, there's a hole there.
That hole gets covered by this eraser, which goes into the float adapter.
And once I put that eraser in like that, you now have a...
Well, I'll show you how to assemble this.
Let's continue with the parts, but I think you're starting to get the idea.
This is the float valve receiver nut.
This is the garden hose washer, and you can use almost any standard garden hose washer.
This one is made out of rubber.
Some are made out of vinyl.
This is a compression fitting.
I'll show you how to use that.
It's optional.
You may not need it, but we include it in case you do need it.
This is a standard paper clip that has been straightened out.
This functions as the hinge.
And you put the paper clip through these holes and you actually attach the float valve receiver with that.
I'll show you in a minute.
And that becomes the hinge to create the moving part of the float valve itself.
Finally, this is the hose clamp and this is a shut-off clamp.
It shuts off the water flow of the hose, the drip line.
It's very simple to use.
You simply bend the drip line like this and you slide it over like that and now you have shut off the water flow.
You'll need to use that when you change the plants Or you're attaching another bin, a grow box, to the system.
So there are times when you might want to shut off the water flow.
That is how you accomplish that.
Now you've got the drip line itself.
Approximately five feet of the drip line.
This is a standard quarter inch outside diameter.
Rain Bird brand is a common replacement for this hose if you need more.
It's.25 inches outside diameter and it's.17 inches inside diameter.
I don't have the millimeters for that because it's actually sold by inches instead of millimeters.
I actually design around millimeters so I can tell you that The dimensions of this eraser are about 7 millimeters diameter, 12 millimeters length, and you want it to stick out here about 4 to 5 millimeters.
That's the ideal dimension that you want.
Now, let's continue.
This is your coconut core, and this is grow medium that you use to fill The net pots.
And then you plant your plant seeds in this media.
Coconut core is a very renewable media.
It's earth friendly.
It's green, in other words.
And it's reusable.
So even after you grow six plants in this and you harvest those plants, you can reclaim this coconut core.
You can literally dry it out in the sun, which sanitizes it, and you can reuse it in the next batch.
It's actually a byproduct of the coconut processing industry that produces coconut milk and coconut food products, things like that.
Finally, you have a water reservoir.
This comes with your system.
This is a 3.5 gallon pail.
And you'll notice that there is a hole drilled into the pail.
The function of this pail is to provide the water and the nutrients.
You're going to actually put the nutrients, these nutrients, in this bucket in very small quantities.
Don't dump this whole bag in there.
You only need a small amount and I'll cover that again in another video.
Plant nutrition is very important.
This right here, just so you know, these two bags, this is enough nutrients to grow between 100 to 200 heads of lettuce.
So you only need a very small amount to grow six heads of lettuce or even nine, depending on what you're doing.
So the water reservoir must be placed higher than the level of the whole In your grow box bin.
Now this is the primary bin.
Let me show you where the hole is located.
You will notice that there is a hole of 15 millimeters diameter.
There, maybe you can see it better.
15 millimeter diameter hole drilled right here.
This hole is designed to hold the float valve and it fits both the commercial float valve as well as the 3D printed float valve.
They are both interchangeable in the same hole.
So, those are the parts.
Just to review very quickly, you've got the bin itself, you've got the lid, you've got the reservoir.
There's a lid for the reservoir as well.
You have the plant nutrients, the coconut core, the net pots, the commercial float valve, the 3D printed float valve with its accompanying parts, and you have about 5 feet of drip line.
Using these parts, we are going to now assemble a system that can grow food without using any electricity whatsoever.
And it's a system that you can print parts yourself by downloading the 3D printable parts from foodrising.org and assembling them into your own float valve.
So if you want to expand this system, you don't really need to go buy more of these.
You don't even need to buy more of these in particular.
You can use other containers.
You can use other buckets.
You may want to use a larger reservoir.
You can print your own parts.
And the additional parts that are needed for this are designed around commonly available items such as a pencil eraser, a paper clip, a garden hose washer, and a vitamin bottle.
So, they're very easy to find and print out yourself if you have a 3D printer and then make your own systems and grow your own food very inexpensively.
Obviously, if you want to purchase them all ready-made, you can buy them from us at SupplySource.com and we send you exactly what you see here.
So, let's get started on how to assemble this system.
Alright, to start with the assembly of this, let's start by putting the drip line into the water reservoir bucket.
To do this, you want to cut this at an angle, and I like these kind of cutters, but you can also use a pair of scissors.
You want to actually cut this at an angle, not a straight cut.
And I don't know if you can see this very well.
Let me see if I can show you.
You want this cut to be at an angle, right?
So it's easy to put through the hole here.
Because it's a pretty tight fit by design.
Then you want to push this drip line through the hole so that it appears on the inside, as you can see here.
There.
You see the drip line?
And that's it.
That's all there is to it.
There's no special connector or O-ring or washers or anything.
That right there, believe it or not, is a watertight Fitting.
You can fill this with water and you won't get any leaks out of here.
I mean, you might get a couple of drops right at the beginning, but it will seal itself very quickly and you won't get any additional water.
Next, we're going to install the float valve Into the bin itself.
So I'm going to show you how to install both of them.
First, let's start with the commercial float valve.
This is very simple, but it does have a compression fitting in there that actually compresses your drip line onto The threads here to make a watertight seal.
So to start with, you put this on your drip line first.
Next, you want to install this in the bin.
So you insert the threads through the bin hole, just like that.
And don't worry about the hole being larger than this thread cylinder.
It's actually okay.
Let me see.
There.
I'm trying to get good light so you can see that.
Then you want to put this nut on top of it and go ahead and cinch it up and make it a tight fit to secure it to the bin.
Now, inside the bin, it's important that you have this oriented correctly.
You want it to be vertical so that when the water level rises, the float goes up.
And that's what shuts off the water.
I know it's a little tricky to see.
Maybe that's better.
You want it to be oriented so that it goes up.
See that?
Obviously, this is a flotation device.
Oh, and if you want to adjust the angle of it, you can do that by loosening this nut, adjusting the angle, and that will allow more or less water in the system.
Right now, it's a little...
Well, it actually looks kind of perfect right now, the way it is.
Finally, you take a drip line and you insert it through this tube and you simply screw it on.
And make it tight.
And that's all there is to it.
You now have your system assembled.
You've got one water reservoir where the water and the nutrients go, and they are gravity-fed into this system with an automatic float valve that controls the water level.
That system is now complete.
It's a self-watering system.
It uses very little water, as little as 1 20th the water of conventional soil agriculture.
And you want to raise this up a little bit higher, about 6 inches higher, so that this bucket is higher than the level of this float.
That way you'll be able to feed, gravity feed all the water in this reservoir into this system over time.
And it will only use the water that it needs.
Now you might wonder, where is this water going?
Well, if you understand plant physiology, I'll grab another plant here to show you.
This plant, let's say, is about right here in the bin.
The bottom roots are grabbing water down below, and they are, of course, pulling the water up through capillary action through the root system into the plants themselves.
Now, plants breathe.
Plants have a respiration, and they transpire water into the air.
Now the amount of water that you use is dependent on a number of factors, but one of the largest factors is the humidity of the ambient air that you have around the plant.
The drier your air, the more water the plant is going to lose to the surrounding ambient air, which means it's going to pull more water off the bottom of the bin, which means it's going to need more water from the reservoir.
So these are some things to think about as you are controlling the nutrient mix with the water.
I'll explain how to do that in another video.
But you want to understand that plants are using water and losing water as part of normal plant physiology.
It's similar to you.
Every time you exhale, you lose water.
That's why in the winter, of course, you can see your own breath because that's actually water condensing in the cold air as you exhale.
Plants are also breathing.
Let's go ahead and change this out because I want to show you the alternative.
I want to show you the 3D printed valve.
So I'm going to remove this.
I'm going to save all the parts.
Alright, now I'm going to show you how to assemble the 3D printed float valve, which is a self-reliant replacement for the commercial float valve.
This is pretty exciting stuff.
I spent a lot of time designing this in a CAD system.
This is...
I went through at least a hundred variations of this design to try to make something that would be simple to print, which is very, very difficult because the 3D printing This technology is only in its infancy right now.
It's a very young technology.
It is tricky.
You don't ever get the same object twice.
Every object is different, like a snowflake.
So just because you design something perfectly in a piece of software doesn't mean that the print represents your design.
There's actually quite a lot of difference between what you design and what you get when you print.
So let me show you how to assemble this system.
It's very easy.
First, you take your garden hose washer and you simply put it over the float valve receiver.
And you'll notice that it fits over it just like that.
Very, very simple.
Now, I want you to notice, pick up the paper clip and notice that there is a hole in the foot of the receiver.
And it allows the receiver to pivot like that.
There.
That's a really important function here.
And because these parts have to move relative to each other in order to function as a float valve.
So next what we're going to do is we're going to thread this paper clip through the feet of the float valve adapter while also taking it through the foot of the float valve receiver.
And actually, let me give you the best orientation for you to see this.
Oh, you want to install the eraser first and then Put these parts together and feed the paperclip through, which should be pretty easy, and then you can bend the paperclip.
Now, you have a pivoting float valve that is 3D printed that you can make yourself at home or your school or your church or your community center and you'll notice that the the eraser here covers that hole it may be hard to see here but if you look at it yourself with your own object you'll see that it covers the hole now what happens is of course the laws of physics are always
present thank goodness and so the buoyancy of the float causes this to rise As the water rises, causing the eraser head to compress against the hole, which closes off the hole, stopping the flow, the gravity flow, of water coming in through this nozzle, and it's all mounted to the side of the bin, just like we did with the other valve.
So from a physics point of view, you have really two competing forces.
You have the mass of the water in the reservoir pushing down and creating force of the water through this nozzle.
And the amount of that force can be relatively easily calculated.
But then you have the force of the buoyancy of this bottle pushing the eraser against the hole Blocking the water trying to come in from gravity.
And I can tell you that the buoyancy force is many times stronger than the gravity force of the water, and that's why the water flow stops.
So, if you want to examine the physics of it, that's what's happening.
Now, to attach this to the bin, we do the same thing that we did with the commercial float valve.
We simply insert this through the hole.
Put on the securing nut, which goes right onto the threads.
Screws on.
And I want to encourage you to screw this on in a way that's very tight.
At the same time, you need to pay attention to the orientation of the float inside the bin, just like we did before.
We want this float to be mounted in a vertical format, so it's going up when the water level rises.
Obviously, if you have this orientation incorrect, it's not going to work, so you have to make sure that it moves up, the eraser blocks the hole when the water level gets higher.
There's also a rubber washer here that needs to be compressed against the wall fairly tightly in order to stop the leaks.
Otherwise you may get a slow leak.
A few drips here and there.
So I do want to encourage you, do not install this system Over something that could be damaged by water, such as a nice hardwood floor, for example.
This is a working greenhouse type of system, so there's going to be water You might get water from plant roots.
You might get some drips.
You might get a, who knows, maybe your cat chews on the line and then you get, you know, water coming out of the lines.
Or maybe you have mice that do that.
So make sure you install this in an area where water won't damage something if there is a leak.
Now, before we attach this drip line, we're going to put the compression fitting over it.
Oh, and by the way, I should mention that this is blue.
But yours may be a different color.
Just like the float adapter there is green because I was printing it with a green tea glass.
You may get a totally different color.
Yours may even be white.
So don't think that the color that you get is going to match the colors here.
They could be totally different.
So now it's really simple.
We attach this just by pushing on it.
And you may have to push very quite hard in order to get this.
You want it to go all the way on.
You should see it bulging a little bit around the nozzle, and that shows you you've got a tight fit.
If you want to make an even tighter fit, you can push this compression fitting on it, which may be very difficult to do.
You might not be able to even get it all the way on, but that's an extra tight fitting.
Your system is now constructed.
You're in great shape at this point.
Now then, your system is almost fully constructed.
The only other thing you need to do at this point is you need to take your coconut core, open the package, put it in another container or a bucket, and let it soak up some water.
And I want to show you what that looks like.
Here's that same brick with a little bit of water In this bucket, and as it absorbs water, it starts to crumble and it starts to make soil.
So you're going to need to add quite a bit of water.
You'll break it up and it'll make a soil-like substance.
So when you're planting seeds, you can take this soil, you can scoop it up into the net pots like this.
Pack it in there.
You put your seeds on top.
You put these in the lids.
And that is how you actually plant your plants.
Very, very simple.
Now let's talk about water because there are two things you need to know about watering this system.
First, you do need to put water in your reservoir.
You also need to put water in this bin when you first plant your plants.
So you're going to fill this up.
Most of the way to the top.
Just enough that the water comes up to about the bottom one-third of the net pot.
So when your net pots are sitting in there, they're actually touching the water.
The water is being absorbed up into the coconut core and feeding the plants.
So let me show you how to do that.
I'm going to fill it up.
We're also going to put water in the bin up to the level that we talked about.
Alright, this is about the right level of water in the bin.
Move this out of the way.
The way you can check it is to put the lid on.
Go ahead and put a net pot in and make sure that you can see some water in the bottom of the net pot, which in this case you can.
It's coming up to about right here.
So that's exactly what we want.
So when you fill these with coconut coir and you put your plants in them, the plants are going to be able to get just enough water but not too much, not so much that they're drowning.
This is the one that we actually put the coconut core in and put that there.
It's going to get nice and moist and support the sprouting of the plant seeds.
Now, I can't show you the other side of this, but you may get some dripping Off the other side, it's not uncommon because of the experimental nature of 3D printing.
Not every print is 100% watertight.
There can be a slow drip that can form when your water level is really high like this, even though the float valve is covering the hole.
There can be some water that seeps through the layers, the actual layers of the 3D object and slowly comes out the other side.
There are a couple of ways that you can deal with that.
One is you can use some common thread tape and you simply cover the threads of the float valve receiver with thread tape Before you install it or you can do it afterwards like now if you experience some dripping.
You can also, sometimes the float valve itself, let me show you this one, sometimes the nozzle did not print perfectly and you may need to clean up the edges of the nozzle, the small part here.
And you can do that with a nail file or a dremel tool, you know, rotary little grinder tool.
Or other kinds of tools.
You can clean up that nozzle to get a more secure fit with the irrigation drip hose.
Just so you know, this is not a design fault.
In the design software, it's the perfect shape, obviously, because that's just the geometric definition of the object.
But in the real world, 3D printing is still not an exact science.
So sometimes the parts are very, very successful.
Other times, they may not function perfectly until you do a little bit of alteration or smoothing of the object itself.
And that's why we include the commercial float valve as well as the experimental 3D printed float valve so that you can try both.
You can use whichever one you want.
And if you want to, you can also print these objects out yourself to see if you can print them more successfully than we could.
I can tell you the best filament to use for this is called T-Glass Polar White.
And it has the best properties.
It looks just like this.
For many of these parts, for example the float valve adapter, T-glass green or blue or clear is very functional, works perfectly.
But for the receiver piece itself, I strongly recommend that you print with T-glass polar white filament, which you can find at SupplySource.com.
And Tom and I co-developed this specifically for this application to make watertight parts that could print very easily at very low temperatures.
They could come off of the print surface reliably that did not have the warping, cracking, and fracturing of ABS filaments and yet had very, very strong printed strength after the print is finished.
In fact, these nozzles are very difficult to snap off and you can't break this part even if you try.
You could probably, you know, you could cut it.
I'm not going to ruin this part.
You could cut it if you wanted to, but it's very, very hard to break with your bare hands even if you're strong.
So that is, that's a perfect kind of filament.
And the best part is that this filament, you can make it yourself With a filament extruder, and you can use up to 12% recycled water bottles and plastic milk jugs made out of PET polymers.
And that way you can turn landfill into actual parts to grow food.
Now, I'm going to show you this example again of this lettuce.
Here comes the water.
But if you do this correctly, then you're going to get These results that look like this.
And it's gorgeous.
In fact, you may have noticed that if you go to a grocery store, you're not going to get lettuce that looks this fresh because this is alive.
It's not damaged.
You know, it doesn't look like it was run over by a truck on the way to your shopping cart.
It's beautiful lettuce.
It's nutrient dense.
If you were to take a leaf of this and analyze it in a mass spec laboratory, as I do, you would find that it has much, much higher levels of zinc and selenium, magnesium, iron, trace minerals like molybdenum, for example.
You'd find that the levels are much higher in this lettuce than in store-bought lettuce or even most organic lettuce products that you could buy anywhere.
This is quite literally the most nutritious food that you can grow yourself because of the nutrient mix that we have right here in this bag.
Remember, these nutrients go into the plants.
The plants turn nutrients into bioavailable minerals for human consumption.
You know, a lot of people think that you need calcium in your diet, but they're consuming products that are made with calcium carbonate, which is really just ground up limestone.
That's an inorganic form of calcium, and I believe that that's actually harmful to your body.
I think that calcium in plant form is what your body needs, not calcium from rocks.
The amazing thing about plants is they can take rocks, because this is calcium and magnesium, these are essentially ground up rocks, the plants can turn the rocks into bioavailable mineral nutrition for the human body that is incredibly healing.
Calcium and magnesium are two crucial macro minerals that your body needs.
Just for your heart to beat, you need calcium and magnesium.
For your muscles to work, for your brain to work, you need calcium and magnesium.
So these plants are providing the bioavailable organic form minerals or elements, you might say, that your body needs to function every second of every day.
If you don't get these nutrients from a healthy source, you begin to suffer symptoms.
And you begin to have health consequences, or your health begins to decline.
You may have suppressed immune function, or suppressed brain function, or suppressed liver function.
There are many, many things that can go wrong with your body if you don't have the right nutrients.
And because most people today are eating foods that are made from processed, nutrient-depleted foods, instead of nutrient-rich foods like this, people are nutrient deficient.
Even though they're getting plenty of calories, processed calories, Sugars and starches and processed oils, they are not getting the trace minerals and even the macro minerals that they need in the form that their body needs.
So when you grow this kind of food and you eat this kind of food, you're not just giving yourself food.
You're actually eating Mother Nature's medicine in the form of natural bioavailable minerals that can help prevent disease, prevent symptoms, And enhance your overall health and body function, brain function, skeletal system health and function, neurological system function, your respiratory system function.
Every system in your body needs the minerals that are found in these plants.
So recognize that this is worth more than gold.
This is not just a salad, like a salad buffet at the Golden Corral.
This is actually, because it's minerally enhanced and it's live, it's enzymatically active, this is more than food.
This is the medicine that Hippocrates Talked about when he said, let thy food be thy medicine.
This is what he's talking about.
And you can grow it yourself now for just pennies.
It's incredibly affordable.
Each one of these bunches of lettuce only costs about 10 cents worth of nutrients.
Imagine that.
For a dime, you can grow amazingly nutritious lettuce.
Now for the actual nutrient ratios, I'll give you just the summary of it here, but I encourage you to go to foodrising.org for more specific instructions on exactly how much of each nutrient to add to the reservoir and the grow bin.
But the overall idea is that you use them at about a one-to-one ratio.
To better understand the nutrient composition of your water, I encourage you to get one of these.
This is a TDS tester.
You can find these on Amazon.com for about $15, and they will show you the total dissolved solids and the electrical conductivity of your water.
They're very simple to use.
You press on, you hold the bottom end into your water, and it gives you a number.
In this case, it's telling me 90.
That means that my water here is about 90 parts per million of total dissolved solids.
That's considered very, very clean.
When you add nutrients to your water, you want the total number to end up being between 1200 and 1500 as a general rule for growing lettuce.
So you would add these nutrients and mix them up and let them dissolve until this number reads about, let's say 1400 would be a good General rule of thumb.
But I will publish more specific details on foodrising.org.
You can also search hydroponics bulletin boards for nutrient strategies and nutrient wisdom, you might say.
And this gets a little more complex when you're growing blooming plants such as tomatoes or strawberries or peppers.
There are higher nutrient needs during the bloom and fruiting cycles of plants versus just growing greens.
So to really nail that down, I encourage you to go to foodrising.org and look at the nutrient reference information that we have published there.
But for growing lettuce, it's super easy.
You can use about 1 to 1.
Aim for about 1,200 to 1,500 parts per million in your water.
Now keep in mind that the cleaner your water source to begin with, the better results you're going to have.
You might also want to have a pH test strip and test the pH of your water.
If your water is too alkaline, for example, if it has a pH of about, let's say, 7.6 or higher, like 8.0 or even 8.5, you need to bring that pH level down.
And the best way to do that is to add white vinegar to the water.
You should aim for a pH of definitely under 7.5.
So a pH of 7.2 would be great.
For this system.
If your water is too acidic, let's say the pH is too low, which means more acidic.
If it's 6.5, which is kind of unusual, but you can get that, then you want to bring it up.
And the way you do that is with baking soda.
To make it more alkaline, get it back in the range of, you know, 7.0 to 7.5, for example, is a great range for most plants.
pH affinity varies among plants.
Peppers, for example, like a little bit lower pH.
Blueberries, of course, like significantly lower pH, more acidic.
But for lettuce plants, anything in the range of 7.0 to 7.5 or even 7.6, 7.7 is going to be just fine for the lettuce plants.
You'll be able to get delicious, nutritious lettuce with almost no effort.
So that is how you get it done.
Enjoy growing with the Food Rising mini farm grow system.
Alright, that's how you put the system together.
And if you follow those instructions, you'll be growing your own food in no time.
It's amazing how easy it is to use this system and how quickly it begins producing highly nutritious food that you can enjoy on a daily basis.
But a couple of tips I'd like to leave you with in wrapping this up.
Number one, for the plant nutrients, the plant food, I want you to look for the instructions on foodrising.org.
They give you more detailed instructions to show you exactly how much nutrient mix to add to every gallon of water in your reservoir.
It also gives you more details about using nutrients for blooming plants such as tomatoes and strawberries and so on.
Obviously, you also want to use the right nutrient mix, the plant food, that matches your plants.
There's a lettuce mix that we offer at SupplySource.com.
There's also a tomato mix.
There is a plant food that specializes in herbs and peppers.
And there's a calcium magnesium formula there that all the plants need.
So make sure that you match your plants to get the best results.
Also, Make sure you have really high quality water going into this system.
If you have a question about the quality of your water, I encourage you to get a big Berkey water filter or an RO system or some kind of a water filter that can absorb or remove elements such as you might have too much calcium in your water for example if it's well water you might have impurities you might have chlorine you might have fluoride in your water you might have chemicals that have been added by the city that you want to remove so you have pure water for your plants in the same way
that you wouldn't want to put tap water in a fish aquarium because it would kill the fish if you put tap water in these systems the plants won't like it either so make sure you filter your water first Also, we will be updating this system.
We've got other additions and adaptations and new 3D printable parts coming out all year long.
So you can find those at foodrising.org.
Simply go to the website.
Every new part that I create using the CAD system, the 3D design, I'll be posting for free.
So all you gotta do is go there, download the part, Get your own 3D printer, or go together with a group of friends, or maybe your school might have a 3D printer.
Use the Teaglass filament to get the best printing results.
If you need the filament, you can purchase it at SupplySource.com.
And we've also developed a special filament for this purpose.
It's called Teaglass Polar White.
And it is extremely strong and very watertight.
You can find that at SupplySource.com also.
But remember, you don't have to 3D print any parts to use this system.
You can buy the automatic float valve on Amazon.com or other retailers.
You can use those.
You don't have to have a 3D printer to make this work.
But you do need a float valve in order to have the self-watering feature, in order to support what's called the bottom feeding irrigation configuration of this system.
So you do need a float valve.
If you don't have a float valve, It's a hassle because you have to add water manually every day and try to keep it at the same level.
That doesn't work and that's why I don't like to use that system.
I like to use the automatic float valve which is what all of my systems are designed around and that's why they work so well.
That's why I'm able to grow all this food with almost no effort even though I spend virtually zero time with these plants.
Once I plant them and I put the water and the nutrients in the reservoir Mother Nature takes over and it just produces amazing food, amazing medicine, high nutrient density, plant-based medicine and food for almost no cost.
And that is a real revolution.
That's the breakthrough that this system now gives you.
So please enjoy the system.
If you have any difficulties whatsoever, you can contact our support at SupplySource.com.
We'd love to have your feedback.
And finally, one more thing I'd like to offer you.
If you will send us a photograph of what you've grown using this system, and you can email it to photos at foodrising.org.
If we use your photograph on the website because we'd like to share the good news about all this, we will send you, free of charge, to you, Two pounds of our plant food fertilizer.
One pound of calcium magnesium and one pound of lettuce mix or another mix.
We'll send it to you at no charge so you can get free plant food just by sharing your photograph of what you're growing with this system.
So when you send us the photo, again the email address is photos, P-H-O-T-O-S, at foodrising.org.
Try to include Your classroom, if it's for a school or if it's for a church, include some of the people around it.
Show us what you're growing and tell us what city and state or country you're from so we can begin to help spread the word that people all over the world can grow food using this system.
And we'll be posting photos on foodrising.org.
You know we've donated hundreds of these systems so we expect to get some photos back and help spread the word about kids of all ages being able to enjoy growing their own food using the Food Rising Mini Farm Grow Box.
So we really look forward to receiving your photograph and we'd love to send you some free plant food just to say thank you For sharing your experience with us.
So again, if you have any troubles with the system, contact our support.
If you have a part that's not working correctly, we'll send you a replacement.
We want you to be really happy with the system.
And also then share with us the success that you're having with the system so we can post that on foodrising.org and help spread the word to others who may also be interested in doing the same thing.
Thank you for watching, and I really, really, genuinely thank you for your interest in this amazing, revolutionary food production system.
This has changed my life, and I believe that it can change yours, too.
It may even help sustain your life if there's a food shortage, a food collapse, a natural disaster where you can't get food, or who knows what could happen in our crazy world.
Now you know you can create your own food.
By yourself, without using any electricity and at very little cost.
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