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How do rafts / floating beds work?

AJ Drew

AJ Drew

I sometimes use those small Styrofoam rafts to start seeds.  Works fine but the roots are now down below the floaters.  They can still get their O2 because the soil / roots is above the water.  I get how deep water culture works cause the O2 is provided by bubbles.  But the set ups where everything floats and there are no bubblers confuses me.  How do the roots get O2?
 
there is some amount of oxygen in all water.
rafts work for short term stuff like lettuce.
 
for commercial setups they oxygenate the stock tank and some use ozone 
 
You might want to try looking into tobacco production thru agricultural extensions like cornel, As Float systems are very common with tobacco and the extension sites put out tons of great info.
 
For the vegetables I grew on rafts this season, which were: bib lettuce, romaine lettuce, broccoli, spinach,
swiss chard and an Aji Lemon.
I used 3 air stones in each rafte set-up all were connected to a 20 watt air pump which ran 24/7.
I used some basic dry GH Nutrients.
The aji is still in my one raft table, fruiting very well.

The vegetables grew so fast and well, we couldnt keep up, so our friends and co-workers were supplied with their green leafies on
the regular.
 
2Goats said:
For the vegetables I grew on rafts this season, which were: bib lettuce, romaine lettuce, broccoli, spinach,
swiss chard and an Aji Lemon.
I used 3 air stones in each rafte set-up all were connected to a 20 watt air pump which ran 24/7.
I used some basic dry GH Nutrients.
The aji is still in my one raft table, fruiting very well.

The vegetables grew so fast and well, we couldnt keep up, so our friends and co-workers were supplied with their green leafies on
the regular.
Click to expand...
I would love to see some photos
 
To do a true floating raft, some things to be considered are the ability to ensure DI in the water or which method you plan on using to ensure DI. Theirs flooming, waterfall, air-pumps with air stones, foggers etc.

I built 2 "water tables" each about 80 gallons but with different dimensions. One shallower, for the lettuces, spinach. One deeper for the broccoli, swiss chard and Aji Lemon. The lettuces and spinach have a smaller, shallower rooting system so they shared one table as well they both liked the same low-med ec/ppm/tds value. The broccoli, swiss chard and Aji table was deeper due to these plants frowing much karger rooting systems and they worked well with their higher nutrients need together.

My tables werent floating though as I didnt want to use too much pump. I would have needed at least a 100 watt pump running 24/7 to supply the amount of DI the plants would need, or build tables that had a significant drop into another water feature for the falls to get the DI the plants needed. As my goal was to keep it simple, that wasnt an option.

So I built a couple tables similar to Kratky but with an air pump...water culture tables.

I did a phone dump a couple weeks ago and thought my pucs loaded up into my PC but I couldnt find them, I do have one pic of part of my lettuce table....hope it works as Im trying to do this from my phone.





https://i.imgur.com/rRI7LRhl.jpg
 
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