Hello all,
I’m thinking of what I want to do for my outdoor veggie garden this year.
I am pondering building an NFT system for lettuce and a dwc system for peppers.
Curious if anyone has had success running hydro systems outside. I’m still looking for parts for the build. Appercaite any insights.
I did tomatoes in dwc outside using miracle grow but got major mites…
I just like growing in hydro.
DWC will work outdoors but you might have to deal with the DWC water getting hot when it gets 90+ degrees outside…
I ran a plant in hydro outside. I think I changed out the solution every week, I had an air pump bubbling and siring up the water a bit. The second on the right was hydro.
however you end up doing it, put at least half of your res underground to help keep it cool. the deeper you can get it, the better. and make sure all your electrical connections are weather proofed and critter proofed
i would probably go sterile res dwc with those brute trashcans buried in the ground and hooked up to a top off tank via float valves, and id try to find a big enough air pump to handle all of them by itself
I did an NFT gutter system for lettuce last summer. Started em inside in rockwool cubes, put into netpots and into the gutter system a few weeks later. 8 different types of lettuce. Some will need support in a 2" netpot. I used 3"x4" gutters, a commander XL tote small pump I had here and 3/4" and 1/4" poly line. Gotta say, it worked fairly well with minimal input on my part 
For bigger air pumps look at pond air pumps like Alita 6A. The Alita 15 might be more than you need. Expensive, but made to drive deeper airstones.
Was thinking nft for lettuce. I want to produce enough that we have some daily. Rain gutter is a good idea. Was thinking of using pvc, but I’ll price compare!
Do you think an air pump is needed or will the fall back to the rez be enough? How did you manage to run the air pump outside? Is it meant for outside use?
