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welcome back to who chose today on who chose I'm going to be showing you how to set up and grow these These are hydroponic tomatoes grown in the kraki style of Hydroponics which means set and
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forget passive and Powerless Hydroponics this technique represents a productive and easy way for people to enter into the hydroponic gardening space so here
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on huchos we try and balance the cheapest and most convenient methods of gardening with the most productive methods of gardening and hitting the sweet spot for all of those points is
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crack kiss hydroponic method of gardening not only is it easy simple and cheap but it is extremely productive now it's all well and good for me to set up a system like this beta bucket
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hydroponic system and plug it into a wall turn on the water and say Emma like this but not all of you may have access to Beto buckets irrigation tubing or
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even electricity so what I'm trying to do with this system is I'm trying to give you an option so that you don't need any of this stuff all you need is a container that you can cover and drop a
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plant into within which that plant can then grow into hydroponic nutrient and provide you with food for your family now it almost sounds too good to be true
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but the method works we saw it in my last crack Here video where we had some really impressive Roots we had some really impressive results but I think that my last two crack your videos have been misleading in the sense that
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they've both been under lights you do not need to have a crack key hydroponic system or any hydroponic system for that matter under LED lights We Can Do It
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Outdoors and it doesn't just need to be lettuce we can can grow any plant in any container given that you take into consideration the water and nutrient
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requirements of that plant so with that in mind let's choose our containers these are the containers that I'll be using today these are a 65 liter
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whole free storage container now they are recycled plastic if you have a problem with recycled plastic just find food grade containers that suit your preference all pots are made of recycled
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plastic and we are just growing plants the edible parts of the plants won't be touching this plastic so suit yourself do what you think is right I will be growing my plants in these recycled tubs the reason I have gone for 65 liter
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containers is because it's the largest container I could find they are rigid as well and it will help me in making what will be a lid and base for the plants to
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sit upon you can use Square tubs with lids if you like I just like the idea of a nice sturdy bucket because the forces are even on all sides of a circle and
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that will mean that this isn't going to warp and it will provide a nice solid base for my plant for the lids I'll just be using some ply that I have left over from doing the studio and I'll
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be cutting it out with a jigsaw now if you don't want to do this part just buy a container that already has a lid and then you will not need to make lids and there's our lid while we're here
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we're going to cut some holes I'm going to do two experiments in this crack could grow so in kratkey's journal article he says that you need between 25 and 40 liters to grow one kilogram of
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fruit on a tomato plant so I'm just going to do one tomato plant per bucket I'm going to do two methods we're going to do a 42 millimeter hole for one of them which I actually have a plan from an idea that I got in my last Karate Kid
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video where the ASCII actually spread the roots for me I'm going to put a 42 millimeter hole in two of them and then I'm also going to put a hole for a net
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pot a 150 millimeter net pot for the other two and we'll see the difference between the two methods find the center [Music] oh nice this is something you definitely
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don't particularly need to do you can cover this in plastic or something if you want to but I want to sterilize it as well as waterproof it so I'm actually going to burn these pieces of wood
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foreign foreign and for the 42 millimeter Lids there is actually one extra step I'm going to take the way that I'm going to set those Lids up is so that when we place our lid
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above the container below the lid hanging I'm going to have these sauces these sauces are going to be filled with growing media whatever growing meter you like however I'm going to opt four
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probably a cocoa mix maybe cocoa perlite maybe just cocoa this is going to allow the roots as they grow down into this container whilst the nutrient solution is still above the rim of this saucer
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the roots are going to expand out and then once the water drops below this saucer they will then shoot down this is going to allow the roots to utilize all
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of the space in the container rather than just forming underneath in a cone coming out from our net pot so I'm hoping here that we get an entire
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container of roots rather than just a column of roots we'll see how this pans out at the end of the growth so I'll just put some holes in our saucer so that
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the water can enter and The Roots can exit the saucer and there it is I'm now going to fill this up with grow media we can flip it upside down onto our lid
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we can attach it with screws into the lid and this is just a hydroponic grade of cocoa I'm just doing this to give the roots something to spread along and then after the nutrient solution drops below
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this this will do absolutely nothing for the plant then we're going to flip this upside down and do the exact same now some people might say this isn't true cracky probably right I don't think
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we'll need too many screws I'll probably do six now if you wanted a reusable substrate you could you might be able to use clay balls instead and then you could reuse this indefinitely and you could just reset it every time
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you lay down a new plant and then look at that there's our lid ready to plant into and we can just top it up with cocoa and I'm going to do another one of those
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and that is all the lids for all the containers made now I just have to fill up the nutrients now I'm actually not going to be mixing nutrients this time there's plenty of videos that I've got on how to mix nutrients I'm just going
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to fill in these four containers up with the nutrients that I have in my IBC which is a 1000 liter nutrient Reservoir it is 2.4 EC and 6ph Campbell's Diamond
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spec tea hydroponic nutrient that I've pre-mixed and runs all of the systems in my Greenhouse so I'm now going to fill it up with a hose with hydroponic nutrient and then we can start planting
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our plants foreign 's filling I can show you what I'm going to do with the net basket tops literally all I'm doing is filling these up with Clay balls
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like so and then I'll plant directly into these with my ready to go tomato seedlings which I started in my DIY propagation shelving system but they have been out in the greenhouse for a little bit because they've got a bit big
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hand they are actually thriving look at those they are fantastic seedlings so you give these clay balls a bit of a rinse and then once we've filled our buckets
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we can pop our tops on and start planting it's actually the quiet times between takes where I'm just sitting in the garden appreciating the running water and the
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plants and looking forward to filming the next segment that I get all my enjoyment in fact the whole process is enjoyment but when you're in a flow State doing the videos time passes so quickly but it's nice to just sit back
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and take it all in sun setting the insects are out it's a beautiful temperature summer's coming and here they are
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chaos one and Chaos 2. hi what are you guys up to you could sense the piece and you wanted to come disrupt I think I'm going to make a cup of tea come on
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okay so theoretically this should all be the same water so we should get a nice across the board the pH is 5.7 and the mill Siemens 3.41 okay so why
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that last one fills up we're going to plant out the other three so I'm just going to lay over the tops of
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our buckets like so so for the first two with our net pots we're just going to drop a net pot in with half of our hydrogen already filled this is probably going to overflow at some
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like so and then we can just drop in our plants just gonna empty our water a little bit we can choose our tomatoes
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one fill around and with these ones I'm just going to drop the top on let the water fill into the base and you can see there the water is in
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the cocoa and we're just going to drop our seedling straight through the hole and into that hole I'm just going to start packing cocoa because it's a bit sparse in there and I'll just drop that
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in the hole as well I'll just pack around that as well and that's a cracky setup I'm now going to set up the time lapse cameras and we'll see how they grow
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[Music] foreign [Music] [Music]
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[Music] relaxing foreign [Music]
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[Music] [Music] thank you [Music]
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foreign [Music]
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and will you have a look at that result now there are a couple of problems which I'll outline but I am overall really impressed with the way that this technique handled large plants like
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tomatoes these large seedlings that I started with in this crack Key System were started on the 17th of November and it is now the 17th of January that means
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that these plants have taken exactly two months to grow in my experience that is a really quick tomato grow all of our plants have fruit on them and are about to start ripening and they're all
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extremely healthy now it's not really a fair comparison between the two different techniques the one that spreads the roots and the one that doesn't because they are different
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varieties of tomatoes which I did not realize at the time we've got three heirloom varieties that way and we've got a more traditional store tomato here I believe these are both Rogue to mermaid and I've got a banana tomato at
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the end in a minute I'm going to pull out all of the tomatoes and we'll have a look at their root systems so first I just want to discuss the cracked key technique how it works and why it works
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crack key Hydroponics is based on the premise that the plant will grow roots into a hydroponic nutrient and utilize the nutrient as it grows as the nutrient
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is utilized as we can see in the time lapse of the roots in our system the nutrient level drops and the plants Roots chase the nutrient down falling
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with gravity now a major consideration in hydroponic systems is oxygen the crack Key System would seem counter-intuitive because you would think that sitting water didn't contain
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much oxygen the way that this system actually provides oxygen to the plants is that the roots once they are exposed to the air above the nutrient solution which is actually a moist air
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environment so the roots are able to extract oxygen from the air as the water and nutrient level drops this creates a dual root Zone in which the top half of
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the roots is used for the plants to breathe especially the roots just above the water where there is a moist air zone and The Roots below the water level are what we call hydroponic Roots which
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are used to draw up water and nutrients okay so let's now have a look at all the other roots and compare the two techniques so these are the two with the net basket I'm just going to pull that
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up pull it up and show you the roots and as you can see they kind of go down in a column but they have spread out a little so I'm I'm actually not too unhappy with this technique it doesn't
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seem to have inhibited the plant growth at all lift up the next one there we go and this one's actually used notably less water than the last one which is interesting as the other one
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actually has a heavier set of fruit so as you can see there's about three or four inches of water in that one and in this bucket
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we have way more so in this bucket we're looking at like six inches of water big difference in how much those two plants utilize the nutrient and you can see it in the growth of the
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plant and the fruit set this one has a ton of fruit all over it whereas I've only got a fruit one two large fruit on this
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heirloom variety and now the ones I'm really interested in this is the technique that had the tray underneath with the cocoa allowing the roots to spread out and drop down so as
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we lift these guys well that one actually didn't really utilize the whole of that tray which is interesting we've got about four inches
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of liquid left in there and remember these are 65 liter tubs there's about 15 liters left now this is the largest plant I expect it to have the largest roots and also to have used the most
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water so let's lift it up oh yeah look at that it's taken up basically the whole container but this is what I wanted to happen you can see how the roots are holding the lower Roots out and allowing them to use up
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the nutrient across a larger surface area on the water and I'd actually argue you can see the size of the roots it directly correlates to the size of the plant because more Roots equals more
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fruits when you can get this method to work I do think this is a good method however I also think that you can achieve this method by just putting maybe some kind of netting over the top
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of the net basket that comes out to each side rather than having to go through all of this so there are two major issues with this grow the banana tomato at the end has Blossom and rot and that
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is a Calcium deficiency within the nutrient solution so the way that I would fix this is that I would add in extra calcium to the nutrient or just change the nutrient completely the
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second problem I've been having is a rodent problem as the summer winds up everything is drying out and there's not much food around the greenhouse in the bush so they're all coming to the
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greenhouse and they've been eating my tomatoes and I don't like to use rodent bait because I have the two dogs and I love them a lot and I do not want to risk their lives for the sake of my
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Greenhouse I have been trapping them but there's only so much you can do and they've been getting into the greenhouse and decimating not just these Tomatoes but also my tomatoes in the bado bucket
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system although they seem to be leaving the jalapenos alone and you can do as much as you like to keep out pests with shade cloth and preventative barriers but some are always going to get in where we would go from here with these
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systems is you would either drain the nutrient out and top it up halfway so that you're leaving some of the roots exposed and continue doing this for the lifetime of the plant or we could add in
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a float valve and this is the style of float valve you would use I'll leave a link in the description to where you can get these and the reason we would use these is because we don't want to use
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the traditional ball float style within a cracky system because the roots can actually take over the bowl and hold it down causing the nutrient solution that's coming in to perpetually fill an
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overflow this is protected the float is within this protective case and you would install it onto a poly Riser like this and then we could then have it
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dropped down into our crack Key System you just make sure that you purchase the Riser there's the appropriate height for the system and then you would drill a hole within the top of your crack key system and attach it to a reservoir
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which is above the crack key system and this would enable a permanent refilling of your crack key hydroponic system this is the more complex way of keeping them filled up and in the future I will be
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exploring infinite crack key with you in more depth obviously you can get away without the float valve just by topping up manually and that is absolutely fine
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if you choose that option well I hope you enjoyed this episode of who chose happy hydroponicing and I'll see you next time
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on who chose
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