All peoples love greenery in their house or terrace. Many people have small kitchen garden and grow fruits, vegetables and flower for aesthetic look.
Some people are still using traditional method for their kitchen garden and some people are doing their kitchen garden with hydroponic method.
Hydroponic is simply the growing of plants without soil. Who loves leafy and short life of plant they are go with NFT channel and long time plant are grow in Dutch bucket.
Nutrient Film Technique (NFT) is a water culture technique, in this technique plant grow in water and LECA balls media with nutrient solution is continuously circulated.
The working of Nutrient Film Technique (NFT)
Items you need to build NFT channel
- Pre drilled holes channel at your requirement length
- A Reservoir
- A Motor
- Net pots
- Feeding pipe and drain pipe
- Growing media for supporting plant ( LECA balls, Coco coir)
Step – By – Step Method to use Nutrient Film Technique
- Firstly, you take pre drilled holes channels to hold pots
- We have to put the reservoir which is there under the NFT channels so that all the water in the channel can go to the reservoir.
- Feeding pipe is connected with the NFT channel to Reservoir Pump and is used to deliver nutrient solution in NFT channels
- Also connected drain pipe to the NFT channel so that it circulates the reservoir nutrient solution from the channel.
- Water Pump placed in the reservoir
By using this method you can easily make NFT Channels at your home.
Plant to grow
Many people have NFT hydroponic garden. You cannot combine all crops together because all plants have different requirement.
The Nutrient Film technique (NFT) is suitable for short period crop and herbs which has light weight and quickly harvested.
- Leafy to grow
- Mint
- Spinach
- Coriander
- Swiss chard
- Lettuce
- Bok Choy
- Celery
- Parsley
- Basil
- Vegetable to grow
- Tomato
- Chinese cabbage
- Broccoli
- Cauliflower
- Peppers
NFT is not for heavy crops because it has lots of support. Root of this plant are weak to hold net pots.
Plants not to grow
- Large vine crops
- Potatoes
- Radish
This type of crops are not grown by Nutrient Film Techniques. This crops have heavy root so its yields are low compression than Dutch bucket. You can grow exotic leafy veggies in your house. You can eat fresh and healthy veggies in your kitchen garden.
Advantage of Nutrient Film Techniques.
- No need of too much manpower
- In small space grow more veggies
- This system contain less water and less nutrient
- You easily checked any disease of plant in this channel and treat properly
Disadvantage of Nutrient Film Technique
- It is very sensitive to electric power outages because the roots dry very quickly
- It has high price
Conclusion
NFT Hydroponic system is best for kitchen gardening and commercial farming. It has low maintainers and in small place you grow more plant and get more yield.