 Welcome to Little Garden on the Prairies. Today's video is one of many series of videos that I'll be doing this indoor growing season on how to grow food indoors using crack key hydroponics as well as using the arrow garden and I-do system. In today's video I'm going to be showing you how to set up some lettuces and arugula using these rubber-made tubs and the crack key hydroponic method. So let's get started. Okay so it is time to get some lettuce planted up and I'm just getting my two rubber-made containers ready here to mix up my nutrients. These have been under the grow lights for a couple weeks now and you can see here got some roots coming sticking out on the bottom. So these are ready to get into some nutrients so they can really start growing. Some of them aren't quite peeking through the bottom yet but once you get them in that nutrient water they will really take off. So I have about approximately 10 liters of water in here so I've calculated out based on this combination of three nutrients from Holland Secret and based on the measurements on the back of the container I've calculated out 10 liters. So the measurements on the back here are based on a 4 liter or 1 gallon size container so using those calculations I've just figured out how much I need to put in 10 liters of water so I'm just going to mix that up. So you should always stir in between putting your nutrients in here. I am mixing this up at about the early vegetative stage according to this chart at the back here. So it's not super strong. I find that the lettuces don't need a really strong solution of nutrients so I'm going to keep it kind of at the mid point according to this chart. And with this amount of water in here you should never have to add any more. It will slowly drink it right down all the way till, you know, way past harvest. You'll be able to take cuttings from it several times before this container will be dry. I also like to add this into my crack key nutrients as well. This is called kelmag and so this adds a little extra calcium and magnesium to your plants and it's supposed to be good for fast-growing plants such as the lettuces here. So it's usually one milliliter per liter of water. This is 10 liters of water so that would be 10 milliliters. I'm only going to put about five. I like to keep everything pretty diluted just to start off. So I like to check my pH and my EC levels when I first mix up my solutions. I keep a little chart here of the main things that I grow. So for lettuce the pH should come out around 6 to 7 and the EC somewhere between 1.2 to 1.8. So I'm going to start with checking the pH level and you usually have to hold the meter in there for a good 30 seconds to get a good reading. It seems to be holding at about 6.4 so that's good. I find the pH usually comes out pretty good using the water I have here. It's treated water that, you know, is our drinking water here in our house and I usually just let it sit in these containers for 24 hours or more after I've filled them up. So both of these are coming out up 6.4, 6.3. So I like to write it down on my notes here. I'm going to have to try and keep a better charge here of my stuff. But for tonight I'll write it down and then this is the TDS and EC. This takes a reading of the PPM or the EC. I always just use the EC reading. I have a video on more in-depth on how to take these readings and adjust your nutrients accordingly if needed. So this one's coming out at 1.8 and this one is also sitting at about 1.7, 1.6. So that falls into the EC range here that you want to be at. So everything's pretty good right now. So we're ready to put the lettuces in. We'll put the caps on here and you want to make sure that your net pots are touching the water. See this one's got a nice long root so it's going to have no problem reaching the nutrients right away. So this is one of my arugulas and I'm just going to mix them up here a bit. This is the baby leaf. There's just a little bit of tiny roots popping through the bottom but I can see when I put it in here that it is reaching the water okay. So those roots will start drinking those nutrients right away. And we'll do a butter crunch. That's got some roots and this is the gourmet blend. So I'm pretty sure we should be able to be eating lettuce in you know in about a month or so. So it's gonna be great. So there we have probably enough lettuce to feed a family of four for several weeks throughout the winter so I'm going to get these under the lights now. So before you get these under the lights you want to make sure you are protecting the plants from getting algae which will compete with the plants for nutrients. So I use the hydrogen clay balls and just arrange them around the little seedlings and that will keep out the light and prevent algae. So that is how you get your lettuce to set up in the crack key hydroponic method. Stay tuned for more future videos to get updates on how the lettuce is doing as well as watching me set up more vegetables indoors all throughout the winter. Thanks for watching and happy gardening.