 Welcome to another special edition of the Private Property Farming podcast, The Gardening Series in Partnership with Home Growers. And today we have a live demonstration of an NFT hydroponic system, a 60 pocket to be specific, which CAS and GIFT is going to be assembling for us. So for any of you that is wishing to purchase an NFT hydroponic system to start growing your own food at home, this one is for you where you actually get to see how the system works and most importantly how it's installed. But that will all be covered by Home Growers. So joining me today is CAS and GIFT. Gentlemen, how are you doing? Lovely to see you again, Bali. Thanks for coming through again. Likewise. GIFT. Great. CAS. Let's get the system started. I mean, you are going to be installing it for us. And I think it's important to mention that when a customer does buy the NFT hydroponic system, this six pocket one specifically, you will install it for them. Is that correct? That's correct. So this is an incredible system. This is the 60 pocket NFT hydroponic system. Okay. Now the beauty about Home Growers again, and this is where it all comes together, is Home Growers is always for the home grower. We come and we set the entire system up as GIFT is displaying right now and showing you exactly the magic, what goes down in terms of an NFT system. So we supply the entire system, set it up with all the nutrients, with the reservoir, and we'll go through all of it just now, the reservoir, the nutrients, the net cups, the clay pebbles and the vegetables. So you don't get your hands dirty, you don't, everything just comes together for you. And it really is a very simple system. You can see it's almost like Lego or a Makano set. And I don't know if I can say that because they're all registered names, but nonetheless, is really like putting, you know, bits and pieces of a puzzle together, but it is so straightforward. And it makes life easier for the home grower to get growing quickly. And it really is special. And remember from the first time you popped in and you visited us, and I showed you the channels and we opened them up and we showed you the flow. And when we talk around hydroponics, no, the hydro means water and it really means growing in water. But the beauty around all of that is the NFT, nutrient-foam technique. So you don't get a massive gushing flow of water that's going to be flying through those channels into the reservoir. It's a flow, it's a foam. There's nutrients being carried through by the water to the rooting system of those plants. And that's what happens in this hydroponic system. So we'll get into more details once we've got the whole thing set up. But I'm kind of giving a bit of an intro as GIFT is busy putting it all together. And as we described a little bit about the system, you can see we've almost done it already and putting it together. It really is something very, very special. So we're almost there. You can see you've got those little wing mats that you got and we put those in and GIFT is spinning them through and we are making sure that this is soundly put together. The structure is in place. And we will then be ready to lay down the channels, which will then be connected with the pipes, which will be then connected into the reservoir and then we will start the process of filling it up, filling it up with the water, filling it up with nutrients and filling it up with the plants in the net cups. And we're going to show you everything each step of the way and it really is fun. It really is exciting. Okay. So let's just see how GIFT assembles this. And then I think it will be fair enough to then start asking questions once the system is installed about the system. Because as I'm thinking now, yes, you've explained NFT. Now we need to know what a 60-pocket mean and just the different levels. So let's just maybe wait for GIFT to complete this. And yeah, we could go in more depth with regards to the technicalities of how the system works. Absolutely. So GIFT has installed this. It looks very fancy and quite sturdy to be honest. But firstly, before we go into the technicalities, explain to us what a 60-pocket means. Is it because it has 60 holes? I don't know. And what type of crops can one grow in this particular structure? Well, good question. So let's first start. The 60-pocket is exactly that. Okay. So these are the holes. And they just call it 60-pockets. And it's got channels. So these white pieces that you see here, these are called channels. And the net cups is really what goes into the holes. And that's kind of where you're going to end up growing your herbs and your vegetables. And what happens is the water will pump up and will go through the process and you'll see how it all comes together. But so let me show you. So I kept a couple of these aside so I can at least give you an example. So that's your net cup. And you get different sizes of net cups. So the net cups will get filled with clay pebbles, which I'll show you now. I kept some of those aside as well. So what happens is the clay pebbles go inside there and it gives the plant support. It absorbs nutrients. It absorbs water. So it sustains the root system. It sustains the root systems very, very well and keeps them hydrated in times of need when there is, let's say, even load shedding. So a lot of people will say, and load shedding is important, which we live through it. What happens is there's no electricity, but what happens is the clay pebbles hold a lot of moisture in it and the root systems, once the plant actually develops, it creates its own buffering and it creates its own reservoir or damming up the water. So it keeps a lot of water in the actual channels, which is a big thing. So these clay rods essentially serve as soil. That's right. That's correct. Right. So you put in the rocks, you put in the cup, inside the system and then you put in your plant and then where does the water come in? Because this is a hydroponic system. Perfect. So we have a reservoir. So we'll switch it on in a few minutes and we'll show you the whole thing works. Okay. But you've got a reservoir that's filled with water and nutrients and we add the nutrients in. The water pumps up into this, through this pipe here and you'll see the water running through this, the channel and gravity will pull it down. So it'll go down that white pipe and come across all the way here and then drop down through that pipe by gravity, make its way through there and down and then all the way down back into the reservoir and the water carries on. So it's a complete secular system that runs its way right through and pulls the nutrients through. And that's why you don't expect to have a dam full of water like that pumping through here. It's a film. It's a flow of water. As long as it's enough water to carry the nutrients, that's where the nutrient film technique, just a form of water that's actually carrying those nutrients. And the clay pebbles will absorb that water as well and it's like a sponge and will hold all of that in. That's why when you look at the clay pebbles to start, they're nice and brown. Yes. After a few weeks of it you'll see they're covered in a white coat and it's a white film and that is all the dry nutrients as it's dried up. It's on the actual stones. The stones always hold nutrients. Right. So I like the fact that you keep referring to this word nutrients, nutrients. What type of nutrients can one put in that reservoir? And you know, because when I think of it from a commercial farming perspective, I'm thinking fertilizers, right, foliar feed, you know. So what type of nutrients would one want to or have to put in through that reservoir? So what we try and do with home growers, remember the whole thing here is about making it easy for people to work with. Because a lot of people, this is this home, this whole domestic farming and this whole home-growing concept is so new that people don't understand. Like the one thing, it's a good question as well, because how often do you put nutrients in? Do you put it in every single day? No. You don't. You put it in and say, you should know what your pH levels are, your ECE nutrient levels are. Do you know exactly how rich the water is in terms of its nutrient volume? Got it. The particles per million. So you need to know that in terms of not overfeeding because you'll end up burning the crop. And so that's one of the most important things that one needs to know. But in terms of the nutrients, you get many different varieties of nutrients. You get the liquid state, which you need to know exactly how much to put in. Then you obviously got to effectively check and test your levels, put the liquid nutrients into the reservoir and that will pump itself through. Or use a dry nutrient, which is what we highly prefer, because we've already got it calibrated. So when you come to home growers, we give you the kit, we've marked it for you. You pour the dry nutrients in, you put water in, you make it into a soluble solution and you pour it into a reservoir and you only do that once every three weeks. And that's all you do. So you know, whilst you're drying it, you may fill up your reservoir on a more regular basis because what happens as some of the hits and it's hot, just like you and I, we get thirsty, we drink a lot more. The plants do the same. You know, some people want to say, I want to feed you and say, do you drink more when it's a hot day? I'll push you. The plants are no different. They're both like my cells. They're sitting in a structure, living there. So the same applies with plants. You have to understand that. But just because you're putting water in, let's say twice a week or three times a week, doesn't mean that you've got to put in nutrients two, three times a week. Remember, the clay pebbles, as I explained earlier, will hold a lot of the nutrient value in those pebbles themselves. So although that the water's been replaced in the channel, and there's still nutrients stuck in those little pebbles, it's going to extract those from the pebbles into the plants. And you only have to replace the nutrients once every three weeks or so. Got it. And because this is a vertical structure, I presume that your type of crop that you'll be planting will be quite limited. So you can't grow a crop that will grow vertically. Maybe it has to be just halfway in terms of height. Is that correct? Technically, no. Not true. So a lot of people are quite surprised. They look at this and they go, well, you can't plant much in there. We've grown onions to that size in here. We've grown cabbages, big cabbage heads like this in here. We've got beet treats growing here. We've got lettuces like you cannot believe. Tomatoes to bush that size of big, big plum tomatoes. So what you've got to do is the whole trick here is about planting. So you don't look at a system like this and take all your vegetables, and you just got plonk them anyway. Ideally, what one should do is actually plant. So anything that's going to grow quite high and big and bushy and so on, you'd maybe use the top section. What we like to do as well, and the lovely thing about a hydroponic stand structure like this, you can use natural growth string. So you can toss string on, and you can actually create a barrier or a structure to hold the plant. So the plant has got some support. So you're dealing with it in a very effective manner. What also happens is the root system, as the root system grows, and you'll see, and I showed you the last time when you first came to visit us, and I opened this up. And this was lovely about the system, because you can clip these open, and you can see exactly what is going on inside the reservoir, sort of the channels. So if you have to maintain roots and clip and cut and do whatever, you can do it with these, which is really, really special. And you'll see it, for example, tomatoes, how the roots grow. Now, tomatoes are naughty, you know, we say those are the naughty. If you look at vegetables, they're the naughty as vegetables on the planet, because they steal all the nutrients. The nutrients. So although this is probably the best place to put them, because it's right on the top, and you can toss string and they grow, your first base of nutrients coming up is over here. So if you're putting your tomatoes in the top section here, they're the first guys that are gonna get the nutrients, and they are gonna suck the nutrients out of the water, and then you find out the lower level crops that end up suffering, because they don't get all the rich nutrients. These guys are flying and those guys are not flying. So you gotta be clever in terms of how you actually put it together, but the nice thing about this, you learn. It's learning and obviously having farmed, it's also always monitoring the EC and the pH of the water. So your customer comes to home growers and they purchase this NFT hydro 60 pocket system. Home growers will install it for the customer, and then it's up to the customer to say, what is it that I plant? And like I said, it's thinking about all those technicalities, about the vertical crops at the top, the shorter crops at the bottom. So is this part of home growers value add when a customer purchases this NFT hydro system? So again, one thing that we've got right in home growers, we've tried to make every one of our solutions and our samples, the solution will be a little bit better. We've tried to make every single one of our solutions and samples incredibly easy to work with. We're trying to simplify the process. So what happens is when you walk in and you say, Cass, wherever you're dealing with, I like the 60 pocket NFT. I remember we've got different sizes, you've got a 28, you've got a 60, you've got an 90, you've got a 250, you've got a big, we've got different systems, right? But let's say this is the one, you walk in and say, this is what I want. What do I get? Let's see what you get. You get the full system. You get all the vegetables. You get all the clay pebbles. You get all the net cups. You get it set up. You get it delivered and set up at home or at your office. You just sit there and you watch and we do the whole thing for you. So there's nothing you have to do. Unfortunately for now, we can only do that in Johannesburg, Pretoria, in the Khartin region. It's the only thing we can do for now in terms of if it's far flung regions like in the KZN or Eastern Cape or Western Cape and so on, unfortunately, we don't have a presence there as yet. We do ship all over the country. So we pack it up with all the instructions. We've got a seven-day a week line, which is there to help. Only thing which we don't send in that case will be the fresh vegetables and herbs because the time it gets, they get damaged or they're dead. But everything else, we supply lock, stock and barrel. There's not a cent more to be spent. So when you see the system and the price is given to you, everything, you don't have to go around shopping, looking, trying to do, understand it. We teach you absolutely everything. That's what makes this experience so pleasurable. Well, that's quite reassuring to hear because, you know, sitting up the system and you're thinking hydroponic and nutrients and, you know, the bigger guys or the bigger crops at the top eating all the nutrients can be quite daunting, you know, for a first-time home grower or for a person who just wants to start producing their own food. My last question here is, Kass, how does one maintain the system so that it could be more durable in the long term? So as you're changing the crops in different seasons and different cycles, how does one maintain this? Do we throw away these stones? Do we have to replace the cup? Do we have to dismantle the NFT hydro to clean it inside? What's the maintenance like? So maintenance, they're very good questions as well. And I love the questions you ask because these are the kind of questions that some people ask when they visit us and a lot of people don't ask. And it just goes over the head because they just get so super excited about this whole hydroponic buzz that they hear. They want to go hydro. And the most incredible thing is because there's different systems and different solutions. You've got a lot of people trying to attempt to build their own systems at home and they use plumbing pipe. And then they go and cut them and they put the holes in and they do all this kind of stuff. That's great, it works. But try and maintain it. That's the problem. Whereas this works. This is a fully manageable system in terms of, as I've shown before, you just clip the channels open. And then if you have to get into here and you've got to take out some roots and clip them and cut them and clean or do whatever you have to do, you can at least get to the root. Whereas if you think of a plumbing pipe as a complete circular system, you can't get into it. So if you had to drill a hole with that diameter, you can't, I mean, I've got a fairly sizable hand. You won't even get your fingers through it. You won't even get a probably one year old kid's hand in there to try and do it. But you've got problems. Those are the shortcomings that people have. Do you replace these? No, you don't. So what you may find though is that depending on the type of edge that you grow, so we see, like some people say, you don't know if you can grow an onion in there or a beetroot in there or a leek in there. Well, you can. We've had beautiful onions growing to that size. The problem is that sometimes part of the bulb is under the channel clipping, but you can't get it out. And the only way to get out is to open this up like you can, take a scissor, clip the roots, and then you can pluck it out. That you can do. But by that stage, which you'll find, the force of nature and the force is so incredible, the pressure pushed. It's most, I'll show you outside. I'll take a tour. When that bulb develops and it's growing, the force that is made, that force is so significant it actually pushes those pebbles into this plastic and it molds it into the plastic. It is absolutely insane to see what goes on. So when you've got that, you're probably gonna either destroy the net cut, can't you replace that. So these are the little things you may have to replace. The pebbles, what we would do is take them out, just rinse them out in water, put them in a nice big drum or a basket type of thing, rinse them, rinse them, rinse them, rinse them, so you're just taking up a lot of excess nutrients out of it. Don't throw that water away, go into your garden, just go pour it down into some of the flower beds or your vegetable beds or in the lawn, because it's so rich in nutrients it's a blessing for the ground. Then start again, so you have that. And also the systems, you can either run the system indoors or outdoors. That's a nice thing. Indoors has got its own set of challenges though. You've got to have decent lighting, your full spectrum LED lighting, which are grow lights, you've got to have that. You'll also see when you enter through home, grow through the front door there, you'll see on the left-hand side, you've got the exact same system that you got over here, but that is only got partial sun, partial sun, but it's got natural lights and everything flourishes there. It is really a remarkable experience. And then the others we leave in full sun and it's really exposed to all the elements. So, and annually what you'll do is, because if it's left outdoors, you must understand that it is outdoors, it's like garden furniture, it's like you need to go- There's dust, there's dust, and it's gonna get dirty. It's insects, yes. So you've got to just take its plastic, easy to clean. And just clean it. Just wipe it down. It's really a very simple thing to maintain a manager. It's not a difficult process. Wow, Cass, this is awesome. Yeah, I wish I could change my processes, but yeah, I think this is lovely, especially for someone growing their own food at home. Very simple and efficient system. And I'm glad that you can install it for us, you know? Absolutely. Because yeah, we wouldn't wanna get this thing wrong. But thank you so much to you and your team for showing us how the NFT Hydro system works. This is a 60 pocket and once again, just to remember the audience at home is that it comes in different sizes. So there's a 60, there's a 12, there's up to 250 like you mentioned. So we've got your, so we've got, and again we'll show in different episodes. So Hydro is interesting. It's not a one shoe, one size fits all type of shoe system. There's the Tauber hydroponic, which works on more of an aeroponic type of principle, which we'll cover at later stage. You've got a DWC cracky type system and a DWC system, which we'll talk about later in another episode. It's also Hydro, it's all water. And then you've got this. And then this is available, as I say, different sizes for different budgets and different sizes. You've got some people that say, oh, I love this, but I can't fit in my patio. So they go for a smaller unit. So it's just different options. All you've got to do is get in touch with home growers. Home growers is yet to help you. We will walk you through, we'll teach you, we'll go through the motions. We're passionate about what we do. Our staff love what they do. And it's really about importing the knowledge and we want to help people. Thank you so much, Kers, for just obviously explaining how the system works. But let's get GIFT in to, maybe it's just start planting a few seedlings. I agree. And see how this beautiful structure will turn out at the end. Absolutely. So GIFT, come and join us. So the nice thing about GIFT is it really got everything ready for us. Fantastic. So what we've done is because I'd like people to see the different levels of success that one gets from a 100-point system. You know, if you take, and I always liked you, you and I were talking before and we're talking about these different systems and then you look at these cooking shows and these baking shows and so I wanted to mix all the ingredients or whatever. And then I take it, I pop it in the microwave and then two seconds later to the open the microwave and the whole cake's ready. And you say, but gee, man, how come mine doesn't do that? So we want to do a little bit different here. So what we've got to do is GIFT's already got some units that already set up quite nicely and quite healthy. And then we've got straight from the seedlings, from the seedling room, which is exactly what you would get if you bought the system from Home Grows. We'll give you the seedlings and then you'll set these. Now, these are bigger babies, as you can see. So they're well-structured, nicely-sized units and those are going in. Then we're going to take the smaller ones, which are the smaller hydroponic seedlings that we've used from our seedling room and that is going to go into the system and they will, in essence, ultimately become what you see over here. So these are amazing. The water's going to start pumping in just now. We've really got some special, special stuff. That looks like a tar basil to me. You can smell it. It's absolutely beautiful. It's one of my absolute favorites. It smells amazing. And this just does so well. The nice thing about tar basil is that you can clip it. You can propagate it in water in one of the others. You can take a piece of here, take a net cap, fill it with pebbles, leave it inside there and then within a few weeks you're going to have another root system growing and more basil growing, tar basil. And you can do it with a whole host of product. It's really a special. You can see what's going on. So really we're creating a barrier over here. You've got myself and you on the one side of the fence and we've got gift on the other side and soon no one's going to see us because we're going to have a field of beautiful greenery. Now if this was at home, you can imagine the incredible, absolutely incredible vegetables that you would be able to grow at home and be able to eat on a day to day basis. And I can already hear and see the water flowing in. And it's quite tranquil. If you think you just close your eyes for a few seconds and you just listen to that calming effect. What better, you've got natural greens growing, you've got water running and this is what it's all about. This is about having something sustainably set up and to grow at home. And you would have seen some of the images now that with gifts busy putting in, you see the roots are quite hectic already. Now think about that. As they start to mature and they start to grow inside these channels, when there's load shedding they're going to act as a damning system. They're going to dam up the water. So you're not going to say, although there may be no water running for two hours or so, there's enough water in those little pockets which is going to sustain the plant. Don't be afraid that if you see some of the leaves start to droop, you must understand they're going into a suspend mode just to protect themselves from lack of water and hydration. But as soon as the water comes back or electricity comes back, one of the water is flowing again within half an hour or whatever it is, you'll see they'll be bursting with it life again. So the hydroponic is really a very, very special product. This looks stunning. I love the smell. It's amazing. Yeah, and the fact that it's just different crops as we go along. And you can see, so those are from the seedling room. So these are small little seedlings. So the journey was this little tomato guy here started like that and that size. The basil started out small and then they start bursting. The chilies are forming. So you can imagine having this at home and you're going to say, guess what are we going to have for dinner? Tomato. Well, I feel like this tomato. Basil. You can have so many different tomatoes. Absolutely. Basil pesto. You can go chop up a few lettuces. You've got some red oak. You've got green oak. You can say beautiful chives. You've got some garlic chives. You can say beautiful spinach. You can set segments on this. You can say for one segment of this, only lettuces, then whatever you decide. And the nice thing, a lot of our families that come here, the kids get so excited. Because of the kids, they say, okay, so that's mine. That's the sisters. That's mom's, that's dad's, that's granny's and that's what it is. And everyone's got their own. And then they trade. So for dinner, they say, okay, tonight we'll have that. I'll trade you with that. I'll trade you with this and so on. Quite remarkable. Very, very special. So these are all seedlings. You can see that they're very underdeveloped at this point in time. But you give them a short period of love in terms of nutrients and flow of water and a bit of care. And then you're going to get something like this, which is really special. And these came from an outside hydroponic that you visited us before. And we replace these continuously all the time because quite often we've got somebody that comes and visits us and they're good clients of ours. We just end up plucking one of these whole things and giving them as a gift for their hydros. If you look over here, and unfortunately we can't show you, but you can see it in talking about how they're pressing. So as that bulb system starts to develop, how it pushes those clay pebbles into the plastic. Yeah. So just from a technical perspective, how many of the clay pebbles do you have to put in like completely while the cup is full or you can put just a few so that we can create room for the actual crop to grow inside. So what we do is rule of thumb is that we take the net cup, we fill it up to the brim of the net cup itself. Just to give the plant enough capacity to support itself. And remember the net cup's there not only for a service to hold the plant up, the net cup is there as a service to hold nutrients and hydration. Got it. The more you have the better and especially now that we're dealing with issues such as load shedding. Yeah. You can see on this baby, you can see the pepper's forming. This is, I think this is a Jupiter pepper. Variety. Okay. So we've got some habaneros growing here. We've got Serena chilies here. We've got the red and then we've got the yellow habaneros. We've got, we really got a wide variety. One of my best that I think I must say I do enjoy and I'll sit down with you the one day and I think we'll walk through was the garlic charms, I love those garlic charms. In a salad they are just full of bursting with flavor. Your magnificent spinach, beautiful, beautiful leaves, huge leaves grow. So really special. Wow. That's it. NFT hydroponic system, a 60 pocket, fully installed by home growers and you don't leave the client hanging. You give them the seedings as well. That drops. The clay pebbles and literally a person is ready to go and start producing their own food. And we will fill up the rest but this is example of what's being achieved. And you can see the water pumping up here and you can see it going through. So it's creating its own flow and the water's getting those channels. Great. Cass, this is lovely. Thank you so much for showing us the live demonstration of the NFT hydra system and that you could grow so many plants and shut a small space. That's remarkable. This is what I love about it. You and I are standing here. We literally got two meters of space. That's what you got. Now if you had to visualize and you had to put this into perspective, you've got between eight and 10 meters of length, which is typically sitting in two meters here. And then the amount of water consumption in terms of what you're gonna use, significantly, significantly less on a hydra than growing in soil. So that's the one thing which is a big, big plus. Right. Talk about maximizing your space. Thank you so much for watching another special edition of The Gardening Series brought to you by Private Property in partnership with Homegrows. Thank you and this is it from us, from myself and Cass. I will see you at the next episode. Take care. Thank you very much.