- Hey guys, Amy here with Bright Agrotech again.
And we're in the Bright Agrotech ZipFarm,
where we have been conducting some microgreen trials.
Now if you've seen our other microgreen trial videos,
then you can learn about what we're finding,
about seed density, and planting time,
and the different tastes and appearance of these crops.
But in this video we wanted to answer some of the questions
that you left in the comments for those videos.
You guys had a lot of questions about the materials
that we're using and our setup.
So we're just going to give you a quick tour of what we do
and how everything is set up, our process.
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So to start with, we get our seeds from Johnny Seeds.
I know that some people also get them
from Baker Creek Heirloom or Everwilde Farms.
It depends, partly on the cost,
but you also want to get high quality seeds
because germination rate is really important.
The cost of microgreen seeds vary hugely,
anywhere from like, $10.00 a pound
to hundreds of dollars a pound.
The craziest one that I've seen is marigold seeds,
which are really light, so there is just millions of them
in a pound and that was several hundred dollars.
But usually, they'll be somewhere between like,
$20.00 and $70.00 a pound.
Once we have our seeds, we plant them and we've been using
this hemp medium mat.
Now a lot of people are using coco coir or soil because it's
cheaper and you can reuse it a lot.
We have stuck with the hemp medium mat just because it's
so much easier to harvest and we can harvest it with
that electric knife you've seen in those videos.
It also makes it really easy
to water them
without a big mess.
So we've been using these 10x20 inch trays.
Now these ones have the mesh bottoms
so that we can water them from below.
It's way easier
to irrigate when you can just put it on a timer
and have it run a couple times a day,
which is how we've set up our flood tray tables back here.
But some people are using solid bottom trays,
it just depends on your set up
and how much time you're willing to put into it.
Another thing to consider is the height of the tray
As you can see, these ones are pretty deep,
like two inches or so and that means that to harvest,
we have to pull the mesh out of the tray to get close,
like within a half inch of that mesh.
Some people are using shallower trays,
which could be a really good idea.
You might not have to take the media
out of the tray to harvest.
You can just go right over the top with that knife.
So you can see our flood tray tables behind us
and we'll get close up on those in just a minute.
But one of you guys had a question
about the pump we're using.
Now, we're using this 550 pump,
it's an Active Aqua Submerisble Pump
and we just stick it in the sump system,
below the trays and it pumps up to the top
and then trickles down to the bottom again.
It's very simple.
This one might honestly,
be a little bit oversized for this system.
The important thing is that you look at the head height,
which is the point from your water or your pump
to the highest point of irrigation,
and make sure that your pump can handle that.
So with this one, on the box it comes with a
oh lets see, where is it?
There it is.
It comes with this table that shows head height versus GPH.
With this system, you're only going to be doing
a few gallons per hour when you irrigate.
The important thing to look at again, is that head height.
And at a head height of
probably 5 or 6 feet here,
we probably need at least a 400 GPH pump
for this brand specifically.
But for other people, you might be able
to get along with something a little bit smaller than that.
It just depends on your system.
So this is our Seedling Cart XL.
It's kind of the commercial version
of our seedling cart that we recently moved to.
Let's start at the bottom and then move our way up
and I'll show you kinda what's going on in this system.
So here at the bottom, we have our sump tank.
Really simple. It's a black tank.
There's a cover on here that we get to cover it with
so nothing falls in there.
And we are keeping it shaded
so not a ton of algae grows in there.
And we just have a simple pump down here.
Let's see. Basically just the same one
that I showed you in our box.
And that pumps our water up
all the way to the top rack here.
So as you can see, this is the 550 Submersible Pump
that we just showed you in the box,
it's a little bit dirtier and slimier, I can feel it.
We've used poly from the top of this pump
to irrigate all the way up to our top rack here.
This other piece of poly here,
comes from the lowest flood tray
to drain out once the siphons have done their work
and sent water all the way down the system.
So from the pump down to the sump tank,
we have water pumping up into this top flood tray.
The water pumps into here, it fills up to a certain level,
and then at the end of the tray,
we have two elbows that are sucking that water
through a siphon down to the next flood tray.
And you can kinda see that happening
in this lower flood tray here.
Same thing happens in that tray.
It fills up with water,
the elbows on the other side kick into a siphon,
and it siphons water down, tray to tray,
until it reaches the very bottom.
Now you can kind of see inside the tray here,
that we have different levels going on
and that keeps the water from drowning our seedlings
or getting to much on the greens and causing mold issues.
I know some of you guys had a question about that.
If you don't have a tray that already has indentations
like this built into the tray,
you can get PVC or something like that
to set those trays up, just so that they're just touching
the water level when it irrigates.
And we have this running twice a day right now.
You can run it more
depending on how hot it is in your growing area.
If it's super dry or you have a ton of dry air
flowing across those, they might dry out faster.
But we've found that on an indoor farm, where we are,
twice a day is just fine.
So if you want to find out more about how this is built
and how it works, go check out the assembly video
for our Seedling Cart XL.
So between planting the seeds onto our hemp mats
and sticking them into the flood tray system,
we need to put them in an environment
that's good for them to germinate.
And the reason for that is,
I mean, it's good to do it with regular seedlings.
You can see we have some going on here.
But with microgreens, it's especially important
because you have an open face
and those seeds are just exposed to the air.
They don't have the soil keeping in moisture and heat.
So the propagation chamber
basically replicates a soil environment
for those microgreens.
Down at the bottom of the chamber,
you can see we have water and the heating element,
and that keeps it really humid,
like 80% or 90% humidity in there.
And then it keeps it really warm as well.
As soon as the microgreens break their shell or germinate,
we stick them into the flood system.
If you guys are interested in learning more
about this propagation chamber,
go ahead and check out the videos
that we have on our YouTube channel.
So you probably noticed, there aren't a ton of microgreens
growing in the system right now.
We're on a bit of a hiatus from our trials
but we're gonna be back in a couple weeks
with more videos, so stay tuned for that.
If you're interested in any of the materials
we've been using: the hemp mats, the pump, the system, etc.,
go ahead and check out shop.brightagrotechs.com
where we have a lot of those listed.
As always, you guys have great comments and questions
and ideas, so please share them in the comments below,
we would love to hear them.
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