Setting up an Amazon aeroponics system with perpetual spinach 20/05/08

The amazon took two years of development by company Nutriculture to bring to the market a reliable product of top quality that gives high end aeroponic results at an affordable price. Aeroponics offers an optimal ratio of oxygen, water and nutrient to the plants roots which allows for rapid growth, promoting high yields. It is simple to set up and i will show you how.
Lets begin with the base. Everything will be stacked upon the base so make sure it sits on even ground, do this accurately using a spirit level or by seeing whether water builds up at one end or is evenly spread in the bottom. The base is also the nutrient reservoir and has a 50 litre capacity. Make sure the lowered groove/lip is towards the back of the tank as this is where the next tier will sit, allowing you room at the front to mix your nutrient solution.

The next teir is the base of the root chamber. It has two holes at either end, the larger should be facing the back of the system as it is a drain hole. The smaller hole at the front is to allow the delivery tube to connect to the pump.

Next we sit the already assembled delivery tube and sprinklers in the raised grooved beds to hold the in position for an even delivery of solution to each plant site, it is raised to prevent root mass building up around them and blocking them.


Twist the 'tail' end of the delivery tube so that it fits through the small hole in the base of the root chamber and hangs into the nutrient reservoir.
Here we connect the pump to the delivery tube. I have used an extra piece of standard 1/2" hose pipe to lengthen the delivery tube so that the pump sits flat against the bottom of the nutrient reservoir and gets the maximum usage out of the tank.

Now we can place the lid on top. Here you can see this is an eight site Amazon but there are 4, 8, 16, 32 site lids, and now you can double the ammount of sites with the brand new Twin Amazon that shares a nutrient reservoir (keep updated as i will post a blog on this new system soon.
Here is i have covered the amazon in black and white, this helps reflect light and heat to prevent an overly warm nutrient solution as the greenhouse is already warm. However you may want to add a water heater if you need to control your temperature.

There are two sizes of holes in the Amazon lid that hold either 1.5" net pots or 3" net pots. The 1.5" net pot sized holes are ideal when using an aeroponic propagator such as the x-stream aeroponic poragators as you can simply propogate and grow a fully mature plant without transplanting into a larger sized pot. However there is also a 3" net pot sized hole and is ideal for larger sized plants with greater root growth and stem size.
I will be growing a perpetual spinach in the amazon which i have germinated in 1.5" fleximix blocks, but for demonstrative purposes i will show you a simple method of how to transplant either a 1.5" net pot or grow cube such as rockwool, fleximix or jiffy peat pellet.

Simply insert the 1.5" net pot, fleximix, rockwool, jiffy into the 3" net pot and fill the side gaps with seramis (as pictured) or small 4-6mm clay pebbles as these are small enough to fill the gaps without spilling out of the net pot. They also provide excellent drainage preventing any rotting around the stem.
This is a picture of the sprinklers in action, they spin round supplying an even spread of nutrient solution to the roots keeping them moist but allowing maximum aeration for a fresh supply of oxygen to the roots.

Keep updated as i will post new blogs on the spinach's development.