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Grow Your Own Hydroponic Lettuce!

Plans and DVD Set

Are you tired of paying exorbitant prices for poor quality produce? Are you concerned about the heavy use of pesticides and fungicides in commercial food production, not to mention the frequent recalls due to bacterial contamination, but just can't afford to shell out the extra money for organic? On the other hand, are you a busy person with a life to live and no time to spend 20 hours a week growing a garden? Or are you unable (or unwilling!) to tackle the back-breaking work of tilling, hoeing, fertilizing, weeding, watering, planting, and harvesting? Well now there is a solution for you! For the price of two or three trips to the grocery store you can have your own hydroponic lettuce and herb garden, producing many times the volume of lettuce, greens and herbs your family can use - regardless of the size of your family! Not only that, but with the knowledge contained in our video you can turn your family hydroponic garden into an extremely simple and profitable home-based business! It is not uncommon to see lettuce, which is ridiculously easy to grow with this system, selling for four to six dollars a pound and more - and herbs at $20-50 dollars a pound and up! The pesticide and herbicide free market is expanding exponentially in these last few years as we become conscious of the growing dangers of pesticides and herbicides to our health. Now is the perfect time to enter the market yourself and carve out a niche business selling lettuce to your neighbors, your friends, local restaurants, hospitals, delis, supermarkets and any place that wants high-quality locally grown lettuce! And the greatest thing is your lucrative home-based business can be up and running and turning a profit in under six weeks! And the investment is about as small as you can imagine for such a venture! But even if you're not interested in becoming a lettuce tycoon, this could make an excellent project for school or a great way for a non-profit group to help the needy. The sky's the limit on this project, you can build the lettuce bed as large as you need and expand it even bigger when your market grows! And whatever else happens, it's almost impossible NOT to grow ten times more than your own family can use! OVERVIEW This is a constant flow fully hydroponic system. Hydroponic means that all of the nutrients the plant needs comes directly from water continuously flowing past its roots. With our system we use 2" PVC pipes with 1.5" holes drilled every six inches along the top side. These pipes are placed at a slight incline, and at the upper end of the incline, 1/8" poly tubes feed a small

amount of water into each one. This water is caught in the drain reservoir at the lower end and pumped back to the top to begin the cycle again. Meanwhile, we plant our lettuce seeds in a tray full of small inert cubes to germinate and we leave them there until they are approximately an inch tall. When they are tall enough, they are placed into the 1.5" holes in the 2" pipes. As the water in the pipes flows past the inert cubes containing the seedlings, the absorbent material of the cube holds the water and the young plant is able to use only the amount it needs without getting waterlogged. Water-soluble fertilizer is placed into the reservoir as needed and the nutrients the plant needs for growth and vibrant health are absorbed from the water flowing past the roots of the plant. As the seedlings grow they will spread out, completely filling the space between the holes and covering the pipes with a blanket of green and red leaves. As soon as that happens, you will be ready to harvest your first full crop. To pick lettuce, remove only the largest outside leaves. As you pick the outside leaves the inside leaves will grow faster to replace them, to be picked in their turn. Using this "cut and come again" method of growing, you can have a full picking - depending on the size of your lettuce bed, yielding perhaps dozens of pounds of top quality lettuce - every other day! Depending on the variety of lettuce you choose, your day length and the air temperature, your lettuce may stay in full production for several weeks to several months before "bolting" and going to seed. When that happens the lettuce will begin to taste bitter and it is time to pull it, compost it and replace those plants with new seedlings. Where I live in Texas, we can grow lettuce year round - although a greenhouse is required during the coldest months of winter with only moderate amounts of heat. Most lettuce will tolerate (although not thrive) in temperatures almost to freezing and up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit, making it a very forgiving crop. In a more northerly climate this bed could stay in production from the last frost to the first one, producing perhaps a thousand or more pounds of lettuce! Of course, this system can also be used to grow many herbs; mint thrives, as do oregano, basil, thyme and most other herbs. And you will be amazed at the amount you can pick; with only 8 pipes 40' long it was common for us to pick over 50 pounds of lettuce every other day! And because of this unique soil-less growing system the lettuce comes off of the pipes clean without sand or dirt of any kind, so no laborious washing is needed! We found that few pests bothered our lettuce bed, which makes it not only undesirable, but entirely unnecessary to use noxious chemicals!

CHAPTER 1: GETTING STARTED Let me preface this by saying that these are only loose guidelines; you can substitute many of the materials used if you have others on hand, this is just to give you an idea of the items involved. To build one small lettuce bed, with seven pipes 10' long you will need the following materials: 1 - plastic 55 gallon drum 7 -10 ' lengths of 2" PVC pipe (plus 10' to be cut for shorter connections) 16 - 2" plastic pipe brackets (such as those used to hold electrical conduit) 3 - sawhorses 1 - small fountain pump, 150 GPH@1' lift minimum. 1 20' length of 1/8" black poly irrigation hose 1 - 20' length of 5/8" black poly solid irrigation tubing 1 - barbed plastic "T" for the poly pipe 2 - barbed cap inserts for poly pipe 6 - hose clamps to hold the poly to the fittings 1 -3 ' piece of 4" pipe 1 -10 ' length of septic drain sock 7 -2 " PVC "street" "L"s 4 -2 " PVC "L"s 672" 2" PVC "T"s PVC caps

1 medium can each PVC glue and PVC cleaner Nylon zip ties To grow the plants themselves: Several hundred Oasis cubes Fertilizer (discussed in Chapter 6: Fertilizer) Lettuce seed Tools you will need: Hacksaw 1/8" tubing poker Measuring Tape

Knife Drill 1.5"holesaw 1/2" drill bit 3/16" drillbit Jigsaw or reciprocating saw Notes on the materials needed: Find a barrel that was used to store food-grade materials, not chemicals. Find one with solid bungs on the end that will seal tightly to hold in the water because you will be installing it on its side. Clean it thoroughly with bleach and rinse very well before using it (this can be done after cutting holes in it as described in Chapter 2 to make it easier to clean if necessary). When selecting pipes try to select pipes that were stored indoors or in the shade. Sunlight is harmful to PVC pipes and makes them brittle, which will make it more difficult to work with it and shorten its life. We recommend building your own sawhorses because you can control the height exactly. In order to drain properly, the lettuce bed needs a drop of 2-3" over 10'. So unless you are building on ground with a natural slope one sawhorse must be 2", and one 1" taller than the shortest one. Kits are readily available to build your own sawhorses which makes it very easy to make one end taller than the other, but if you use existing sawhorses simply block one end to make it stand taller. The height should slope from approximately 38" to 36" tall if the person who will spend the most time picking is of average height. Otherwise adjust the height accordingly. The lowest sawhorse must be specially made or cut; it must slope from 36" on one side to 34.5" on the other. This will make the pipes all drain to one side. The other sawhorses will be level on top. For 7 pipes to fit on 8" centers, the sawhorses must be about 52" wide. Many fountain pumps are available and nearly any one will do; the more pipes you run off of a single pump the larger it must be, but in general for less than 7 pipes not less than a 150 GPH@1' lift pump is required to provide enough flow. 1' lift doesn't mean it won't pump higher, just that that is how it was rated. Larger pumps are acceptable, but if they have too much flow, the extra will need diverted using some sort of a bypass system. Make certain the pump is designed to be fully immersed in water. Septic drain sock is used in septic systems to go over the drain pipe to prevent sand from flowing into the slits in leach beds. It looks something like
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pantyhose. It is very inexpensive and you will use it to filter the water returning to the barrel. The PVC caps can be either the regular heavy caps or the cheaper "knockout" caps. The tubing poker is designed to poke holes in the side of the soft 5/8" tubing so that the 1/8" tubing can be pushed into it. It should be available in the irrigation department of your home improvement store. While you are there find a way to adapt 5/8" poly tubing to the outgoing side of the pump you intend to use - depending on the model, it may be very easy or a bit tricky. There are several different Ways of doing it and the store should be able to help you select one. The 2" brackets should be gray plastic, other materials will rust in the presence of the fertilizer and water. They will probably be in the electrical department. These will be used to hold your pipes in place. More details on fertilizer will be given in Chapter 6: Fertilizer. Lettuce seeds and suppliers are also given in their own chapter - Chapter 10: Suppliers. Oasis cubes can be also purchased from many nurseries or from suppliers listed in Chapter 9: Lettuce As A Business. CHAPTER 2: STARTING TO BUILD The first thing you must do is find a stable, fairly level or evenly sloping surface that is well drained and accessible to water and electricity. If your surface slopes adjust the height of your sawhorses to compensate so that you are left with 2-3" of drop over 10'. You can determine your drop by taking a long, straight 2x4 and placing it where your pipes will be setting. Place a level on it and raise it until the bubble centers - then have someone measure from the bottom of the 2x4 to the top of the lower sawhorse. This is your drop. From now on these instructions will assume you are building on a reasonably level surface. Set your three sawhorses 5' apart, make sure they are stable and setting firmly on the ground, and make sure that they line up and the center one doesn't sag or hump (either of which will make the water not drain correctly). Next take the barrel and lay it on its side, with the manufactured seam side up to give you a straight line. Take your 4" pipe and put the end on the barrel centered approximately 6" from the upper end. Mark around the outside of it with a magic marker, drill a hole inside that mark with the 1/2" drill bit and using the jigsaw cut the circle out and discard. The 4" pipe should fit snugly inside the hole and down into the barrel, sticking out about 3". Cut off any excess and smooth the rough edges. Remove the 4" pipe from the barrel and drill a BUNCH of holes in the 4" pipe with the 1/2" drill bit. It should look roughly like a honeycomb when
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you are done. You are making a rough "screen" out of the pipe to hold the drain sock "filter" you are going to make. Every hole you make gives the sock more drain power. When the pipe is thoroughly perforated clean all the burrs off of the holes you drilled using a knife, file, or heavy sandpaper. Tie a knot in the end of the drain sock and set it into the 4" pipe, and pull it all the way to the end of the pipe with your other hand. Cut it about 3' long and fold over the top of the 4" pipe. Using nylon zip ties or a hose clamp, tie it snugly in place around the top of the pipe. Then lay the whole thing out of the way for now. Set the barrel on its side so that the 4" hole for the filter is on the top. Mark an 8" hole centered 12" from the lower end of the barrel in line with the 6" hole so that both will be on top when it is installed. Cut it out just like the other hole and smooth the edges with a sharp knife. This is where you will lower the pump into the barrel and add your fertilizer. When finished, set aside, but do not discard the cutout. Set your 2" pipes, one at a time, on a stable surface or workbench and with a pencil or chalk-line put a mark all the way along the top side of them. If the words marked on all PVC pipe are lined up straight you can also use those for a mark. Mark all 7 pipes this way. Then starting at the end, put a mark every 6" along it crossing the first mark. Mark 4 pipes this way. On the other three pipes put the first mark 9" from the end, then mark every 6" as before. This will offset the holes so each plant has more space. Then take the 1.5" hole saw and drill a hole at every mark. These are the holes your lettuce will set in. Drill every pipe and clean the burrs from the holes with a sharp knife (carefully!). Glue a 2" "street elbow" (an elbow with one male and one female end) onto the end you DIDN'T mark from on all 7 pipes (this will be the lower end). Be careful to orient them as you glue them so that when the elbow is pointing straight down, the holes you drilled are along the TOP side! Glue the caps onto the upper end (the end you DID measure from) of the lettuce pipes. As I've said, pipe tends to get brittle in the sunlight because of UV deterioration. These pipes will mostly be shaded by the lettuce, but you may wish to paint them a reflective color to help block sunlight and extend their life, or you may wish to coat them with aluminum foil tape. This last has the added benefit of annoying bugs and helping deter algae growth by blocking light from the pipes. I mention it as an option only, for it is not necessary to get a lot of use out of your lettuce pipes. Now set two of the T's you will use, lined up as if they were to be glued to the pipes, and measure 8" from center to center. Then measure from the stop on the inside of one, to the stop on the inside of the other, to see the exact length that the pipe must be to glue these together at exactly 8" apart. It
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should be about 5". Cut 7 pieces of 2" PVC (from your extra piece) to that length. On a flat, stable surface, lay out 6 T's in line, with the pieces you just cut beside them. Glue them all together in a row. It is CRITICAL that these are glued together straight - with all the open ends of the T's (if you imagine the letter T - the bottom end) pointing in the same direction. They cannot be twisted more than a fraction of an inch or they will not glue into the pipes you are about to make. You can align them on a table or by sight. Then glue the last 5" pieces of pipe into each end of the T's. Glue a 2" L into one end, aligned with all the other T's. This is your manifold drain. If you are confused by all this don't worry, it is a very simple task, it just looks hard on paper. The accompanying DVD will make this process clear. Arrange all seven lettuce pipes on the tops of the sawhorses in the order in which they are to set (so that the three offset pipes set between the four regular pipes). The short pieces you glued onto the elbows should dangle down. Have a carpenter's square handy, if available. Then grab the outside pipe on the HIGH side of the LOW sawhorse and glue to the elbow end of your manifold. Using your square try to get it as close as possible to a right angle to the pipe. Then glue the first T into the next pipe, making sure the pipe is parallel with the first you glued. If it is parallel with the other, and the other is square, then both will be square. Continue for all the other pipes. When done, all the lettuce pipes should be approximately 8" apart, and the last "T" should have a 3" or so piece of 2" pipe sticking out the end of it. Onto that 3" piece, glue an elbow to point horizontally away from the lettuce runs, and slightly downhill. Cut a 3" piece of 2" pipe and glue it into the open end. Now take your barrel which you had set aside earlier and place it between the legs on the sawhorses, with the drain end (the 4" pipe) on the barrel closest to the drain end (the elbow you just glued in) on the lettuce pipes. Temporarily block it in place. Center the pipes on the lower sawhorse. Glue the next elbow to the last piece of pipe, pointing towards the barrel at a significant slope to allow for good drainage; about 1" per foot is good. Glue a piece of 2" pipe into that "L" that ends just short of the center of the 4" hole on the barrel. Glue the last "L" into that pipe, pointing straight down into the barrel. Cut a piece of pipe long enough to reach from the last "L" down into the barrel to avoid too much splashing. Stick it into the end of the pipe, but DON'T glue it! Block the barrel so that it cannot roll at all using either dirt, blocks, wood, or whatever material is available. Attach the two outside pipes with the pipe
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brackets. On the upper end line up the pipes so they are the same distance apart as the lower end and attach each pipe with the brackets. Unless they are warped, the center pipes will not need to be attached to the sawhorse. Now is a good time to stop and take stock; your project should be starting to come into focus and look like a lettuce bed. You have the drains all connected and the barrel made. The only thing left is to set up the water supply and the filter. CHAPTER 3: WATER SUPPLY Take the poly tubing and cut 2 pieces about 30" long (if your sawhorses are 52"). Set aside. Drill a hole through the upper two sawhorses large enough to allow the 5/8" poly tubing to pass through. The holes should be drilled directly under one of the pipes. Starting at the lower end, thread the poly tubing under the first sawhorse and through the second two. Attach the tubing to the pipe in at least two places between each sawhorse pipe using nylon pull ties. Make sure that the ties girdle the pipe between the lettuce holes and don't tighten them too tight - if the poly looks kinked, it won't carry water! Just snug it enough to keep it from sagging. When you get to the upper end pull the poly about 1" past the end of the upper sawhorse. Push the "T" into it and attach the hose clamps to hold it in place. Attach the poly pipes into the open sides of the elbow and run them across the pipes on the underneath to the outer edge. Cut them about 1" past the last pipe and attach the plugs like you did the elbow. Use 1/2" or 3/4" mounting brackets to attach the tubing to the sawhorse. Cut 14 pieces approximately 1' long of 1/8" poly tubing, making each cut at a diagonal angle. Then drill 2 holes with the 1/8" bit into every pipe at the top of the bell. Drill them at a 45 degree angle leaning into the pipe, so that they will "aim" the water down into the pipe. Using the tubing poker poke two holes per pipe into the poly tubing in the exposed area between each pipe. Grab the 5/8" poly firmly in one hand and with the other force a length of 1/8" poly into it. Loop the 1/8" around so that it makes a smooth loop around and into one of the holes in the lettuce pipe. Repeat for all 14 pieces. Make sure each tube is securely into the 5/8" poly and into the lettuce pipes. Cut the other end of the 5/8" poly (the end by the barrel) long enough to reach to the bottom of the barrel. Attach it to your pump using whatever adapters are necessary, if any. Now retrieve the cut-out from the barrel that you saved earlier. Cut a 1" hole out of one edge to fit around your poly and pump cord. Take two strips of treated lumber and screw to the edge of the hole, on the inside of the barrel, one on each side. The cutout you saved should just fit into the hole around the tubing and cord and seal off the barrel from mice, spiders, debris, and keep your reservoir clean. As an option, you may wish to cover the barrel in foil-faced bubble insulation to reflect light and heat from the
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barrel. Depending on your location and climate, the water in the barrel may get unpleasantly hot in the sunshine which can hurt your lettuce production. If you intend to do this, do it now. Next fill the barrel 3/4 full with water and plug in the pump to test all of your connections. PLUG THE PUMP INTO A GFCI GROUNDED OUTLET! Otherwise there is a risk of severe shock if the pump malfunctions! Then make sure there are no leaks on any of the joints or drains. It's a good idea to let it run all night to make sure all particles are out of the pipes and into the filter, and that your drains are not going to clog up. And that's it! Your lettuce bed is finished! CHAPTER 4: GROWING FROM SEED In order to support the young lettuce plants in the pipes it is necessary to place them in a solid medium. For this we like to use Oasis cubes. This is an extremely light but incredibly absorbent substance and is available from many greenhouse and plant growers around the country (see Chapter 10: Suppliers). Oasis cubes come in a sheet about 12" by 24" by 1" thick. It is perforated so that the individual 1" cubes can be broken off when the plants get large enough to separate, and it has a small hole in the center of each cube. The best way to start lettuce and other herbs is to take an old tray and put a sheet of Oasis cubes on it. Put your seeds in a small saucer and set it on the cubes and using tweezers put one seed in each hole. Plant about 25% more than you expect to need (for 7 tubes with 19 holes each you will have 133 holes to grow in) since you cannot count on every seed germinating. When all seeds are in place set the tray in a warm, well-lit spot. Gently pour water along the side of the tray. Do not pour water on top of the Oasis because you will wash the seeds out! It will absorb 40 times its weight in water, so expect it to take a lot. Add it until water stands in the bottom of the tray and is no longer absorbed, making sure the cubes are wet all the way to the seeds. The top will probably not get wet, but make sure that the holes where the seeds set are damp. Give it time to wick up and come back every half hour or so and add more water. Check back on your cubes to make sure your cubes are saturated with water twice a day. No fertilizer is needed yet, but as soon as the seeds sprout and peek above the tops of the Oasis cubes, fertilizer will need to be added. Then add fertilizer to the 55 gallon drum reservoir as described in Chapter 6: Fertilizer, and pull out a cup of fertilized water from the barrel and add to a cup of plain water. Stir and pour the mixture over the seedlings. We do this because it is important to dilute the fertilizer as the tender plants don't need much fertilizer yet and too much would shock them. All water that you add to the seedling tray from this point on will be 50/50
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fertilized water and regular water. It will usually take, depending on temperature, light, and seeds, between one to three weeks from planting until you have small plants ready to move into the pipes. When seeds germinate they first have "baby leaves" which are really just what grew as the sides of the seed. Then those separate and the first true leaves come out. Sometime between when the first and second set of true leaves come out on the majority of the seeds it is time to separate them and move them to their new home in the pipes. They will probably be about 1" tall at this point. Break each plant off into its own cube. Carry the tray to the lettuce pipes and set it aside. Turn on the pump. Once the water starts flowing take one fully wet empty cube (one whose seed didn't germinate for instance) and set it into one of the holes in the center pipe. Watch it and see if the water flow washes it away. If it does, then you either have too powerful a pump - in which case, you need to open your bypass or build one - or too much slope, in which case you need to reduce it and try again. Keep trying until the flow doesn't wash the cube away. Then try another tube (one towards the center of the bed, where the pressure will be strongest) and make sure the water flow doesn't wash it away there either. If all is well and the water won't wash your cubes away, start setting the real lettuce cubes in place, upright, one in each hole. Put a toothpick into each oasis cube to make sure they stay upright and don't fall down into the pipe. After doing one pipe, go back to the top and make sure that none of them are sliding or slipping downhill. It is better to have less flow than too much! Continue until all pipes are filled. Next it's time to fertilize the barrel. Incidentally the planting in the Oasis cubes can be done as soon as you get the seeds, while you are building the lettuce beds themselves, to give you a head-start when your lettuce bed is ready. CHAPTER 5: PLANTING STORE-BOUGHT SEEDLINGS If you're in a hurry, it is also possible to buy young lettuce plants from a local nursery that are already well on their way to maturity. It is possible to cut up to a month off of the time it takes to harvest your lettuce this way. To use plants like this, start by gently removing the plants and their soil from the tray and (if necessary) gently breaking up the soil to loosen it. Lower it into a bucket of clean water and swish back and forth several times, being careful not to break off the stems of the young plants. Don't worry if a few broken roots fall away, more will soon grow to replace them. When 90% or more of the dirt has been washed away, slowly lower them into the lettuce pipes, and guide the roots to flow downstream as you lower it. Set it in place so that it is facing up, and repeat with the next plant. A few of
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the outside leaves may wilt over the next few days, but the inside leaves should come up vibrant and green to replace them. Fertilize the barrel immediately after placing the plants in the tubes, as described in the next chapter. CHAPTER 6: FERTILIZER The concept of hydroponic growing is that ALL food must enter the plant through the water, or through the leaves. Unlike soil growing where a hardy plant can draw much "food" out of even poor soil, if the nutrients are not in the water they cannot be in the plant! We use a variety of different fertilizers in our mix. You can experiment with this on your own but we recommend that you stay close to our blend for your first few batches at least. To make the first batch fertilizer, take: 4 ounces Lettuce Formula (8-15-36) (Chapter 10: Suppliers) 4 ounces Calcium Nitrate 2.5 ounces Magnesium Sulfate (Also called Epsom Salts) All measurements are by weight. Mix together thoroughly and add to the barrel of fresh water, stirring very well. The mixture will immediately start recycling through the tubes and often you can often see a visible difference in the plants over a few hours after fertilizing. Each plant in each environment will feed differently so you will have to monitor them yourself to know when they need more fertilizer, but usually this will last for several weeks. When you see your plants starting to look peaked, long and lanky, not very vibrant, a pale yellow color, or see strange spots and odd colors in the leaves it means they are hungry for something. Which means it's time to add more fertilizer. This fertilizer formula works very well for all types of lettuce and most herbs. However each environment and plant is different so you may wish to modify it or add supplements to it from time to time. Unfortunately due to the large amount of possibilities involved, we can't offer any more detailed advice than we already have here - trial and error will teach you the exact requirements of your environment. CHAPTER 7: MAINTAINING YOUR LETTUCE BED One of the greatest things about this gardening system is that it is almost entirely maintenance free. There are no weeds, few bugs, and all the work is at waist-level so there is never any bending or kneeling to work on your garden. Your lettuce beds should be visually checked on a daily basis if possible. You will need to change the filter from time to time and replace it with
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another drain sock. You will need to make sure that nothing slipped past the filter and clogged up the 1/8" tubing lines, otherwise that pipe might not be getting enough water. That is why you must use two lines for each pipe, to double up and give yourself a safety net. You will also need to periodically add fertilizer as it is used by the plants and water as it evaporates. Also it is helpful, particularly in hot weather, to aerate the reservoir barrel by putting an aquarium pump with a stone bubbler on the end into the barrel. They are available at pet stores and help oxygenate and cool the water. The only critical thing is that this is a CONSTANT flow lettuce bed. That means that the water must flow CONSTANTLY! The Oasis cubes will hold some water, and the lettuce plants themselves can survive for a while without flowing water, but not too long! The exact time depends on the age of the plants, the humidity, and the temperature. On a cool night it might not hurt them at all, but a few hours in a hot, dry day will make your lettuce crispy. In a bad way. What this means is that if you live in an area prone to frequent power outages it would be wise to have a twelve-volt backup pump that can run off of a battery for a while, or better still a generator that can run the pump in case of a power outage. And if your pump should fail it would be a good idea to have a backup pump on hand. That said, there is very little risk if you have a backup available or are in a stable power grid. And excepting those things, there is virtually no maintenance involved in this system! Just plant it and pick it! CHAPTER 8: PICKING There are two ways of picking lettuce. You can either wait for it to form a head and cut the entire plant off, or you can pick some leaves off of the plant on a regular basis and let them grow back. Pound for pound you will get much more lettuce by pulling off a few leaves at a time. Heads look nicer but they take longer to make and only produce a limited amount per hole. Because of this we recommend the "cut and come again" method. For this, you will wait until the plants measure about 5" across to take your first picking. The leaves should be at least 1" by 3" before you pick them, and pick only the outermost leaves. At first just pull off a leaf at a time when the plants are smaller with weaker stems, and only one or two leaves per plant. As the plants grow and become more sturdy they will produce faster, produce many more and much larger leaves. When they get to that stage, hold your right hand like you are making a "C" with the thumb and fingers. Make the "hole" of the "C" large enough to fit around the core leaves of the target plant. Lower your hand straight down over the core, close the "C" and drag your fingers back around to the side of the plant towards your palm. When you get all the outside leaves dragged together into a nice bundle, with the
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core and stem untouched, give a gentle twist; the leaves should break off very crisply then drop them into a clean trash bag or a large container. It is very simple and once you get the hang of it you can pick the entire bed in just a few minutes. CHAPTER 9: LETTUCE AS A BUSINESS We started growing lettuce first for ourselves, but found it produced so well that we had hundreds of pounds a week to unload. There is a vast market opening up now for locally grown produce and good quality lettuce brings a very high price at the supermarket. You can grow expensive specialty lettuces like Endive and Arugula as easily as you can grow Romaine. Plus, with the "cut and come again" method, you can have a pre-mixed batch of specialty lettuce for salad right off of your tubes. You will be amazed by how much a lettuce bed in full production can produce - and it only takes about 30 days for most lettuces to reach production age from seed! You will have to check health department and growing and marketing regulations in your own state and town but in my area they do not require you to have a license to grow and sell lettuce AS LONG as it is not torn into a salad. It being torn would make it a prepared food product, which requires a health department license and special kitchens and other things like that. There is room for both Retail and Wholesale ends of a business to be built; retail has the advantage, as always, of more markup, but wholesale has the advantage of less packaging hassle and more volume. Also a wider target audience, since you can approach schools, hospitals, colleges, restaurants, cafeterias, and any place that has a market for high quality, fresh, locally grown lettuce grown without pesticides and herbicides. And our lettuce keeps much better than lettuce bought in the store - when stored in gallon Ziploc bags in the refrigerator, we've had lettuce stay crisp and fresh for as long as a month! Healthy foods always keep better. And your new business doesn't have to stop at lettuce; fresh, intensely flavorful herbs are extremely expensive and in most cases as easy to grow as lettuce. Use your imagination. Most herbs can be started by putting a cutting (a broken stem with a leaf, for instance) into an oasis cube and setting it into the lettuce run. Lettuce beds are easy to maintain, the lettuce is easy to process and bag, and the beds are easy and affordable to make. Doing it as a business is obviously not for everyone, but for an entrepreneur looking for a new direction it might be just what it takes to make him a Lettuce Magnate, or just bring in a little income on the side. And if nothing else, even a small bed

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should allow you to grow more than you can possibly use and have plenty left over to give to a good cause. CHAPTER 10: SUPPLIERS While many stores can supply seeds, often they are old or of poor quality. A source for good quality and exotic seeds of lettuce and other herbs and plants is Territorial Seeds www.TerritorialSeed.com. Fertilizers can be purchased from www.Hydro-Gardens.com which also offers Oasis cubes and many other specialized hydroponic growing supplies. Unfortunately their website is a bit difficult to navigate currently. A direct link to a product index is www.hydro-gardens.com/director.htm which simplifies things somewhat. These supplies may be available locally but we list these here as options. CHAPTER 11: FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS What can't I grow? Technically you can grow anything, but some types of plants require their own fertilizer; spinach for example, doesn't grow well in this fertilizer mix. Neither does cilantro. Other types of plants grow too large and won't fit in the pipes once they reach maturity (tomatoes, squash, etc) and also don't grow well in this fertilizer mix. However, there are ways of adapting this system to grow tomatoes, watermelons, and other vegetables, which we are currently developing into an instructional video and brochure like this one, so check back at our website in the future for more gardening ideas. Can I make the pipes longer? Yes! I have had lettuce pipes that were 40 feet long, and they can be as long as you like if you just keep a downward slope to them. And the best part is that you won't need a bigger pump - the water just naturally flows downhill! CHAPTER 12: DISCLAIMER Pinnacle Switch Builders, Inc. is not responsible for the use or misuse of any information contained in this booklet or companion DVD or of accidents or injuries or damages caused by use or misuse of any items purchased from Pinnacle Switch Builders, Inc. Use all instructions at your own risk. When working with electrical pumps underwater there is always a risk of shock so use caution. Do not drink fertilizer mixes or ingredients and keep out of reach of children and pets. All plans, instructions, and images presented here and in the accompanying DVD are the sole property of Pinnacle Switch Builders, Inc., and are not to be redistributed without express written consent. Copyright Pinnacle Switch Builders, 2008.

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