In addition to my AeroGardens, I've recently acquired a Gardyn. I have been hugely impressed with their customer service, and the design of the Gardyn itself, but the system still has a few minor wrinkles to work out for maximum efficiency and ease of use, in my opinion. This is not really a complaint, simply a fact of life for a relatively new product. But, that is for another post!
As anyone familiar with hydroponics can tell you, water+nutrients+light is an equation that inevitably equals algae.
Although algae is almost inevitable, and not in itself a horrible thing, a thorough cleaning of the Gardyn system is quite an undertaking, and being myself heavily disabled, I am trying everything I can to prolong the time between cleans. One way I want to do that is to cover the rockwool and prevent algae growth there. While algae on top of the pods isn't any particular problem, I figure the less algae there is, the less that will breed inside the system. Since neither water or food can be removed from the equation, that leaves light. All this needs, of course, is a relatively simple cover. Although the folks at Gardyn recommend just using tinfoil, I wanted something a bit better looking. It's a simple enough design, and would work on most any growing system.
My first prototype, I got a few pieces of mirrored plastic. It sounded ideal for the purpose, right down to already being adhesive on one side, and would even reflect all the lovely light back up to the plants. However, when they arrived, the plastic was much too thick for what I was looking for. While it would definitely work under the right circumstances, in this case I wanted something the plants could 'push' out of the way if they outgrew the holes I made. I went ahead and put on the prototypes, but almost immediately I was looking for a better option.
Finally, I came upon 6mil diamond mylar. It turned out to be exactly what I'd been looking for. It's about the thickness of a heavy shower curtain, or blackout curtains. Much easier to cut and deal with, and soft enough that with some slits cut, the plants should be able to push it out of their way if they get large without any trouble. Plus with the diamond texture, it should be even better at catching and reflecting the light up to the plants.
Voila! Lovely, reusable pod covers. At worst, I might need to reapply the adhesive for subsequent uses, but in theory it shouldn't be needed.
For those that were still the 'default' plants (I replaced some with my own seeds) I carefully peeled off the labels and stuck them on top of the cover. The adhesive was stronger than the paper in a few spots, so I just added a bit of my repositionable adhesive to those spots.
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