I finally got a chance to finish (well almost - it's functioning but not yet perfect - more parts coming in soon) the setup for the strawberry experiments, and not a moment too soon!!! These guys were crowding each other around in the nursery - so much so that one of them was almost completely shaded - we'll see if it can recover in the main garden...
This is how it looked as of this morning - the black container with yellow top is a homemade humidifier - there is an ultrasonic fogger floating in that reservoir and 3 cheap fans push the mist out of the box and into the tent. The hose going into it is coming from a trough underneath the cold water air conditioner - it's basically just a heat exchanger with about 40degF water running through it and a couple of fans blowing the tent air through it, so the heat exchanger gets lots of condensation - so by draining the condensate back into the reservoir, it's self sustaining. The heat exchanger is quite effective at sucking heat out of the room.
Here's a closeup of the "nursery"....
This is the new setup (without the plants) going through a testing phase. In hydroponics lingo, this is called an NFT setup which stands for Nutrient Film Technique. Nutrient water is pumped into the left side - it flows like a river down the trough which is sloped at a 2% grade, and then drains out the right side into a sump underneath. The sump then pumps the nutrient back into the main reservoir located outside the tent (for heat purposes - the nutrient is kept around 65degF, which is different from both the daytime and nighttime temps in the tent, plus it's big, so it frees up real estate inside).
Finally, the plants are home! #2 is the runt that was shaded by everyone else in the nursery.
Added this shot of the outside - 30 gallon reservoir and chiller
