Originally Posted by Jeff zone 8 N.C.

I am answering here after reading both of your todays posts. Just some things to think about if you have not already. You said it would be deep water hydroponics culture. You did not want competition for light but do not say what kind of light. I will assume you mean LED indoor lighting and you plan on growing vigorous plants and not just maintaining them in a suspended animation state for winter. LED and all other artificial light needs to be very close to the plant to make good use of that light. Its useful light diminishes quickly with distance. You are going to be growing bananas at 6 foot high or so and peppers at a much shorter height and pineapple at an even shorter height. At least some of your lights would need to be raised to follow the fast growing height of the bananas so would quickly get too far away from the other plants. Have you thought about the distance side to side that a banana plant takes. It's leaf canopy will easily have a 5 foot spread or more. They will block a lot of light from getting below so with the space you are starting with they will quickly crowd out the other plants. Bananas strongly seek light so if they are bigger and growing strongly and if the light is not directly over them they will lean towards it till they fall over since they are so heavy. Bananas growing in pots outside that fall over take less than 24 hours to start straightening up towards the sun again and will never straighten back up. The lean is permanent. I am aware of the venturi principal but is that used in smaller hydroponics systems? My understanding is that you need a fairly powerful water pump to make a venturi work. Am I wrong? Would just aquarium air pumps do the job?