Good evening and welcome to ongoing election coverage by Town Meeting Television. This is one of many forums we are bringing you in advance of local elections and town meeting on the first Tuesday in March, March 1st 2022. Town Meeting is traditionally where voters weigh in on local government representation, municipal budgets, school budgets, and local ballot items. All candidates on the ballot are invited to participate in Town Meeting TV election forums. Town Meeting TV election forums introduce you to community decision makers and connect you with the issues that shape your local community. My name is Emily Brewer and I will be moderating tonight's Wilson Select Board Candidate Forum. With us we have incumbent Ted Kenney who is running unopposed for a three-year seat on the board. If you are watching this live we would love to hear your questions at<PHONE_NUMBER>. Watch Town Meeting TV on Comcast channel 1087, Burlington telecoms channels 17 and 217 as well as online at Town Meeting TV's YouTube page. With that said let's get started with the opening statement. Each candidate has about a minute to introduce themselves and we only have Ted here with us so Ted we will start with you for your opening statement which can you please tell us why you're running and what experience you bring to the position. Sure great well first of all thank you Emily for having me I'm I'm running for the Select Board because I like I want to serve I feel like I have it sounds probably a little arrogant but I feel like I do have something to offer I've lived in Williston since 1999 my wife and I have two daughters one of whom graduated from CVU last year one of whom is a junior at CVU Williston's my home and I love it. I've been involved with the town for a long time now I was a member of the Williston Planning Commission I was elected a couple of different times to the Williston School Board in that capacity these things don't exist anymore because they merged but it was also on the Chittenden South Supervisory Union Board and I served on the Select Board from 2005 until 2010 and then got off for three years but I've been on since 2013 again. I'm running because I want to work on the challenges that Williston faces has faced and will continue to face. Williston continues to evolve it still has remnants of being a farming community like it did when I was growing up I grew up in Richmond and I had family in Williston so I was here a lot but Williston is a really it's a challenging municipality the municipal government of it is challenging and the reason for that is because it has a residential population basically people who are here at night people who live here of 10103 people according to the last census but it has over 20,000 people during the day who work here in offices banks stores and businesses that we have so you have to provide services for twice the number of people who live here now luckily we have the local options tax and that does take that does bring the town of Williston about 25% of the money that it uses for municipal services but the demands continue to grow we're asking the people to approve of a budget this year that's higher than it has been and so keeping the needs that growth puts on us with sustainable budgets is a significant challenge so that's in a nutshell why I'm running I want to continue to help Williston as it evolves and would ask would ask that I be allowed to serve thank you so much Ted and moving right on from that jumping off from one of the last things you said do you support the town budget of 13.1 million this year and why do you yeah I do it's it's a significant increase in the budget it just is and that's that's never fun to bring to the voters but to put the numbers on it we're asking for a budget approval of $13.1 million this year that's up from $11.5 million last year 1.6 million of that or 13.6 percent of the increase is well I'm sorry it's increasing the tax rate by 13.6 percent what that means if you boil it down a median home in Williston has a value of $302,000 so the estimated overall tax increase would be about $9.58 a month so when you look at it that way it's it's it's always a bad thing to raise taxes I don't like it I don't like to pay taxes myself I like to spend my money how I want to spend it but this this is only $9.58 a month increase the reason I'm in favor of it is because about half of that proposed budget $785,000 is attributable attributable to the the addition of nine extra firefighters currently the department has three shifts of four career firefighters to provide fire and emergency medical services department last year had just under 2000 emergency calls 2000 emergency calls that's huge and again that's because we have twice the number of people in town during the day who then are here at night the other difficulty is that as the town has continued to evolve and change there have been less and less people who want to volunteer as volunteer firefighters when I was growing up in Richmond and Richmond still has an entirely volunteer force but there was an air raid siren we live right in the village an air raid siren that went off it was before walkie-talkies even and it was really loud and to go off whenever there was a fire and the firefighters would go down to the station and take the trucks out and that was the way it was done Williston had a similar situation when I first got on the board here except they didn't use air raid sirens we used radios and cell phones and such but the number of people who are volunteering is going down and the fire department tried to get more volunteers over the last year and it just can't meet its need so the way to meet that need is to hire more firefighters there was a company a consulting firm that the town hire because this is a big deal and we didn't want to just you know barrel into it and take anybody's word for it but it was a company called AP Triton and they analyzed the services and they realized they came back and told us that this is a significant significant problem I'll get maybe more into that when we if we're going to talk about the ambulance situation but the but the bottom line is that we're sending people we're sending crews out that don't have enough under fire regulations to actually go into a burning building and then there've been other circumstances where there have been two calls that come in at the same time and we actually leave equipment leave a fire truck in one location everybody piles in and goes to another location that's that's just it's a very dangerous situation because if you have to wait for another town to respond then that fire truck or ambulance is coming from South Burlington it's coming from Richmond it's coming from Essex and two of those places have volunteer forces where the people would have to go to the station get the equipment and then drive to Williston and by that time it's it may be too late thank you Ted and and yeah we'll move right on to the question about the article on the ballot that would allow for the purchase of a new ambulance for the town and we'll talk about why why you support that yeah um it's it's actually it's the new ambulance is if if it's approved is going to replace the 2014 ambulance that has reached the end of its useful life um so it's it's not adding a new a new toy or something it's replacing a unit that is at the end of its usefulness um it's going to be fine if it's financed if it goes through it'd be over a period of seven years and the uh equipment isn't supposed to cost more than $280,000 the reason we need it is because of the 2,000 emergency calls that I just mentioned um about 1,300 or medical so it's a little over half our our medical emergencies that the the crews respond to um and out of the entire out of the entire number of calls about 30 percent of the time about three out of 10 times another call comes in so while we're responding to one call and most of them are emergency or medical calls you have a three in ten chance that another call is going to come in and we only have you know this gets back to the number of firefighters that we need um but we need the ambulance because it goes out a lot and um again we're talking about service for 20,000 people and and again we're it's not like we're doing those 20,000 people a a favor that they don't return these are people who come to the town to work and shop and um uh are part of the the vibrant uh uh town that we have uh their employees who work here uh we're not we're not doing them any favors by responding when they have an emergency but it is uh obviously a moral obligation and we we just we need to do it we need the ambulance thank you very much ted um i would just like to remind folks watching in the community that we are taking questions from callers you can call in at<PHONE_NUMBER> we would love to hear your questions um but we will move on to our next question and ted um the seats for the board are uncontested again this year uh do you think that there is limited civic participation in the community uh why or why not no i don't um i don't i don't think that people uh not wanting to run to be on the select board is a sign of lack of civic participation um uh frankly it's uh it's oftentimes not a fun job it's fulfilling it's rewarding uh but it's it's not a lot of fun the meetings can go long and um the details can be pretty intense and the feelings in the room can be pretty intense as well on both sides of an issue um so i you know it's not like i'm suffering through the job i enjoy it but i can understand how you know most people in a representative democracy would choose somebody else to represent them and not do it themselves um i think the select board is actually doing a very good job um whether whether i do a good job on the select board i'll i'll leave to others to weigh in on um but the the select board is pretty nuts and bolts it does vet issues pretty extensively um the questions that are asked uh by other select board members and on occasion by myself are are intelligent and well informed and um the decisions that are made uh i think are are uh if if they're wrong then they're very well thought out but i think most of the time they're not wrong um it's pretty nuts and bolts i mean we're talking about municipal budgets we're talking about uh streets we're talking about plowing uh you're talking about the parks and rec department um issues such as uh how much money are we going to put into programs so that uh uh kids that come from less well off families can do day day camps in the town of williston without having to pay for uh tuition for them um you know these these are nuts and bolts things and um by and large i think you know i i think people recognize that that's what the select board does i think they're they're relatively happy with it and um but we do we do get a lot of um feedback by email uh now that the meetings are being streamed virtually um there is a lot more participation than there was uh every now and then there'd be there'll be significant issues that come up um either significant issues that will affect the future of the town or issues that just have an emotional component to them and then at at that point the the room will will be pretty well full um so i i think i think there's a lot of civic participation in the community great thank you very much for that ted and now we'll move on to a question about relating to the pandemic so covid has spurred changes in how we meet and vote as you just referenced um what have you learned and what would you like to see continued post pandemic well the answer is pretty easy i want to see the um the streaming the participation by zoom uh continue uh i think that has been a a wonderful thing um and i want that to to go on um i i do you know i do want the pandemic to end and it may be a shock for people for me to say that but not it it's it's it's a very bad situation that we've been in and it's vexatious and trying um and it has probably cut down on the number of people who come to the meetings live um for a while we were not having meetings live but uh we do now again um but uh i think the number one thing that i've learned in a positive ways that the the technology is there to allow more people to see the meetings live and participate live great thank you very much um we will move on to a question about um housing does williston have a role to play in meeting the housing needs of chitenden county how and what is your vision yeah uh it it definitely does um we've already made some progress on this recently the champlain housing trust uh was uh came forward and they're going to be converting what used to be a marriott hotel in williston um from a hotel into 72 apartments and those are designed to be uh homes for people who would would then be formerly homeless and for low income vermonters um so that's uh that's a that's a great thing the housing group actually purchased it's a town place suites for a 13.4 million dollars and it did it with federal covet 19 stimulus money and state funds um the other thing that we uh are going to be looking forward to is we're change we're hopefully changing our zoning um from the current model to a form-based code and uh what that basically means is that zoning usually works that you can in this zone you can have industrial stuff in this zone you can have uh agriculture in this zone you can have uh residential and then they're mixed use zones all the way through um form-based code takes the emphasis off of that and puts it on what the form of the buildings will look like um that it will be two or three storey buildings or four storey buildings and that they have to be this close to the sidewalk and the new road will have to have uh will have to be a pleasant thoroughfare that is you know drivable and the pedestrian and bike friendly as well within that uh the um the zoning is actually going to be having uh an effect to try to get more affordable housing in uh within that context as well that's that's a number of years off but uh that that's that's the vision for the future is that we're going to be able to do things like that and again that you know there there's still a lot of land in Williston I know people are are uh of two minds uh when it comes to the development that's been going on in Williston um I would say on front porch forums sometimes people uh write things that make it sound like the select board could actually just put a stop to it and come in and say oh we've had enough banks no more banks uh and we can't do that um that that would be unconstitutional in a big way um but the uh but there is a lot of land in Williston that is still developable in areas that are supposed to be developed in tax corners by the big box stores things like that the idea is that in the future we want to be able to look back and I'm not sure if I'm going to be around for this because this is deep into the future um where the uh where the town is it's not just left up to the developers to put another big box store in uh but there's going to be mixed use um smaller stores more affordable stuff with technology showing what could happen with the pandemic um places that would facilitate a good life for people who work at home and will walk down to the small store you know in the building or the next building over or uh you know get a cup of coffee at the cafe that's nearby um and within that we're we're hoping to get uh more uh more affordable housing as well great thank you very much Ted and unfortunately we're coming to the end of our time here um so I would love to give you enough time to have a closing statement um so we will do that now okay um I don't uh I don't really have uh any grandiose uh words that I can throw out um I do ask for people to uh support my request to be put back on the select board um I find it personally fulfilling but that's not the reason I would ask people to consider uh we still have the second lowest municipal tax rate in um Chittenden County uh we also have a pretty significant number of services that the town provides and uh Williston's a great town um it's it's got a lot of challenges and I mean that challenges I don't use that as code word for uh problems although I suppose you could look at some of them as problems um but there there's a lot of opportunity in when Williston for the future both the future of economic growth but also the future for um just quality of life um we've got great schools we've got great parks um and I want to uh I want to be a part of that uh and see that that continues and and improves and in in some uh I want to serve so I would ask for your support well thank you very much to Ted Kenny for participating in tonight's Williston select board candidate forum and thank you very much to our viewers for tuning in to town meeting tv's ongoing coverage of local community candidates budget and ballot items you can find this and more forums at www.ch17.tv don't forget to vote on or before the first Tuesday in March town meeting day March 1st 2022 early voting by mail is available contact your town clerk's office to find out how your community is handling vote by mail polls will also be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m


Welcome to another special edition of the Private Property Farming podcast, The Gardening Series in Partnership with Home Growers. And today we have a live demonstration of an NFT hydroponic system, a 60 pocket to be specific, which CAS and GIFT is going to be assembling for us. So for any of you that is wishing to purchase an NFT hydroponic system to start growing your own food at home, this one is for you where you actually get to see how the system works and most importantly how it's installed. But that will all be covered by Home Growers. So joining me today is CAS and GIFT. Gentlemen, how are you doing? Lovely to see you again, Bali. Thanks for coming through again. Likewise. GIFT. Great. CAS. Let's get the system started.  And I think it's important to mention that when a customer does buy the NFT hydroponic system, this six pocket one specifically, you will install it for them. Is that correct? That's correct. So this is an incredible system. This is the 60 pocket NFT hydroponic system. Okay. Now the beauty about Home Growers again, and this is where it all comes together, is Home Growers is always for the home grower. We come and we set the entire system up as GIFT is displaying right now and showing you exactly the magic, what goes down in terms of an NFT system. So we supply the entire system, set it up with all the nutrients, with the reservoir, and we'll go through all of it just now, the reservoir, the nutrients, the net cups, the clay pebbles and the vegetables. So you don't get your hands dirty, you don't, everything just comes together for you. And it really is a very simple system. You can see it's almost like Lego or a Makano set. And I don't know if I can say that because they're all registered names, but nonetheless, is really like putting, you know, bits and pieces of a puzzle together, but it is so straightforward. And it makes life easier for the home grower to get growing quickly. And it really is special.  And when we talk around hydroponics, no, the hydro means water and it really means growing in water. But the beauty around all of that is the NFT, nutrient-foam technique. So you don't get a massive gushing flow of water that's going to be flying through those channels into the reservoir. It's a flow, it's a foam. There's nutrients being carried through by the water to the rooting system of those plants. And that's what happens in this hydroponic system. So we'll get into more details once we've got the whole thing set up. But I'm kind of giving a bit of an intro as GIFT is busy putting it all together. And as we described a little bit about the system, you can see we've almost done it already and putting it together. It really is something very, very special. So we're almost there. You can see you've got those little wing mats that you got and we put those in and GIFT is spinning them through and we are making sure that this is soundly put together. The structure is in place. And we will then be ready to lay down the channels, which will then be connected with the pipes, which will be then connected into the reservoir and then we will start the process of filling it up, filling it up with the water, filling it up with nutrients and filling it up with the plants in the net cups. And we're going to show you everything each step of the way and it really is fun. It really is exciting. Okay. So let's just see how GIFT assembles this. And then I think it will be fair enough to then start asking questions once the system is installed about the system. Because as I'm thinking now, yes, you've explained NFT. Now we need to know what a 60-pocket mean and just the different levels. So let's just maybe wait for GIFT to complete this. And yeah, we could go in more depth with regards to the technicalities of how the system works. Absolutely. So GIFT has installed this. It looks very fancy and quite sturdy to be honest. But firstly, before we go into the technicalities, explain to us what a 60-pocket means. Is it because it has 60 holes? I don't know. And what type of crops can one grow in this particular structure? Well, good question. So let's first start. The 60-pocket is exactly that. Okay. So these are the holes. And they just call it 60-pockets. And it's got channels. So these white pieces that you see here, these are called channels. And the net cups is really what goes into the holes. And that's kind of where you're going to end up growing your herbs and your vegetables. And what happens is the water will pump up and will go through the process and you'll see how it all comes together. But so let me show you. So I kept a couple of these aside so I can at least give you an example. So that's your net cup. And you get different sizes of net cups. So the net cups will get filled with clay pebbles, which I'll show you now. I kept some of those aside as well. So what happens is the clay pebbles go inside there and it gives the plant support. It absorbs nutrients. It absorbs water. So it sustains the root system. It sustains the root systems very, very well and keeps them hydrated in times of need when there is, let's say, even load shedding. So a lot of people will say, and load shedding is important, which we live through it. What happens is there's no electricity, but what happens is the clay pebbles hold a lot of moisture in it and the root systems, once the plant actually develops, it creates its own buffering and it creates its own reservoir or damming up the water. So it keeps a lot of water in the actual channels, which is a big thing. So these clay rods essentially serve as soil. That's right. That's correct. Right. So you put in the rocks, you put in the cup, inside the system and then you put in your plant and then where does the water come in? Because this is a hydroponic system. Perfect. So we have a reservoir. So we'll switch it on in a few minutes and we'll show you the whole thing works. Okay. But you've got a reservoir that's filled with water and nutrients and we add the nutrients in. The water pumps up into this, through this pipe here and you'll see the water running through this, the channel and gravity will pull it down. So it'll go down that white pipe and come across all the way here and then drop down through that pipe by gravity, make its way through there and down and then all the way down back into the reservoir and the water carries on. So it's a complete secular system that runs its way right through and pulls the nutrients through. And that's why you don't expect to have a dam full of water like that pumping through here. It's a film. It's a flow of water. As long as it's enough water to carry the nutrients, that's where the nutrient film technique, just a form of water that's actually carrying those nutrients. And the clay pebbles will absorb that water as well and it's like a sponge and will hold all of that in. That's why when you look at the clay pebbles to start, they're nice and brown. Yes. After a few weeks of it you'll see they're covered in a white coat and it's a white film and that is all the dry nutrients as it's dried up. It's on the actual stones. The stones always hold nutrients. Right. So I like the fact that you keep referring to this word nutrients, nutrients. What type of nutrients can one put in that reservoir? And you know, because when I think of it from a commercial farming perspective, I'm thinking fertilizers, right, foliar feed, you know. So what type of nutrients would one want to or have to put in through that reservoir? So what we try and do with home growers, remember the whole thing here is about making it easy for people to work with. Because a lot of people, this is this home, this whole domestic farming and this whole home-growing concept is so new that people don't understand. Like the one thing, it's a good question as well, because how often do you put nutrients in? Do you put it in every single day? No. You don't.  Do you know exactly how rich the water is in terms of its nutrient volume? Got it. The particles per million. So you need to know that in terms of not overfeeding because you'll end up burning the crop. And so that's one of the most important things that one needs to know. But in terms of the nutrients, you get many different varieties of nutrients. You get the liquid state, which you need to know exactly how much to put in. Then you obviously got to effectively check and test your levels, put the liquid nutrients into the reservoir and that will pump itself through. Or use a dry nutrient, which is what we highly prefer, because we've already got it calibrated. So when you come to home growers, we give you the kit, we've marked it for you. You pour the dry nutrients in, you put water in, you make it into a soluble solution and you pour it into a reservoir and you only do that once every three weeks. And that's all you do. So you know, whilst you're drying it, you may fill up your reservoir on a more regular basis because what happens as some of the hits and it's hot, just like you and I, we get thirsty, we drink a lot more. The plants do the same. You know, some people want to say, I want to feed you and say, do you drink more when it's a hot day? I'll push you. The plants are no different. They're both like my cells. They're sitting in a structure, living there. So the same applies with plants. You have to understand that. But just because you're putting water in, let's say twice a week or three times a week, doesn't mean that you've got to put in nutrients two, three times a week. Remember, the clay pebbles, as I explained earlier, will hold a lot of the nutrient value in those pebbles themselves. So although that the water's been replaced in the channel, and there's still nutrients stuck in those little pebbles, it's going to extract those from the pebbles into the plants. And you only have to replace the nutrients once every three weeks or so. Got it. And because this is a vertical structure, I presume that your type of crop that you'll be planting will be quite limited. So you can't grow a crop that will grow vertically. Maybe it has to be just halfway in terms of height. Is that correct? Technically, no. Not true. So a lot of people are quite surprised. They look at this and they go, well, you can't plant much in there. We've grown onions to that size in here. We've grown cabbages, big cabbage heads like this in here. We've got beet treats growing here. We've got lettuces like you cannot believe. Tomatoes to bush that size of big, big plum tomatoes. So what you've got to do is the whole trick here is about planting. So you don't look at a system like this and take all your vegetables, and you just got plonk them anyway. Ideally, what one should do is actually plant. So anything that's going to grow quite high and big and bushy and so on, you'd maybe use the top section. What we like to do as well, and the lovely thing about a hydroponic stand structure like this, you can use natural growth string. So you can toss string on, and you can actually create a barrier or a structure to hold the plant. So the plant has got some support. So you're dealing with it in a very effective manner. What also happens is the root system, as the root system grows, and you'll see, and I showed you the last time when you first came to visit us, and I opened this up. And this was lovely about the system, because you can clip these open, and you can see exactly what is going on inside the reservoir, sort of the channels. So if you have to maintain roots and clip and cut and do whatever, you can do it with these, which is really, really special. And you'll see it, for example, tomatoes, how the roots grow.  If you look at vegetables, they're the naughty as vegetables on the planet, because they steal all the nutrients. The nutrients. So although this is probably the best place to put them, because it's right on the top, and you can toss string and they grow, your first base of nutrients coming up is over here.  These guys are flying and those guys are not flying. So you gotta be clever in terms of how you actually put it together, but the nice thing about this, you learn. It's learning and obviously having farmed, it's also always monitoring the EC and the pH of the water. So your customer comes to home growers and they purchase this NFT hydro 60 pocket system. Home growers will install it for the customer, and then it's up to the customer to say, what is it that I plant? And like I said, it's thinking about all those technicalities, about the vertical crops at the top, the shorter crops at the bottom. So is this part of home growers value add when a customer purchases this NFT hydro system? So again, one thing that we've got right in home growers, we've tried to make every one of our solutions and our samples, the solution will be a little bit better. We've tried to make every single one of our solutions and samples incredibly easy to work with. We're trying to simplify the process. So what happens is when you walk in and you say, Cass, wherever you're dealing with, I like the 60 pocket NFT.  But let's say this is the one, you walk in and say, this is what I want. What do I get? Let's see what you get. You get the full system. You get all the vegetables. You get all the clay pebbles. You get all the net cups. You get it set up. You get it delivered and set up at home or at your office.  So there's nothing you have to do. Unfortunately for now, we can only do that in Johannesburg, Pretoria, in the Khartin region. It's the only thing we can do for now in terms of if it's far flung regions like in the KZN or Eastern Cape or Western Cape and so on, unfortunately, we don't have a presence there as yet. We do ship all over the country. So we pack it up with all the instructions. We've got a seven-day a week line, which is there to help. Only thing which we don't send in that case will be the fresh vegetables and herbs because the time it gets, they get damaged or they're dead. But everything else, we supply lock, stock and barrel. There's not a cent more to be spent. So when you see the system and the price is given to you, everything, you don't have to go around shopping, looking, trying to do, understand it. We teach you absolutely everything. That's what makes this experience so pleasurable. Well, that's quite reassuring to hear because, you know, sitting up the system and you're thinking hydroponic and nutrients and, you know, the bigger guys or the bigger crops at the top eating all the nutrients can be quite daunting, you know, for a first-time home grower or for a person who just wants to start producing their own food. My last question here is, Kass, how does one maintain the system so that it could be more durable in the long term? So as you're changing the crops in different seasons and different cycles, how does one maintain this? Do we throw away these stones? Do we have to replace the cup? Do we have to dismantle the NFT hydro to clean it inside? What's the maintenance like? So maintenance, they're very good questions as well. And I love the questions you ask because these are the kind of questions that some people ask when they visit us and a lot of people don't ask. And it just goes over the head because they just get so super excited about this whole hydroponic buzz that they hear. They want to go hydro. And the most incredible thing is because there's different systems and different solutions. You've got a lot of people trying to attempt to build their own systems at home and they use plumbing pipe. And then they go and cut them and they put the holes in and they do all this kind of stuff. That's great, it works. But try and maintain it. That's the problem. Whereas this works. This is a fully manageable system in terms of, as I've shown before, you just clip the channels open. And then if you have to get into here and you've got to take out some roots and clip them and cut them and clean or do whatever you have to do, you can at least get to the root. Whereas if you think of a plumbing pipe as a complete circular system, you can't get into it.  You won't even get your fingers through it. You won't even get a probably one year old kid's hand in there to try and do it. But you've got problems. Those are the shortcomings that people have. Do you replace these? No, you don't. So what you may find though is that depending on the type of edge that you grow, so we see, like some people say, you don't know if you can grow an onion in there or a beetroot in there or a leek in there. Well, you can. We've had beautiful onions growing to that size. The problem is that sometimes part of the bulb is under the channel clipping, but you can't get it out. And the only way to get out is to open this up like you can, take a scissor, clip the roots, and then you can pluck it out. That you can do. But by that stage, which you'll find, the force of nature and the force is so incredible, the pressure pushed. It's most, I'll show you outside. I'll take a tour. When that bulb develops and it's growing, the force that is made, that force is so significant it actually pushes those pebbles into this plastic and it molds it into the plastic. It is absolutely insane to see what goes on.  So these are the little things you may have to replace. The pebbles, what we would do is take them out, just rinse them out in water, put them in a nice big drum or a basket type of thing, rinse them, rinse them, rinse them, rinse them, so you're just taking up a lot of excess nutrients out of it. Don't throw that water away, go into your garden, just go pour it down into some of the flower beds or your vegetable beds or in the lawn, because it's so rich in nutrients it's a blessing for the ground. Then start again, so you have that. And also the systems, you can either run the system indoors or outdoors. That's a nice thing. Indoors has got its own set of challenges though. You've got to have decent lighting, your full spectrum LED lighting, which are grow lights, you've got to have that. You'll also see when you enter through home, grow through the front door there, you'll see on the left-hand side, you've got the exact same system that you got over here, but that is only got partial sun, partial sun, but it's got natural lights and everything flourishes there. It is really a remarkable experience. And then the others we leave in full sun and it's really exposed to all the elements. So, and annually what you'll do is, because if it's left outdoors, you must understand that it is outdoors, it's like garden furniture, it's like you need to go- There's dust, there's dust, and it's gonna get dirty. It's insects, yes. So you've got to just take its plastic, easy to clean. And just clean it. Just wipe it down. It's really a very simple thing to maintain a manager. It's not a difficult process. Wow, Cass, this is awesome. Yeah, I wish I could change my processes, but yeah, I think this is lovely, especially for someone growing their own food at home. Very simple and efficient system. And I'm glad that you can install it for us, you know? Absolutely. Because yeah, we wouldn't wanna get this thing wrong. But thank you so much to you and your team for showing us how the NFT Hydro system works. This is a 60 pocket and once again, just to remember the audience at home is that it comes in different sizes.  So we've got your, so we've got, and again we'll show in different episodes. So Hydro is interesting. It's not a one shoe, one size fits all type of shoe system. There's the Tauber hydroponic, which works on more of an aeroponic type of principle, which we'll cover at later stage. You've got a DWC cracky type system and a DWC system, which we'll talk about later in another episode. It's also Hydro, it's all water. And then you've got this. And then this is available, as I say, different sizes for different budgets and different sizes. You've got some people that say, oh, I love this, but I can't fit in my patio. So they go for a smaller unit. So it's just different options. All you've got to do is get in touch with home growers. Home growers is yet to help you. We will walk you through, we'll teach you, we'll go through the motions. We're passionate about what we do. Our staff love what they do. And it's really about importing the knowledge and we want to help people. Thank you so much, Kers, for just obviously explaining how the system works. But let's get GIFT in to, maybe it's just start planting a few seedlings. I agree. And see how this beautiful structure will turn out at the end. Absolutely. So GIFT, come and join us. So the nice thing about GIFT is it really got everything ready for us. Fantastic. So what we've done is because I'd like people to see the different levels of success that one gets from a 100-point system. You know, if you take, and I always liked you, you and I were talking before and we're talking about these different systems and then you look at these cooking shows and these baking shows and so I wanted to mix all the ingredients or whatever. And then I take it, I pop it in the microwave and then two seconds later to the open the microwave and the whole cake's ready. And you say, but gee, man, how come mine doesn't do that? So we want to do a little bit different here. So what we've got to do is GIFT's already got some units that already set up quite nicely and quite healthy. And then we've got straight from the seedlings, from the seedling room, which is exactly what you would get if you bought the system from Home Grows. We'll give you the seedlings and then you'll set these. Now, these are bigger babies, as you can see. So they're well-structured, nicely-sized units and those are going in. Then we're going to take the smaller ones, which are the smaller hydroponic seedlings that we've used from our seedling room and that is going to go into the system and they will, in essence, ultimately become what you see over here. So these are amazing. The water's going to start pumping in just now. We've really got some special, special stuff. That looks like a tar basil to me. You can smell it. It's absolutely beautiful. It's one of my absolute favorites. It smells amazing. And this just does so well. The nice thing about tar basil is that you can clip it. You can propagate it in water in one of the others. You can take a piece of here, take a net cap, fill it with pebbles, leave it inside there and then within a few weeks you're going to have another root system growing and more basil growing, tar basil. And you can do it with a whole host of product. It's really a special. You can see what's going on. So really we're creating a barrier over here. You've got myself and you on the one side of the fence and we've got gift on the other side and soon no one's going to see us because we're going to have a field of beautiful greenery. Now if this was at home, you can imagine the incredible, absolutely incredible vegetables that you would be able to grow at home and be able to eat on a day to day basis. And I can already hear and see the water flowing in. And it's quite tranquil. If you think you just close your eyes for a few seconds and you just listen to that calming effect. What better, you've got natural greens growing, you've got water running and this is what it's all about. This is about having something sustainably set up and to grow at home. And you would have seen some of the images now that with gifts busy putting in, you see the roots are quite hectic already. Now think about that. As they start to mature and they start to grow inside these channels, when there's load shedding they're going to act as a damning system. They're going to dam up the water. So you're not going to say, although there may be no water running for two hours or so, there's enough water in those little pockets which is going to sustain the plant. Don't be afraid that if you see some of the leaves start to droop, you must understand they're going into a suspend mode just to protect themselves from lack of water and hydration. But as soon as the water comes back or electricity comes back, one of the water is flowing again within half an hour or whatever it is, you'll see they'll be bursting with it life again. So the hydroponic is really a very, very special product. This looks stunning. I love the smell. It's amazing. Yeah, and the fact that it's just different crops as we go along. And you can see, so those are from the seedling room. So these are small little seedlings. So the journey was this little tomato guy here started like that and that size. The basil started out small and then they start bursting. The chilies are forming. So you can imagine having this at home and you're going to say, guess what are we going to have for dinner? Tomato. Well, I feel like this tomato. Basil. You can have so many different tomatoes. Absolutely. Basil pesto. You can go chop up a few lettuces. You've got some red oak. You've got green oak. You can say beautiful chives. You've got some garlic chives. You can say beautiful spinach. You can set segments on this. You can say for one segment of this, only lettuces, then whatever you decide. And the nice thing, a lot of our families that come here, the kids get so excited. Because of the kids, they say, okay, so that's mine. That's the sisters. That's mom's, that's dad's, that's granny's and that's what it is. And everyone's got their own. And then they trade. So for dinner, they say, okay, tonight we'll have that. I'll trade you with that. I'll trade you with this and so on. Quite remarkable. Very, very special. So these are all seedlings. You can see that they're very underdeveloped at this point in time. But you give them a short period of love in terms of nutrients and flow of water and a bit of care. And then you're going to get something like this, which is really special. And these came from an outside hydroponic that you visited us before. And we replace these continuously all the time because quite often we've got somebody that comes and visits us and they're good clients of ours. We just end up plucking one of these whole things and giving them as a gift for their hydros.  So as that bulb system starts to develop, how it pushes those clay pebbles into the plastic. Yeah. So just from a technical perspective, how many of the clay pebbles do you have to put in like completely while the cup is full or you can put just a few so that we can create room for the actual crop to grow inside. So what we do is rule of thumb is that we take the net cup, we fill it up to the brim of the net cup itself. Just to give the plant enough capacity to support itself. And remember the net cup's there not only for a service to hold the plant up, the net cup is there as a service to hold nutrients and hydration. Got it. The more you have the better and especially now that we're dealing with issues such as load shedding. Yeah. You can see on this baby, you can see the pepper's forming. This is, I think this is a Jupiter pepper. Variety. Okay. So we've got some habaneros growing here. We've got Serena chilies here. We've got the red and then we've got the yellow habaneros. We've got, we really got a wide variety. One of my best that I think I must say I do enjoy and I'll sit down with you the one day and I think we'll walk through was the garlic charms, I love those garlic charms.  Your magnificent spinach, beautiful, beautiful leaves, huge leaves grow. So really special. Wow. That's it. NFT hydroponic system, a 60 pocket, fully installed by home growers and you don't leave the client hanging. You give them the seedings as well. That drops. The clay pebbles and literally a person is ready to go and start producing their own food. And we will fill up the rest but this is example of what's being achieved. And you can see the water pumping up here and you can see it going through. So it's creating its own flow and the water's getting those channels. Great. Cass, this is lovely. Thank you so much for showing us the live demonstration of the NFT hydra system and that you could grow so many plants and shut a small space. That's remarkable. This is what I love about it. You and I are standing here. We literally got two meters of space. That's what you got. Now if you had to visualize and you had to put this into perspective, you've got between eight and 10 meters of length, which is typically sitting in two meters here. And then the amount of water consumption in terms of what you're gonna use, significantly, significantly less on a hydra than growing in soil. So that's the one thing which is a big, big plus. Right. Talk about maximizing your space. Thank you so much for watching another special edition of The Gardening Series brought to you by Private Property in partnership with Homegrows. Thank you and this is it from us, from myself and Cass. I will see you at the next episode. Take care. Thank you very much.


In entertainment news, the Lagos state governor, Babajde Sonwaru, has taken to his verify Twitter account to share pictures of when he hosted the Ikorudu Boys in his office. The committee group paid the governor Ikotsi visit. In his post, the governor mentioned that the young boys' creativity put them and Ikorudu on the world map. The governor tweeted and I quote, Today, I welcomed generational filmmaking talent Ikorudu Boys, whose creativity has put them on the global map of international platforms like Netflix, earned them a nomination at the Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards and put their faces on billboards in Times Square, New York. Last year, the Ikorudu Boys drew the attention of the producers of the movie, Russo Brothers, following the remake of the movie trailer, Extraction. Find out about fresh news updates.


And so we can think of scholarly communication activities, peer review and otherwise, as that core value proposition of what societies bring to the table. And so we can think in new ways about if we're, you know, putting that in practical terms, you can think about that in terms of business models. Business model is not the control of information, the gated access to information. It is the evaluation of that information. And that evaluation process is a viable business model. We need the expertise that are housed in the collective action of societies and their members. And so that is a service worth paying for. And that evaluation process can be conceived from a society level as something that is done piecemeal. We help to organize and facilitate the actions of peer review rather than the control of the information, the output of that review.