The Atami Wilma hydroponics system

The Atami Wilma system is an active hydroponics version of the drip irrigation system. Plants grown in a Wilma system benefit from all the positives of hydroponics coupled together with the flexibility growing in pots brings.

 In the Wilma system plant pots are placed on a tray that sits on top of a nutrient tank, simply fill these pots with your chosen media be it coco, clay pebbles, rockwool, soil or even a mixture and your plants. In the nutrient tank sits a pump that pumps your solution to a dripper for each pot to feed your plants, the timing and frequency of watering can be changed by use of segmental timers to automatically feed your plants.

 The solution will work its way through your chosen media and over your plants roots before draining through the pot on to the tray and then back in to your nutrient tank pulling vital oxygen with it all over the root zone.

 The Wilma system can be used as a simple auto watering irrigation system of a proper re circulating hydroponics system giving this dynamic system multiple uses.

The big positives to the Wilma are obvious but i will list them for you anyway:

Plants take up more water and nutrient than simple hand watering methods resulting in bigger healthier plants.

The Wilma comes in many different sizes making it suitable for growers with all size growing areas.

The Wilma takes far less maintenance than a hand watered garden sometimes making it possible to go for a week without having to fill up your nutrient tank.

The Wilma is a flexible system with it been in pots, plants can be moved around under lights for example unlike some other systems.

Tips

Always use the correct dripper for the growing media you have chosen, For instance when growing in clay pebbles you would use the flood dripper as the clay does not hold a great deal of water. For more capillary media such as soil or coco you would want to use the arrow drippers.

If using your Wilma with a media such as coco you would treat it as a basic irrigation system .

If using clay pebbles you would run your system as a re circulating hydroponics system and run your pump twenty four hours a day.

In my opinion the Wilma works much better when using just clay pebbles with roots receiving much more oxygen making plants healthier thus equals bigger yields.

Article source: http://neilstuart1978.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/the-atami-wilma-system/