As winter approached, I began an experiment that has been in the back of my mind for a year or so - hydroponic strawberries! Various online sources, mainly youtube videos, indicated it was very possible to produce strawberries throughout the year using an NFT system, with consistently good results.

The starting point was to buy a set of strawberry “crowns“ from a standard online garden retailer - these are basically nearly dried out clumps of roots with the old foliage and stems dried up and mostly trimmed back. These were rehydrated by soaking for several hours, and dropped into the freshly cleaned NFT system with just water running initially. After another day or so I began adding nutrient to a very weak level, and left this running for a few days until the first signs of life began to appear, with the green hints of new leaves.