Keeping your Flex Acre Clean

Updated

Follow the instructions in this article before any task that touches your crop, your water, or a tool that meets either one. This is the only page that covers what to wear and how to clean, so read it once and then work straight from the task article in front of you.

Gather Tools:

  • Clean Gloves
  • Soap and a Sink
  • 3% Hydrogen Peroxide
  • Clean Towels
  • Scrub Pads
  • Bristle Brush (in the Grower Toolkit)
  • 5-Gallon Bucket

NOTE: This list is cleaning supplies only. Each task article carries the tools that task needs.

What to Wear

If your school or facility already has a food-handling routine, follow it. Your Flex Acre asks for nothing beyond what you already do.

If your room has no rule of its own, this covers every task in this category:

  • Tie back or cover your hair.
  • Wash your hands with soap and water.
  • Put on clean gloves.

That is the whole routine, and it is the same for every article in this category. You will not be asked for it again.

Reach for a fresh pair of gloves after you handle plant waste, used rockwool or compost, when you move between your Flex Micro and your Flex Acre, and before you handle seeds. Those are the moments when something can ride from one job to the next on the same pair.

Cleaning Before Sanitizing

  • Clean the surface first with hot water and a scrub pad, or with 3% hydrogen peroxide and a clean towel.
  • Sanitize the surface second, once it is visibly clean and dry.

Cleaning and sanitizing are two jobs in a fixed order. Cleaning lifts the algae, salt and plant matter off the surface. 3% hydrogen peroxide cannot reach through what the scrubbing left behind, so a surface that was never cleaned is never sanitized either.

Using 3% Hydrogen Peroxide

  • Spray 3% hydrogen peroxide on the surfaces that stay on your Flex Acre, including the Tank Lid, the wall and the Frame.
  • Wipe the doors down with 3% hydrogen peroxide, keeping the spray off the Light Bar connection points.
  • Spray your Tank with 3% hydrogen peroxide once it is drained and open.
  • Wipe each sprayed surface with a clean towel.
  • Rescrub any spot that is still marked.
  • Spray 3% hydrogen peroxide over the whole surface a second time once it is clean.
  • Carry the parts that come off your Flex Acre to the sink for hot water: a scrub pad for Drip Line and Top Cap surfaces, a brush for the inside of a Drip Line, its holes, the plant spaces, and the Disc Filter discs.

CAUTION: Spray your towel, not your Light Bars. The Light Bars are not waterproof.

Your hydrogen peroxide is store-bought, and any 3% solution from a drug or grocery store is the right one.

Surfaces That Touch your Crop

Every surface that meets a harvestable plant gets both halves of the treatment: your Panels, your Root Chambers, your Tank Lid, your containers, your utility carts, your work tables, and your harvest knives and pruning shears. Watch your Tank Lid where the Panels meet it, as algae settles there first.

Your supplies are ready and your surfaces are clean. Well done!

Next: Logging your Flex Acre Tasks & Readings, to record each task as you complete it.