When considering growing plants indoors, there are numerous advantages to growing them in an hydroponic system grow box versus converting a room in your house or apartment. The cost of converting a room can be a huge undertaking. Often there will be quite a mess associated with convertion. Often, these spare rooms do not have adequate ventilation required, so you could have temperature issues right at the beginning.

Obviously, it’s not a good idea to have water directly on your carpet or wood floor. A grow box is self-contained and, unlike the grow room, the advantages don’t stop there. A grow room cannot be moved. A hydroponics grow box, however, can simply be moved to another room or space in your house or even to another growing location with ease. It comes completely assembled, ready to use and can be broken down and cleaned in minutes. You can’t rebuild a the room that fast.

I’m considering growing my own hydroponic strawberries. They are delicious and I hope to make money from them. Here are some of the reasons why hydroponic strawberries beat traditional soil grown strawberries.

No matter where you live you can grow strawberries in an hydroponic system.  So even if you live in a crowded city centre apartment block, you can still grow them. Because you are not using soil, no soil borne diseases will be passed on to the plants. There will be no need to eliminate any soil loving pests. You will have no need to use any expensive or controversial pesticides.

Once you have your strawberries growing, your running costs will be around 20% lower compared to soil based gardening. You can grow more hydroponic strawberries in a smaller area. This is due to the decreased size of the roots as they do not have to spread out to find nutrients. So you will be able to grow more in your growing trays.

Maintenance time is greatly reduced from as soon as your system is set up. There is no need to water your strawberries as they will already have access to all the nutrients. There is also no weeding involved as there is no soil. All you really need to do is pick the strawberries as and when they are ready.

The strawberry yield will be year round. You control their environment and you will have everything set to their optimum growing conditions so they will continue to produce 365 days a year.

You can grow hydroponic strawberries anywhere; greenhouse, cellar, kitchen, conservatory, rooftop, window ledge, living room or in the garden. Th strawberries grow on average 40% larger than their soil born brothers. This is because you have created their ideal growing environment and they have full access to all the nutrients they need. Could be money in the bank!

As hydroponic gardening becomes increasingly popular more and more ideas are coming to the forefront. With growing plants in water and a nutrient solution, you can save time, money and space and enjoy year round fresh fruits, vegetables and flowers. Although there are many commercially produced nutrient solutions available to nourish and grow your plants, it is possible to create your own homemade hydroponics nutrients solutions, even if you have no previous experience.

Creating your own nutrient mixtures can be nearly as enjoyable as growing the plants themselves. It is quite possible to produce various kinds of solutions. Doing some homework is essential to determine which nutrients you need and in which concentrations to best suit your plant’s needs.

Fortunately, there are various types of hydroponic systems available for us to choose from. These systems can either be passive or active in nature. With a passive systems, nutrients are passed through the growing medium. With active systems, a pump is used to get the nutrients to the plants. More often than not, you see better growth with an active system, since active systems provide more oxygen to the plants.

Hydroponic systems can be based on either recovery or non-recovery methods for dealing with the nutrients. The non-recovery method does not recycle the nutrient solution. The recovery method, on the other hand, does, making if quite a bit more efficient.

This is a bit technical but good information from my favourite magazine:

by J Benton Jones, Jr.

pH is defined as the negative log of the hydrogen ion (H+) concentration on a scale from 0 to 14, 7.0 being the neutral point, with less than 7.0 being defined as “acidic” and greater than 7.0 as “alkaline.”  The optimum pH ranges for plant root function growing in a mineral soil, an organic soil, a soilless organic rooting medium, or a hydroponic nutrient solution are not the same. In addition, there is no one explanation for the pH effect on plant roots growing in these four media. A pH range of 4.5 to 8.5 is the normal encompassing range associated with these rooting media with plants functioning best in “acidic” environments.

Read more……….

I found another good tip for your in home garden full of roses:

Many growers of roses use a baking soda solution to fight powdery mildew fungus. Mix one rounded tablespoon of baking soda with one tablespoon of summer horticultural oil in a gallon of water.

Spray this mixture on the plant as long as the temperature is not above 850 F. This will not stop powdery mildew once it has established itself. But it can be an excellent preventative.

Another treatment is sulphur dust. Apply either sulphur or lime sulphur about every seven to ten days.

Many quality nutrients provide beneficial microbes that colonize on a plant’s roots. This, in turn, will inoculate a plant for life against disease.

When purchasing products with beneficial microbes, remember that they are living organisms. Pay close attention to the shelf  life of the product you are considering. A long shelf  life, which most quality products provide, will help assure you of getting living, vibrant microbes that will go to work for you.

Quality nutrients also help to guard against insect infestation.  If your roses are attacked by pests, you’ll be giving them the ability to recover.

The magazine I’ve come across covers such a wide range of gardening subjects; everything from diagnosing what’s wrong with crops or an individual plant to tips on hydroponics.

When you subscribe, the copies are free.  On line, you can read issues going back three years.  I think paper magazines are still such a comfort to read and keep around the house.  Here’s a snippet from the latest edition:  “A Diagnostician’s Does and Don’ts”, written by J Benton Jones, Jr., an expert in hydroponics:

“A greenhouse tomato grower asked me to make a visit to determine why some tomato plants had leaves with dark “scars” on them. The greenhouse was glass-covered, the crop being grown in a home-made NFT hydroponic system. There were open water surfaces and the air in the greenhouse felt “humid.”  What was happening? With night cooling, condensation accumulated on the interior structure and water dripping from the joined structural pieces was falling on the leaves, causing the leaf “scaring.” The grower thought that there was a disease condition developing and was prepared to apply a fungicide to his tomato plants.”

Read more……..

The comparison between LED lighting and all the others lighting is simple.  When done right and built correctly the LED’s will last ten times longer, with 50% to 90% less energy used on a constant basis.

It is really easy to see, for instance; A 4 ft florescent tube uses 40w’s for 8,000 hrs (that is 333.334 days or less than one year at 24 hours a day use)

The best fluorescent 18w 4ft tubes will last for 50,000 hours “minimally” and will have run for over 80,000 hours of testing in a lab (that is 2083.334 days or 5.71 years of continual use minimally to 3333.334 days or 9.13 years with continual use) all with more light output.

The conventional lighting with the equivalent output and coverage uses 250w minimum.

Incandescent (regular light bulbs and conventional lighting) and fluorescent tubes and even “energy saving” bulbs all have horrible toxic, dangerous and explosive chemicals in them, some of which leach out into the air. All of it will end up in the ground as these are not recycleable. It is likely that most people don’t know they are toxic and so just throw them away.

If roses are worth growing, they’re worth feeding with the best nutrient fertilizers.  If you want to grow quality roses, feed them quality fertilizers.

Generic fertilizers found at box stores and other gardening stores and supermarkets, generally lack two important things. One is the essential minerals needed to produce quality flowers. Even when a cheap product appears to have a complete formulation, don’t be fooled. Some manufacturers use cheap minerals which plants cannot readily absorbed. This will end up giving you disappointing results.

The other reason for shopping quality is to be assured of a well tested nutrient formulation that includes the proper balance of minerals. Too little or two much of a particular mineral can either starve the plant or set up a toxic condition.

Setting up the Grow Room For Roses

One of the first considerations for your roses will be lighting. During the non-blooming stage, you’ll want to use a high intensity bulb that provides an abundance of blue spectrum light, such as a Metal Halide bulb. When your roses move into the flowering stage, they will need bulbs that provide a red spectrum, such as High Pressure Sodium.  Try the new LED grow lights for even better results.

The rest of the grow room will need to be set up the same way you would for growing most other flowers or vegetables. You’ll want to provide proper temperatures, quality nutrient solutions and ventilation. Also, if you want to increase productivity, increase the amount of CO2 in your grow room. This will help stimulate more photosynthesis activity which provides more growing power.

As Big Mike says, roses are a hydroponics crop that can win you a ton of praise and provide hours of gardening enjoyment. And they are not difficult to raise.