What makes hydroponic gardening different from traditional in-ground gardening is a soilless growing medium. No dirt! All plants require support, to be held up. This basic requirement is dealt with by soilless growing mediums which are inert, meaning they neither add nor take away anything from the growing environment.  There are a perplexing jumble of growing mediums available for hydroponic gardening. Generally speaking, these mediums are porous, light and coarse, allowing oxygen and nutrients to be easy accessible  to the plants roots.

Some of the most common used in hydroponic gardening are: (more…)

There are hundreds of different kinds of growing medium as anything that a plant can grow in is considered a growing medium. They range from organic (natural) mediums to man-made. What growing medium is the best?  The answer depends on the job you need it to do. The best growing medium for your purpose depends on many variables which include the type of system you are using, what kind of crop you are growing and local environment as some of the determining factors choosing a growing medium for your hydroponic systems.  Mostly it comes down to availability, price or personal preferences. The most popular types of growing are Rockwool cubes, Coconut fiber, Perlite, Vermiculite and Soilless mixes.

Rockwool cubes are lightweight pre-formed cubes designed for propagation. An extremely popular medium when growing from seed or from cuttings, cubes have a neutral pH and retains water very well. They are meant to be a starter medium and commonly come in three sizes starting at 2″ x 2″. They can be easily moved into just about any type of hydroponic system or growing medium – including soil.

Coconut fiber is moving into position as one of the primary growing mediums in the world. As the first totally “organic” growing medium which offers top performance in hydroponic systems, it is essentially a waste product (powdered husks of the coconut) of the coconut industry. The advantages – maintains a larger oxygen capacity than rockwool, superior water holding ability than rockwool (a real advantage for hydroponic systems that have intermittent watering cycles), coconut fiber contains high levels of root stimulating hormones and can offer some protection against root diseases such as fungus infestation. A mixture of 50% coconut fiber and 50% expanded clay pellets is the perfect growing medium according to Dutch growers. You must be careful when you purchase coconut fiber. There are lower grades of coconut fiber high in sea-salt and is very fine grained. Expect disappointing results should this coconut fiber be used in your hydroponic systems. (more…)

Let’s examine some of the basic Hydroponic Systems available to the home user.

EBB AND FLOW

Also called the Flood & Drain, this system works by flooding the reservoir routinely with nutrient solution and empties back to yet another tank to be recycled. Crops on this method are put into trays which hang over a nutrient chamber. The choice of growing medium will determine how often and how long you flood the container for. To regulate your ebb-and-flow cycle a water pump is utilized. This system is considered the most typical of all hydroponic systems.

DRIP

Having the identical set up as an Ebb & Flow system with a reservoir and trays that hang over the nutrient chamber, this hydroponic system works by a constant drip of solution pumped in the growth tray. Flow rate can be difficult to control on a drip system as well as the emitters are prone to clogging. These problems can be magnified when you try to make your own drip system.

WATER CULTURE

This setup will work well for beginners as it is widely considered the easiest arrangement for small scale hydroponic systems. Crops drift on top of nutrient tanks with dangling plant roots within the solution. An air pump can be employed to oxygenate your nutrient solution. Water Culture is one of the oldest examples of hydroponic systems; however it can be a bit tough to control. You must make an effort to keep light from getting to the nutrient solution as it promotes the growth of algae. Algae will eat the nutrients you are trying to feed to your plants, and when pieces of algae die they attract pests leading to many other problems.

WICK

This technique needs no pump and little upkeep. Wicks, usually nylon rope, soak up the nutrients solution to the plant roots inside the growth tray. The solution will not cycle out of the trays so you may have issues with dissolved solids in the nutrient solutions crystallizing on the wick which results in a decline of water absorption. Should there be any pH issues they are slower to remedy because the wick itself harbors additional nutrients which would throw the actual nutrient pH off.

These simple, yet versatile, hydroponic systems allow the home user to pick and choose which method will work the best in spaces available.  After all you are not limited to just one way of growing. Each will have their positive and negative attributes and you may be surprised at what works best for you.  All these hydroponic systems allow for adjustments to make them capable of growing organic crops.

Well imagine one of these scenarios- you have a plant you really enjoy that you’d love to have more of like a rose, you have grown some really brilliant variety of tomato in your hydroponic garden and you want more of it, you have a herb you cook with frequently and need more of it or you simply just want to grow plants you as gifts for friends and family.  What do you do? You clone it in a hydroponic system.  In biological terms- participate in the process of developing similar producing populations of genetically identical individuals. Quite the mouthful?  Simply put – cloning is the process where you propagate or make copies of a whole plant from a piece of an existing plant.  This works really well in a hydroponic system.  You do this every time you take a cutting and place it in water – and as a fact plants propagate this way in nature rather easily- take strawberries and their runners as an example. (more…)

CO₂ is Carbon Dioxide. Basically it is made up of one carbon molecule and two oxygen molecules that are in a gaseous form at standard conditions for temperature and pressure. But enough of the elementary science – how is it important to hydroponics?  The role of CO₂ in your hydroponic system is not a complicated one to understand – photosynthesis is a process that all plants use to converts carbon dioxide into organic compounds, especially sugars, using the energy from light.   Now what this means to you is that your plants require CO₂ to make food for themselves, pretty simple. Not so fast.

Where is it?  In the very air you are breathing right now.  With that being said, why would you need CO₂ in your hydroponic system at amounts greater than what is in the air?  Good question.  Let’s break the explanation down. (more…)

What are they?

Now it may seem that these solutions must be some strange scientific process, however the basics are quite easy to understand. Growing mediums do not contain any nutrients on their own and obviously plants need food to live.  In hydroponic systems this need is dealt with by using nutrient solutions. A solution is a homogeneous mixture of two or more substances, which may be solids, liquids, gases, or a combination of these. In other words it’s a mix of a variety of nutrients in water.

Why is it important?

Plants require different proportions of nutrients during vegetation and flowering stages. Current nutrient products are more advanced than earlier counterparts and now allow precise adjustments based on these growth stages. This means you can get a bigger bang for your buck by increasing yields in your produce crops with a little research. (more…)

pH Testing invokes this image of a mad horticulturalist muttering an arcane ritual over a set of vials when nothing could be further from the truth.  pH testing is simple and easy to understand.

First off – what is pH?  It stands for the rather cumbersome potentiometric hydrogen ion concentration. Simply put, it is a measure of the acidity or alkalinity of a solution.  The pH scale is from 0-14 and pure water has a neutral pH of 7.  Anything that would be considered acidic is rated lower than 7 and anything considered alkaline is rated higher than 7. Pretty simple. (more…)

Imagine being retired. No daily grind of the 9 to 5.  Now imagine being in a retirement home. Do you have images of a regimented, somewhat institutional environment?  Now imagine being in that type setting growing strawberries or roses or fresh herbs?  Seems impossible or contradictory? It is entirely possible with Hydroponic Gardening. (more…)

What makes hydroponic systems different from traditional in-ground gardening is a soil-less growing medium. No dirt! All plants require support, to be held up. This basic requirement is dealt with by soil-less growing mediums which are inert, mostly non-organic materials.  Non- organic refers to the medium not being derived from living organisms (unlike soil- which is). There is a perplexing jumble of growing mediums available. Generally speaking, these mediums are porous, light, and coarse, allowing oxygen and nutrients easy access to the plants roots. Some of the most common are:

Coconut coir

This is produced from the husk that surrounds the coconut shell. Made up of millions of tiny micro-sponges, it can absorb and hold up to eight times its weight in water. It lasting three times as long as peat moss so is fairly sturdy. It is also called palm peat, coco, or just coir.  Some of the advantages are better water retention and aeration.  The disadvantages of coconut coir are its breakdown after several uses and some drainage issues.  It is often mixed with other media to improve drainage in hydroponic systems. (more…)

Fresh air is at the centre of successful indoor gardening. Outside, air is abundant and almost always fresh. C02 levels in the air over a field of rapidly growing vegetation will vary on how still the air is. Being outdoors, and subject to the warming and cooling of the day, the wind blows in fresh air. Rain will cleanse the air of dust and pollutants. The outdoor environment is always moving. Plants grown indoors do not have the natural balance that is present out of doors and must be achieved indoors by way of fresh air ventilation or CO2 enrichment.

So you have decided to add CO2 to your hydroponic systems. Great! Welcome to the wonderful world of bigger yields.  Now having said that, there is a caveat – like all good things – there can be some events to watch out for.  For our purposes we will be dealing with the increases of humidity in a CO2 enriched environment. (more…)