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.

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……..

Apart from proving to be superior grow lights for plants, Light Emitting Diodes (LED) offer numerous benefits over traditional light sources including lower energy consumption, smaller size and greater durability. As a result, LED’s have become increasingly widespread among today’s most practical applications. LED Lights are appearing in everything from brake lights and status indicators to glow sticks and strobe lights.

LED lights are capable of dimming very easily and then lighting up again very quickly. These advanced on and off capabilities allow standard LED’s to achieve full brightness in mere microseconds, making them extremely well suited for traffic signals and emergency vehicle lighting. In fact, the use of LED Lights in recent years has led to vast improvements in drivers’ safety, since they now have more time to react to other vehicle’s brake lights.

The technique of growing in hydroponics is taking off in many places.  I encourage you to read this article and start thinking about a space in your home where you can set up an efficient, small in home garden and enjoy the nutritious benefits of home grown food.

Written by Danny O. Calleja / Correspondent

Monday, 28 December 2009 18:34

PILI, Camarines Sur—Even urban areas in the country can now produce in commercial scale high-quality vegetables and other agricultural crops through a revolutionary approach in farming called hydroponics. This newly introduced urban-farming system is a potential approach to revitalize agriculture by fundamentally altering the manner of how crop is produced. This included eliminating the dependence of plants on soil by completely changing their growing medium. The concept of hydroponics proves that soil is no longer crucial for the plant to thrive when the required mineral nutrients are artificially introduced into the plant’s water supply and plant roots absorb them, said Jose Dayao, the regional executive director for Bicol of the Department of Agriculture (DA) based here. Dayao explained that hydroponics makes use of crafty facilities, and resource-efficient and cost-effective cultures and systems to allow the effective use of land, nutrient, water and labor in a comfortable and sanitary working condition. Read more………

People are coming up with new ideas for growing everyday produce in hydroponics and in home gardens all the time.  It’s a “growing” industry that will feed the world one day.

Here’s an excerpt from a news report:

………”Mr. Fitzpatrick and his friend, an adept student of hydroponics science, began conducting some edible experiments which, after some time and nourishment, yielded a gold mine of an answer. “Anything that doesn’t grow inside the ground, we can probably grow it. We worked with some strawberries and these strawberries turned out to be the best-tasting, juiciest strawberries I’ve ever eaten in my life,” Mr. Fitzpatrick said.

“We tried basil. It was like a weed. It was phenomenal. You couldn’t keep up with it.”……..”

Read more……….

After the first successful application of hydroponics techniques in the 1930s, the stage was set for a shift in crop production from conventional cultivation in soil to hydroponics or soil less cultivation. Among the first crops to be commercially harvested included tomatoes and peppers, but the techniques were soon successfully extended to other crops such as lettuce, cucumbers and more. It was not long before successfull hydroponics techniques were adapted to cut flowers production. In fact, any plant can be grown hyrdroponically.

The extended growing season is not the only advantage to the soaring popularity of hydroponics production with both growers and consumers. Other advantages include the consistent vegetable quality and superior taste, plus the elimination of the use of pesticides and herbicides. Pesticides and other chemicals used in conventional agriculture have an adverse environmental impact; the run off from these chemicals contaminate groundwater supplies. Commercial hydroponics systems eliminate these toxic chemicals and contribute substantially to keeping the groundwater free from contamination.

You might be surprised to hear that such a large plant as a banana tree was being grown hydroponically on liquid feed alone, but it is entirely possible that there are people out there growing them that way. Hydroponics gardening really is not that difficult once you get the hang of the basic requirements and if you are well enough disciplined to attend to your growing plants regularly and consistently you will have great success.

The technique of hydroponics gardening might seem complicated to a person doing it for the first time, but usually novices are able to quickly get the hang of it. Just like you need gardening supplies for a regular garden, you will need hydroponics gardening supplies for hydroponics gardening. The supplies might not be available in your local supermarket but they can simply be ordered online at at very good prices.

Ivanhoe Junior and Infant School is growing its own vegetables with help from £5,000 from Local Food, a new programme supported by the Big Lottery Fund.

The £50 million scheme is funding food-related community projects across the country.

The Ivanhoe Gets Healthy project is a new education and growing scheme which will provide food-related activities for children, young people and adult volunteers to develop their horticulture skills.”

Read more….