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…)

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…)

You can grow hydroponic lettuce in every variety that we would normally find at the supermarket or in a seed packet. It is one of the fastest growing plants to experiment with.

First, you will want to have a hydroponic nutrient solution that provides everything that a lettuce needs to grow and thrive.

Next you need to support the plants as they grow.  For this, you may want to use perlite, which is the most highly recommended substrate for the growth of hydroponic lettuce. For other types of hydroponic plants, you can use gravel or rockwool but perlite has proven optimal for lettuce. Hydroponic plants grow very fast so you will be able to replant as soon as you take the harvest.  If you don’t need a whole lettuce head at once, just cut a few leaves off the plant and leave it growing.  You will be able to repeat the crop over and over again without risk of rot, mold, or disease.

Even though the idea of hydroponics and hydroponic grow cabinets can sound very high-tech and rather out of reach for most people, the basic concept is grounded in simple good gardening practices. Hydroponics grow boxes allow us to imitate nature and they are becoming more and more affordable.

What does a plant need in order to grow and thrive in a healthy manner?  It is simply four things: light, heat, water and food.

The modern Hydroponic Grow Cabinets make it possible to provide these things in virtually any environment. At the same time, giving complete control of these elements to you, the hydroponic gardener. It is no coincidence that the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is incorporating hydroponic cabinets into the design of outer-space living accommodations.

Isn’t it wonderful to hear about the spreading popularity of Community Gardens?  What are they? A community garden is a garden that has members of the community participating in planting, weeding and maintaining a piece of the land.  This may be community owned, owned by an organization, or even a privately owned site shared with others. It is often set up where each gardener has his own individual plot for growing, or it can be one large garden, with participating gardeners sharing the harvest as well as the work. Maybe one day this will include a community “hydroponic garden” where we can all gather together and keep gardening all through the winter as well.

More than 10,000 cities in the US have set aside spaces for the residents to garden and grow their own food. Participating residents share in the planning and overall management of the garden, giving them a sense of community, a learning experience they can share with others and their children, as well as fresh nutritious food that they can take pride in growing. It is a growing trend all over the world.

Definitely one of the most enjoyable things for a gardener is planting seeds and watching new plants grow. It’s such a joy when one of your plants you grew from seed or cutting starts to flourish and  then flowers for the first time.

However, there’s always the problem of getting to many. We quickly fill up  our garden  space, trying to tuck in as many as possible and even end up throwing some out. Don’t stop growing new plants. The solution is to sell some. Put a notice up in your local shopping centre and in your community newspaper.  You’re sure to get lots of calls, especially if you grow what’s popular.  Apparently, petunias are always a favourite.  You could end up financing your whole summer gardening.

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……..