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…)

Do you have some good window space in your house?  You can cover it with little plants growing in hydroponics with this unique idea.  What will people think of next?

From the blog posts, it seems that there are a few problems to work out yet but the idea is there.   Growing plants indoors is such a life affirming thing to do, I find.  Bring on the new ideas!

How to Build a Window Farm

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.

It is a common myth that plants can’t utilize more than 12 hours of light per day and require a dark period. It isn’t true. Try to imagine a plant’s growth cycle is similar to an animal, the more you feed it, the fatter and bigger it gets. If you never decided to switch to 12 hours of darkness your plants would continue to grow until they reached an unmanageable size!

It is recommended that you start the flowering stage, which is when you start the 12 hours of darkness, once your plants reach 10-18inches in height. During all stages of growth your light hood should be around 5 inches from the growing tips of your plants. Since the reflector stays cool to the touch there is no risk of your plants burning. Move the reflector up as your plants continue to grow taller.

Often, home hydroponics gardeners miscalculate how much space is needed to produce the quantity of plant material they hope for. It will depend on which crops you intend to grow but the space must be large enough for the plants, reservoir, high intensity lights, ventilation fans, exhaust fans, electrical wiring and more. Certainly,there are very efficient hydroponics systems that fit on a counter-top but realistically, the smallest practical hydroponics garden will be the size of a clothes closet.

Hudro Huts, or grow tents, are about the size of a clothes closet. They are lightproof enclosures designed specifically for an indoor hydroponics garden. A Hydro Hut grow tentg can be erected anywhere there is sufficient space.   Made from 100% lightproof material, it will normally have a highly reflective lining with access holes for intake, exhaust fans and lightproof vents for good air circulation.

Your garden does not have to be limited to the summer months. If you are at a point where you want fresh kitchen herbs or fresh fruits and vegetables year round, an hydroponic system may be what you need to look at.

The use of Hydroponics has been around for thousands of years, since ancient Babylon. They were the first to use soilless gardening techniques and water conserving irrigation methods. Now through the use of technology, we have even simpler hydroponic systems to use in our homes, greenhouses or yards.

You may have seen an infomercial for the Aerogarden. This little system is a great way to see first hand the benefits and potential of having a garden in your home. It will sit on a counter-top, out of the way in a dark corner, and still produce. The Aerogarden’s simple and complete instructions make sure you are successful from the moment the lights are turned on.

In hydroponic plant growing systems, nutrients are dissolved in water.  The soil is replaced with a growing medium, which is a soil substitute that holds the roots and supplies them with water, nutrients and oxygen.

Nutrient solutions can be delivered in a couple of ways.  You can drip feed it to each plant, or you can flood the root chamber, then drain it out. These methods require a pump and timer to circulate the nutrients through the roots. You can also grow the plant roots in the air by spraying them with a fine mist of nutrient solution or grow them by aerating the solution under each root mass with an air pump.

There are six basic types of hydroponic systems making up the basis of all hydroponic gardening:

* Wick
* Water Culture
* Ebb and Flow (or Flood & Drain)
* Drip
* Nutrient Film Technique (N.F.T)
* Aeroponic

When you start thinking about building your own hydroponic system for the first time, you need to be aware that not all types of hydroponic grow systems will work for growing indoors. Picking up relevant information becomes the first important step. One of the best, and easiest hydroponic systems is the ebb and flow technique which can be built at home within a modest budget.

Here are a few hydroponics supplies you will need to get an efficient system working for your indoor gardening.  These include plastic storage containers, water pump and air pump used in a fish tank, good quality flood and drain fittings, a timer and a good length of plastic tubing.  When picking out the plastic container as a nutrient storage unit, keep in mind that dark colors are the best prevent growth of unwanted algae.  You need to keep bright light from reaching the water soluble nutrient solution which will encourage algae growth.

When you have grown plants indoors using hydroponics for any length of time, you know that plants can have quite an odor during the flowering cycle. As the plants are flowering, there is a distinct aroma that fills your entire house or grow room. You may find the sent of flowering plants. You will need an effective odor eliminator to dea with it.

There are two fundamental ways to deal with plant odors in a hydroponics application. A safe and effective carbon scrubber would always be a first choice. There are electronic and technical air ionizers. Both of these types of equipment used in your hydroponics applications will help to deal with the odor. A typical set up would run both with an ionizer and an active carbon scrubber simultaneously to get best results.

In today’s gardening marketplace is a plethora of time saving, space saving, user friendly gadgets. Everyone can grow a garden if a few simple rules are followed. Gardening publications and books are everywhere. Old timers enjoy giving advise and sharing their heirloom seeds. They truly are the best resource available.

Indoor gardens are all the rage now. Hydroponic systems come in many different sizes and shapes, each designed to do a specific job which is grow extremely fast, high quality organic vegetables. Indoor growing is so popular because it greatly reduces the amount of food that has to be purchased and brought home.  The person growing the food has total control over whether chemicals or organics are used.  There is no dirt to mess up the inside of the home and the yield is far higher with  better quality food than found in the grocery stores. Every person should learn to grow using hydroponics for safety and health reasons.