The Adventure Continues

I gave my standard Hobby Hydroponics talk in Harrisonburg, VA yesterday evening to an audience of about 23 people.  I always enjoy spreading the word about hydroponics.  I'm one of those people who can't grow anything in dirt.  Some people are said to have a "green thumb", I, by contrast have the "thumb of desolation and destruction".  That's why hydroponics was just great fun for me.

I'm a tad lazy so I don't want too much work.  Getting down on my hands and knees, especially now that I'm an old dude isn't something I look forward to; so hydroponics was and continues to be the way I approach gardening.  I like to tinker a bit and I've evolved a whole system to create NFT (Nutrient Film Technique) hydroponics systems.

Kinds of Hydroponic Systems
There are many kinds of hydroponics systems and I'm not an 'expert' on any of them, but I think they are all cool.  Below I'll give a brief summary of kinds and maybe a picture if I can find one.

1. NFT Systems are my favorite kind partly because is some ways they are the most ideal or pure embodiment of the hydroponic idea.  Water with nutrients in it and sunlight.  Check out the site here for any number of examples of NFT systems.  The illustration here is of the Star System, six PVC tubes fed from a single tank with gravity feed back to the tank.  Works incredibly well and is great fun.  The system will grow tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers on the same nutrient solution and all turn out very well.

2. Flood and Drain Systems operate by periodically flowing nutrient into the system with a medium to retain the moisture and then a rest interval followed by another flood.  I only built one such system and it worked well enough but required a timed switching system to turn the pumps on and off and pumps run better continuously than when started and stopped.

3. Wick Systems are particularly easy since you wind a wick into your medium and extend the wick into your nutrient solution.  Now power required.  Works reasonably well although I think figuring a way to ensure oxygenation of the roots might improve my few experiences with the technique.

4. Float Systems are my favorite systems after the NFT systems.  I like them because they work well and are easy to do.  (Note: easy to do is very high on my list since I'm lazy.  I do this because it is fun and I like tomatoes and peppers and basil, etc.)  The picture on the right is me with a little tub float system.  You put a slab of Styrofoam with holes cut in it for the plants and the plants just lower their roots into the solution and away you go.  The one thing you need to do is make sure the nutrient is oxygenated which can be done with an aquarium bubbler or if your system is larger you can create a fountain.  The water splashing into the nutrient bath oxygenates the system.  The system in the photograph just had a bubbler in it and was in a small plastic tub.  The basil plant obviously likes it.

5. Aeroponic Systems are systems that mist the roots instead of immerse the roots.  I have not personally made any, although HERE is a link to a hobbyist How-To on making such a system.  I may try it in the future.

Obviously you can do whatever you want and see if it works.  As a scientist that is always part of the attraction of hydroponics for me.  I hope this page gives you a little motivation to explore hydroponics and join the weedless garden adventure.

Beginning A Recap

Recapitulation of my Hydroponics Adventures seems like a fun thing to do so I thought I'd start updating my blog with a little retrospective of how I got started with hydroponics.

Frankly it all started with bad gardening experiences.  Don't get me wrong, I like gardening.  I just don't like digging around in dirt.  I don't like mulching.  I don't like bugs.  I really don't like slugs.  I don't like weeds.  Whenever I did gardening it seemed like all of those things as well as others like critters would come out of the woodwork or maybe just out of the woods to mess up my plants by eating them, crawling on them, giving them diseases, splitting the tomatoes and generally spoiling the experience.

I'm also a computer person since I am, among other fun technical things, a computer programmer.  So I was a fairly early adopter of personal computers and even ran what was called a bulletin board in the early 1980's in Minnesota in the Twin Cities area called Terminal Station.  HERE is a peek at the past.  I got into email and message boards pretty early and so it was natural when I got to wondering "What's that hydroponics stuff I've read science fiction about anyway?" to look around and see if there was an interest group.  Well I found one and started reading about what hobbyists were doing and though, "That doesn't sound too hard, I think I'll try it."

Of course the first thing you need to do if you're a scientist type is do some literature research so I started reading books.  Here's a picture of some of the books I acquired and read up on as I tryied to learn more about hydroponics.

As I read the books I ran into lots of ideas for hydroponics systems.  Some were very simple like wick systems where you just dipped a wick into a nutrient (fertilizer) solution and it clued the plants in to where to find nutrition.  Others were a lot fancier requiring pumps and timers and instruments.  They all sounded like great fun so I decided to make a few systems to try it out.  My wife gave me permission to set systems up on the side deck of the house and I was off and running.

The problem was that there were so many kinds of systems and people on the message board kept talking about different kinds of systems so that no sooner did I get one system going that it seemed like a good idea to set up another.  It wasn't very long before I had the whole deck covered with systems.

I had a Nutrient Flow Technique (NFT) system.  I had a flood and drain system.  I had a wick system.  I had a sort of passive valve system that was supposed to add its own nutrient by gravity feed whenever the plants drew the nutrient down enough.

Pretty soon the deck was covered with systems.  I learned a lot that first summer of 1997.  Meanwhile, the editor of The Growing Edge came on the message board looking for a hydroponics hobbyist to write articles.  I sent her some email and pictures of what I was doing and she asked me to write an article.  What could be greater than combining my hydroponics hobby with one of my other loves, writing.  That was the launch of a fun association with The Growing Edge, sadly no longer published having met the fate of so many other specialty magazines.

The Weedless Garden: What's Next?

I gave my talk on Hobby Hydroponics at the library in Harrisonburg this afternoon.  It's always a lot of fun for me and the folks that came seemed to enjoy it.  In the talk I cover hydroponics basics and talk about the various kinds of systems I've made over the years.  HERE is a link to one of my early stories for The Growing Edge magazine which is no longer published having met the fate of many small specialty magazine with the growing dominance of the internet.  I think I'll have to put together some sort of mosaic image showing all the different system designs I've played with over the years.

I really like the nutrient film technique (NFT) systems but they need continuous flow which means if you lose power you may have a problem since the flow stops so you might want to ensure that there is a little nutrient retention in the design to keep the plants from drying out if that happens.

I'm also growing increasingly fond of float systems but I don't have a good tomato support design for those.  I really want to get back to doing hydroponics and giving talks like I did today are very self-motivational.

Summarizing The Journey

The hydroponics adventure I've been on since sometime in the 1990s has been slowing down of late mostly due to an injury I sustained when I fell and tore my medial tendon in my right leg.  That had to be surgically repaired but all the injury wasn't reversible so I've been pretty cautious about walking around especially on hills and grass outside.  As you can imagine that puts a crimp in one's hydroponics style.

Wife and I were talking about getting a small hobby greenhouse because in our new house in Woodstock, Virginia (about forty miles from Harrisonburg, Virginia where we used to live and moved from in 2012) we have discovered that there are quite a few deer shopping for treats so if you expect to grow tomatoes, for example, in an NFT system like I've usually done, the deer will be thrilled and come and eat all your tomatoes.  Whatever system you build needs to be deer-proofed.

I thought a little LINK PAGE might be helpful so herewith are links which can be used to check out hydroponics topics.  I may add to this as time goes on.  To return from a link just hit your browser's back arrow button.

LINKS

1, Starting Plants in Rockwool Cubes  SEE HERE

2. A fairly simple NFT system design  SEE HERE

3. Preparing your nutrient solution (here using TotalGro) SEE HERE

4. Keeping data as you experiment  SEE HERE

5. The baby pool float system adventure SEE HERE Design

6.  (a) Here it comes! SEE HERE

7.  (b) Early in the adventure SEE HERE

8.  (c) A little later SEE HERE

9.  (d) Tomatoes need supports and we can't sink the float SEE HERE

10.(e) Did we mention jungle phase? SEE HERE

That's probably enough for now.  I'll probably add to this later if the inspiration so moves me.  Meanwhile I'm still thinking about a small tomato system that would be deer-proof and easy to manage maybe right off the back patio.

What To Do As Spring Approaches

Well last year's container experiment was a loser, mostly because the plants got a blight early on for reasons I'm not quite certain of. I think maybe it was something in the potting soil I used but I'm not sure. I rank it as a failure however, which is very annoying.

Then a couple of weeks ago in the early twilight my wife and I turned onto our road to find what at first looked like four or five large dogs in the street. As we came closer and the headlights picked up the animals we were surprised to see five large deer ambling down the center of the paved road like they owned the place. We drove very slowly because we didn't want to spook them, but it was quite uncanny. I joked that it looked like enough deer to keep us in venison for a few years.

Finally they ambled off onto the neighbors front yard and watched us drive by to back into the next door driveway. That event highlighted the fact that you can't just grow things around here because as soon as there's something good you'll have hooved raiders eating your produce. You need a fence. Our last house had a fenced in back yard that we'd put up so we never had deer problems although there was a gopher that liked to come out now and then. I never knew where he came from exactly, but he was a brazen beast and would appear in the backyard near the shed and watch us looking at him from the kitchen window.

I've been starting to think about what to do for this coming year. I think a hydroponics system would be nice but given that I have to worry about deer I'm not quite sure how to do it. I don't want to fence in the back yard. I'll have to think about this. Stay tuned.

Not A Good Year

I suppose I ought to put up some more pictures.  This has not been a good year.  No hydroponics for example except in a stretch the plants left in trays and fed hydroponic nutrient.  The plants planted in containers managed to get some sort of blight and I found myself fighting all summer with them and not really making much progress.  Now it is October and I've just about given up the fight.  I really should go out and plant some of the herbs along the side of the house.

June And Progress ... And Some Complaints

It's June 18th and I'm rather annoyed by the progress I've made.  I decided to go with pots this year and found some really cool pots.  I started a whole bunch of herbs and tomato plants in little peat pots whatever they're called.  They work well for seeds.  After they got started I watered them, at first just with water, but then with dilute hydroponic nutrient, and more recently with standard strength nutrient.  As usual the plants flourished in the peat pots.  When I'm planning on doing straight hydroponics I usually use rockwool cubes, but since I was planning to pot these plants anyway I just did the peat pots.

 

That's a picture of the green plastic tray with herb plants in it that I took a couple of days ago.  They're flourishing on the whole, especially the basil which is the largest plant in the picture.  Now the next picture is of a basil plant (same cultivar) that was transferred to a pot with potting soil.  The potting soil was a Miracle Grow related product purchased at a local store.  It advertised how healthy it was for plants.

This is what it looks like.  Same cultivar, started at the same time.  Trust me, I'm not happy about this.  I'm not sure what the reason is.  I'm imagining that there is too much fertilizer in the potting soil and that it "burns" the plants stunting their growth at first.  But I don't know if that's actually the case.  I have had the same problem with my tomato plants.

There are two tomato plants in the pot.  The one with the larger leaves was in the green tray much longer than the one with the smaller leaves and was only transferred about a week ago while the other was transferred somewhat longer ago (don't remember exactly when but the same time the stunted basil plant was transferred).  I was thinking about starting a pot with passive media and only using hydroponics nutrient and now I'm sorry I didn't.  It would probably be a revelation to see how much better the hydroponically fed plant did.  I'm hoping that over time the plants will acclimate to the higher fertilizer content or whatever it is that is stunting them and start to do better, but we'll see.  Just this moment I'm not a happy camper.

 

Seeding Peat Pellets and Thinking About Containers

One of the interesting things about hydroponics is that it can be done in so many ways. Most of the hydroponics systems I've done have been NFT (Nutrient Film Technique) systems which take medium-less seriously. Except for the initial rockwool cube there is no medium.

There are other hydroponics systems that have a passive medium, i.e. one that doesn't directly contribute nutrients to the plants but instead serves as a moisture maintainer and some root support. You can use lots of different non-nutritive mediums ranging from rocks to mixtures of sand, vermiculite, and perlite in various ratios and deliver the nutrient the same way that it's delivered in the NFT systems, in a liquid solution of non-organic fertilizers that includes both macro and micro nutrients.

Container gardening can be done this way and I'm thinking of doing just that with at least some of my plants.  The rest I'll just put some potting soil in.  I was looking around at Walmart for good containers and came upon Plant Spa which looks about perfect.  They have a reservoir where you put in water or nutrient and the plants siphon it up as they need it.  Generally the evaluations are quite good and I thought they looked good so I bought a few when I was at Walmart and stumbled on them.

The big advantage of a reservoir is that it means you don't always have to be watering the plants.  You can leave them for a few days and that's great.  So I'm going to have an adventure.  Yesterday and today I was seeding little peat pellets.  I've seeded so far about 37 pellets.  Four are in melons, 12 are in three varieties of tomatoes, and then I put seven different herbs into 21 starter peat pellets, three instances of each.  I'll be waiting for the first sign of germination.  The various seed packets advertise anywhere from about five days to eighteen days for germination.  I'll be keeping watch.

Seeding and Thinking: How About Containers?

I've been thinking about what to do this Summer, our first Summer in our new house in Woodstock. I'd like to do a hydroponics system but I took a horrific fall in January which completely tore my right medial quad tendon (whatever that is, but it's important if you want to walk around). After the news from the MRI (neat pictures) I ended up going under the knife and now have this neato incision scar that runs from above my knee to below my knee over the top. That put me in a full leg brace for six weeks and I'm still working on physical therapy and can't walk up stairs except one step at a time.

So obviously hydroponics has not be my number one focus. Also we're planning to pour a cement backyard patio which is about where I'd tend to put a hydroponics system. So what I've decided to do is experiment with container gardening. I have a book named "Crops in Pots" and The Great Courses company has a video course on container gardening which I downloaded to my Kindle Fire HD (got it running which was awesome) and so now I'm an expert (well not really, but I did do some container gardening on the deck a couple of years ago).

 Meanwhile a friend from Pennsylvania, Stephen Haust was kind enough to send me some French Dona seeds. Those who have followed my adventures know how much I love the little French Dona hybrid tomatoes and my Totally Tomatoes folks where I would tend to buy my seeds stopped handling the Dona a couple of years ago. I got by with some old seeds but Stephen sent me some more recent ones. I just seeded them into some peat pots (usually I'd do it into rockwool cubes and feed them on a weak nutrient solution, but since I'm going to try to do containers this year I opted for some peat pots that I had lying around. I also bought some interesting plastic pots at Walmart which can be watered from the side.

I'll generate some pictures for you all soon. Meanwhile I have to watch all those Great Courses videos and read through that container gardening book. I always end up using some hydroponics nutrient to enrich the plants growing environment too and I'll tell you about that.

Starting to Think About Winter ...

Winter is design time. It's not Winter yet, but it's after Thanksgiving and people are starting to say Merry Christmas and that's a sure sign Winter is on the way. In the Wintertime I start thinking about what I'm going to do come the Spring. I just moved about 40 miles North from Harrisonburg, Virginia to Woodstock, Virginia. I have a little more property and a little less house not that I'm retired and have more time to putter around I'm discovering that I have way too many things to do.

I'm doing NaNoWriMo and finished by 50,000 words on the 25th but as usual the characters are not cooperating and the story still has a lot to go. So I'm still working on it. I'm hoping to finish it up so I'll actually have a novel to edit and trim up. Since this is a combination of the 50,000 + words I wrote in 2009 and the 50,000 + words I've written in 2012, I actually have the length of a pretty respectable novel. If the characters will cooperate I might be able to actually finish it in a few more days.

I'm also working to develop materials for Home Schooling parents. That's fun too. Then of course the wife, otherwise known as "She Who Must Be Obeyed" (SWMBO) is lobbying for me to actually arrange all the books and empty all the boxes that were moved a few months ago. They're all down in the basement not bothering anyone except her.

Then of course we're selling the other house.

Never a dull moment. But what about design time?

I'm actually thinking about building a nice compact little four hole system. The one tuber I was planning for 2012 never materialized due to the move and I tossed all the paraphernalia for the large stars, just too much work and too many tomatoes now that I'm retired. You might think it would go the other way and it probably would if I wanted to go into business, but I just want enough good tomatoes to make great sandwiches all Summer long.

Jessica (SWMBO)wants only big tomatoes. Her definition is when you cut a slice it covers a hamburger bun. So I have this system in mind. I'll just describe it, a drawing will come later when I'm in a drawing mood.

Trash can for a tank. On top of the tank a rectangular piece of something or other that is about 3' on the diagonal squarish with a plant site in each corner. The nutrient feed would come from a vertical manifold coming up from the tank and distributing the nutrient to each corner. Then the supports would be four vertical thin walled conduit verticals with crossed bracing at the top and strings dropped down. It would be compact and produce quite a few juicy tomatoes. It actually would not be too difficult to create a version with a few more plant sites.

I'll see how it looks when I get around to drawing it up. It's been wandering around in my imagination for a few weeks now. I guess I'll get more serious when Winter really gets here.

Vertical Farming In The Urban Maze

SEE HERE

Growing plants in crowded environments requires real planning but it can be fun and productive. HERE's MORE

The Crowded Stunted Tomatoes of 2012

I suppose this is what happens when your plans are messed up and the tomatoes just keep growing in the original container in one inch rockwool cubes. I've been keeping these twenty-one plants in this container since sometime in May I think and this is what happens to tomato plants that are crowded and fed hydroponics nutrients.

You do get tomatoes of course. Here are three and they are all about 3/4 of an ounce apiece. I've taken a whole five of these guys off the plants and there are more coming of course. Sliced up they actually look pretty good.

But of course they are tiny. You might be interested in what the roots look like. I've been putting nutrient onto the rockwool about once a day. The plants are healthy enough given their crowded conditions but the bottom line is that the tomatoes are very stunted. These were supposed to be three varieties of large tomatoes but the crowding clearly stunts their growth.

I'm going to keep them going. It's interesting just seeing what happens. Hydroponics is always an adventure and it's a great way to explore what happens with plants under various controlled conditions. This started out as a plan to grow big tomatoes but since we're moving it turned into an experiment in crowded conditions. The sliced tomatoes still tasted good with my morning omelet.

Float System Production of Lettuce

Float systems are really cool, but tend to be limited to low growing plants. I've grown a few herbs in float systems and using the small kiddie pool I did tomatoes a couple of years ago but I didn't solve the support problem very well.

Wicking Baskets: Pretty Cool!

This is a fun little video about building a kind of a wick system. It would not be difficult to transform this into a true hydroponics system by replacing the soil and the wicking material with passive medium and watering with hydroponics nutrients in the water. I'll have to try a design like this. It looks like it would likely beat the kind of wicking system I've used in the past.

The Mini Jungle Saga Continues — Tiny Tomatoes

Not sure what to do with this little mini-jungle that's been developing.  One problem is that it has now reached the point where it might be unsustainable since it's gobbling up nutrient at about a gallon a day, well maybe a smidge less.  If you forget to check the plants can get droopy really fast.  This afternoon I went to check that the rockwool was getting fairly dry (I must have forgotten to put nutrient on them yesterday) so I filled the tray and after a couple of hours they were back.  But I imagine that that kind of stress is not good for them.

Now they have little tomatoes on a lot of them, which makes them all that much more difficult to just sacrifice.  See picture.  Jessica found a bunch of pots and is lobbying to put them into pots.  That might work but the shock from separating the plants might be a problem.

I'm currently thinking of it as an experiment in plant crowding.  How's that for a rationale for screwing up?  It's also an experiment in just adding nutrient to rockwool without any flow.  The oxygenation doesn't seem as if it ought to be very good, but the plants don't look all that bad given the crowding and the sporadic watering.

The Price of Delay

Back on April 8th I posted a picture of the original 1 inch rockwool cubes that I seeded with about four different kinds of tomato plants.  SEE HERE Well a small problem developed.  We decided to move and bought a house about 40 miles North and that made it difficult to decide how to proceed with the Summer 2012 Hydroponics adventure.  The short term solution was procrastinate but keep the plants going with nutrient.  So there they are as of today ... a dense clump of tomato plants, the smallest "jungle" I've created to date.  They are healthy but now thoroughly intertwined so that if I separate them I'll destroy a lot of developed roots.

The bottom line is that we bought a house and are very busy transferring stuff from this one to that one and this clump is living on our back screen porch just outside the door on a railing overlooking the backyard.  It's pretty cool but it is now absorbing about half a gallon of nutrient a day and will likely increase and I'm not quite sure what to do with it.  You get attached to your plants and don't like sacrificing them.  So I'm currently trying to figure out what to do with a mini-jungle of about twenty-four tomato plants all growing in less than one square foot of 1 inch rockwool cubes mounted in a shallow plastic container.  Stay tuned!

Lights and Reflectors

Grow lights are a great way to grow indoors. I've not done a lot of it although I have a couple of security lights which can double as grow lights. When I first did some of this I was amazed to discover how little light fluorescent lights put out. They have to be just a few inches from the plants and then they only provide enough light for deep shade. High pressure sodium (HPS) puts out a lot more light and so does metal halide (MH). I've fooled around with both a little, mostly to start seeds before it is warm enough to put the plants in the back yard. Nate Lipton from GrowersHouse.com sent me a link to a piece on reflectors. For the technically inclined this is great fun. For others it might just be important to know that if you're using an expensive high-powered light you really don't want it going all over the place, just on your plants. So the efficiency of reflectors is important. Check out their site for other stuff if you're so inclined.

Feeding 16 was never so easy!

SEE HERE I've always liked the idea of geodesic domes as greenhouses. This is an interesting aquaponics system that uses a geodesic dome.

April Musings ... Rockwool Cubes and All That

Well here we are on Easter Sunday, April 8th, 2012.  Around April 3rd I finally got off my duff and planted some seeds in rockwool cubes.  First I soaked the rockwool cubes in water for a day pouring off one charge of water and adding another.  This is good practice to make sure the pH of the rockwool cubes isn't too high.

Then I seeded them with three kinds of seeds: Abe Lincolns, Better Boy hybrids, and Best Boy hybrids, eight each for a total of 24 rockwool cubes in a matrix 4x6.  Here's what they look like now. (see below)

They are currently in a plastic container which I cover and sit near a Southern exposure window since I'm too lazy to keep track of what nights it is going to be cold.  I made up a gallon of weak nutrient, about one-sixth standard growing strength (a teaspoon of concentrate of the blue and the white instead of an ounce) and here's a picture of the nutrient and the container when it is closed.

Then I was walking around my hydroponics design stores (Home Depot and Lowes) and was looking for a "greenhouse".  Of course nothing is as it seems.  A "greenhouse" is something that can be used as a baby greenhouse.  There are lots of clear plastic containers that seem to fit the bill and then I saw a cute thing, an inexpensive radio thermometer which will radio in your outside temperature to display inside.  Wow, I thought.  That's a neat way to create a baby greenhouse and monitor.  So here's a picture of the sensor.  (I already have one on my screen porch so I thought if I put the baby greenhouse out there and the extra temperature monitor then I'll be able to see the difference between the temperature in the screenroom and the temperature in the baby green house on the screen porch.  So here's picture of the sensor (about $25)

And this is the baby greenhouse.  Right now the sensor it out on the screen porch inside the baby greenhouse while the plants are in the house still.  I'll wait until they get a little bigger before putting them out. Here's the greenhouse.  It's just one of those clear plastic containers which you can put outside upside down.  We'll soon see how this works.

Since my camera has a macro capability here is a close up of the two tomato plants best expressing their baby leaves.  So far things are going well.  I'll keep you abreast of the adventure of the baby green house.

Thinking ... It's Winter!

Winter is the time between systems.  This past year without a hydroponics system reminded me in spades why I went over to hydroponics in the first place.  No weeds, fewer bugs, I've yet to have a slug climb up to the plants in the NFT systems.  The result is much better and uniform fruit and higher yields.  What's not to like about that?  But you do get more tomatoes than you can comfortably eat yourself.  The secret (well not so secret) is that beautiful tomatoes are a cinch to give away.  The only problem is people keep coming back for more and are disappointed when they're all gone.  This year Jessica (the better half, often referred to as "The Boss" or "She who must be obeyed") has informed me that I'm to build at least a one tube system because that produces as many tomatoes as she wants and make sure that you plant big ones, not those French Dona's you're so fond of.  Nothing opinionated about that right?  Well a one tube system or even a half tube system is a cinch.  I'll make a little figure to show what the minimum one tube system looks like.  There it is at the top of the post.  Simple really.