Hydroponic gardeningAll about hydroponic gardening information

When I think of gardening I think dirt, weeds,bugs and cold, dirty fingers. I also think of wonderful, flavorful, fresh and pesticide free food and that’s the reason I tolerate all that other “stuff”.

Would you be interested in getting rid of the dirt, weeds,bugs and the cold dirty fingers and still get great garden produce. What If you could grow all this indoors with almost no effort? Does this sound like something you want to do? Then you need to think Hydroponics.

A method of growing plants both for home and commercial use without using soil is hydroponics. The interest in home hydroponics is a recent phenomenon and is increasing in leaps and bounds and with very good reason. Hydroponic plants are usually more healthy, mature earlier, and use less space.They can be grown year round.

If you are serious about growing clean, flavorful, healthy food and herbs at home year round I would suggest you get one of the many portable hydroponics systems. Get one that promises to have all the instructions you need. If you don’t have a large window to supply enough light for growing plants, get a system with a proper light source

If you are interested in constructing your own system you will be able to find lots of information on the various types of system to build. Don’t let the idea of building your own scare you. It is really quite simple.

Try this to get a beautiful lettuce crop: Get yourself a cheap plastic tote from any hardware store. Be sure it is dark colored. (light colors allow excess green algae growth) You will need 2″ thick styrofoam slightly smaller than the tote. This needs to be carefully shaped, pay particular attention to the corners. It has to move up and down freely inside the tote. (It will float on the liquid underneath). Cut it so that you do not allow any more light than necessary under it. Cut 2″ holes in the styrofoam raft to accommodate your plants growth. they should be 7″-8″ apart.

Next you need an air pump, an air stone and a length of plastic tubing from the pet store. Put the air-stone in the bottom of the tote and carefully place the tubing down the corner so as not to interfere with your styrofoam raft. Use a bead of silicone and press the tubing into it and let dry for a few hours. The air stone infuses the solution with oxygen. Cut foam rubber discs the same size as the holes in your raft. Cut these about 2/3rds of the way across. These will hold your seedlings in the raft. That is essentially all there is to the construction.

By: Carm Paynter

If you have decided to dabble in some indoor gardening and maybe your house plants could use a pick-me-up, think about using an LED grow light. Lets have a look at some basic information about LED grow lights, so you will have a good understanding of what they will provide and how you might benefit from using them.

LED stands for light-emitting diodes. These use electronic semiconductor diodes to make electroluminescence or simply put, energy which is released in the form of light. These really are not that complicated. Just use them basically like any other grow lamp. Homeowners often utilize these varieties of lights for indoor gardening as well as greenhouse owners. The effects of the bright light and benefits to plants is hard to beat.

Saving power and cutting down on the electric bill are number one concerns these days for many people. These lighting systems use less power to operate than traditional types of grow lamps, which gives them an added plus for saving money. In addition they last longer than other types of bulbs.

Maybe you have shied away from an indoor garden because you keep reading that you need special light from a specific type of light bulb. Light spectrums can be confusing. The bright light that you see from an LED grow light out shines other grow lamps in brightness, and it provides all the light spectrums required for all the different phases of a plants growth cycle.

In addition these lights are sold in a smaller sized unit than the typical grow light. Standard lighting usually requires air-cooled reflectors and ballasts for the system of lights and ducting. Installation is a snap when you purchase them pre-wired. Just plug them into a power outlet and you are ready to go. Enjoy all of the many benefits of using LED technology to grow your indoor plants.

By: Van Gordon

Yellow leaves on your hydroponics plants! Oh no, that’s definitely not a good thing to see. Probably you’ve seen them and put them out of your mind, not wanting to think about what they could really mean or what to do about them. But the truth is after all it’s a deep, lime green color you want to see on your leaves. When you see yellow or some other color, it means your plants are having nutrient problems.

And nutrient problems lead to growth and yield deficiencies. This means you are spending a lot of money and time on your hydroponics gardening but you aren’t getting the most output per watt. In some cases, you end up losing money because you’ve poured a ton of expense and care into your garden and all you’ve gotten in return are sickly plants.

In most cases, yellow leaves indicate that nutrients are not making it into your plants. But wait a minute, you’re pouring nutrients into your plants’ root zones, aren’t you? Of course you are. And aren’t your plants supposed to magically inhale those nutrients and grow properly?

Well, sometimes the magic doesn’t work. In fact, more often than not a lot of those costly nutrients you’re pouring are getting stuck in the root zone instead of making it up inside your plants where they can create vigorous growth and massive yields.

There’s no need to panic. There’s an easy way to get nutrients out of your root zone and into your plants. All you have to do is augment your nutrient feeding with Advanced Nutrients F-1 fulvic acid formula. The fulvic acid in F-1 is a carrier compound that quickly sends crucial nutrients from your root zone into your roots and then transfuses them into every cell of your plants.

Pretty soon, your leaves are a rich green instead of yellow. Your plants have recovered full vigor. Almost all the nutrients you’re giving your plants are actually entering your plants, instead of being trapped as pollutants in your plants’ root zone. Now this is the way your hydroponics gardening is supposed to work. You give hydroponics nutrients to your plants. Your plants intake them through the roots and then quickly transfer them to the proper places inside their cells so they can give you the kind of huge floral activity you’ve longed for.

By: Michael Straumietis

Companion planting is a term frequently used in organic gardening. It refers to the fact that many plants have natural substances in their roots, stems, flowers, and leaves that attract insects or alternatively repel insects depending on your organic garden needs. Using this technique helps in bringing a balanced ecosystem to your garden, allowing nature to do its’ job.

There is sufficient gardening studies and scientific research that shows benefits from using this technique. Some plants produce odors that deter or confuse pests, while other plants produce odors that attract friendly insects. Certain plants provide food or a habitat for beneficial insects as they search out their pray which may be harmful to other plants in the general area. Sometimes companion planting means providing a trap crop which draws unwanted insects away from other plants. There are hundreds of ideas and companion planting schemes to be tried and tested in your garden.

For an example, tomato allies are many and include basil, asparagus, beans, celery, chive, cucumber, garlic, head lettuce, marigold, mint, bee balm, and peppers. Basil repels flies and mosquitoes and improves the growth and flavor of the tomato. Bee balm, chives, and mint improve the health of the tomato plant. Beans deter the tomato worm. Dill, while it is maturing, helps improve growth of the tomato. Matured dill will retard its’ growth. Other enemies of the tomato are corn, kohlrabi, potatoes, cabbage and cauliflower. Corn and tomatoes are attacked by the same worm. Kohlrabi will stunt the tomato plants’ growth. Keep potatoes and tomatoes apart as they both can get early and late blight and contaminate each other. Cabbage, cauliflower, and tomatoes will all attract the same pests, so keep them apart. Do not plant tomatoes under walnut trees as they will get walnut wilt and will not survive.

Many gardeners find that by using companion planting they can discourage harmful pests without losing the beneficial allies. Be open to experimenting with your organic gardening how to and find what works for you. Some possibilities to think about are to use certain beneficial plants for borders, backdrops, or inter-planting in your flower or organic vegetable garden where you have specific needs. Companion gardening can combine beauty and purpose to give you an enjoyable, healthy environment. Have fun and let your imagination go wild. There are many ways you can incorporate these useful plants in your organic garden and flower beds.

By: Richard S. Cannon

If you are looking for a versatile nutrient booster that will help your plants achieve more flowers and ripened fruit with a speed not normally seen, Bloombastic could be the nutrient for you. Produced by the B’Cuzz Company, Bloombastic, also known as Atami Bloombastic, is a wonderful nutrient additive that can be used in hydroponics, aeroponics or in traditional soil gardening.

If you are a commercial grower, you know that the sooner you can get a plant from seed to fully mature plant, the quicker you will realize a profit. Even if you are a home gardener, you look forward with fervent hope to the day your plants are mature and in full fig.

By using B’Cuzz Bloombastic, you can enhance your plants’ growth processes. Taking a plant from a tiny seed and bringing it to full-fruit maturity is an amazing process, and one that can be hampered if the plant’s basic needs for food, water and light are not adequately met. Bloombastic makes it easy to take care of the food portion of your plants’ growth needs.

All plants need certain minerals in order to grow and thrive. The main nutrients needed are called macronutrients, and they are nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Calcium, magnesium, and sulfur are also needed, and along with carbon, hydrogen and oxygen they make up the full spectrum of plant macronutrients. Plants also need micronutrients in, as the name would imply, smaller amounts for plant growth. Even though smaller quantities of these nutrients are needed by the plant, if the plant is missing any one of them they will not grow or thrive. Micronutrients include iron, boron, manganese, copper, chlorine, molybdenum and zinc.

Keeping track of all these minerals can be a full-time job, especially when you consider that certain plants need more or less of some of these in order to thrive, and plants need certain of the nutrients in greater amounts at specific times in their life cycles. You can go out and take soil samples and have them professionally tested, which is what professional farmers do, or you can purchase hydroponic nutrients that come preformulated for specific purposes. This provides a much easier solution to ensuring that your plants have everything they need for explosive growth.

If you wish to quickly grow pre-rooted cuttings, Bloombasticis perfectly suited to the task. It is also especially good at helping plants dramatically increase their root production. Atami Bloombastic can also be used to reduce the effects of certain soil contaminants which can disease your plants; it can also be used to help clean the dripper portion of your hydroponics system. For all these reasons, Bloombastic is a great choice for boosting your plants’ vigor and growth.

By: Susan Slobac

With the agricultural breakthrough that has come over the past century, planting has become easier than it was before. Two of the breakthroughs, the hydroponics and aeroponics have come a long way in developing the agriculture and food production that not only resulted to individual progress but also the economic growth. But what is the difference between aeroponics and hydroponics?

The difference between aeroponics and hydroponics is that hydroponics is the means of soilless planting where there is a little or no soil required at all. The nutrients are supplied through a nutrient solution or a nutrient film at which the formulation has been controlled to sufficiently meet the needs of the plants. Aeroponics meanwhile is similar to hydroponics, growing plants without the use of the soil. The difference between the two is that the latter uses nothing as medium while the former uses water.

However, many has become confused of the agricultural methods and the difference between aeroponics and hydroponics. Aeroponics is a form of hydroponics procedure. It is the water that serves as the nutrient carrier when then the nutrient solution is sprayed into the roots of the plant.

Another difference between aeroponics and hydroponics is that the environment set-up. While in hydroponics, the plants are cultured into an enclosed area like the greenhouse, the plants grwons through aeroponics is in a closed or semi-closed area. The environment is not that restricted which may become a source of potential problem. This is for the reason that the plants grown aeroponically are not kept free from plants hazards like pests and diseases.

One significant ddifference between aeroponics and hydroponicsis that plants can mature easily with air as there are abundant sources of the essentials in plants’ growth. These are oxygen, the nutrient solution and the water.

You might quetsion why there are some farmers that prefer aeroponics rather than hydroponics. This is for the reason that aeroponics can give consistent supply of oxgen that can yield to a much higher yield of production.

The procedure between hydroponics and aeroponics also differ in terms of set-up. The aeroponics procedure allows the plants root to be suspended in a hydro-atomized nutrient solution that will make some parts of the roots like the crown to be extending on the top. In comparison to hydroponics, the procedure varies depending on the technology used. These technologies ranges from static solution and continuous flow solution. Moreover, there are also some precautions made to avoid disease contamination in the irrigation system.

There are a number of difference between aeroponics and hydroponics. Despite of these, it cannot be denied how these technologies improved the food production and the lives of many.

By: Keith Turner

Researchers comprehended that plants soak up necessary fat nutrients as organic ions in H2O. In general terms, plants need soil from where it absorbs all its nutrients along with water so that it can escalate its development and reach to full growth. When you pour water into the soil, essential nutrients from the soil dissolves into the water and this is absorbed by the plant roots.

Hydroponics is a new system introduced by which plants can be supplied its essential nutrients artificially without the use of soil. Plants are now grown in an artificially made nutrient solution by which the growth depends on this medium for its development.

There are a lot of advantages that are brought forth from this great technique, of which some are:

1. No soil: with the introduction of liquid nutrient solution for the plants to growth, the need for soil has become avoidable. This is a great remedy for those who do not want to dirty their house and property with soil falling all around the area and messing up the place.

2. Less water: it is only in the procedure of traditional cultivation of plants, that soil needs sufficient amount of water. As said earlier, water was an essential requirement to dissolve all the essential nutrients from the soil to nourish the plant. But with the introduction of hydroponics, the evasion of soil does not necessitate the use of water. Hence, the nutrient solution stays in the system and can be reused, reducing the cost of water.

3. Nutrition control: With hydroponics, you can control the nutrition level in the solution which brings in lower nutrition cost. A total control of nutrient consumption of the plant brings in an effective cultivation procedure.

4. No pest: the avoidance of soil brings in the prevention of pest in these plants. Thus, the cultivator does not have to worry on his crops getting eaten by pest and other soil borne diseases. This is one of the major blessings with procedures like hydroponics.

5. No pesticides: When there is no pest at all, why would you need pesticides? Pesticides are seen as one of the major causes to a lot of health problems in human beings. The chemicals involved in pesticides affect the plant growth as well as the nutrition in them.

6. High yield: when the procedure of hydroponics is completely under your control, your crops will remain stable and have high yields. Moreover, hydroponics has proved to be more fruitful than a traditional mode of cultivation.

Hydroponics today, is one of the most recognized branches of agronomy. The progress of this method has been rapid and the results brought in from various countries have proved it to be one of the most practical solutions to traditional cultivation.

By: Robert Fogarty