Nematode's not yet epic Hydroponic thread

[bower]

Nematode, if the plants are suffering from cold stress there are for sure benefits to warm watering or in your case the nutrient solution. I use warm kelp solution myself, to water the tomatoes when they're cold stressed early in the season or just after transplant, and it makes a huge difference to their contentment level.

[Nematode]

Thanks for the info. I have an aquarium heater lying about somewhere. Will give it a try if it goes cold here again.
Forecast 82 today

[Nematode]

Pac Choi intercropping looks good!
Tomato is looking for elbow room about the time pac choi is ready.
Should do more of this next year. Hmmm what to interplant.......

[Msheirloom]

Looks great!

[AKmark]

The blend seems high in Nitrogen compared to what I use. 4-18-38

[Nematode]

well I did something they didn't like.
Think I mis read the ph drop kit and overdid the acid addition.
or maybe it was the salt
or maybe it was the first sunny day over 80 degrees.

potato leafs look fine
regular leafs look ok
each of the heart plants has leaves rolled up and shaped like a little canoe.

ph meter and calibration solutions should be here later today, I'll hand water with some of last years recipe until I get the new nutrient ph sorted out.

Took a look at the changes made this year, and the biggest is the change from jr peters hydroponic special to jack's nutrient. jr peters hydro special says it is ph buffered, jacks is not as far as I can tell. The whacky tobacco growers seem to have success with jacks and I can get it locally which is why I switched, might be time to switch back. Buffering would keep the ph inside the rails so to speak to keep the ph from rising and causing the iron chlorosis seen a few days ago.
the chlorosis is improved but not gone with the more acidic solution.

still learnin

[Elagrow]

looks good. I probably would cover the tops of the rockwool cubes though to prevent mold and algae.

I dont know that I would heat your solution up, the best temperature for the solution would be around 60F, if it gets to high it will promote Pythium (root rot) as well as other diseases.

If you are having a pest problem, you can use something like FoxFarm's Dont Bug Me, or a much more organic solution is Green Cleaner if you can get past the $190 price tag for a 32oz bottle that makes around 60g.

If you are having PH issues you can use Humic Acid to help stabilize them, also Humic Acid is very beneficial to your plants.

The leaf curl could be from the new heat, or could be a Mg deficiency, but more likely its the heat.

Check out GrowUniversity with Harley Smith, he is a genius, and does online classes for free, and will answer questions and help as well. He will push a particular brand of nutrients though, NPK Raw solubles (they are great, I recommend it to anyone as well)

[Nematode]

Thanks, I think its the new heat plus the salt.
Ph meter arrived and feed is 5.6, drain is 6.0
from what I understand it doesn't get better than that.
Going to keep rolling with the current formula then.

Nematode

[HydroExplorer]

Don't heat your nutrient solution. It opens you up to disease as someone already said but more seriously it makes the water not able to bear as much oxygen which makes the roots not able to function.

The only time I have ever ran a heater on my res was when I was first year doing hydro and I was growing plants in my basement where it was extremely cold. I was told that the cold stress on my tomato plants was the cause of the purple stems and purple veining on the underside of the leaves. I don't see that on your plants so if what I was told then was indeed correct then it wasn't a cold stress problem.

I think pH swings are your biggest problem. It's a good idea to use distilled or RO water for your nutrient solution because well and municipality water tends to have stuff in it that can do funny things to your nutrient solution.

Also, if you have chloramine in your water that can screw your plants up right after a water change. You can remove it with vitamin C which will turn it into something considerably less harmful (hydrochloric acid). This will make your nutrient solution slightly more acidic.

[HydroExplorer]

Originally Posted by luigiwu

I'm sorry I'm not more familiar with hydroponics but how does your system work? It thought all hydroponics involve a pump that dispense fertilized water. Does your plants basically get fertilizer water from a bottom source?

Most hydroponic systems use pumps.

You can do hand watered hydroponics which is similar to container gardening. I grew carrots in a trash can like this last year using aquarium water as my nutrient solution. It was fun.

You can also do something called Kratky hydroponics where you don't aerate the water and you don't change the nutrient solution. The plant will form high O2 absorption roots above the water line and nutrient absorption roots below it so you don't get root rot. It is easiest to do with short lifecycle plants like lettuce. If you refill your res and cover the high O2 roots you will drown the plant in about an hour. The nice thing about kratky is that it's completely hands off. You set it up and you go back for harvest. It's also cheap and zero energy required. I only did it once and it worked great. The rabbits really loved that cauliflower.

Other forms of hydroponics include:
Nutrient Film Technique where you run a stream of nutrients by your root zone and drain back to the res.

Deep water culture where you run aeration and have the roots grow down into the nutrient solution.

A variant form of deep water culture uses a foam raft which floats on top of the nutrient solution. Some people say that's another kind of hydro... It's raft DWC.

Aquaponics where you use the waste from fish to grow plants. The plants filter the water for the fish. The fish make fertilizer for the plants.

Aeroponics where you spray the nutrients onto the root zone on timed intervals. This one is the ferarri of growing. It is possible to cut plant maturity time in half with this. A clogged nozzle or pump fail results in catastrophic failure in hours.

Fogponics is the ferarri of aeroponics. You fill the root zone chamber with a dense fog of nutrient solution. The fine droplet size makes the roots get all hairy and EXTREMELEY efficient. It is insane what can be done with fogponics. NASA and a lot of people growing illegal plants do this.

Ebb and flow is where you have a bunch of pots sitting in a basin. You fill the basin up to some level and then drain it on timed intervals to feed and water the plants.

Drip style hydroponics uses drip emitters to drip nutrients into the root zone. This is often done using dutch buckets to drain the runoff back to the res. This is what MHP Gardener does and he is a master of this.

I feel like I'm missing one but that's most of them.

[Nematode]

I definitely had one good ph swing.
Should be under control now. If anything they look a little over-fertilized at the moment.
It's a drain to waste system.
Our tap water has chloramine, thanks for the vitamin c tip I'll check it out, think I was putting in a little molasses last year for chloramine... Can't remember.
Once I tried an aquarium water conditioner. It was a complete disaster, plants went yellow immediately from nutrient deficiency.

My goal is for this to be a catalogue of my successes, got to get through the mistrakes first

[HydroExplorer]

I just learned about Vitamin C. I'm experimenting with it this year. I don't anticipate problems. The nice thing with it is that 1000 mg apparently can treat 50 gal of water. So 5 cents per 50 gal. It doesn't get cheaper than that.

I had really bad pH swings last year on my chemical hydro stuff. I did a water change to a res that was all distilled water and the problem went away. I can't cost-justify growing in distilled water all the time but it did tell me that it was a problem with my water supply. I kind of wonder if the chloramine is what's causing the pH swings. Not sure, but we both have chloramine and we both had that problem.

My most successful hydro plants last year were growing in water from my aquarium. The tomatoes growing on that system tasted about the same as fresh garden tomatoes. The ones on my chemical hydro system tasted watered down and generally awful. Granted, I was horribly neglectful of my garden last year because of rl stuff.

Regardless, I think I let the aquarium water tomatoes go 3 months without a water change or even a top off and they were still good. Not so with the chem hydro stuff.

I've been journaling my experiments on my youtube channel found here
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgb...R_BCY-w/videos

This year's main experiments are with aeroponics. I've always been afraid to try it because there are so many things that can go catastrophically wrong. I decided to bite the bullet and go for it. I'm expecting everything to die but I should learn a lot when that happens.

I'm going to do an aeroponic barrel garden running on nothing but aquarium water. I'm going to be filtering the solids out of the water but I'm still expecting clogs to really screw me up. We'll see.

[Nematode]

Sad bean turns into happy bean!

Aphids were giving it a rough time I guess, that and the ph yo-yo.

Nematode

[HydroExplorer]

I was poking around on youtube and found this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5vLME0N-54

I'm starting to think that the pH swing problem I was having was caused by adding undiluted pH adjuster to my nutrients. Apparently doing so will lock out localized nutrients in the area where you drop the pH adjuster which will throw off the balance of your res.

I need to get a digital meter. it's a pain checking pH with those drops.

[Nematode]

Planted some dill in the garden, because it is supposed to attract beneficials, oh and it goes good with cucumbers and vinegar
Anyone know what I got going here? Friend or foe?