Hydroponics Equipments
LED Grow Rooms & Growth Chambers Setup
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Suitable grow lights is an important aspect of the hydroponic plant cultivation process. Apart from water, vitamins and minerals, accurate amounts of lighting are very essential. LED light is one of the important hydroponic equipments and a very good resource of artificial light for your plants. LED grow lights are designed to stimulate photosynthesis by supplying light in the frequencies that plants primarily use for this biological process.
LED lighting technology has become popular because of the fact that it consumes less than 210 watts of electricity. These lights are usually placed on a timer so that the plants receive an optimal amount (more…)
Hydroponics Crops Growing Under T-5 and LED Grow Lights
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Hydroponic plants require a healthy light source to produce their own food for growth. Since most hydroponic growers prefer their garden to be built indoor, grow lights play an important role. Hydroponic grow lights come in a variety of types that include full-spectrum fluorescent bulbs, metal halide grow lamps, high pressure sodium lights, and high-intensity LED grow lights. Among them, T5 fluorescent lights and LED are designed to support bigger growth with improved quality bulbs.
For T5 lights, the letter ‘T’ indicates the shape of the bulb (tubular) and the number after the ‘T’ represents the diameter of the bulb. These lights have a reflector which focuses the light directly to your plants by supplying 3 times more light. The structure of a four foot high T5 lamps, produce 5000 lumens each and (more…)
Hydroponics Indoor Grow Room Protection In Winter
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Winter has arrived and now is the time to strategize and protect your indoor hydroponics grow room from the influence of dropping temperature. During winter, the main difficulty you face is that your indoor grow room is warmer towards the ceiling and colder near the ground level. This can kill your hydroponic plants or cause diseases and stress. To protect your plants, it is important that you ensure proper air circulation inside your grow room. If your indoor grow room is not well protected in cold weather, the low temperature would give fungi, pests and disease causing pathogens a good environment to thrive (more…)
How to Maintain Your Hydroponic Nutrients Reservoir
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A reservoir forms the center of every single hydroponic system. An ideal nutrient reservoir like soil-growing medium will help you grow plants without having to worry about balancing chemicals, nutrients and pH level of the water. However, it’s very important to maintain hydroponic nutrient reservoir for proper growth of plants. To manage your hydroponic nutrients reservoir using nutrients, you need to follow following steps:
- Every plant requires a particular pH level of nutrient media at which it can grow healthily. To know the ideal pH level of (more…)
Indoor Gardening Grow Lights
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If you’re an ardent gardener and want to see your garden flourishing with good healthy plants, then you must provide them with their basic needs—food, water, climate, and light. Light is the most commonly overlooked factor that restricts plant growth. In outdoor gardening, light is not a problem for growers because nature provides balanced light intensity for healthy plant growth. However, it is the sole responsibility of the gardener to furnish adequate light of correct spectrum in indoor gardening. Even if you provide the best hydroponic nutrients or soil fertilizers to your indoor garden plants, but fail to provide enough light, your plants might hardly grow. (more…)
Indoor Gardening : Fluorescent Grow Lights
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Plants need energy to grow and this energy comes from sunlight in an outdoor home garden but grow lights are must if you’re scheduling for indoor gardening. Two basic and most vital plant processes, transpiration and photosynthesis, require light. Apart from these, light also affects various other processes like flowering, seed germination, pigment production, and certain growth phases of plant life.
It is essential to pick your grow lights wisely while starting with indoor gardening. Hydroponic grow lights come in various varieties like incandescent, fluorescent, and high-intensity discharge lights. Fluorescent grow lights are very popular amongst indoor gardeners because of their inexpensiveness, easy availability, and versatility in size, color spectrum, and low heat output.
Technological advancement has changed the face of fluorescent lights, which earlier weren’t considered as good as the other two lights. Whether you’re growing seedlings in a stacked grow cabinet or cultivating prized plantings and clones, you can be (more…)
DIY Hydroponics Systems
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Do It Yourself (DIY) hydroponics systems are in vogue these days. Assembling things yourself starting from scratch gives you a sense of accomplishment and, of course, the activity itself is so much fun! You are more emotionally attached towards your garden as DIY hydroponic systems support life— life of your plants.
DIY hydroponic systems can be little hard on your pockets, so you must be well prepared to spend that extra few bucks on quality products. First, you have to be familiar with the principle of hydroponics and hydroponic systems and then gather required equipment for setting up your own hydroponic garden. You can use some informative instruction booklet or some credible websites, the idea is you should be thorough and clear with the concepts on how hydroponic systems work. You can choose from a variety of hydroponic systems like Nutrient Film Technique (NFT), Ebb and Flow for homemade hydroponic system. NFT injects a thin layer of nutrient solutions over the root zone of your plants whereas Ebb and Flow temporarily (more…)
Homemade Hydroponics Systems
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Hydroponics is a technique for growing plants in which plants are grown without using soil but in a nutrient medium. Nowadays, many growers are opting for hydroponic methods to grow fruits and vegetables. Hydroponics systems is easy to set-up and requires minimal cost. So if you want to build, your own homemade hydroponics systems, here is your guide on how to do it!
The simplest hydroponics systems that can be built at home is the Deep Water Culture system (DWC). For this, all you need is a container to fill in nutrient solution and water. Use an air pump and air stone to aerate the nutrient solution. Place a smaller container inside nutrient solution reservoir so that lower half of container is immersed. Clay pebbles act as best growth substrate/ medium for this system. DWC is one of the simplest methods and can be set up easily by the beginners as well.
One of the other popular systems amongst hydroponic growers is Ebb and Flow system. To build this system, you will need plastic container to hold the media, air pumps, nutrient solutions, outlet water fittings, and the submersive pump. To set-up ebb and flow system, place the inlet pipe at the bottom of the growth container. Nutrient solution and water is pumped in through this inlet pipe. Air pump is used to flood in the solution. Next place outlet pipe right at the top of grow box from where water and solvent will be pumped out.
Another system which you can build at home is wick hydroponic system. For this, you will need two cheap storage totes and several feet of nylon rope of cotton fibers. Place the two totes one above the other. Fill lower container with nutrient solutions and keep it oxygenated with the help of an air pump. The top tote will hold plant containers. Drill about ½ an inch holes in each container and allow nylon/ cotton ropes to dangle down from there in to the nutrient reservoir. Because of capillary action of wicks, nutrient solution will be carried up to the roots of plants. This is a very cheap and easy to set up hydroponics systems.
With the help of more advanced technical equipments, you can build any system of your liking at home; however, above mentioned are the simplest systems of all. These homemade hydroponics systems require low maintenance minimal cost to be built. While building any hydroponics systems, take into consideration space available, number and type of plants you want to grow, and your budget and then accordingly you can select the best suited system.
Building a Greenhouse with Hydroponic Equipments
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Like any other structure, building a greenhouse or any other hydroponic equipments or system requires detailed planning and estimation in terms of space available, desired outcome and cost. Greenhouse like other hydroponic equipments is to be built in such a way that it provides proper environment for growing plants. By taking following points in to consideration, you can plan your greenhouse
Location:
Location of greenhouse should be such that it gets maximum sunlight (ideally south or southeast side). If plants get enough morning sunlight, their food production process is stimulated early. Other than availability of sunlight, you have to make sure that your greenhouse site has proper drainage system. Rainwater and irrigation water should never get accumulated in the greenhouse. Also, greenhouse should be located near the storage room and workplace for potting plants so that it is easily accessible to workers.
Structural Details:
While planning to build these hydroponic equipments, structural details like frames and roof/ coverings have chosen based on your budget, the plants you want to grow, space available, and environmental conditions.
Frames:
Depending on engineering requirements of your greenhouse, you can go for simple or complex structured frames. There are a variety of frames available like rigid frame which has vertical sidewalls and rafters, does not have to support the roof. This structure allows maximum interior space and air circulation. Another type of frame is Quonset which is made of electrical conduit or galvanized steel pipe frame. It has low height sidewall, which restricts storage space and headroom. For simple constructions, you can go for post and rafter type of frame which is designed with wood, has strong sidewalls posts and deep post embedment which withstand outward rafter forces and wind pressures.
Roof/ Coverings:
Glass roof: One of the most traditional rooftop used for greenhouses, it provides maximum sunlight, is easy on your wallet, and requires very less maintenance. Tempered glass is used to cover greenhouse as it is stronger.
Plastic coverings: Plastic coverings are used frequently by many farmers as they are inexpensive and can be replaced easily from time to time. Plastic films are made of co-polymers, polyvinyl chloride (PVC) or polyethylene (PE).
Fiberglass: It is strong, lightweight, and can last for 10-15 years. A good grade fiberglass increases light penetration and gives as good result as glass.
Air Circulation and Ventilation:
Plants require proper air supply to grow healthily. A well ventilated greenhouse should be built to exchange of inside air for outside air to control temperature, remove moisture, or replenish carbon dioxide (CO2). Using hydroponic equipments like mechanical ventilation and exhaust fans are used in greenhouses effectively. Ventilation requirements vary with the weather and season. You should decide your needs based on the time period for which the greenhouse will be used.
Along with taking in consideration, all the mentioned points, remember that you should do proper research of each and every product (eg. taps, pipelines, quality of wood or metal used in frames etc) while building this hydroponic equipments. With an eye towards precision and proper planning, you can build a greenhouse which will help you grow healthy and blossoming plants at minimal cost.
Try Hydroponics Farming For Optimal Yields
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The agriculture industry is ever evolving with new inventions and technologies to grow plants more efficiently. Increased urbanization has led to scarcity of arable land. In such scenario, growing plants with a technique that can sustain changing weather conditions, and give maximum yield in lesser space is a must. Hydroponics farming is one such technique which will meet the aforementioned criteria. It is a method of growing plants using nutrient solutions, in water, without soil.
History of hydroponics farming:
In the 18th century, researchers discovered that plants absorb essential mineral nutrients as inorganic ions in water. They realized that soil is mere supporter and carrier of nutrients but is definitely not an essential factor in plant growth. The same nutrients when dissolved in water can be efficiently taken in by the plants. This led to the invention of a technique called Deep Water Culture hydroponics. However, surprisingly, the very earliest published work on growing terrestrial plants without soil was the 1627 book, Sylva Sylvarum by Francis Bacon, printed a year after his death. Water culture became a popular research technique after that.
Hydroponic Systems:
Hydroponic farming can be performed with the help of various hydroponic systems. Each system has its own principle, mechanism, set of nutrient media, and lighting system. The most famous hydroponic systems are Ebb and Flow, Nutrient Film Technique (NFT), Drip Irrigation, Wick System, and Aeroponics.
Ebb and Flow system involves temporarily flooding the grow tray with nutrient solution and then draining it back in to the reservoir. In case of NFT, nutrient solution is pumped through growing tray or growing tube and it flows over the roots of the plants. Drip irrigation follows mechanism of using timer controlled submersed pump to flow nutrient solution and water into the container. Wick system, as the name suggests, uses capillary action of cotton or nylon wicks to provide nutrients to plant roots. In case of aeroponics, too the primary growth medium is air. The roots hang in the air and are misted with nutrient solution.
Advantages of Hydroponic Farming:
- With hydroponic farming, plants can be grown anywhere.
- Hydroponic systems can be monitored by you completely and so you get a better control over plant growth.
- It is a space saving, less time consuming method and automated systems require much less labor work than that of the traditional farming methods.
- The chance of soil-borne disease is largely reduced with hydroponics as it is a soil-less culture system, thus the need to fumigate is much less.
Disadvantages of hydroponic Farming:
- Starting cost to set up a hydroponic system is quite high.
- Sound technological knowledge and professional guidance is needed to perform hydroponics farming successfully.
- Systems like NFT, Drip irrigation and Aeroponics are dependent on electric supply and power breakdown can cease working of the entire system. This can put plants’ health and lives in jeopardy.
