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CLEAN FOOD: The Hydroponic Gardening Thread
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Mission: To grow truly clean, holistic, non-gmo heirloom produce at a (fast) sustainable rate to feed 2 adults. Please post if you are familiar with growing food hydroponically and can contribute some lessons learned.
Our setup:
Type: 48 Hydrofarm Waterfarm units (6 kits) [link to www.hydrofarm.com]
Medium: Hydroton pellets [link to www.hydrofarm.com]
Water: Reverse Osmosis with UV lamp, 0-1 PPM TDS with PH-Up / PH-Down powder as needed.
Nutrients: FloraGrow, FloraMicro, FloraBloom [link to www.hydrofarm.com]
Synopsis: We've got the system assembled and in place, hydroton added, etc. The first vegetables we're going to try are heirloom Romaine lettuce, heirloom cucumbers and heirloom tomatoes. From my research it appears that we will need to learn the method for starting from seed (eventually to use a propagation station for cuttings eliminating the seed starting process). We had a dozen rockwool cubes to begin, so we used 4 cubes for each type of vegetable to get started. No nutrients yet have been added, and the cubes are in a tray getting adequate sunlight and being fed RO water only. Roots are appearing from the cubes as expected and the starts seem healthy. Are rockwool cubes the best way to introduce seedlings to our growing medium?
Questions:
1. What PH should we maintain? I know the PH has a lot to do with the plants ability to metabolize the nutrients, but don't know what good ranges are for things like lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers.
2. How much nutrients to start with (per gallon of water) and what type? I am confused as to whether we use a tsp of each (micro, grow, bloom) mixed together, or do we use one type of nutrient solution exclusively for each growth phase? The packaging is not very clear as to this, and only shows a table of all three types of nutrients and the amounts used for various stages of growth.
3. I've heard algae can be a problem. How do we address algae growth?
4. Watering times? I've read that some people setup a timer to activate the pump every 15 minutes, for a 5 minute duration. Others say they run theirs constantly.
Are you a Hydroponic gardener? Can you share some wisdom so we don't fail miserably?
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