HorticultureSource.com Adds 1300 Products, Slashes Prices Across the Board
HorticultureSource.com now features 3661 discounted products including Grow Lighting Systems and Lamps, Hydroponic Grow Systems, Organics, Nutrients, and more! Many items are on special far below cost during a limited time Inventory Blowout Sale. A complete Glossary of Terms as well as a Guide to Successful Indoor Gardening are available on all pages at www.HorticultureSource.com. HorticultureSource.com is the starting point for all your flowers, fruits, vegetables, and ornamental plants’ cultivation product needs. Offering the finest quality horticultural/agricultural/botanical products at fair prices from the best manufactures.
Drug Test got you worried? CLICK HERE
General Hydroponics Growing and Disease Prevention
Though hydroponics has many advantages over traditional soil growing, plants grown hydroponically are still subject to the same kind of diseases of soil-based plants. One of the biggest factors that determine your success in general hydroponics growing may very well be what steps you take to make sure your plants stay uninfected. If you take the following measures, your odds of having to deal with an epidemic in your grow room will decrease dramatically.
Keep Your Grow Room Clean - Old trimmings that are lying on the floor or in the cracks of your growing medium can be an invitation to disease. Make sure you follow up every pruning session by clearing away all the removed foliage. You should also make sure to thoroughly clean out or completely replace your growing medium after every growing season.
Drug Test got you worried? CLICK HERE
Hydroponics Industry Hits Pay Dirt in Mainstream Suburbia, States Advanced Nutrients
Advanced Nutrients has discovered a booming hydroponics industry in suburban neighborhoods. Michael Straumietis, Robert C. Higgins and Eugene Yordanov state that the recent increase in fertilizer prices has led to a direct higher cost for consumers buying fruit and produce. This has increased the use of hydroponics for the propagation of food crops in suburban homes and gardens.
“Hydroponics gardening used to be something done only in large commercial greenhouses,” states Advanced Nutrients co-founders Michael Straumietis, Robert C. Higgins and Eugene Yordanov.
Hydroponics program nets Gateway $5G award
WOODBURY HEIGHTS Technology education students at Gateway Regional High School were rewarded for their efforts in sustainability and alternative energy Thursday with a $5,000 Environmental Community Service award.
Students in Chris Anderson and Chris Better’s tech ed classes have been working for the past few years on developing a hydroponics system of growing vegetables, fruits and herbs without soil and raising full-grown tilapia fish which produce natural fertilizer for the plants.
Fish fertilize ‘farm’ at school
WOODBURY HEIGHTS — At Gateway Regional High School, the Information Age smells like fish.
Tilapia, actually. A hundred of them, each about a half-pound, together living in a 1,000-gallon plastic tank in what was once the school wood shop.
“They grow in anything,” said Chris Anderson, 27, a technology-education teacher. “That’s why we started with them.”
Indoor Grow with Hydroponics
From Self-Reliance by permission of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, 1717 18th Street N.W., Washington, D.C. 20009.
The author has requested feedback from anyone who tries the solution described in the following article. Address your response to: Miranda Smith, ILSR, 1717 18th St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20009.
To many, the idea of organic hydroponics seems like an impossible contradiction. Hydroponics, the growing of plants in a medium other than soil, usually utilizes a chemically derived nutrient solution. Organic gardeners, as a rule, do no like hydroponics: for those who love the soil, the prospect of plunging elbow-deep into a gritty mix of parlite and vermiculite is not very inspiring. Nor is brewing up a batch of Hy-pon-ex or Miracle-gro. How-ever, as an enterprising group of urban gardeners in Montreal has discovered hydroponic food production need not rely upon a chemical nutrient solution … and, under the unique conditions of rooftop farming in the city, soilless vegetable cultivation has distinct advantages.
Hydroponics Industry Hits Pay Dirt in Mainstream Suburbia, States Advanced Nutrients
Advanced Nutrients has discovered a booming hydroponics industry in suburban neighborhoods. Michael Straumietis, Robert C. Higgins and Eugene Yordanov state that the recent increase in fertilizer prices has led to a direct higher cost for consumers buying fruit and produce. This has increased the use of hydroponics for the propagation of food crops in suburban homes and gardens.
“Hydroponics gardening used to be something done only in large commercial greenhouses,” states Advanced Nutrients co-founders Michael Straumietis, Robert C. Higgins and Eugene Yordanov.
Are organic and hydroponics a good fit?
The permissibility of hydroponics in organic agriculture is a source of on-going debate in Canada. Under current standards, soil-less culture appears not to be permitted, but some intriguing questions need answers in order to bring clarity to the issue.
A loophole under the 1999 Canadian National Organic Standard made hydroponics permissible (depending on the certification body) because guidelines for greenhouse production did not explicitly state production must be soil-based.
Salinity & Salinity Meters
Plants need water for growth and healthy development. If plants are deprived of the required amounts of water, over a period they will whither and die. Unlike plants grown in soil, plants grown hydroponically in grow rooms and indoor greenhouses, are completely dependent on supplied water to meet their nutritional needs. It is therefore important that growers gain a basic understanding of certain vital aspects concerning water supply and plant nutrition.
Water is an excellent solvent and whether it is drawn from a tap, a lake, river or other natural sources, contains dissolved impurities along with mineral salts. The salts commonly found in water include common salt (sodium chloride), calcium chloride and carbonates. Plant growth is not adversely affected as long as salinity levels (levels of dissolved salts) are not excessive, but beyond certain threshold limits it can cause extensive tissue damage.
Chemicals used in standard hydroponic nutrient solutions contain only minor quantities of common salt (sodium chloride) which does not normally constitute a problem. Usually, it is the amount of dissolved salts in the water used for making nutrient solutions and the water added to replace the water transpired by plants that can be potentially damaging to plant tissue. Unless this water is purified to remove the salts it can lead to high concentration in the nutrient solution which can cause damage. The dissolved salts are present as anions and cations, which are negatively and positively charged atoms or groups of atoms. These always exist in pairs as so that the net electric charge is zero. Salinity can be defined as the total amount of soluble salts in the nutrient solution, which is a measure of its conductivity. It can also be defined specifically with reference to the level of sodium chloride in the solution.
Carbon filtering
Carbon filtering is a method of filtering that uses a piece of activated carbon to remove contaminants and impurities, utilizing chemical adsorption. Each piece of carbon is designed to provide a large section of surface area, in order to allow contaminants the most possible exposure to the filter media. One pound (454g) of carbon contains a surface area of approximately 500.000 m² (125 acres). This carbon is generally activated with a positive charge and is designed to attract negatively charged water contaminants. Carbon filtering is commonly used for water purification, but is also used in air purifiers.
Carbon filters are most effective at removing chlorine, sediment, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from water. They are not generally effective at removing minerals, salts, and dissolved inorganic compounds.
Typical particle sizes that can be removed by carbon filters range from 0.5 to 50 micrometres. The particle size will be used as part of the filter description. The efficacy of a carbon filter is also based upon the flow rate regulation. As water is allowed to flow through the filter more slowly, the longer contaminants are exposed to the filter media.
