Plant Gardens 101

The advantages of growing with hydroponics versus soil growing

To understand what the advantages are growing with hydroponics, first you must understand what hydroponics is. Hydroponics is simple. Hydroponics is growing with water instead of soil. Typically a user add concentrated nutrients into the water, simulating the fertilizers found in soil.

With hydroponics you much more control over your grow then you do with soil, because simply adding the right amount of nutrients in the water guarantees that you will have the right amount of food for your plants. In soil it can be much more difficult to diagnose when you are short mineral trace elements, because you really don’t know what was missing to begin with.

However when using hydroponics nutrients are pre-mixed with exactly the right amount of trace elements. So by simply adding the proper amount of hydroponic nutrients to your water in the hydroponic system, you know that the nutrients have been mixed correctly and the plants have all the elements they need to survive. If your plants should never begin to get sick such as yellowing leaves due to some sort of nutrient deficiency all you have to do is dump your hydroponic systems water, and fill it with fresh water and fresh nutrients. (more…)

The importance of using an air cooled lights in a hydroponics environment

When you are growing in a hydroponics environment, it is important to have light and lots of it. In hydroponics the more light you have, the better your plants will grow. However there is a trade-off. More powerful HID lights will use more electricity and also give off more heat. So there is always a compromise between high-powered lights and dealing with the heat. The idea is you want to use the most powerful light you can, but not raise the temperature in the environment of your hydroponic system higher than what the plants are comfortable with. Plants are usually comfortable in the same temperature range as humans. For this reason you need to have clever ways of dissipating the heat away from your garden.

This article will deal with the most efficient ways of keeping your high-intensity lights cool, so that your plants can maintain a healthy rate of growth. (more…)

Light reflector in your hydroponics grow.

It is very important to use a light reflector in your hydroponics garden if you would like to get the most out of your grow lamp. A light bulb will admit light in 360°. If you do not have a reflector above your bulb these light rays will be wasted because light will be beaming out in all directions around for your plants and not on your plants. What you really need is a way of focusing the light beams at 360° radius back onto your plants. That’s exactly what the light reflector does and why it’s important to have one. A light reflector will take all the light from the bulb and once installed around the top of the light reflector will bounce light down to your garden. This is called out of bounce light. This can make your lights much more effective because now a lot less of those light rays are to be wasted by going in directions not needed. You never want to run the lights without out a good reflector. (more…)