hydro-organic veggies ( lettuce / spinach )

[habeeb]

ok guys,

wanted to try this for a while now, and try some hydro "organic" growing. was gonna do pot plants, but I'm giving up growing for now to get some time back, and take a break, be able to go on vacations freely again, and I have more jars then know what to do with so I thought I would move on to other things I was interested in.. organic hydro.

being as I never ran hydro, but once when I didn't know shit and grew some lettuce, not sure if I even fed it but tap water.... haha, well I'm here to this point now.

Well, I'm going to get to the point, and outline what I think are some important things, regarding hydro, and more important the organic part..

THE SYSTEMS ( aero has the lettuce, rain-forest has the spinach )


I'm using a aeroflo 18 with holes cut for the bio filter, ones that GHE uses..thought to keep it simple, and the rain-forest has a bag with bio filter media in it, as I did not want to cut into the rain-forest yet, and will see if that bag of media does the trick.. these systems are both on float valves, so constant water level is achieved, and nutrient addback is all I should have to do. the rain-forest has a line for air stone but I'm not sure it's needed, I was worried how much oxygen the bacteria munch on, so it's there if i want to try to increase air levels. the aero has two lumigrows but once they get to a starting level I will switch to one lumigrow, as the light level is very uneven for the long trays.. the rain-forest has the "mr.x" evo 50 LED, so a total output of 86 watts over the system.. we'll see how it does. I have another home made rubbermaid system, but I need to get these running before I start that up, and I'm short 5 netpots.. coming in the mail is a bluelab nutrient doser, I originally got it to run the aero with my plan of 18 blueberry plants with salts, but things change fast for me I guess.. we'll see how I can automate the aero with the doser..

BIO FILTER


got your stars and your sponge, I think I will try and move over to just sponge next round. cheaper and easier I think, but gotta start somewhere right.. I am just using a bag of subculture-B, as Im after the Hazarium strain, as it's what they use in the GHE biomix to run the bio filter. If you see I cut a space for another filter on the aeroflo, but not sure I'll need it, we'll see how it goes this round.

NUTES


to keep it as simple as possible, I am trying to use the minimal I can. I have to use a Ca supplement as the biosevia has none, and I don't use tap .. it seems to create minimal foam, but we'll see.
problem is going to be calculating the Ca to when I do add back, as this is just a sort of toss and read on the PPM scale grow, nothing scientific, but later have to so some more calculating to the ratio per ML of biosevia used for the ratio of Ca supplement then..






very little to see right now, hopefully in a week there should be some more progress, and hopefully the spinach will germ, I hear it can take a while, and likes cool temps?

thanks for anyone reading ,and stopping by. any hydro advice is welcome or organic nutes in hydro, as I am all new to this.

this is all about experiments in hydro ,and more important feeding with "organic" . I love keeping myself busy, and love growing so I want to get started in fulfilling one of my goals, which is to run a hydro-organic setup. let's see where it goes...



have fun

 

[MileHighGuy]

I'll be following along.

I'm in the process of ordering a large greenhouse to grow organic hydroponic tomatoes and am very curious about what others are doing right now with food.

So far looks great!

 

[habeeb]

^ thanks mile high, sounds great, should be alot of fun.. interested in your setup, are you thinking of raised beds? pots? autopots? any hydro in there? I myself want a greenhouse sometime down the road when I am a little older and more settled.. keep me updated




well, looking at this, I wanted to make some brief notes on production of food indoor, obviously outdoor is very different, and will not get into that in this portion, as I'm focused on indoor production of veggies ( not pot ) as we all know pot prices are insane, and one of the highest value crops there is..

so looking at indoor production, can you even get ahead in small systems? is is productive to produce your own food indoor? how much is the costs, and what are the benefits / negatives?


negatives:

-using electrical power to produce plant material
-using products to produce material, which costs money and the pollution from production
-buying nutrients, either shipping them in or driving car to hydro store, which they shipped in
-if using a R/O , costs and waste of filters / water rejected


positives:

-not much waste generated as opposed to store bought plastic bagged / shipped in
-you know what's going in your produce
-no pesticide sprayed
-freshest you can get / no car trips to store which cost gas / wear on car
-sense of harmony growing your own food / more self reliant
-hobby which for time put in is very low costs vs. some other hobbies
-working with plants I think is always positive
-can be "organic" or even half organic derived



some things you can do to offset balance:
-run only on off peak / cooler temps usually
-run smaller nute schedule, thus using a little less nutes making them go further
-don't dump res as often ( if running hydro ) or do on runoff if using peat / coco
-shop around on nutes, and buy cheaper brand or more concentrated product
-use less additives if any
-don't need to run optimum setup to achieve veggie production vs. pot production
-lower the light schedule a hour or two
-recycle any plant material not used in compost / garden / recycle center
-use re-usuable products ( in hydro hydroton... ) . coco fiber ( sifting media when done )





now onto energy production / costs of material / expenses for production output generated:

obviously some generalities will occur here.

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energy use cost per kilowatt used: .12 cents
energy used on the rain-forest system ( 100 watts an hour at 16 hours a day )
energy used on the aeroflo ( 450 watts an hour at 16 hours a day )

so for a month production:
the rain-forest costs me $5.76 dollars to run a month
the aeroflo costs me 26.40 dollars to run a month

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the things to look at here are costs for the unit and space of the unit.

the rain-forest costs me $200 to buy.
the aeroflo costs me $350 I believe to buy.

the rain-forest has 6 sites
the aeroflo has 18 sites. 3 times the production of the rain-forest..

but the rain-forest cost alot less to run the system, but will need more lights for each unit as the aeroflo is more compact dimensions by a little.

the rain-forest is powered by 2 LED lights. costs was $600 to buy the lights
the aeroflo will have 1 lumigrow under it costing $1,000 to buy the light

so all in all, the rain-forest package cost me $800 dollars to buy and setup
so all in all, the aeroflo costs me $1,350 to buy to setup

so price per site on each system is:

rain-forest is $133 dollars per site
aeroflo is $75 dollars per site

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so calculated production ??? yet to be determined, and hopefully will be updated.


obvious is some things here which can affect price : system brand used, nutrient used, light used. These are the main factors I believe to factor in when thinking of costs.

I am no mathematician , or hold no sense in statistics or economics. please feel free to share any info anyone has about these things I was talking about, I was just trying to play around a little with numbers to see indoor production costs

 

[habeeb]

well, the lettuce is dead. wasn't looking good. maybe had slime or bad bacteria or something up.. the leaves had like transparent parts.. very weird and wasn't having it. so they got tossed..

also aeroflo with organic is a nightmare. actually selling as it's a bitch to clean from organic. I had run it once with some salts and was fine or appeared to be clean when rinsing off with a hose sprayer. the organic nute kinda stains the parts, and you have to scrub them.. also think if it was ran more it won't be such a pain, put honestly , who can fit there hands into the channels to clean??? could they not make a top with locks to clean the chambers like the botanicare with there lid system...

anyways.. lessons learned eh

spinach has horrible germs. even with fresh ones. so I had one come up, and none others, had to keep replanting them to get a full system. then had one die the other day, stem kinda rotted in the hydroton.. who knows, I don't run hydro let alone this organic hydro setup. but there moving along

funny thing is the roots. when there young there like transparent, clear, not white and solid looking. even this picture shows some of what I'm talking, there older roots though.. very interesting..

keep having fun guys,





also had to add, my pH seems to locked at 6.2 as far as I've gone.. also saw this on the aero that it was like stuck at 6.2 also. I couldn't get it to flux at all, even adding pH down, in a matter of maybe half an hour the pH was back, and when I added water still locked at, wonder if it will change over time, also noticed the aeroflo with the fish filter got to the locked pH much quicker then the rain forest, I have a mesh bag with some stars and a sponge for the "bio filter" , next time I think I'm just gonna drop the sponge and stars in the water

 

[GP73LPC]

very cool habeeb....

i'm in