What exactly is hydroponics? As the name implies, hydroponics is a system by which “water” (hydro) and nutrients are used to grow plants, without the use of soil. This means that plants can be grown indoors inexpensively, regardless of season or climate and you can have more growing cycles per year due to a faster growth rate.(READ MORE)

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1. make the run as short as possible
2. make as few turns as possible
3. pull in fresh, cool air from the bottom
4. exhaust hot, used air from the top

The Exhaust Run
Easy enough…determine where you will exhaust your hot air and than design your garden so the garden grow light is nearby. If the distance is greater than 20 feet, make sure the fan in your exhaust fan setup can handle the extra strain. Try to make the run straight from your lights to the exhaust point.

Airflow in the Garden
Since hot air rises, you will be removing much more heat from the garden by starting your exhaust near the ceiling of your garden area. This creates a vacuum that naturally pulls cooler, fresh air into the garden area.

Use an oscillating fan on the floor to keep the cooler, fresh air moving through the plants and toward the exhaust.

Just One More Thing
Fans are much more efficient at PULLING air than at PUSHING air. With this in mind, the exhaust fan is usually placed right at the point of exhaust. From there it will pull air through your exhaust fan setup (through the light reflector) and out of the garden area.

Some Examples

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One side note…the examples here are all shown with centrifugal fans. With no carbon filter, these examples would work fine with squirrel cage fans These fans are covered in more detail on my garden exhaust fans page.

Assume your plants are getting enough light and air and are kept at a good temperature. Plant growth will happen (often quickly) as long as you provide the best conditions in the nutrient solution (and in the rest of the grow room) everyday!

Beginning Water Quality
Learning how to grow hydro starts with your beginning water quality. Check your tap water with a TDS meter. Anything over 200 ppm and you should probably use a reverse osmosis filter, or else use bottled spring water. While not necessary, it’s not a bad idea to treat your water using hydrogen peroxide.

If you really want to complicate things, you can get a complete water test. In this case, you can use tap water with up to 300 ppm as long as no more than 150 ppm of the total is from calcium, calcium carbonate, and sodium compounds.

How to Grow Hydro with Additives and Supplements
Through the water, the plants will receive all of their food. This water needs to contain primary nutrients (N-P-K), secondary nutrients (calcium, magnesium, iron, sulfur), and all trace nutrients. I strongly recommend using a professional hydroponic nutrient product for this.

How to Grow Hydro with Supplements
In addition to regular food, there are a few additives that make a huge difference in the healthy development of your plants. These are vitamins (like Thrive Alive B1), trace nutrient supplements (like Maxicrop liquid seaweed), and plant hormones (in any type of seaweed). Another useful additive is silica, which is used to boost the immune system of plants.

Many expert gardening articles I have read by people who know how to grow hydro recommend adding Thrive Alive B1 and Maxicrop to every drop of water you give your plants. Use 10 ml (2 tsp) per gallon of each. If you are using a seaweed based fertilizer, it is not necessary to add additional liquid seaweed.

For more information on feeding and maintaining your nutrient solution, check out my hydroponic nutrients page.

Nutrient Solution pH
If you want to learn how to grow hydro well, you must know about the pH (potential Hydrogen) scale. Hydroponic nutrients are only in usable forms to your plants when the pH is right. The maximum amount of nutrients are available to your plants in a range of 5.5 pH to 6.5 pH. In hydroponics, the nutrients are often kept around 5.5 because the plants absorb nutrients slightly more quickly at this pH.

Nutrient Availability Help for How to Grow Hydro
Also, the natural tendency is for the pH to creep up slowly over time, so it is your natural tendency to adjust the pH down to the low end of the acceptable range whenever you make a pH adjustment.

Nutrient Solution Strength
People that know how to grow hydro use a total dissolved salts (TDS) meter or an electrical conductivity (EC) meter to tell how strong or how weak the nutrient solution is. The ideal strength of your nutrient solution depends on what type of plants you are growing, and also what stage of the plant life cycle they are in. Check this section out to find out what strength to keep your nutrient solution.

Maintaining your Nutrient Solution
In a ten gallon reservoir, you will need to check the strength (TDS or EC) and the pH of your solution twice a day. With a larger reservoir, the changes in the nutrient solution take more time. I would still recommend you check your nutrient solution at least once a day, no matter what size reservoir you have! People that know how to grow hydro usually use a larger reservoir. 3/4 gallon to one gallon of nutrient solution per plant is a good general guideline to follow.

If you test your nutrient solution and the pH is up, than slowly add pH down. When checking your nutrient solution, it is a good idea to check the pH first (as opposed to checking the TDS or EC first), because the addition of pH down will increase the strength of your nutrient solution a little. If your pH is too high, you may need to add a little pH down.

Once the pH of your nutrient solution has been tested and adjusted, it is time to test the TDS/EC. If the nutrient strength is a little weak, add a little fertilizer. If the nutrient strength is a little high, add plain water. It is a good idea to let any water that you use sit out overnight in an uncovered container. This lets the water de-chlorinate, and also lets the water come to room temperature. Adding cold water will shock the roots, causing root damage as well as above ground damage.

Change it Every Two Weeks
After two weeks of using the same nutrient solution, it is time for a nutrient change. The plants may have been using some nutrients more than others, and now you might be heading for a nutrient imbalance. Keep an extra nutrient reservoir full of plain water waiting for your next nutrient solution change. This ensures you will have de-chlorinated, room temperature water that will not damage your plants’ roots.

It is a good idea to run a tank full of plain water (or 1/4 strength nutrient solution) through the hydroponic system for a few hours in between nutrient changes. This helps to flush out any nutrient buildup. Some experienced gardeners do this every four weeks, or every other nutrient change. The addition of enzymes, such as Hygrozyme, will help with the flushing process. During every nutrient change, consider using hydrogen peroxide to keep things clean and healthy.

The Final Tweak
Once you have a simple feeding plan that is working well, you can try to maximize your results. The best advice here is to make small changes, one at a time, and to let each change show its effects before making another change. Sometimes this will mean waiting two weeks, other times it may mean waiting a whole crop cycle for the results.

My experience has shown that a simple plan with high quality results is what your goal should be. Many times, experimenting only leads to bad results. To make matters worse, if you changed two or more things, you have no idea what is causing the problem now. Anyone interested should learn about these fertilizer and soil additives.

The Final Flush
Pros that know how to grow hydro usually do a final flush just before harvest. This can be done by replacing the nutrient solution with plain water for the last 7 to 10 days. It will help if you change the water each day with fresh, plain water for these last few days. An alternative is to use a product specifically made to help flush out these nutrients, such as Final Flush or Flora-Kleen.

Flushing the crop helps remove any fertilizers in the plant tissue. Flushing will improve the flavor and aroma of the produce coming out of your garden.

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Originally published at Jason’s Indoor Organic Guide

WHAT IS A CLONE? Cloning has become one of the most efficient ways to grow plant. Clones are the result of asexual or vegetative propagation, whereas, seeds are the result of sexual propagation. Cloning is basically taking a cutting (a branch or growing portion of the plant, including a few small leaves to aid growth) of one plant, and placing it in a medium and forcing it to take root on it’s own, by applying rooting hormones(described later). This cutting then becomes a plant of it’s own, but identical to the “parent” plant(the plant from which the clone was taken). This gives us the first benefit of cloning, survival of the fittest.

Unlike with seeds, where the outcome of the plant can be a guess to the grower, clones can be taken from the strongest, healthiest and most productive plants, and turned into genetic replicas of their strong parent plants. This gives you a complete, uniform garden of only the most productive, disease resistant, pest resistant and healthiest plants(or whatever characteristics you decide are the best qualities for your particular plant). Plants that are grown from seed can be non-productive. Some seeds, more than likely about 30%-60%, can grow up to represent the worst characeristics of their species. They also take time to start and grow; with clones you start with a prebuilt plant, and all that is involved past that is adding the rooting hormone and regular plant maintenance. Although the first step in cloning is the seed, after they have shown their traits, the unhealthiest(by the characteristics you set) can be taken out of the garden, leaving you with your strongest, most productive plants to clone. Your healthy plants are then cloned, and when these clones begin to grow small branches, they too can be cloned and so on and so forth, until you decide to stop. If you decide that you could benefit from cloning then you are ready to begin the next step. In the next part you will be given the information on the materials needed to take your clones, followed by “Ten Steps To The Perfect Clone”. I hope your newfound interest in cloning will lead your garden to the amazing results that they lead my garden to. Good luck and happy cloning!!

WHAT MATERIALS ARE NEEDED TO TAKE A CLONE?

The first thing you will need to take a clone will be a parent plant exhibiting your desired characteristics. The plant should be atleast 2 months old. The next thing you will need is a rooting hormone. They come in liquid, as well as, powder forms. Liquid solutions are used by most professional growers because the have better stem penetration, and exhibit consistent results; powders are less used, because they adhere inconsistently to the stem and yield poor survival rates. The following is a list of rooting hormones good for a wide array of plant types(some of these products are not intended for plants that are used for consumption, so read the labels carefully to make sure you get the solution that will work best for you); Dip-N-Grow, Rootone-F, Woods Rooting Compound, Up-Start, Hormodin, Hormex and Superthrive. You will also need a piece of screen or shadecloth to protect your clones from large amounts of intense light for their first few days. New clones are sensitive to light, and need some sort of shade or filtered sun for their first few days, until they begin to form roots. They will also require foliar feeding via a water spray bottle. In their first few days it is critical that you spray the leaves of your clones with water about 4-5 times a day to supply the water that isn’t able to be supplied to the plant through the roots. Just spray the with a fine layer of mist to keep the leaves from dehydrating.

Also needed are a pair of sharp, sterile scissors to cut your clipping and remove excess foliage, a glass of fresh, tepid, water, a pencil or chop stick, and a container(filled with the planting mix of your choice) in which to transfer your new clone. With these materials you are now prepared to take your first clone.

TEN STEPS TO TAKING THE PERFECT CLONE

1) Choose a parent plant that is atleast two months old. Leach the soil with water, at a rate of 1 gallon water per 5 gallons of soil, once a day for 5 days prior to cloning.

2) Locate some older, lower branches with about 4-6 sets of leaves on them, and that are about 1/8-1/4-inches-wide and 3-8 inches long. With your scissors, make a 45 degree cut across the intended clones branch, being careful not to smash the stem. Trim the 2-3 sets of bottom leaves off the stem, leaving 2-3 sets of leaves above ground. Immediately place the cut end into the glass of fresh, tepid water. This will keep an air bubble from blocking it’s transpiration passages, which can kill a plant within 24 hours. Leave your cuttings overnight in the water with no light.

3) Use your pencil or chopsticks to place a hole in the potting soil in your pot, just wider than your clones stem. The hole should bottom out 1/2-1 inch from the bottom of the container to allow for root growth.

4) Now is the time to prepare your rooting solution. Most professional nurserypeople use liquid hormones which should be mixed just prior to using. There should be dilutions for hardwoods and softwoods, use which ever dilution applies to you. Swirl the stem of your cutting in the solution for 10-20 seconds. Place your clones in the hole and press the potting soil around the base of the stem gently. If you are using a powder hormone, roll the stem in the powder, taking special care to keep a solid layer of powder around the stem when packing the soil into place.

5) Lightly water with a mild solution of water and rooting hormone, until the soil is evenly moist, watering the soil as needed to retain moisture.

6) Place your new clones under filtered sunlight, a piece of shadecloth or a screen to prevent excessive shock to the plant. After 4-5 days they can be moved into a sunny area where they will begin to adjust and continue to grow.

7) With your spray bottle of water, gently mist the leaves of your clones, just lightly covering the surface of the leaves. This will help the plant continue to absorb water without needing roots. Spray about 4-7 times a day, just to keep the leaves from drying out completely.

Maintain the temperature of clones at about 70-80 degrees fahrenheit for about 3 days after growth, bringing them inside if you need to.

9)Some of your cuttings may wilt for the first few days or have rotting leaves if the leaves were in contact with moist soil. Remove any rotten leaves as they may occur. Your clones should look like normal, small, uniform plants after about the first 5-7 days. If any of the plants are still badly wilted at the end of the first week they probably will not survive or if they do they it is unlikely they will catch up with the rest of your plants, and should be removed from the garden.

10) In 1-4 weeks the clones should be well rooted and ready to be checked. To check simply remove one of the clones from it’s container to check for the off-white strands of roots. After your plants have rooted they are now ready to be put into their regular growing area and resume growth. In about another month these plants will be ready to be parents theirselves. Simply follow the same process as the first clones for each subsequent generation and can be continued as long as you wish for them to. Within no time you will see just how beneficial cloning can be in your garden. Good luck with your new cloning hobbie.

Rooting a cutting Many herbs—including oregano, thyme, rosemary, and sage—are best propagated for indoor growing by taking a cutting from an existing outdoor plant. To do it, snip off a 4-inch section, measured back from the tip. Strip off the lower leaves and stick the stem into moist, soil-less mix, such as perlite and/or vermiculite. To ensure good humidity, cover with glass or clear plastic, and keep the growing medium-moist.

Transition to indoors
Before the first fall frost (while the weather is still on the mild side), start moving your potted herb plants toward their winter home. Instead of bringing them directly inside, put them in a bright, cool “transitional zone,” such as a garage, entryway, or enclosed porch, for a few weeks.

Once they’ve acclimated, move them to an area with lots of sun (south-facing windows are brightest, followed by east or west views). But protect them from heat and dryness. Most herbs prefer daytime temperatures of about 65°F to 70°F, although they can withstand climbs into the 70s. It’s especially important that night temperatures drop at least 10°F—down into the 50s would be better—to simulate outdoor conditions.

With the exception of basil, they’ll even do well with occasional dips into the 40s. (So turn that thermostat down when you go to bed.) Place them outside on mild days, and give them regular baths to wash off dust.

Water, light, and temperature
Most herbs like to be well watered but don’t like wet feet. That’s why good drainage is important. Water when the top of the container feels dry, or learn to judge the moisture in the soil by the weight of the pot. Add sand or vermiculite to the potting soil to ensure good drainage.

Learn to juggle water, light, and temperature. An herb in a clay pot in a south-facing window will need more water than one in a plastic pot in an east- or west-facing window. If the light is low, keep the temperature low.

Pest prevention
Choose the soil for your indoor herbs carefully. A good commercial potting soil is fine, or for a deluxe mix, blend one part potting soil with one part compost and one part vermiculite, perlite, or sand (or a mixture of all three).

Resist the temptation to use disease- and pest-prone garden soil. And when you pot up garden-grown plants, remove as much of the garden soil as possible without damaging the roots.

Keep such transplants separate from your other houseplants while you’re gradually acclimating them to the indoors. If you see insects on a plant during this “quarantine,” leave it outside.

If, despite such defenses, your indoor plants do come under insect attack, help the herbs stay healthy by providing the correct mix of light and temperature, and give them regular baths. A plant weakened by hot, dry indoor conditions is even more susceptible to spider mite, whitefly, or aphid damage than a healthy one.

If you choose to use soap sprays to control these pests, remember that the wet spray must come in contact with the insect to be effective. Spray in the evening (and never in bright sunlight) to prevent rapid drying, and wash off residues the next day (or before eating the leaves). Don’t spray very young seedlings with soap!

Hold back on the water and fertilizer through December, but when the days start getting longer in mid-January, feed them with liquid seaweed or compost. Even potted soil gets compacted as you water it, so cultivate it with a little fork, then top-dress it with compost.

February is usually a great month for indoor plants because of all the bright light. By March, they are starting to get buds, and in April, be sure to put them outside on a warm day. Then it won’t be long before the herbs—and you—are ready to move back to the garden.

READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE at OrganicGardening.com

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