any hydro peeps here?

[Rusty Trombone]

i want to start growing some killer marijuana hydro. Any advice?

[David Hare-Scott]

Spray with nicotine.

David

[gunner]

David, what does nicotine spray do besides control pests?

[kate]

Makes it deadly, aka "killer."

It's a joke, son. :)

[gunner]

Perhaps your right, I'm am just a 1st era Boomer, so the "humor" excaped me. I would have never thought of David deadpanning.

Sorry David, Stand Up would be a poor career choice, but if it is any consolation, Leno is needing new material and writers too.

[Aluckyguess]

Actually pot has 10 times the nicotine of cigarettes.

>

[Billy]

Not funny. Not accurate. Stupid.

[phorbin]

The original post asked for advice on growing "killer marijuana"

[mj]

That would be "killer marijuana Hydro" I don't get your point. MJ

[mj]

.

How does that answer my question? MJ

[jeff]

The OP, specifically mention marijuana. You are commenting on an inference that wasn't being made here.

With that said, it would seem to me that the value of the crop must exceed the cost of growing it. No doubt why there are few hydroponic squash growers.

Jeff

[phorbin]

.

Just that this topic was based in the original post.

Clearly not everyone thinks that growing hydroponically means the crop=20 must be pot.

In the time I've been monitoring the rec.gardens.edible I've seen =20 little discussion of hydroponics and marijuana. A quick search of google=20 groups seems to back me up.

Which makes me wonder why you think that everyone thinks that growing=20 hydroponically must mean growing pot.

[gunner]

A logical premise, yet hydroponics can be very cost effective and need not be expensive.

For sure, a bit more than sticking a seed in a hole in the ground and hoping it grows.

Most cases, hydro foods are much easier to grow; using much less water to grow much more food on much less acreage.

Definitely less labor, plus the cost of nutes is controllable & you get better pest control.

As for squash growing? done quite often, mostly outdoors:

old AG study on baby squash production.

[jeff]

It almost looks like an extension of drip irrigation, which many here (including myself) are using. The difference being the soil less medium and recycling the water. It also appears to me that hydroponics is almost exclusively done indoors such as in a greenhouse. I imagine this is to keep from contaminating the system and the fact that the plants have to be elevated to recover the nutrients and fluid.

So, it looks to be a wise choice for greenhouse gardening and a step too far for those of us in the great outdoors. Do I misread that?

Jeff

[David Hare-Scott]

Not so. There are commercial setups with waist-high troughs outdoors that grow greens on a large scale. But this is in a more temperate climate than most of north america or europe.

I imagine this is to keep from contaminating the system

In the trough system the nutrient flows down the trough which is on a slight slope, this could be done a few inches off the ground but it is up high for ease of access without stooping. Labour is a significant component of cost in the fresh produce market.

It's a completely different view of the growing world, different skills required, different costs. I am not so sure about it being inexpensive although it may be cost effective. Hydroponic lettuces only work because people will pay high prices in the supermarket for nice fresh produce so it may be effective to set up hydro systems on crap soil where you would have to do much work to improve the soil if it keeps up freshness and down transport costs. Also there are some crops which are not really suited to hydro, I cannot see pumpkins being very cost effective for example.

David

[Billy]

survive have more bioflavonoids, bell peppers being an exception. Are "ponics" competitive? Citation please.

[gunner]

Good points, but realize I am very pro Hydro so I have a different view than most and disagree with some points here. It certainly is not for the "back in my day" crowd. IMO, The article link below is demonstrative of how folks seems to have an associative problem of cannibis with hydroponics:

which tend to diminish exploration of the field and its real value to food production.

That aside, I don't wish to argue pros and cons of cannibis, just hydroponics. Agreed It is a bit different skill set, but the goals are the same, grow a quality product with the least energy/resources.

Speaking as a hobby vice commerical units, Hydroponics can be as expensive as you make it. I have systems that I've made from spare parts and a few dollars. This is plans of one I made in the early 90s and we still use for lettuce:

. Presently, I am building an a 24 position Aeroponics unit for strawberries that will cost ~ $70 when complete. But if you got the $$s, go buy one or two of the high priced units and help stimulate the economy. Terribly overpriced.

Here is a link of hydroponic examples:

you like videos, try Youtube: lettuce production : . But you can grow raft lettuce or herbs in your kitchen using an old aquarium, a piece of styrofoam and air pump, add a light ( i.e. a CFL) or two and you can do it all year long.

(look at the right hand side of Youtube to view more hydro examples).

There are so many methods and setups to use that tinkers have a really good time with this hobby. Raft, Ebb and Flow, DWC, Wick, Drip, Aeroponics, Fog, Aquaponics, open and closed systems, using perilite, vermicilate, clay pellets, rockwool, coir, gravel, sand, bark.... Nowdays, it is a huge commerical industry and we have NASA and many Research Scientists leading the way forward to the future

In our future, we will incorporate Hydroponics into kitchen appliance food productions units, i.e. the Electrolux Vege:

well as office building and green rooftop farms with similiar approachs as this example: . another: the Easy Food factory: rather than spend time limiting application , I ask folks to spend the energy expanding its application. So.....

If any doubts as to it growing size read this:

to Outdoor Hydro use? Hydro is great for our vast arid conditions we have in the Western US, as well as throughout the temperate SE as well. It is much more common than one realizes here in North America. In an outdoor example, it is subject to the same weather/environmental conditions as conventional crops except for water and nutrient feeding ( big bonus!). Some can be on the ground ( run to waste, a sump tank, and/or using pumps), most are elevated (good thing for me) but this really is not for protecting the nutrients from contaminations.

There are many ways to extend seasons without a greenhouse, chances improve however when you provide a simple shade cloth. So, no, I do not think it a step too far for great outdoors types. I run both but that is to save electricity in the short summer we get.

I can't agree that Hydro lettuce only works becasue people will pay high prices for it.I don't see hydro and organic lettuces with much different price points now days and only seasonal difference with field lettuce. Maybe some can recall the year that TX, FL and CA all had weather problems and limited crops so we relied on Mexican tomatoes and the hothouse biz.? I think you will see more repeats of that in the future. Then we had the wild hog contaminating fields. So hydro systems are much easier to control from a Food Secuity aspect.

As for pumpkins? maybe not be as cost effective as putting seeds in the ground and waiting , yet squash production is still very do-able and profitable besides as I said, food security aspects are a great consideration these days, as exampled here:

Pumpkin shortage:

there are now Organic Hydroponic crops for those still hung up on terminology and short on science.

[gunner]

Highly, especially Tomatoes and Peppers. The specific hydroponic nutritional analysis is referenced in here :

understand the concept but would like to see your "struggle to survive" material research. What plants, methods, etc. Was it environmental stress, heat stress, water deprivation, bending?

[Billy]

In article , "gunner" wrote:

Funny that you should hold me to a higher standard than yourself, especially since the site you gave me appears to be a private lab that does extensive work for the "biotech" industry.

Here is more information than you gave me.

Omnivore¹s Dilemma p. 179

³The organic label is a marketing tool," Secretary Glickman said. ³It is not a statement about food safety. Nor is 'organic' a value judgment about nutrition or quality." Some intriguing recent research suggests otherwise. A study by University of California?Davis researchers published in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry in 2003 described an experiment in which identical varieties of corn, strawberries, and blackberries grown in neighboring plots using different methods (including organically and conventionally) were compared for levels of vitamins and polyphenols. Polyphenols are a group of secondary metabolites manufactured by plants that we've recently learned play an important role in human health and nutrition. Many are potent antioxidants; some play a role in preventing or fighting cancer; others exhibit antimicrobial properties. The Davis researchers found that organic and otherwise sustainably grown fruits and vegetables contained significantly higher levels of both ascorbic acid (vitamin C) and a wide range of polyphenols. The recent discovery of these secondary metabolites in plants has ought our understanding of the biological and chemical complexity of foods to a deeper level of refinement; history suggests we haven't gotten anywhere near the bottom of this question, either. The first level was reached early in the nineteenth century with the identification of the macronutrients?protein, carbohydrate, and fat. Having isolated these compounds, chemists thought they'd unlocked the key to human nutrition. Yet some people (such as sailors) living on diets rich in macronutrients nevertheless got sick. The mystery was solved when scientists discovered the major vitamins?a second key to human nutrition. Now it's the polyphenols in plants that we're learning play a critical role in keeping us healthy. (And which might explain why diets heavy in processed food fortified with vitamins still aren't as nutritious as fresh foods.) You wonder what else is going on in these plants, what other undiscovered qualities in them we've evolved to depend on. In many ways the mysteries of nutrition at the eating end of the food chain closely mirror the mysteries of fertility at the growing end: The two realms are like wildernesses that we keep convincing ourselves our chemistry has mapped, at least until the next level of complexity comes into view. Curiously, Justus von Liebig, the nineteenth-century German chemist with the spectacularly ironic surname, bears responsibility for science's overly reductive understanding of both ends of the food chain. It was Liebig, you'll recall, who thought he had found the chemical key to soil fertility with the discovery of NPK, and it was the same Liebig who thought he had found the key to human nutrition when identified the macronutrients in food. Liebig wasn't wrong on either count, yet in both instances he made the fatal mistake of thinking that what we knew about nourishing plants and people was all we need to know to keep them healthy. It's a mistake we'll probably keep repeating until we develop a deeper respect for the complexity of food soil and, perhaps, the links between the two. But back to the polyphenols, which may hint at the nature of that link. Why in the world should organically grown blackberries or corn contain significantly more of these compounds? The authors of Davis study haven't settled the question, but they offer two suggest theories. The reason plants produce these compounds in the first place is to defend themselves against pests and diseases; the more pressure from pathogens, the more polyphenols a plant will produce. These compounds, then, are the products of natural selection and, more specifically, the coevolutionary relationship between plants and the species that prey on them. Who would have guessed that humans evolved to profit from a diet of these plant pesticides? Or that we would invent an agriculture that then deprived us of them? The Davis authors hypothesize that plants being defended by man-made pesticides don¹t need to work as hard to make their own polyphenol pesticides. Coddled by us and our chemicals, the plants see no reason to invest their sources in mounting a strong defense. (Sort of like European nations during the cold war.) A second explanation (one that subsequent research seems to suppport) may be that the radically simplified soils in which chemically fertilized plants grow don't supply all the raw ingredients needed to synthesize these compounds, leaving the plants more vulnerable to attack, as we know conventionally grown plants tend to be. NPK might be sufficient for plant growth yet still might not give a plant everything it needs to manufacture ascorbic acid or lycopene or resveratrol in quantity. As it happens, many of the polyphenols (and especially a sublet called the flavonols) contribute to the characteristic taste of a fruit or vegetable. Qualities we can't yet identify, in soil may contribute qualities we've only just begun to identify in our foods and our bodies.

----- And,

and,

await your pissing and moaning.

[gunner]

billy, I have oft said that your attempts at self righteous indignation are a joke, now let me add to that your pseudo-intellectual attempts are as well.

I don't want your 7th grade book report on the " Organic Bible" nor your lame attempts to bring this thread back to your pathetic philosophical platforms.

This is one of those frequent times you should have kept your mouth shut so as not to remove all doubt.