I'm often asked a "Which is better, hydroponics or soil?" Each method has their advantages and disadvantages that require certain personality traits to maintain and to be successful with. If you stick a plant in soil, it grows in what plants are genetically engineered to grow in, earth, or in many cases a custom mix of earth concocted by one of our friends at a potting soil company. Planting mixes are often charged with nitrogen and phosphorus in the form of earthworm castings and bone meal, which assist the plant with a much-needed boost to handle its vigorous root and vegetative production. The soil acts as the plant's foundation and food source while providing a cool, moist environment for a plant to stretch out in and search out life giving nutrients.

With hydroponics, the gardener needs to provide the plant with everything it needs to survive. The medium used in hydroponics should have a good air to water ratio. Potting soil is not suited for hydroponics applications because of its absorption. After a thorough watering, soil may remain soaked for days. Most hydroponics systems require a pump of some kind set on a timer that waters at the very least once a day, most of the time. If you saturate soil once a day, your plants will last about a week before they suffocate and drown, especially when they are young. For example, If you had an ebb and flow garden (I will explain the strange but alluring term "ebb and flow" soon enough), and your plants are growing in a rock medium of some kind, you would set the pump on a timer to water four or more times a day. The plant will feed out of the nutrient solution and spend the next four hours or so until the next watering soaking up the traces of nutrient on the rock medium and taking in oxygen through its roots. More waterings mean accelerated growth, one true advantage to hydroponics. Some preferred materials used as mediums are expanded clay pellets, perlite (a white, brittle, processed volcanic rock often used as a soil amendment), rockwool (rock that has been melted and spun like cotton candy, resembles fiberglass), coco coir (shredded coconut husk), and sand. In soil, a plant's root system needs to move through the soil to retrieve nutrients. In hydro, a gardener is essentially sticking a feeding tube into the plants system and pumping it with exactly what it needs, so the plant spends less time on making roots and more time growing on the topside. This is where your personality comes into play. A plant growing in soil has something to go off of, that being the soil itself. Fertilizing is not necessary in the first couple weeks if needed at all due to the fact that the soil is the food, so the gardener merely needs to water. That's not a luxury in hydroponics. The medium in hydroponics comes with nothing, nada, zilch. No nutrients in any shape or form (there are always exceptions to the rules, so read the bag!). You feed the plant everything it needs for survival, so that means hydroponics is not as forgiving as soil when it comes to mistakes. If you exceed the recommended amounts of fertilizer in soil, you have a few days to catch the problem and flush the excess fertilizer away from the roots to correct the problem. If you do this in a hydro system, your plants could fall on the floor in a matter of hours! Now don't let this scare you away. Hydroponics is really is not as complicated as everyone makes it out to be. All you need to be concerned with is PH and PPM. There are digital pens and meters on the market you can get for under a hundred dollars that will considerably make your life easier. The meter will indicate with an easy to read digital readout how concentrate your nutrient solution is. PPM means Parts Per Million. Almost everything you feed your plants are metals - calcium, magnesium, iron, and manganese to name a few. The PPM meter simply divides the solution into a million parts of water, and tells you out of those million parts of water how many parts of the water is something else. PH is just as important as PPM. The availability of metals is governed by PH. That means wrong PH, no food for the plants.

Another important choice is what kind of food to use. There are many different hydroponic solutions out there you can use, that usually come in three or more parts. The reason for dividing nutrient components into different parts is not only make these nutrient companies a lot of money, but it is also to make the nutrients shelf stable and avoid lock-out. Nutrient lock-out occurs when certain metals in its concentrated form will attract each other and bond forming a molecule that is too large for the roots even to ingest, rendering your nutrient solution worthless. At that point you might as well be giving your plants plain water. When lockout occurs you will quickly see your plants suffer in the form of drooping leaves, red stems, and purple veins on the leaves, truly a sad sight. Lockout is not exclusive to hydro; it is just as common in soil. If you fertilize with every watering, like most nutrient manufactures want you to do, chances are you will experience a lockout sometime throughout your growing cycle. That is due to the fact that in soil, unlike hydro, you have no idea what the soil is holding on to and what the plant has used. There is no practical soil meter that will tell you accurately exactly what's going on in soil. If you experience a lockout and your plants are suffering, flush the growing medium to leach (or rinse) access fertilizer away from the root mass. In soil this can be a daunting task because that requires every container to be flushed with gallons of fresh water. In hydro the flushing process is a snap, just drain and discard tainted solution in the reservoir and replace it with a new batch. Another point for hydro!

If you haven't caught on by now, I'm a hydro guy. Hydro is clean, easy, fast, and in my opinion better. Now I've been accused of going to the dark side, of being a "Chem Guy", referring to non-organic compounds in the form of red and green chemical fertilizers that have been used as hydro food for years. My friends, things are drastically changing! We are now experiencing the dawn of hydro. Countless numbers of organic nutrients and additives are popping up everywhere. Once, emulsification and chelating were achieved with chemicals. Now organic compounds cultured with beneficial bacterial inoculations are replacing chems.

The concept of hydroponics is perplexing to some. Maybe it's the technical sound of the word itself that brings waves of unanswered questions and surges of mysterious curiosities that make people cower and run. Sit down, take a breath and relax, I'm here to help.

Hydroponics is the cultivation of plants in nutrient solution rather than soil. There are many kinds of hydroponic gardening that range from the basic, one or two container patio set-up to sophisticated, fully automated greenhouse operations. If you pot a plant in a medium such as perlite or coco coir and use a simple hand watering system to feed the plant, this is considered hydroponics. The plants get no nutrient from the medium itself so it relies entirely on the nutrients you provide. This may work on a very small scale but proves to be impractical on a large scale due to the fact that soilless mediums dry out extremely fast. This is where consist ant automation comes into play and a timer becomes crucial.

There are a couple different ways to fully automate your garden making the watering process a snap. First of all, the nutrient supply needs to be established in a reservoir of some kind. The size of the reservoir needs to be large enough to accommodate the number of plants you are working with. A submersible or inline pump is connected to a feed line. A timer controls the watering times. Set the watering times for ten or fifteen-minute increments one to five times a day, depending on the absorption of the medium you are using. When the timer turns the pump on, water is pumped either to a tray containing the plants, or through a drip line that runs to the base of each plant. Mediums that retain less water such as Hydro ton, which are clay pellets that have been fired and expanded in a kiln, or perlite, which is processed volcanic particles, retain small amounts of water, so you would water three to four times a day. Other mediums such as rockwool, stone that has been melted and spun like cotton candy, and shredded coconut coir, coconut husk that has been salt leached and shredded to a consistency similar to peat moss, retain a lot of water, so water less.

The two popular methods of hydroponics I'm referring to are ebb-and-flow and drip systems. Ebb-and-flow is an oceanic term that refers to the rise and fall of the sea's tide. Keeping this in mind makes the concept of ebb and flow easy to understand. First you've got to put the plants in a container filled with a soulless medium of some kind, or root them in rockwool cubes and slabs. Two holes need to be drilled in the hydro tray. Install one fill and one drain outlet. The fill outlet should be smaller than the drain and is usually ½ inch to ¾ inch in size, whichever is directly related to the pump you are using. The pump will force water through the fill faster than gravity will let it drain, so use a larger size drain outlet. Failing to do so may result in a flooded floor verses a flooded tray, not exactly the desired effect. The pump should be big enough to completely flood the tray with a few minutes of drainage back to the reservoir in the required time set on the timer. The size of tray needed depends on the space you have to work with. Many sizes are available from your local hydroponic store. Some popular sizes are 2x2, 2x4, 3x3, 3x6, 4x4, and 4x8 foot sizes. A 4x4 tray would need a pump rated at least 350 gph. Gph is how many gallons per hour the pump will move out of the pump by itself with no tubing attached to it. The more tubing you string up to the pump and the vertical distance it has to move in feet will dramatically draw on the pumps' workload. For example, a pump rated at 633 gph out of the box quickly becomes 131 gph when twenty feet of tubing is attached and water is pumped six feet vertically, so don't skimp on the pump. It is the life support system for your plants.

Drip irrigation systems are easy to set up and have been used in both hydroponics and soil applications for years. As with ebb and flow, a timer regulates the plants' feeding schedule. Nutrients are pumped down a feed line that is strung to the base of each plant. Each plant site is usually fitted with an emitter of some kind. Some emitters are nothing more than a tiny valve that adjusts the drip flow of the life giving nutrients. Other emitters are plastic watering stakes that resemble a tent stake. The watering stake is pushed into the root zone and nutrients are trickled down a grove in the plastic watering stake directing the flow into the heart of the plants' root system. Another style of watering stake has a spray nozzle on to top, which sprays the nutrients at the base of the plant like a mini sprinkler system. Don't forget to fine-tune your flow amounts and watering times. Your plants should never get bone dry. Your roots will die and fungus gnats will invade your space. Your plants should never stay saturated and swampy for days either. Your garden will suffocate. And don't forget the saucers! Save yourselves the mess.

Hydroponics is all about walking that fine line of ideal environmental factors and holding consist ant patterns. Those factors include pH, both room and nutrient temperatures, humidity, light levels, nutrient concentration (ppm or ec), and air movement. Have you ever heard the term "You're only as strong as your weakest link?" This couldn't be more fitting to hydroponics. You can spend as much cash on the latest and greatest atmospheric regulators and specialized gadgetry, but if you're over fertilizing, none of those pricey toys will make any difference. So remember not to get ahead of yourself.

Once again, I've skimmed the surface and ran out of space. Next week we're diving back in. Don't forget to love those plants!

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3. Three magic words; Nutrient Film Technique

After covering all things hydroponics over the span of a couple weeks, what's left? NFT and aeroponics baby, that's what!

NFT, short for Nutrient Film Technique, is a popular hydroponics application commonly used in greenhouse application. Although NFT systems may greatly differ in appearance depending on the scale of the application, the general concept remains the same as all hydroponic applications. A NFT system consists of a chamber, or series of chambers, constructed of gutters or PVC pipe. If gutters are used, a cover is often used to block out the light from above, preventing the roots from being exposed. Holes are drilled in the covers or pipe to accommodate the round, net baskets used to house the base of the plant.

Net baskets come in a variety of sizes, some which include 2, 3, 3.75, 5, and 6 inch round. Square net pots are also available in a variety of sizes, but are often referred to as pond baskets. In either case, the walls and bottom of the net containers are made of a rigid, plastic mesh material. A net pot acts as an anchor or foundation for the plant. The roots grow through the mesh, thus enabling a plant to hold onto the walls of the basket and stand upright. Unlike a plant growing in a container of soil, the plant's root system is not restricted to the container. The roots grow through the mesh and down the growth chamber. The chamber needs to be deep enough to allow an inch or two of airspace between the bottom of the net pot and the bottom of the growth chamber.

The next question is how deep should the layer of nutrient be. Most of the time, the depth of the nutrient solution should be no more than a trickle, as thin of a layer as possible. But, as in all aspects of life, there are exceptions to the rules. A seedling or freshly rooted cutting has a small root system that would not be able to reach the thin layer of nutrient solution flowing along the bottom of the chamber. Your plants will work as hard as they can to reach the bottom of the growth chamber, but that takes days. In times like these, occurring in the beginning of your growth cycle, you need to raise the level of nutrient solution so the bottoms of the net pots sit about 1/8 of an inch in the solution.

Now let's take a couple steps back. We are talking NFT. We have a growth chamber. Nutrients are pumped in at one end of the growth chamber, which needs to be at the higher end of a slight incline. Nutrients flow down the entire length of the growth chamber with plants happily nestled up top with the roots basking in the nutrient solution. Nutrients run down to the drain. If the drain is flush with the bottom of the chamber at the drain, you have a thin layer of nutrients my friends, which is ideal most of the time. At those times you need to raise that level, risers need to be applied. This usually calls for a drain with adjustable risers, or a grommet fitted with a PVC pipe. More risers or PVC pipe exposed means more water in the growth chamber.

Over the course of a week or so of the new plants being introduced into the NFT system, you want to monitor the plants root growth and lower the solution to accommodate the root development. Stay ahead of those roots. Make them work for food by keeping the level of nutrients in the chamber a quarter inch under the root mass until the nutrient level is down to a very thin layer, then let those babies soak it up.

Now, as great as that system sounds, I've found that there is a flaw to the NFT design. That goes back to the golden rule of hydroponics; roots sitting in water will rot. The exceptions being aquatic plants, of course. Browning roots, fungus gnats, and pythium will challenge you if your roots are waterlogged. In comes aeroponics, the answer to our problems. Yes, I'm throwing another term at you. I know you're up for it.

I'm running out of space so I'll keep this short and sweet. You have a growth chamber, much like what we just got done talking about with NFT. Instead of a nutrient layer flowing along the bottom of the chamber, you have a water line attached to a pump sitting in a reservoir like NFT. The water line runs down the center or circles the chamber. Misters are tapped into the water line and the pump is plugged in. From the outside, it may look like any other hydro system. But on the inside of those chambers are sprinklers loving those root systems. It rains everyday in your aeroponics system. Don't think I'm just brushing over a topic as important as aeroponics because that couldn't be further from the truth. Aeroponics just happens to be my favorite method of gardening and we will be spending plenty of time on it in the near future.

Pat yourself on the back if you've been paying attention. We've gotten through most of the popular methods of hydroponic gardening. So what comes next? Well, there's only lights, nutrients, vegetable crops, tropical plants, ventilation, greenhouse applications, even aquaponics! That's what I'm talking about, or writing about. Be here next week!

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4. Let there be Light... and Ventilation

That great big fiery orb in the sky is the reason there is life on this planet. Plants need light to turn nutrients into energy. The leaves of the plant act as solar panels, harnessing the sun's energy and storing it to withstand the rigors of the vegetative and fruiting/flowering cycles.

If you were lucky enough to own an atrium or a greenhouse, you would be foolish not to take advantage of the natural light that is at your disposal. No light system available on the market today can come close to the intensity and spectrum that natural sunlight provides. Not to mention that it's a lot cheaper. Depending on what kinds of plants you are growing, you may want to consider some kind of light system for supplemental light. Tomatoes and bell peppers, for example, need a certain number of sunny days to fulfill their developmental needs, a number we don't get up here under the fog belt. Plants will vegetate, or grow in size and structure, as long as it is exposed to at least sixteen hours a day. A plant will fruit and flower when it is restricted to twelve hours or less. These are Mother Nature's rules. Indoor lighting tricks Mother Nature and forces plants to follow your schedule.

There are two commonly used bulbs, or lamps, used in indoor gardening - Metal Halide (MH) and High Pressure Sodium (HPS). MH provides a blue spectrum simulating the spring and early summer spectrum, which plants naturally use during the vegetative phase of their growth cycle. High Pressure Sodium provides the red side of the spectrum, which imitates the sun's spectrum in late summer and autumn. That wild and crazy red spectrum plants crave throughout the fruiting/flowing phase. If you purchase a switchable ballast, "switchable" meaning a ballast that will fire both MH and HPS bulbs, you will have a growth advantage because you are providing the plants with the specific spectrum they need. There is a catch. It will cost you $100 more for this luxury. If you're going to use one type of bulb only, make it a HPS. HPS delivers more intensity than MH, and intensity makes all the difference during fruiting/flowering. Hortilux and Grolux are examples of superior bulbs enhanced with extra blue light not found in those standard, cheaper HPS bulbs. The lamp is the delivering component of your system, so it pays to spend the extra $30 to upgrade. If you want to see the color difference in the light output of these two bulbs, look out your window. MH and HPS fixtures have been used for years in lighting fixtures and street lamps. They just so happen to have a spectrum that plants can use.

Incandescent bulbs have a very small amount of spectrum that plants can use and usually require a wattage of 150 watts or higher to have any beneficial effect on plants. That means you have a very hot bulb in a regular light fixture. Be careful!

Fluorescent lighting provides an excellent alternative for indoor gardeners on a budget. These lights provide a cost effective, cooler burning light system. Newer fluorescent fixtures like the Tek-light T5 fixture offers a spectrum made specifically for plants. Just make sure to drop those fluorescent fixtures down on those plants. Fluorescent lights are nowhere near the intensity of MH or HPS lighting systems, and the light intensity dramatically diminishes the further away the lamp is from the plants. For example, one foot away from the lamp is 100% of the lamps intensity. Move another foot away and the intensity becomes 22%. Make the most out of your light! You're paying for it.

In gardening, like in all other aspects of life, you're only as strong as your weakest link. You can pack your atrium or greenhouse with as many high-tech lighting systems as your budget will handle, but without the proper ventilation and air exchange, you will have dismal results. Light systems create heat. Plants will stress and stretch when temperatures climb past ninety. Pests love hot dead air. Only a couple of things you will face if you brush off your ventilation. Air is everything. . We'll finish this next week.

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5. Ventilation Part II -- Choosing An Inline Fan

All right people, let's talk about air. Plants and mammals have a symbiotic relationship when it comes to the air we breath. When we take a breath our lungs take in oxygen. The byproduct of our gas exchange is carbon dioxide. Luckily for us, plants do the opposite. That top surface of a leaf really is nothing more than a solar panel protected with a waxy layer. All the action takes place on the underside of the leaf. It's this part of the leaf which is riddled with microscopic mouth openings opening and closing independently. Each tiny mouth opening takes in a gulp of carbon dioxide before breathing out oxygen. It's almost like those lovable plants and all of us crazy mammals were made for each other.

Don't get carbon dioxide confused with the poisonous gas carbon monoxide. There is a big difference. I once talked to a guy that wanted to take his garden to the next level. To achieve this, his plan was to run a tube from the tailpipe of his car to his garden. Well, he would have taken things to the next level all right. This is a perfect example of someone shooting from the hip. That works if you're a gunslinger, but can prove to be fatal when your dealing with poisonous gases and high wattage light systems. If you're not sure how something works, ask someone who knows what he or she is doing! What he meant to do was set up a carbon dioxide (CO2) emitter system to raise the parts per million (ppm) of CO2 in the air. A very good idea when you have all the other kinks in the garden worked out. Since CO2 emitter systems are worthless unless your lights, temperature, humidity, and nutrients are running at optimal, consistent levels, extra CO2 won't make any difference. So we will tackle the topic of CO2 later after we cover everything else.

What I consider to be a ventilation system may differ from others' idea of what ventilation is, so let's make sure we are on the same page. To ventilate a room, you need air exchange. This involves an exhaust fan moving air out and a point where fresh air comes in. Everyone's gardening area is unique to that area. What works for one location may not work for another garden across town. There are way too many variables to have a one-size fits-all explanation. There are, however, guidelines to follow. The first thing to do is find out the total cubic feet of the area you are working with. To get this number, multiply the length of the area in feet by the width and height. For example, an area sizing up to 8x8x8 would have a total volume of 512 cubic feet. This number is the total amount of air sitting in your garden at any given moment. Now you've got to move that air out.

Inline fans are sealed when capped off on both ends with the appropriate size of ducting. This creates a tight, focused vacuum, which moves large amounts of air in a short period of time. Inline fans are superior to other style of fans such as cheap inductors and blowers commonly referred to as squirrel cage fans. These fans cost a lot less than inline fans, but you end up sacrificing a lot of usable CFM, or cubic feet per minute.

CFM is an important number to pay attention to. All fans are rated by CFM. This is their workload. How accurate that number is for that fan once you install it in your garden is another story. A fan rated at 747 CFM may only be performing at 550 CFM once twenty feet of ducting and a carbon air filter for air purification is attached. That's twenty percent loss, or draw, on your fan! Don't undercut your ventilation and buy a rinky-dink fan that just doesn't do the job. You'll just waste your money on something that's not going to work.

The real question is what fan is right for you? Take the number you came up with earlier as your total cubic feet and divide that number by two for average application. Average applications would include an average size home garden with a couple of lights. Your new number is the CFM required to ventilate your garden in two minutes. For more ambitious applications involving wall-to-wall high voltage in a small space, you will want to vent that space every minute. So match up the CFM of the fan with the total cubic feet of your space. That fan will vent the space every minute.

To make an educated decision on a fan that will take care of all your ventilation needs year-round; it is a good idea to buy a fan that is slightly bigger than required for your space. Ace sells inexpensive fan speed controls for about nine dollars that, when wired into your fan, gives you the ability of controlling the speed of your fan. In the summer it gets hot, so dial it up. This time a year when an atrium or greenhouse gets a little frosty and heat is not as much of an issue, turn that thing way down. Be sure to buy a fan speed control, not a light dimmer switch. They are different.

Congratulations, you are now qualified to make an educated decision on an exhaust fan. That's half the battle. Next week we'll talk about forced verses passive air intakes and those ever so important oscillating fans. Now we're getting to the meat of this thing! Until next week, love your plants!

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6. Ventilation Part III -- Installing an Exhaust Fan

Buying an exhaust fan is only half the battle. Now you've got to set it up right. The concept of ventilation is easy. The exhaust fan needs to pull air off the ceiling and move it out of your gardening area. This is crucial because hot air rises and sits like a heavy blanket on the ceiling. Now you need to think about the intake. The intake is your fresh air source. There are a couple different ways you can approach the intake. Ideally, try to set up a passive air intake. Passive air intake is a term that refers to the path of least resistance. The path air will always take. Did I lose you? Think of it this way. Exhaust fans move a large volume of focused air out of the room. So that means that air need to come in from somewhere. Air will always pass through an open space, or a path of least resistance, over an obstructed or filtered path. So if you have or can install a vent in the wall at floor level of your garden area and turn your exhaust fan, you and your plants can breath easy because fresh air will come pouring into your garden simply by the vacuum created. A window you can slide open may also be used, but put some thought in its position.

The points of exhaust and entry are crucial. I talk to a lot of people who have heat problems attributed only to the fact that they have their exhaust sitting on the floor. It's getting hot because they are not venting the room. Exhaust needs to pull hot air off the ceiling. The intake should be at the exact opposite point of the garden area. The idea is that fresh air is cool. When it comes pouring in through the vent it will move along the floor. As soon as the light shines through the fresh air, the once cool air will be heated, causing the air to rise up through the plants in route to the exhaust on the ceiling opposite from where it came in. This way, the fresh air travels the full length of the room before it is exhausted. And by moving up through the plant's canopy, the plant will have fresh air where it needs it the most, at the stomata openings on the underside of the leaves. Now you see it makes no sense to have the exhaust sitting on the floor. The fresh air will just get sucked off the floor and you will have a compounded heat problem as that blanket of hot air just gets thicker in the room and your poor plants will suffer. Another common mistake is having your intake and outtake right next to each other. You can see what is going to happen. Air will be pulled in and quickly sucked right out without dispersing throughout the room. If your ventilation is not working efficiently and your plants suffer, you can count on cutting your plant's production in half. Ventilation is that important! I cannot stress that enough.

Now, if you have a vent or window close to the floor and your area is airtight you can enjoy the luxury of one less fan for intake. That means less electricity being used and less noise from a rattling fan. One small detail I failed to mention, the room has to be airtight. If you have large gaps or holes in the walls or openings to rafters leading to an attic above, this method will not work. Since air is pulled through the path of least resistance, as we just discussed earlier, you would be pulling stale air from another part of your house. And if that stale air is coming from a hot attic or a crawlspace that has never seen fresh air, your plants will suffer. Small cracks and seams can be patched with that miracle product known as foam in a can. If all these factors are working against you, you need to bring air in with another fan. Blowers, commonly referred to as squirrel fans, offer an inexpensive, cost effective way to move air. You don't necessarily have to match the CFM of the intake with your high-powered exhaust. You want to come close, but put the more powerful fan moving the air out. The exhaust fan will actually help bring air in through the smaller fan with the vacuum it creates.

Upon hearing the term ventilation, many people wince and immediately disregard the idea of an extensive ventilation system because that means you have to cut holes and alter the property. Nobody wants to cut 8 to 12 inch holes in their ceiling. Not to mention that landlords will go crazy and you probably won't see anything that resembles your security deposit ever again. There are easy solutions to these problems. Almost every room I've been in has light fixtures on the ceiling. Just remove the fixture and run ducting through the hole already there. Another method is to take off the door to the garden and replace it with a cheap mock door that you are not afraid to cut holes in. Just cut two holes in the bottom of the door, one for intake and one for exhaust, and push and pull air through those holes.

Bottom line is that you need to know, understand, and believe in your ventilation system. You're plants will thank you with abundant fruits and vegetables. Come back next week when we talk more about air movement and air purification. The best is yet to come! Love your plants!

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7. Ventilation Part IV -- Are you digging this air, man?

So we've covered everything there is to know about ventilation, right? Not so fast. Immerse yourself, if you will, in the very concept of air movement. By all means, step outside and consider what is going on with the air out there. Massive wind currents push and pull air across the surface of the earth in ever-changing, unpredictable patterns. Something you need to simulate indoors if you want to keep your plants happy.

There is a very generic way to gauge the atmosphere of your garden without using the latest digital gadgets and fancy hygrometers (although they are worth the money spent). Just stand in your garden and see how you feel. If you stand in your garden area and it feels hot and stuffy, then your plants are feeling hot and stuffy. I consider myself to be a pleasant, laid back individual. But when I'm hot and uncomfortable, I get cranky, nauseated, and I feel unmotivated. Your plants are living organisms that react to temperatures and humidity levels like you and I do. The last thing you want on your hands is a pissed off, stressed out plant that spends more time just maintaining itself in those stifling conditions than it does producing those fruits and vegetables you and your family are counting on. Those plants need to keep working if you want success as an indoor gardener. If you have a problem, acknowledge it and then fix it. Even if you've set up your intake on the floor and the exhaust on the ceiling opposite from each other, you need to help push and stir up that air. Oscillating fans take care of the job.

First, visualize how the air flows through your garden. Think of how the air enters the room, rises as it warms in the light, and vents out of the area. Then simply place your oscillating fans in an arrangement that assists the airflow. Position your fans to help the fresh air move from point of intake towards the exhaust fan moving air out of the garden. If you have a corner or an out-of-the-way wall in your area that doesn't seem to be in the direct airflow, put that oscillating fan in that corner and blow out that dead air. Get it out of there! Don't fight the natural airflow. To set up a fan that blows against the natural flow of the intake defeats the purpose. You want to move that blanket of hot air sitting on the ceiling out. Fighting the airflow only stirs up that hot, stale air sending it down onto the canopy of your garden. To experience efficient airflow, sit in your garden with a few oscillating fans. Experiment with different fan positions and configurations, keeping the natural flow of your ventilation system in mind. When you get the fan positioning right, you will feel it. The room should literally drop ten degrees or so. Your plants will thank you with a bountiful yield.

Another use for oscillating fans is to cool off the plant canopy. When high-wattage HID lights hover over the tops of your plants, the plant tissue gets hot. Just like the skin tissue that covers our bodies, plant tissue is susceptible to sunburn. At the same time, in order to maximize the light you are spending your hard earned money on, you need to have the lights three feet or closer to the tops of your plants. The indoor gardener always walks that fine line. As you can imagine, it gets pretty hot under those bulbs. Oscillating fans will help with the heat. By training the path of the fan to blow through the space between the bulb and the tops of the plants will keep those plants from burning. Depending on the flair of the reflector you are using, heat problems will vary. If your plants continue to burn up even with a fan, raise those lights. Always monitor the temperature under the lights. That's where the plants are growing! Not off to the side in the secondary light were you're standing!

There are many other benefits from oscillating fans. Plants can simply breath better. Don't you feel better in front of a fan when temperatures climb into the nineties? Look at the vegetative growth in your garden. Are your leaves moving consistently across your garden? If the answer is no, then you are not exchanging the air around the leaf surface. You want all the leaves on all your plants moving slightly in the air current. On the other hand, you don't want to hammer the plants with harsh winds. The stress of intense wind will cause the leaves to curl and fold into itself in an attempt to protect those delicate stomata on the bottom of the leaves. When plants are huddled together, a lush canopy will restrict air movement. A lot problems can and will develop underneath that thick canopy. Your plants' precious fruit and flower sets will sit in a cloud of humidity. Such conditions invite mold and mildew, and there's nothing worse than putting time and effort into your garden only to have your produce consumed by mold in the ripening stage. The sight of fruits and flowers consumed by gray mold is enough to make an adult cry like a little baby. Create holes in the canopy for air to move throughout the foliage by removing large fan leaves. This coupled with fans stirring up the air will prevent mold and mildew from even starting. Now, I'm not saying take off all the leaves by any means. The leaves are what feed the plant. Stripping the plant of all its leaves will only shock the plant. Just remove a few large leaves here and there.

Fans are also used to control pest populations. Spider mites, for example, run rampant in the great outdoors but you don't see plants mummified by mite webs like you will inside if you neglect an infestation. That's due to air movement. Mites love still, hot, dead air. Conditions commonly found in your average indoor garden situation. Wind currents will actually blow mites and other pests right off your plants. And mites, being about the size of a pinhead, take a long time to crawl back up on your plants. It all comes down to creating a hostile environment for an infestation. If you have ever battled mites before, chances are the mites took a foothold on your garden on a plant that was stuffed in the corner out of any kind of air movement. By keeping your garden temperature in the mid seventies, or low eighties at the very least, you can dramatically slow down the rate of reproduction of pest populations, giving you a chance to hit them with a pesticide spray. Bugs won't stand a chance. Keep in mind that spider mites can reproduce up to ten times faster when temperatures rest in the nineties.

So turn up those fans and cool off your room. Your plants will perk up in the wind and you'll make life miserable for all those bugs. A price they'll have to pay for invading your garden! Until next week, breath easy.

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8. Nutrients I -- Nutrient Basics

There are three basic stages of growth - rooting, vegetative, and fruiting/flowering. When rooting cuttings or germinating seeds, very little nutrient is needed. In fact, too much nutrient will actually hinder the rooting process. Those first roots that pop are lined with delicate root hairs that you can't even see with the naked eye. An overabundance of nutrient will burn all those little hairs right off your plant and you will find yourself back at square one. A very light solution of seaweed and filtered water is all you need to provide your plants with enough nutrients to develop a root system to sustain the seedling's growth. Only when those little plants begin to take off and grow is it time to move the little plant to a soil container or hydro system.

If you are using new soil it is unnecessary to fertilize for the first couple weeks. Most potting soils on the market today are fortified with nitrogen and phosphorus in the form of earthworm castings and bone meal. Watering with plain water will wake up these nutrients, making them available to the plant. Over the course of a few weeks, nutrients will be washed or leached from the soil through the process of watering. That's when most people fertilize.

Now let's be realistic. Plants have been around a lot longer than us humans have, and they did just fine without regular applications of fertilizer solutions. Plants want to grow. Plants want to live and they will fight for it. What happens is that humans think they have all the answers, as usual. We pour all the latest concoctions dreamed up by a chemist in a lab into the tender environment that the root system calls home. The contemporary indoor gardener tends to make things more complicated than it needs to be. Be careful. This industry is gimmicky. There is another way of thinking. I have talked with a lot of people who just laugh at all the nutrient varieties offered today. They all claim to have had the best results when they used new soil and watered with plain water! No nutrients!

That argument works for soil, but not for hydroponics. Plants need more than just water in hydro systems because mediums used in hydro systems offer no form of nutrient. You have to provide everything they need. A successful feeding schedule begins with some basic understanding of nutrients.

There are many nutrient programs on the market today that range from simple one-part solutions to more complex programs that require ten or more components! A common thread to all these nutrient programs is that they are formulated as complete lines. You're setting yourself up for failure if you mix and match components from one company to another. For example, a popular nutrient on the market is Botanicare. Botanicare is essentially a four part nutrient program that consists of a grow or veg formula, a micronutrient, a bloom or fruiting formula, and a catalyst. When you use the grow and micro from Botanticare but choose to use the bloom formula from another company, let's just say Earth Juice's bloom, you run the risk of either doubling up on certain nutrients or missing out on crucial components altogether. In short, you will experience nutrient lockout and deficiencies, and a deficiency will just slow you down and stress your plants.

It may appear that nutrient manufactures are dividing the components on their nutrient lines to make the gardener spend more money, and that is probably true in some cases, but there is a legitimate reason for doing so. Almost everything you feed your plants are metals. If you throw all the metals together in a concentrated form in one bottle, they will grab onto each other. Those molecules will form a particle too large for your plants to uptake through the small openings in the root systems rendering the nutrient solution useless. In hydro this can be fatal for your plants.

Now say after me, it is better to starve your plants than to overfeed. Ponder this statement and come back next week. We have a lot more to cover on this subject.

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9. Nutrients II -- As Easy As N-P-K

Those three magical numbers proudly displayed on bottles of plant nutrients are the N-P-K analysis of that particular nutrient. If it claims to be food for plant, it has a N-P-K ratio. What does N-P-K stand for? I thought you'd never ask. The N, or first number in the lineup stands for nitrogen. The P, or second number, stands for phosphorus. And last, but just as important is K, or potassium, or potash as it is affectionately referred to.

Plants need all of these elements, or macronutrients, to successfully supplement all the rigors that plant development demands. The majority of plant feeding programs offered today involves one or more components that are fed at the appropriate plant developmental stage. The earliest phase of plant development is rooting. Cuttings and seedlings have similar needs. They both are caught in a sink or swim situation. In order to survive they need roots to uptake all those vital nutrients necessary for growth. Roots themselves are made up of potassium. Phosphorus aids in rapid root growth and gives plants the edge they need to make it to the next phase of growth - vegetation.

Nutrient manufacturers tend to formulate growth formulas that aid in both rooting and vegetation since the two growth phases run into each other. Nitrogen directly feeds a vegetative plant, so nitrogen levels tend to be higher in grow formulas. If you compare grow formulas, you will notice that they not only contain nitrogen, but also high levels of potassium at equal or higher levels. That potassium is for root development. More roots down below means more plant up top. They are directly related. To get those sizable fruits and vegetables, your plants need a large root system. Your roots are the lifelines of your plants. They search out and uptake all the nutrients your plants crave. Roots also expel wastes that accumulate within the plant. Keep your roots clean and healthy and your plants will be happy.

As the growing cycle progresses and your plants have achieved a manageable size and girth, the lights are cut from eighteen hours to twelve, thus inducing fruiting/flowering. Keep in mind that plants will almost double in size from the time you cut back the lights to the time they finish producing fruit. Be careful not to outgrow your garden space. A crowded garden only gives you headaches down the road!

The moment you cut back the lights, your plant's nutritional needs will change. The plant's diet is a factor in its response to the shortened light cycle. At this time, a plant needs less nitrogen and more phosphorus and potassium. Feeding programs alter the feeding schedule to fill these needs. This usually requires a mix or half grow and half bloom formula coupled with added calcium.

Calcium is a considered to be a micronutrient, but that is an understatement. Calcium is just as important as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. In fact, the available calcium levels directly affect the phosphorus intake. Without calcium, plants can't process phosphorus. Fruits, vegetables, and flowers are all made of phosphorus. You see where I'm going. This is where a micronutrient formula comes into play. All nutrient lines on the market today have some form of a micronutrient, or micro. There is a lot more in that bottle of micronutrients than just calcium. Magnesium, iron, manganese, zinc, copper, boron, molybdenum, and cobalt are just a few elements that are considered micronutrients. Make sure your chosen micro has got them, because your plants need them! Micronutrients fill in the gaps in your plants diet allowing them to live up their potential.

After a week or so, the plants in your garden should be acclimated to their new light cycle. Now it's time to run with fruiting/flowering. At this time, grow formulas are cut out of the diet all together and you switch to a bloom formula. Bloom formulas offer higher levels of phosphorus and potassium. Nitrogen is cut down to a trace, just enough to supplement the vegetation that is to develop. Be careful with those nitrogen levels during the bloom cycle! High levels of nitrogen will work against you by promoting vegetative growth when the plant needs to be thinking about producing fruit.

There is another aspect of picking out plant food that you should be aware of, and that's the manufacturer's point of view. Rule of thumb: manufacturers of plant fertilizers will always recommend that you use more food than needed. They usually, and consistently, recommend you use about twenty-five percent more nutrients than required. Manufacturers push higher levels of nutrient simply to sell more product. That's it. When fertilizing, less is more. Do yourself, your pocketbook, and your plants a favor and keep it light. Your plants will thank you for it!

Another thing to consider are the N-P-K numbers. When fertilizer companies submit their nutrients to independent analysis to formulate those N-P-K ratios, they are only required to publish the minimum amount of N-P-K found in the nutrient concentrate. In a nutshell, this means there probably is more N-P-K in that food than indicated. They do this because simply because they want to tell us, their customers, what we want to hear. Do the research and ask your fellow gardeners questions. See what they had success using and how they used them. There are many different approaches to gardening and they all work. We are all learning. The day you think you know everything is the day you start to fall behind.

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10. Nutrients III -- Additives

Now that you've found the right nutrient solution to fit both you and your plant's needs, let's talk additives. There are more additives on the market than actual nutrient formulas. Although many additives have a N-P-K analysis, they are not a primary food source for your plants. They are used in conjunction with a complete feeding program. There are hundreds of additives that supplement every stage of growth one way or another. Some people use them, some don't. What they do offer is an additional kick to your preferred nutrient program in the form of growth stimulators and high nutrient doses. Nutrient programs are formulated to give your garden all the essential building blocks for plant development in the form of a grow formula, a micronutrient, and a bloom formula. Some additives just make your plants facilitate the nutrients faster.

Doc's Simple Solutions manufactures additives that fall into this category. Doc's offers a wide array of products that range from cloning gels to foliar sprays, but it is two products in particular, Liquid Carbon Grow and Liquid Carbon Bloom, which put them on the map. The grow and bloom formulas provide your plants with added carbohydrates, simple proteins, phospholipids, and kinetin. These are elements your plants have to produce themselves. By providing these elements your plants get to skip to the next page. That means accelerated growth. Since your plants are kicked into overdrive it is important to dilute the nutrient solution by twenty to thirty percent. Products like Doc's will open up your plant's root system and uptake nutrients like never before. That's the whole point of using these products. But if your plants take in twice the volume of an already strong nutrient solution, they will burn up and turn crunchy. As always, read directions and use measuring cups and spoons!

Other additives are used to hold plants in a desired stage of growth, or to push them to the next. B'cuzz and GreenFuse are two popular products that fall into this category. Both product lines are kelp based, super concentrate, and expensive ($40 a quart). They come in three flavors - root, growth, and bloom. They are fermented plant tissue cultures from rooting plants, from vegetative plants, and blooming plants. Let's say the plants in your garden have reached a desired size. Now you're ready to cut back the lights and jump into the bloom cycle. These bloom additives will help push your plants into bloom and keep them there. When a vegetative plant takes in blooming cells through the root system, those blooming cells set off a chain reaction within your plant. Coupled with the lights being cut from 18 to 12 hours, your plants will have no choice but to stop growing and start producing fruits and vegetables. The continual use of these bloom additives will ensure your plants will stay on the right course. Stresses such as an interrupted light cycles and temperature variations that come with cold mornings and inevitable power outages will be minimized with these products.

These benefits also apply to the root and growth formulas. Since a cutting is an exact replica of the host or parent plant, a cutting is still a vegetative plant. It takes time to change the cutting's train of thought from growing to rooting. The rooting formula will supplement this change. If you have a garden full of Pomodoro tomatoes that have been harvested and you would like to bring back the plants vigor before the second harvest, use the growth additives. This will help your plants get back on their feet. The stresses of a fruiting cycle followed by a harvest are immense.

Fulvic and humic acids are considered additives and provide your plants with powerful growth accelerator. Humic acid is an organic compound extracted from shale, or Leonardite. Fulvic is refined from humic. What these elements do for your plants is fill in the gaps in your plant's diet while stimulating new growth. On a chemical level, these elements will break down the nutrient solution, or chelate them, preventing nutrient lockout and deficiencies.

The most commonly used additives are fruiting/flowering supplements. There are a wide variety of fruiting supplements on the market today and they usually come in the form of a powder. Organic gardeners take note, with N-P-K numbers like 2-52-48, there is nothing organic about them. For those not afraid to use a little chemical supplement, this is the additive for you. With high levels of phosphorus and potassium added to your feeding schedule, your fruits and vegetables will increase in size. That is a fact. But please consider two things. High levels of phosphorus and potassium contribute to nutrient lockout. There is such a thing as too much. Be sure to provide your plants with plenty of calcium to facilitate all that phosphorus. It is also imperative to provide a seven or ten day water flush, which means water with plain water, before you harvest your plants. Failure to do so will result in metallic flavors.

To cover all the additives available on the market today would require a hundred page essay. For all practical purposes, use this as a general guide. This is a gimmicky industry, and in the state of California it is legal to purchase someone's else's product in bulk, slap your own sticker on the bottle, and sell it as your own so a lot of additives do the same thing. Do your research on additives only after you have mastered your preferred feeding program. One step at a time! When in doubt, refrain from complicating things. Leave it out!

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