It’s Halloween, and that means that Jesse’s Giant Pumpkin Contest has come to an end. We only had one entry, but the good news is that in the first month of our blog, readership has steadily risen! I really want to thank Jeff from Maverick Sun for entering his tomato. Maverick Sun is a lighting [...]

Earlier in the week I posted about our European counterpart, GHE. While I was checking out their in-depth website, I found their information on Vegetal Walls. In California we call them Living Walls. It’s a cutting edge concept that combines plants and architecture to create a lush vertical landscape. Here is a photo from the Millennial Village in London, [...]

We are expecting rain this weekend in NorCal, and that signals that it’s the perfect time to get winter crops in the ground. Just about everything except the strawberries and the artichokes were cleared from the acreage at the FarmLab. It can be shocking to see all the vegetation gone, but it will all be worth it [...]

Check out this resilient plant! Usually sunflowers grow to 6 feet, right? Well this one only got to 6 inches, and today it was covered in frost. The flower is a volunteer that planted itself behind the office in Sebastopol.

And the other plant oddity I found at the farm this morning was this misshapen pumpkin. 

I saved the best festival wrap-up for last. SolFest is a one of a kind event in Nor Cal, featuring music and entertainment alongside hands-on learning.

The whole thing goes down in Hopland, at the Real Goods Solar Living Institute. It is an amazing campus, dedicated to a fully sustainable lifestyle. The premise of the event [...]

GHE stands for General Hydroponics Europe. Did you know that we have a large, successful branch of the company that operates out of France? GHE serves to bring the same quality and innovation to the gardeners outside of the American continent. They produce and sell many of the same products that we release. Their markets [...]

General Hydroponics is all about growing your own. We want you to create your own sustainable vegetable harvest so that you can be self reliant and help reduce the energy required to produce and transport food into grocery stores. I was chatting about all of this with a good friend who has a background in [...]

Here is a great list of hydroponic links that have been published by major universities. Click away!
Virginia State University
University of Arizona, Tuscon
Ohio State
Texas A&M
UC Davis

I recently purchased some hearty coleus plants for my yard. I love them and they are well suited for my part shade garden. So I decided that I should propagate them. Coleus are notoriously fast to “strike”(ex: form roots), so they should be ready to go into the ground before it gets too much colder here [...]

It’s harvest time in Nor Cal. Fall crops have been doing well, but this last week frost has begun to set in. That means it’s time to get all the veggies off the vine and off the ground before they rot from the icy dew. These squash were grown and picked on our farm. They [...]

One of the main reasons General Hydroponics wanted to start a blog was to foster a community of growers who share and learn online. Flickr is a really cool photo sharing website, and its simple format allows users to create tutorials and give step by step instructions. (It’s also a great place for hosting photos [...]

So, this past weekend, Jesse’s now famous pumpkin was picked and loaded up via forklift into the bed of a truck. Jesse hauled it down to the Half Moon Bay Art and Pumpkin Festival. The festival features not only pumpkin weight contests, but pumpkin carving contests and pumpkin pie eating contests. There’s pumpkin beer, and [...]

So here at GH, right behind one of the office buildings and next door to the FarmLab, is our vintage orchard. I call it vintage ’cause in Sonoma County apple orchards are an endangered species. Once the humble apple accounted for the majority of agriculture production here. In recent decades though urban development and vineyards [...]

Check out one of the ways that Gen Hydro has been connecting with children, educators, non-profits and local charities. Our sales rep Jessica Lilga really went above and beyond helping to orchestrate this amazing project. She also took the really great photos below!

San Francisco is teeming with eco activists, and General Hydroponics has joined with some of the [...]

This weekend in San Rafael California is the 19th annual Bioneers Conference. I was able to go back in ‘98 ‘99 and 2000, and I believe attending the conference deeply changed my view of environmental activism. I was exposed to people who deeply care for the earth, and who strive everyday to share their knowledge of organic [...]

This is a fascinating video where famous mycologist Paul Stamets basically lays out his plan to use mushrooms to save the world. He even promotes their usefulness as a national security solution. This is a brief presentation that he gives at the world famous TED Talks (Technology, Entertainment and Design).

After watching the video, here’s what [...]

So, this morning I woke up inspired by mushrooms! Well, not mushrooms per say, but fungus. Mycorrhizal fungus to be exact. (Pronounce it My-Ko-Rye-Zal) It’s a very special fungus that grows on the roots of plants, or sometimes even IN the roots of plants. Together the roots and the mychorriza have a very symbiotic [...]

AWESOME!
Giant Pumpkin Dropped on a Bus

Pumpkin Boats

Exploding Pumpkins!

For many years General Hydroponics has partnered with Maximum Yield Magazine. MY is a very successful industry mag, that is just packed with Do-It-Yourself practical information. They are also responsible for the incredible annual tradeshows. These events are to some the backbone of the industry’s community. They have a new site up, so I thought [...]

P.S.1 is a really cool modern art museum in New York City. Named after the original purpose of its building Public School No. One, the museum is an extention of the MoMa. Their exhibits are edgy and very unique. And their current show Public Farm One is no exception. The exhibit is based on an [...]