The dates have been announced for the 2010 Indoor Gardening Expos. Start making plans now to visit us in Montreal- June 5th and 6th and San Francisco- July 24th and 25th. These industry trade show events are the best place to learn about new products and recent innovations. And after hours, they are some of the most epic parties of the year.

I’m very happy to introduce you to my new friend and the newest addition to the General Hydroponics sales team at our headquarters in Sebastopol, California: Andy. He works every day taking tech calls, responding to emails, and placing orders.

Andy is an amazing resource for GH because he is a devoted, experienced, and knowledgeable grower. He has 6 years of academic hydroponic achievements and a BA in environmental studies with a minor in geography and urban studies. Andy has long been fascinated with hydro, and chose to write his senior thesis on Urban Sustainability of Hydroponic Crop Production. Part of that process was teaching an entire team of people about how to garden without soil and expirimenting with different methods and techniques. He then applied to building a UV filtered, gravity driven, NFT hydrosystem for Temple University.

He is also going to be contributing sometimes to the GrowGH blog, and so it’s going to be really great to get to know him in a way that goes beyond just hydro. Andy is 1/5th the board of directors for the Muddy River Jam Festival. Its a 3 day musical event happening 7 miles from Philadelphia in Salem County. The festival is in its 6th year, and this year is estimated to double attendance from the 800 who made it out to dance and camp last year. The Muddy River Jam sound is based on the electronic-jamband-expirimental-dj national touring acts that fuel the Philly area, including Telepath, BioDiesel, Indobox and the MJ Project. Check it out at muddyriverjam.com

Everyone here is glad to have Andy as part of our sales team, and I am glad to finally and officially say. “Welcome!”

Via Hydroponics Aquaponics News Digest

These are seeds I saved from my garden last year… Gonna go outside right now and sow them in the ground!

The project began as a response to the idea of vertical urban farming. Instead of waiting for the agricultural model to change it’s infrastructure, Windowfarms encourages individuals grow cheap food in their owns homes now. But beyond hydroponics, Windowfarms is a great example of a web 2.0 online community. According to the short video I watched on their site, the founders, Britta Riley and Rebecca Ray are determined to build a crowdsourced platform that creates widespread social change. Users are encouraged to sign up, download instructions and build their Windowfarm. Growers then troubleshoot their gardens online with feedback and guidance from other members. With support from a network of users, it becomes natural for participants to innovate and evolve the Windowfarm project.

To learn more, or get involved, visit the Windowfarm website. The project takes full advantage of social networking as well, with a Flickr page, a kickstarter page for funding, and twitter.

Photos by Nicholas R. Clark

In case you haven’t heard, an earthquake measuring 6.5 on the Richter scale struck Northern California this weekend. The epicenter was 25 miles off the coast of Arcata, just 225 miles north of the offices here at General Hydroponics. The quake did much damage, but thankfully there were minimal major injuries. Since then, aftershocks as strong as 4.5 have continued to strike the region, including one just less than 24 hours ago.

At General Hydroponics, we have many friends, family, stores, and customers that are affected by this dramatic event. It’s been slow getting ahold of them in the wake of widespread power outages and the sheer amount of work to be done cleaning up. We will be providing updates on the blog in the coming days, and putting together strategies so that we help get the area back on its feet. It’s going to be a long process of recovery, with the property damage to just the city of Eureka reaching at least $12.5 million dollars. To read more, check out this article on SFGate.com.

Cheers! It’s the start of a brand new year, and its a time for a fresh outlook on indoor gardening. GH is back from the holidays, and the office is beyond busy catching up ( I personally have 400 messages in my inbox to work through!) I’ll be replying to emails and comments as the week goes by and posting up tons of entries too.

This year promises to hold many exciting developments, including new products and new relationships. I for one am ready to reach my full potential as a gardener, and as a blogger. We will be introducing videos on the blog, rolling out more contests and giveaways, and staying involved with our community- which is your community. I want to hear from you! Leave comments letting us know what you would like to see on our site, and share any ideas about things you would like to see us develop. Know that we are always listening, and always working to impress everyone who uses General Hydroponics.

Everyone is in town right now for the General Hydroponics holiday party, and the flurry of team meetings for the end of the year. Our banquet was held last night at the Hop Monk Brewery in Sebastopol. All the employees from the offices, warehouse, and even the Canadian sales staff were here. Even Shawn, still recovering from his motorcycle accident made it out. It was quite the party. I did NOT shoot photos during, but I can disclose that the afterparty at Lawrence Brooke’s house ended with an accordion/didjeridoo jam session. Good Times!

GH’s Rapid Rooter medium plugs are “a unique matrix of composted organic materials bonded together with plant-derived polymers.” They’re infused with GH’s magic micro nutrient recipe. The plugs come in trays of 50 or 98 plugs or a bag of 50 plugs.

Click here to read the rest, and while you are there, be sure to check out their impressive lineup of blogs.

Meet Nath, of Babylone Hydro-Organique, in Montreal, Canada. His shop is a great place to visit for equipment and knowledge of all things hydro. He shared some great photos of wheat germination trials that he’s been running with our new General Organics Bio Root. The sprouts have really healthy roots, and very vibrant shoots. Nath has also got some great answers for our store Q&A:

TigerLilly: Where did the inspiration for opening a grow shop come from?

Nath: We opened a shop downtown Montreal 10 years ago because they were no shop specialized in hydro-organics nutrients in the area and the demand was BIG. Has a group of organics growers, we decided to fulfill the needs of the area.

T: What sorts of growing products do you specialize in?

Nath: At Babylone hydro-organique we specialized in high performance products for beginner gardeners to professional growers.

T: Do your customers mostly grow in soil or hydro systems?

Nath: Most of our customers grow in soilless mix with organics nutrients but the vibe right now it’s the coco fiber, everybody want to try it, and it’s about time personally i’m growing in coco since 2004.

T: What is your favorite product?

Nath: My favorite product it’s a product better then the others. They’re his so many products, the one we choose to sale need to be better.

T: In your geographical area, what are the most pressing environmental concerns? Is it heat? Pests? Humidty? And tell us what product you recommend to customers that come to your store trying to combat the problem?

Nath: Obviously, insects infestations are the main concerns in the hot summer time because they pupate like crazy and in the winter time the fungi disease are the most common situation because big difference of temperature between day and night. A good product to prevent a problem it’s Florashield but we don’t want to raise the shield when you have the knife in the heart, prevention it’s the key.

T: Can you give us a growing tip?

Nath: Healthy plants get less troubles, what we want it’s the immunotary system of the plant to be at the top, so seaweed his an excellent product to use has a foliar spray every week this will help your garden being healthy.

Please visit Babylone Hydro-Organique at 100 Duluth Street, East Montreal, 514-284-6382

I recently had the opportunity to talk about food with a food and lifestyle editor here in Honolulu, and when I asked about local agriculture as it relates to fine dining, I was very surprised with what I learned. Hawaii has to import 80% of its food, and reportedly only has enough food to last a few days if shipping were halted. With all this sunshine and rain, I couldn’t believe that local farms were not a bigger part of the food supply. Everywhere else in the United States, local and sustainable agriculture is a growing trend and is supplying more and more of what we eat. I was curious about what was so different here, so I had to learn more.

Apparently since Hawaii is a desirable location, land is quite expensive here. In addition to having a very finite landmass surrounded by ocean, much of the land is steep, arid or volcanic, making this extremely expensive land mostly unsuitable for farming. It’s not economically sustainable to grow basic food crops on land which approaches $100,000 per acre. This got me thinking about hydroponics, and the vertical farm model. With the exceptional climate here, and the high cost of imported food, it seems that this could be one of those places where all the factors would combine to make this new strategy actually economical.

Most of the local farms in Hawaii are supplying the fanciest of restaurants, so local agriculture is still considered something of a luxury concern. However, there are many small farms and institutes which are attempting to change the paradigm by achieving a model for sustainable local food production. Check out this sweet blog from Evening Rain Farm on the island of Hawaii to read more about the experience of tropical permaculture. The University of Hawaii also has an extensive agriculture program dedicated to organic and sustainable methods, which points towards a future of sustainability.

Luke is a veteran grower, who spent years working at Pacific Garden Supply. He actually knew Jessica from his time there. Besides his retail hydro position, Luke has been an independent consultant for 10 years, specializing in helping growers set up the efficent high yield rooms. He found out about the General Hydroponics opening quite serendipitously. A friend of his saw the ad on Craigslist, and emailed him about it, urging him to reply.

Because he has been involved with hydroponics for so long, Luke has some amazing methods for hydro, and is always trying to take steps out and take products out of the lineup. He wants every grower to have less work and more success. He swears by dosers. They are inline and powered by water pressure. “They give you perfect water without a resevoir.” And his ideal formula? Nova Grow, Nova Bloom, Floralicious Plus, and Liquid Kool Bloom. “Follow the feed chart, and you have to add powdered seaweed to keep it in solution for the dosers.”

Luke’s territory is from NorCal to Seattle, and when he is not on the road at stores, he will be on the road working festivals and tradeshows. During his time at the office, Luke will be offering customer service and tech support to who ever needs it. I am happy to welcome him, and just know that he will find success! If you’d like, say hello, and if you have any questions about dosers, leave them here in the comments, and I’ll get them answered!