FloraDuo is the latest General Hydroponic product to hit the market! This new nutrient is complete, balanced, and very simple. And like all of General Hydroponics’ formulas, it is highly concentrated and cost effective. FloraDuo makes all the essential macro and micro nutrients available to your garden and also provides plants with specific ingredients to help resist pathogens and insects.

Let us know in the comments if you’ve tried FloraDuo, and please submit any questions too!

No matter what time of year, there is always some kind of amazing flower blooming here at General Hydroponics. And some flowers, like these dahlias seem to be perpetually producing massive flowers. These beauties are growing in CocoTek planters, and are fed the latest bloom formulas.

Sebastopol Hardware is currently selling predatory nemotodes AND fishing licenses.

I’ve been watching the hydrangea bloom behind the office here at GH. I love how the bright green buds open into pale pink blooms. The transformative power of plants blows my mind.

I swear, the hydro roses never seem to stop blooming. I love the dark red and the moon rising in the background of this shot.

This yellow rose with the tinge of pink smells like cinnamon. It’s totally spicy.

The white ones are unique because they open all the way up and show their yellow centers right when they start blooming.

More Roses on the GH Blog: April 2009, October 2008

Spring is officially here. At General Hydroponics headquarters that means rainbows and wildflowers.

This lovely yellow flower is a type of sorrel, commonly called Sour Grass. I can’t believe I got that shot of the bee in mid flight, with its little tongue sticking out!

Click on the above chart to view a larger version.

If you are getting seeds going, there’s no better tool for keeping young plants warm and cozy during late winter than a seedling heat mat. I use one under each tray of Rapid Rooters that I start, and I don’t think my baby plants would live without one. I did some research and found this great table illustrating the preferred temperature for optimum germination of different crops. I found the chart on Tom Clothier’s Garden Walk and Talk. It’s a website with a massive database of gardening knowledge that’s really quality data.

The greenhouse right now is filled with flowers. Remember the fruit trees that are waiting for transplanting? Many of them are currently in full bloom. I took some really crazy closeup shots, and it just blows my mind how each flower is so different from the next, yet so the same.

One of our readers left a comment, that I decided to answer in the form of a Q&A blog post. I talked to our tech support, and without knowing very much about his grow, we did our best to put together an answer. I think that the information suggested is of value to many different growers, so, here it is!

Q: I am growing brandywine tomatoes in your coco growers and I’m having serious problems. The plants are stunted and fried. All my other systems are working fine. I can’t find ANY info on these new growers? They look really cool, but so far not impressed. What am I doing wrong?

A: Unfortunately, brandywine and other heirloom varieties of tomatoes do not typically do well in hydroponics. Not to say that you won’t find success, but if your other varieties that are doing well are also heirloom varieties then I am stumped.

You should go with a hybrid variety that has been bred for greenhouse production such as F1 Cobra or Mountain Girl. I would guess that you need to cut down the watering intervals to about fifteen minutes on every hour when the lights are on- and fifteen minutes on every two hours when they are off. You should put an extra airline in the reservoir to keep it oxygenated while the circulation is not taking place.

In addition, the tomatoes probably needs some extra calcium as well in order to ward off blossom end rot. That tends to be the number one culprit of tomatoes biting the dust in hydroponics. Also, a 10 mls Gro, 10 mls Micro and 5 mls Bloom per gallon is a good Flora Series mix for tomatoes. Supplement with 10 mls/gallon of our General Organics, CaMg+.

I took this shot on August 11:

They have exploded in the last month. Amazing.

Here is the blossom from a sedum in the GH Farm Lab.