There’s always something interesting growing at Gen Hydro, and so I wasn’t too surprised to wander into the office kitchen and find these oyster mushrooms on the counter. It’s an inoculated substrate and all it needs to throw off one or two rounds of delicious ’shrooms is moisture.

This is the second round that has bloomed off this little plate, and they look great. The first set is drying up nicely. I generally eat them fresh, but drying them is a simple way to preserve their amazing flavor. Anyone else cultivating mushrooms in their kitchen?

Even more mushroom posts on the GrowGH Blog:

Glow in the Dark Mushrooms

Time Lapse Video of Mushrooms Growing

Mycorrhizal Monday

Mycoremediation

Candy Cap Syrup from Corvallis Hydroponics and Organics

Right now we have a crop of dark, leafy green kale going nuts in the greenhouse. It’s a power veggie, packed with vitamins and minerals. Most people know that it’s super nutritious, but did you know that vegetables grown with General Hydroponics nutrients actually have more nutrition than most soil grown crops? This is due in part to the fact that our products have the complete macro and micro nutrients needed for growth, and that those nutrients are formulated to be easily available to the plant.

But just because we know kale is healthy, it’s often a challenge to want to eat it. Here is a super short and entertaining presentation on “How to Crave Kale”

Urban Garden Magazine posted a great article about growing strawberries yesterday. I love strawberries! GH grows their berries outdoors, and one year I picked ripe berries from March until December. In fact, the photo above is my GH strawberry harvest from December 5th, 2007.

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

The greenhouse team has been busy at work potting up an entire orchard worth of fruit trees. These trees will eventually be transplanted into the General Hydroponics Farm Lab orchard, but for now they are cozy and warm indoors.

Mushrooms, mushrooms, mushrooms! Yum! Check out these awesome Mini Mushroom Farms from Far West Fungi. They are little gardens that will produce ongoing harvests of shitakes or oyster mushrooms. They seem easy and fun, and a great way to produce food that is as beautiful as it is delicious.

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+.

It’s really cold here in NorCal, and so I like to sneak over to the greehouse to soak up the warmth. Besides the decent temperature, there is the warming effect of looking at the rainbow of peppers growing in the ebb and flow trays. They look great, and are the perfect reminder of the real reason we all grow hydro: to get amazing results any time of year.

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.

Let me begin with a simple admission. I don’t know much about gardening. Until a few weeks ago, I had never planted a seed, or maintained houseplants. My thumbs weren’t green, they were red and swollen from playing Xbox. I had never given much thought to the source of the fresh food I consume or its impact, but recently I’ve started to experiment with growing my own.

I think these plants look great, especially for a beginner! And I love the compact use of space, the recycled containers, and how the whole set up brightens up his apartment. Now only if we could get him to switch to hydro!