I am stoked to share this video from the MAKE YouTube Channel! Becky Stern set up a RainForest 318 on her rooftop in Brooklyn, NY. The video explains step-by-step how she set up her GH system, potted up her plants, and maintains a thriving garden. Plus there’s a post with more details over on her blog. She’s killing it with a great looking hydroponic herb garden.

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.

In our time of emerging technology in Hydroponics, it is easy to get overwhelmed.   I talk to a lot of people that are constantly searching for “IT”.  Call this a friendly reminder to not get caught up in all the hype.  All you really need is a plant, and an ability to care.

This is a gifted Pelargonium with a beginning height of 6 inches transplanted 1 month ago into a GH CocoTek 8” Basket filled with a Blend of GH Mixed Brick Coco Coir and Ancient Forest, our new Alaskan Humus Product.  It has been fed some of the General Organics (BioThrive Grow, CaMg+, BioRoot, BioWeed) and Floralicious Plus.  I like to top-dress it with Ancient Forest every two weeks.  It lives on my kitchen countertop under a mounted ‘under-cabinet’ fluorescent fixture, on for about 15 hours a day.  Note how many of the bigger leaves are curving in from the sides, in an attempt to procure more light.  This Simple Drain to Waste System provides an easy way to hydroponically grow your favorite houseplants

By the people who brought you the Ant Farm, the Hydro Greenhouse 2! It’s like an aeroflow, but for kids! Anyone out there given this a try? I’d love to know what you thought!

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.

Tigerlilly, what would you say the TDS would be in a fully fortified grow & a fully fortified bloom hydro-organic solution…. I saw that you (Tigerlilly) posted that you were using these new products…Do you have a TDS meter & can you test the resevior ?….and post your test results ? that is, if you’re using reverse osmosis water..and can get 0.0 ppm reading as a control for a comparison . I am going to say I hope it’s about 0.0-0.09 …..but it’s not a perfect world …I know.

In my “about me” page I said I was running the new organics, and at the time I was. But now my room is down, in the process of a lengthy remodel…. And when I was running the organics, I love them, but wasn’t the most meticulous record keeper. So I got in touch with Darek, our Greenhouse Operator, and asked him for the numbers. Here is what he sent, and I hope it helps!

When I used Organic nutrients, I followed the high ratios ( let’s call it expert program)
I checked my data and that’s the numbers I have had during my trail:
Grow 20ml/gal (4tsp/gal) + Calcium 5ml/gal (1tsp/gal) = ppm 1000-1100
Grow 10ml/gal(2tsp/gal) + Bloom 10ml/gal (2tsp/gal) + Calcium 5ml/gal (1tsp/gal) = ppm 750 – 900
Bloom 20ml/gal (4tsp/gal) + Calcium 5ml/gal (1tsp/gal) = ppm 1150-1250

Didn’t use RO Water, just tap water and the ppm is about 180-200.

Assuming that nutrients change is every 7 days, the ppm values I gave you are from day 1, later on ( i mean day 3th, 6th from your change the ppm may rise and that depend mostly on the temperature (in the room,  and in the reservoir – based on water evaporation.)

UPDATE: This deck belongs to the one and only publisher of Urban Garden Magazine, Everest Fernandez! And Jessica Lilga helped him get it set up. The deck is on Gabriola Island, in Canada.

Sent from Jessica Lilga’s Blackberry.

General Hydroponics wants to give growers the tools to solve the problems of poor growing conditions, bad water management, and the excessive use of chemicals in our food supply. The company was founded on those principles.

Here is a statement from Larry Brooke, founder of General Hydroponics:

General Hydroponics was founded over 30 years ago in Berkeley. You could see that the future would hold an enormous increase in human population, on a very tiny planet, that was already straining.

My goal was to develop technologies to help us feed the world and to do so in a more gentle way. The problem with modern agriculture is that it takes a lot of soil, a lot of water, and a lot of chemicals. If we think it’s bad now, watch as the world’s population increases.

The enviromental stress on our planet from the way we manage resources and assets has put a huge strain on the planet. I wanted technology that could give us crop production under marginal conditions. But the bottom line is to protect natural resources, of forests, of oceans, of waterways, and to still produce enough nutritious, high quality food for people.

Happy Earth Day, everyone! Please consider hydroponics as one of your best tools for a green future.

Q: What are expaneded clay pebbles? How are they made?

A: The expanded clay pebbles are made of “expanded clay.” Ok, I’m not trying to be a smartass. Clay, an organic and sustainable material, is shaped into balls, and then fired in an oven at about 1200 degrees. The little balls then puff up like popcorn into air filled pebbles. 

Q: Is it salty? 

A: No, clay pebbles are not salty, they are inert. Love that!

Q: If its not salty, do I still have to rinse it?

A: Yeah, you should. It’s recomended to rinse the pebbles before you use them to remove any dust or particles first.

Q: What are the benefits of using clay pebbles as a growing media?

A: The porous expanded clay pebbles have the unique ability to soak up water, and then to release it quickly. So while they hold moisture, at the same time they hold lots of air. And that keeps the roots oxygenated. And because it can quickly drain, it’s the perfect choice for ebb and flow and drain to waste.

Q: Can I use it in every system?

A: Totally.

Q: Is it possible to reuse the pebbles again and again?

A: One of the great benefits of using the pebbles is that they can be reused. To clean them, either boil them in water, or clean them with a bleach solution.

Our goals are innovation, quality, simplicity, and sustainability. Besides producing the best plant foods, we also strive to provide our customers with information and knowledge. Our nutrient calculator and feed charts are the best ways for us to inform you about how to use our products.

But we face some major hurdles when we try to make a single document that applies to every grower. Different plants have different needs. Sometimes even different varieties of the same plant want different nutrient strenghts. Environment plays a big part in feeding schedules, if it’s cold in your climate, the formula will be different for a grower in warm climate. And besides that, even plain water can be dramatically different from location to location, altering PPM’s in strange and non linear ways. We try to take all these variables into consideration when we build our feed programs, and at the same time, we want to provide accurate and easy to understand information.

Please tell us what you like, and what you don’t like about our feed chart. We really want to hear from you. We would especially love specific comments about what works and doesn’t work for you. What recipes do you love? What makes it easy for you? What makes it confusing. Please let us know in the comments section.

The formula is revolutionary. There are ingredients in the FloraSeries three-part nutrient line that cannot be together in the same bottle. The molecules of those ingredients “fight” and will drop out of solution, and then can’t be up-taken by the plant. So they are kept separate, until they are added in order to the water in a resevoir. FloraNova solved that problem. Every mineral and micro nutrient needed for a plant’s life cycle is mixed in one bottle, including humic acids.

Here are the top reasons growers love FloraNova: 

Nova is a hybrid combining the most sophisticated mineral content with organic compounds.

Nova is perfect for beginners. Its recipe is beyond simple. First use the grow formula, then transition the plant to the bloom formula.

It is pH stabilized.

Nova is very, very concentrated. A little bit goes a long way, in hydro systems, soil-less medias, or dirt.

Nova gives great results. Plants thrive without much effort because it supplies complete and optimal plant nutrition.

All that’s left to do is plant the cuttings. I popped them out of the Rapid Rooter tray and dug some holes. I have really acidic soil with a layer of redwood duff, and while I was digging I found millipedes and worms.

It was really fun to find spots in my yard for all 25 of the cuttings. And you can’t beat the feeling of propagating from your own stock. It’s so much more rewarding than shopping at a nursery. Cheers!