However, because not everyone can start out with soft and/or purified water, our expert team developed FloraMicro Hardwater, which reduces the problems associated with hard water and maintains proper nutrient balance. It is formulated to compensate for the elevated calcium levels in your base water. 

But where is the cut-off? When do you know you need Hardwater versus normal FloraMicro?

Here is the answer:

Use FloraMicro Hardwater when your starting water contains over 200 ppm or Calcium above 70 ppm.  Always test your starting water, especially if you know that it’s prone to being hard. Using FloraMicro Hardwater will help you avoid nutrient imbalance, which can lead to severe deficiencies or, more likely, toxically high levels of certain nutrients.

If your levels are only slightly high, try blending the normal and Hardwater FloraMicros together. If your water contains 30 to 50 ppm Calcium, you can mix the original FloraMicro with FloraMicro Hardwater to create a perfect Micro blend for your plants.

Share your experiences using FloraMicro Hardwater with us! Are there other tricks you use, when dealing with hard water? Leave a comment and let us know.

I’d like to try growing a giant pumpkin next year, using General Organics humus and fertilizers. I think it would be easy to challenge some past pumpkin champions with a prize-winning GO pumpkin! Has anyone tried growing pumpkins hydroponically? It’s easy enough to do. You just need to have enough space for the long, trailing vines and the large, heavy fruit. Three years ago, Jesse grew this 485lb guy here at GH and entered into the Half Moon Bay Giant Pumpkin contest. It was grown with Flora Nova, Alice’s Garden, Floralicious Plus and SubCulture B. Check out the size of that baby!

 Some people are growing them vertically, with the pumpkins hanging in mid-air, as they grow. Check out these awesome photos!

 Photo from Discover Hydroponics

 Photo from Linneyville

If growing pumpkins isn’t your thing, you can still carve them every year! With the proper tools and motivation, you can get really creative with your designs. Many people use stencils to make it easier but you can free-hand some interesting shapes and faces as well. If you want something to aspire to, check out these amazing sculpted pumpkins! The artist, Ray Villafane, has truly perfected the art of pumpkin carving.

I hope that served as some inspiration for your Halloween weekend! Enjoy, dress up and be safe out there everyone! Happy Halloween from General Hydroponics!

We’ve been talking lately about our new root-enhancing product, RapidStart®. RapidStart® delivers a powerful blend of natural plant extracts, amino acids, and nutrients to generate prolific root growth. It stimulates abundant root branching and development of fine root hairs that enhance nutrient uptake. We’ve seen what it can do for bell peppers and lettuce. Now, you can learn more about RapidStart® and watch a time-lapse video that really shows the difference it can make.

Behold our latest video! Jesse explains how the product works and shows you the spectacular footage that proves its effectiveness. Enjoy!

Coco fiber is a truly great growing medium, effective, and environmentally friendly. It can be used on its own or mixed with clay pellets, perlite or topsoil to grow amazing plants! It’s nicer to the earth than sphagnum moss and has better water and oxygen retention than most other media. Coco coir works well for hydroponics and also is a wonderful addition to most soil mixtures, especially for propagation!

However, it does come from the sea and the sea is salty! High salt content is dangerous for plants. It causes nutrient imbalance, dehydration and can lead to plant death. Most coco fiber contains at least a small amount of salt but some can contain a high, fatal quantity. Our compressed CocoTek® bricks and blocks are generally low-sodium. However, we still recommend rinsing it before use, just to be safe.

There are a few methods for rinsing coco fiber. When in a brick form, it is quite compact but when it’s soaked in water, will expand up to three to four times larger than the brick size. So, think big when you prepare for this project (or just do small amounts at a time).

Place the fiber in a bucket, plastic tub or other large container (bathtub? wheelbarrow?). Break it into chunks with your hands (some people prefer to wear gloves for this process). Cover it with water and let it sit. You can continue to stir it and break it apart or you can let it sit for a while and the water will absorb into the entire pieces, eventually making them easy to pull apart. We recommend adding a small amount of CALiMAGic to the soaking water to ensure proper calcium ratios when you put that coco to use. It tends to hold onto positively-charged nutrients, like calcium, so adding extra helps guarantee proper balance.

Once it is fully soaked, you can take out handfuls, squeezing out the water and placing them in another bucket or tub for later use. However, to really ensure that the salt is removed, we recommend running water actually through the fiber a couple of times. You can place it in a bucket with holes in the bottom or over a mesh screen or sieve and just let the water run over it for a while, occasionally turning and moving the fibers around. Keep breaking apart any remaining chunks, making sure that the water can penetrate every part.

Some people prefer to use hot water only. Others use distilled or pH balanced water. You can experiment and see what you prefer but the most important thing is to make sure it is well-rinsed before using it as a growing medium of any kind. Your plants will thank you with their bountiful growth.

Click here to see our line of CocoTek® growing media! 

Zach tried RapidStart® on some lettuce and the difference was amazing! In the first two pics, we see leaves and roots growing with base nutrients. The last two pics were taken less than two weeks later. Look at the dramatic difference both in vegetative and root growth! RapidStart® launched a major growth spurt!

RapidStart® delivers a powerful blend of natural plant extracts, amino acids, and nutrients to generate prolific root growth. It stimulates abundant root branching and development of fine root hairs that enhance nutrient uptake increasing plant growth.

Before RapidStart (leaves)

Before RapidStart (roots)

After RapidStart (leaves): 2 weeks later

After RapidStart (roots): 2 weeks later

FloraNectar™ Grape Expectations helps your plants maintain optimal metabolism and growth while sweetening the aroma of your fruits and flowers. The unique blend of ingredients contains all natural raw cane sugar, molasses, malt syrup, select plant-based esters, L-amino acids, organic acids, polyflavonoids, vitamins and essential minerals.

FloraNectar™ Grape Expectations helps your plants regulate enzymes that aid in optimal metabolism. Metabolism is the KEY to sustaining life processes within a plant so optimization leads to better growth and output, not to mention flavor!  With superior metabolism, plants can achieve balance between photosynthesis (converting light into sugar) and respiration (converting sugar into energy). These processes make the fuel that is needed for every stage of plant growth, but especially for fruit and flower production! Balance between respiration and photosynthesis leads to more sweetness. And we know that more sugar, in this case, is a very good thing! Think of all that sweet, juicy fruit and those aromatic flowers!

This plant enhancement promotes sturdier plant structure during the vegetative phase and really provides for your plants’ energy requirements through all phases of growth. But, where Grape Expectations really shines is during the flowering and fruiting phase, when nitrogen levels have been reduced. It ensures optimal metabolic rates which lead directly to an abundance of sweet, flavorful fruit, ripe for the picking!

Use FloraNectar™ Grape Expectations as a part of your regular feeding program! It’s available NOW at your favorite hydroponic store!

We are very excited to announce the release of our brand-new product catalog! This is the most all-inclusive catalog we’ve ever produced!

It provides the most current information on our nutrients, supplements and even all of our systems. It’s great to flip through and see our entire line of products in one place. This easy reference guide can help you choose the right setup for your growing needs. We also provide information on successful gardening and advanced hydroponic techniques, to fill any knowledge gaps and help new growers get started.

We are happy to announce the latest addition to our catalog: New feed charts! We’ve included all of our new feed charts, to give you easy access to the information you need to grow successfully. Whether your system is re-circulating or drain-to-waste, your feed chart is there.

We also have a few new products available in this catalog! We have a brand new Ca+ Mg plant enhancement available called CALiMAGic. This low nitrogen, calcium magnesium supplement is specially formulated to prevent secondary nutrient deficiencies in fast-growing plants. Find more information about this innovative new supplement at our CALiMAGic blog here.

Be sure to check out the amazing new nutrient enhancement, RapidStart®! It delivers a powerful blend of natural plant extracts, amino acids, and nutrients to generate prolific root growth. It stimulates abundant root branching and development of fine root hairs that enhance nutrient uptake.

We are proud to announce the latest member to the FloraNectar™ family: FloraNectar™ Grape Expectations! The unique blend of ingredients helps your plants maintain optimal metabolism and growth while sweetening the aroma of your fruits and flowers. Stay tuned to this blog and the GH website for more details on all our new products!

This comprehensive catalog is an invaluable resource to hydroponic stores, growers and businesses everywhere. Download your copy of the new General Hydroponics product catalog here (20 mb)!

At General Hydroponics headquarters in Sebastopol, CA, we are always working to provide growers with value driven solutions to enhance flavor and yield as well as vitamin and mineral content for the healthiest food crops. We are constantly testing, experimenting and growing to create the perfect nutrients for hydroponic growers everywhere.

It is from this process that we are proud to announce a brand new nutrient supplement to help enhance plant health: CALiMAGic™!

CALiMAGic™ is a low nitrogen calcium magnesium supplement, specially formulated to prevent secondary nutrient deficiencies in fast-growing plants. Many calcium-intensive plants, like lettuce and tomatoes, need that extra Ca+ boost to optimize growth. This prevents diseases related to calcium deficiency like blossom-end rot (a disease that causes the bottom of fruits to rot on the vine). CALiMAGic™ also prevents leaf tip burn: drying and curling leaves due to a shortage of calcium in leaf tissue. Calcium deficiency affects a huge range of plants but can easily be remedied with a little CALiMAGic™!

CALiMAGic™ is a clean, fully soluble product that will not clog spray lines or drip emitters and is safe to use in reservoirs combined with many other fertilizers.  Use CALiMAGic™ as a part of your regular feeding program! CALiMAGic™ is NOW at your favorite hydroponic store!

With the clever use of plastic tubs, foam board and net cups, he creates his own floating raft to grow lettuce. By adding GH nutrients, he is harvesting lettuce from this system in just 4 weeks. That is pretty impressive for a homemade system! Our nutrients really kick production into high-gear, giving plants everything they need for healthy growth and high yields!

The floating raft technique is what many commercial hydroponic lettuce growers use, but on a much larger scale. (Check out this awesome video of a commercial hydroponic operation in action!) Many hydroponic businesses also count on General Hydroponics for their nutrients. Whether you are a business, a home gardener or experimenting with a DIY system like this, GH nutrients really are the universal recipe for growing success.

This homemade floating raft is really great for simple crops like salad greens. Full instructions on how to make this can be found here. However, if you want to grow bigger, heavier crops that bear fruit, we recommend a stronger system that can handle longer roots and bear more weight. Additionally, if you don’t want to spend the time (or just aren’t the DIY type), you can find all more information about General Hydroponics’ systems here.

Randall's peppers in June

He’s growing both green and red bell peppers in a WaterFarm® and a PowerGrower®. Randall kept them healthy and successful with the ever reliable Flora Series™, with help from SubCulture B, a probiotic bacterial root inoculant that helps increase the vitality and yield in all plants. He’s also been using a brand new GH product called RapidStart®! RapidStart® delivers a powerful blend of natural plant extracts, amino acids, and nutrients to generate prolific root growth. It stimulates abundant root branching and development of fine root hairs that enhance nutrient uptake. Stay tuned to this blog and the GH website for more details coming soon!

Randall's peppers in August

This summer has been one of the hottest on record for the east coast! The average temperatures during the life of these pepper plants have been 95° during the day (80° at night) with 88 – 90° water and 65% humidity. Peppers generally like warm weather but, even for them, this was a bit much. During the peak temperatures of July, the plants would produce flowers but they fell off due to several 100° days in a row. At the beginning of August, when the temperatures finally lowered to 85-90°, the peppers began to hold their fruit. Now that it’s back to a comfortable range, the pepper has been exploding with flower sites that are rapidly bearing fruit. And just look at that tall, lush foliage!

Thanks to Randall’s hydro skills and his good choices on what GH products to use, he‘ll be enjoying the fruits of his labor before the summer is over. Good luck keeping cool in the meantime, Randall!

Here is the question from Mullin Farms:

“With hydroponics, where do people dispose of the waste nutrient solution? If people put it down the drain it goes into our oceans; if we put it in our septic systems then it goes into others’ well water nearby. What’s the answer in disposing of the discharge in an environmentally friendly way?”

Here is what Pennywize and the GH team had to say in response:

“Luckily, when the time comes to dispose of the nutrient solution, it is very weak. The plants have already used most of those nutrients. You can further dilute it when you dispose of it and it will contain fewer minerals than typical well water. I always tell people to feed their lawn or bedding plants with it. Add it to your watering can or a hose end sprayer. Also, with hydroponics, the waste water is a smaller amount, not thousands of gallons of solution. The algae blooms that are discussed in China are caused by the runoff from thousands of square miles of farm land containing hundreds of thousands of tons of low grade fertilizer, high in nitrates and phosphorus. Waste water from hydroponics is much weaker than that.”

What do you do with your waste water? Leave us a comment and let us know. We always love to read and answer your feedback and questions so feel free to ask anytime. You never know; we may turn your comment into a blog too!

Written by GH’s South Western Sales Rep, Nels Hansen:

After the sun began to set on this record-breaking hot day, I figured it was the perfect time to start teaching my boy about the growing and feeding of plants. What better way than to introduce him to General Organics™?

Living in a city with nothing more than a large concrete patio makes growing vegetables a little tricky. But, with some imagination and creativity, I figure anyone can have their own little farm! I used some cinder blocks that I found laying around the house to make walls for my garden bed, which gave me roughly about eleven inches to fill. Man, it took lot of soil to fill this thing! But after all was said and done, with a few inches of Ancient Forest® spread across the top, I had completed my very own raised garden bed!

My son is really excited about helping, maybe almost as much as I am to have him help! We started with the nutes at the full strength veg dosing. We began by mixing BioThrive®Grow at 10 mls per gallon of water with our twenty-five gallon res.  Then we added the CaMg+™ at 5 mls, BioRoot® at 10, BioWeed® at 2.5 milliliters per gallon. To finish it off, we added DiamondBlack™ at 1 tablespoon and BioMarine® at two tablespoons per gallon.

Once we had all our GO nutrients mixed together, in the proper amounts, we sprayed 25 gallons of solution (using a 400 g.p.h. pump) and top fed the entire 6’X12’ garden plot. No need to adjust the pH with the GO line so we were ready to go!
     
In our garden, we are growing many different herbs and spices, like cilantro, basil, and thyme. We also have a handful of onions, artichokes, tomatoes, kale, a blueberry bush and more! We expect a bountiful, delicious harvest, thanks to the GO. My son is so excited to watch the plants grow and taste everything that comes out of our garden.

Stay tuned for updates from our garden periodically (sooner if something pops up!) With the help of my son, and General Organics, before you know it, I will be enjoying the fruits of my labor!

We are so lucky to work with so many great hydro stores around the country! We love to feature them in the blog once in a while. We’ve just been talking with Michael Taylor over at Horizen Hydroponics in Grand Rapids, MI. He has been using the GO line in his home garden and having some awesome results! See the photos below.

A little bit about Horizen Hydro:

They started online in November of 1999; after much success and realizing the industry potential, Horizen Hydroponics opened a retail location in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 2002.  On a shoe string and a prayer, shelves were stocked with the finest plant fertilizers from around the world and the highest quality equipment used for controlled environmental agriculture. 

They offer complete hydroponic systems, the perfect blend of science and nature for your garden. Horizen Hydroponics stocks a wide selection of hydroponic systems, lighting, organic composts fertilizers and indoor gardening equipment. Hydroponic indoor gardening is a fun, clean, and safe hobby for the whole family.

About Michael’s garden:

He has been using the GO line in his vegetable garden and has been seeing some amazing growth rates on his tomatoes, strawberries and other edibles. His fruit production is taking off and you can really see that healthy, lush foliage in the photos. He’s using them indoors and out with some seriously great results. Thanks for sharing, Michael! Keep us posted on your progress!

Take this recent event into consideration: Sections of China’s coastline are currently being plagued with intense algae blooms. This has been an ongoing problem since 2007, even so far as to interrupt the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. However, the blooms are currently worse than ever, taking up entire coastlines, affecting tourism and the health of the wildlife there. China Daily says “the algae, though not toxic nor detrimental to water quality, ravages the ecosystem because it consumes large quantities of oxygen, thus suffocating other marine life.”* One theory as to the cause of this enormous bloom is that the growing population in the area has increased the demand for agriculture. The nitrite-rich wastewater from the fertilizers used to grow the extra food could be making their way into the ocean, causing the speedy growth. **

Check out all the photos of this massive algae bloom! ***

This is not only happening in China but also in the United States, particularly in the Gulf of Mexico, where the Mississippi Delta comes into the Gulf. The Evironmental Protection Agency (EPA) cites dozens of examples of so-called “red tides” or “dead zones” caused by algae blooms in U.S. waters, most likely as a result of fertilizer run-off.****
China’s algae problem is just one example of the recurrent problems of modern agriculture and the world-wide conundrum of feeding our growing population. We feel that this is where hydroponics can really save the day! As these problems become more evident, we can turn to hydroponic farming as a more viable means of crop production, especially as fresh water resources become scarcer. Unlike the open circuit methods of traditional farming that are essentially drain-to-waste, commercial hydro operations are closed circuit and don’t have the same potential to pollute the water downstream. 

General Hydroponics continues to stay at the forefront of hydroponic technology and education, to help prepare for the future and usher in a new era in agriculture! While China scrambles to remove the algae and clean up their coastline, we hope they will also give consideration to alternative farming methods (like hydroponics), to prevent this reoccurring problem. We all must invest in the future of food to keep our local and world-wide communities healthy and fed, while protecting our precious environmental resources.

Sources:

* Zhillin, Chen. China Daily. Green Algae invading China’s tourist destination Qingdao. 7-11-2011. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/m/shandong/e/2011-07/11/content_12873047.htm

** Frantz, Vickie. Accuweather.com. Algae Invades China’s Eastern Coastal Beaches. 7-30-2011. http://www.accuweather.com/blogs/news/story/53084/algae-invades-chinas-eastern-c.asp?partner=accuweather

*** Algae invades a popular beach in China. 7-19-2011. http://news.yahoo.com/photos/algae-bloom-1311121572-slideshow/view-algae-filled-coastline-qingdao-photo-102645670.html

**** Harmful Algae Blooms. EPA.gov. 5-7-2010. http://www.epa.gov/gmpo/habpage.html