newleaf150
Full Member
Posts: 21
Joined: Sat May 14, 2011 11:43 pm
Location: Denver area, Colorado

hydrolifeCA wrote:I want to chime in too... I grow hydroponic lettuce. On my second round now.

Out of round one total cost (nutrients, ph Down (natural) and electricity) results in an average cost of $1.90 for a head of lettuce.

In the super market I can buy it for 0.90 cents.

So what does this mean? Hydroponics is an outstanding, beautiful, amazing hobby which can produce edible results.

If you DESIGN and manage your system you can COMPLETELY and NATURALLY grow anything. I use natural ph Down (Vinegar), Natural substrate (corn husk coir) and natural nutrients.

No pesticides, chemicals, etc. I would like to think my lettuce is healthier and yes it tastes better than store purchased.

So... are you going to save money? no, probably not.

Is it worth it? WITHOUT A DOUBT!

Grow for passion' nothing more and nothing less.
Hydrolife,

Thanks for chiming in! I agree with you on the less tangible rewards of growing hydroponically. I have really enjoyed designing, putting together and operating this and my previous systems. I hope your grows continue to be successful and rewarding on a whole variety of levels :D

newleaf150
Full Member
Posts: 21
Joined: Sat May 14, 2011 11:43 pm
Location: Denver area, Colorado

Hydroguy,

Thanks for the support, feedback and great questions! I'm afraid I don't have time to address them properly right now, but that will change. Will be back to you ASAP. I have some new pics, too :)

newleaf150
Full Member
Posts: 21
Joined: Sat May 14, 2011 11:43 pm
Location: Denver area, Colorado

Hydroguy: hey, long time, my bad. Lots of real life going on, not much time to attend to the *important* things....<snicker>...
hydroguy wrote:I've been watching your thread with great interest and I must say it is quite impressive newleaf150.

We seem to share very similar ideals on many levels, others I might disagree but like you said that's for another forum. :wink: The idea of quality components for a system I couldn't agree more. I've gone cheap and then had to replace so the old saying of "you get what you pay for" has been true at least for me over the years I've been water farming. Take the T-5 light systems I picked up this winter, if I put the costs of those systems on one cycle of produce then it makes no sense to grow a $100 head head of lettuce but if I spread that cost over several years of production then the costs is very much justified.
First off, thank you for your interest and support, Hydroguy! Thank you even more for turning away from the temptation to go political!

The idea of a multi-season investment' is hugely critical to this rig <grin>. More to come....
hydroguy wrote:Growing hydroponicaly without meters or testing equipment just raises the possibility of failure. Can it be done, sure, lots of folks do. It's like insurance to me. I've spent all this $ and time on my systems so why not protect my investment. Another way to look at the use and costs of meters is maximize my investment. If I'm going to put this much into something I want to make it produce to its fullest potential. Knowing what's happening in my resv. only makes sense IMHO.
LMFAO - Seriously, NOT LAUGHING AT YOU! It's just that you may as well have been in my head for the above chain of logic. You are totally right, BUT - what we have to keep in mind is that this system literally started 3 seasons ago as some 5-gal buckets and assorted stuff...back then, it made good sense to save $$ by not buying instruments. I was also seriously interested to see whether I could do hydroponic cultivation 'by the seat of my pants' or not.

I am pretty satisfied at this point that I can indeed grow hydroponically without expensive meters and so forth. I am also satisfied that to continue to do so on the scale I'm working with is quite dumb and a waste of good money. This season's rig has cost...let's say a few hundred bucks. I'll get several seasons' use out of it <knocking on wood>, but I and the lovely wife are still in for a pretty significant amount of cash. At this point, I'm totally in on meters.

While I can do without, I would much rather maximize my plants' growth potential by having at least some vague clue about what is happening in the nutrient solution. In short, I am, once again, in complete agreement with ya, Hydroguy...awaiting $$ for meter-implementation <grin>.
hydroguy wrote:And one last thing on this beautiful Sunday morning before I head off to church, you stated earlier that you would explain more about the use of all those feed tubes going into your upper tubes. I've been curious about that since I first saw them. Not being critical but it seems a bit overkill and your goals could be accomplished with a larger air pump. I've not ventured oudoors with a system so I'm just asking and trying to learn something from your hard work.

Thanks for taking the time to post your efforts,

hydroguy
Thank you for taking the time to pay attention and ask insightful questions! Sorry it's taken me so long to answer you.

In any case, the deal on the the huge number of tubes is this: I am looking to agitate and circulate my nutrient solution as much as possible. I am also looking to set things up once and run them that way through the season.

Basically, my experience in past seasons has led me to want to put a widely distributed spread of solution into my grow buckets. At the moment, I have 2-3 lines running into each net pot with multiple others running into the solution itself.

I will end up (I hope) with solution constantly running down the plants' main roots, and into the reservoir at widely separated points. This will hopefully help to keep the whole tub turned over/agitated more efficiently, thereby keeping 'dead zones' in the huge root structures to (hopefully) come to a minimum.

Ultimately, my philosophy in this is that more turnover is better. Since I have the remote reservoirs, I need to turn my nutrient solution over, and frequently. The more the solution flows past the roots, the greater their opportunity to uptake it and make the plant bigger :D

The secondary philosophy is low-maintenance. It takes me literally less than 2 minutes to check the rig in the morning, another 2 minutes in the afternoon. If I need to do something to it, like add water/nutrients, I'm in for 5-10 minutes.

My relatively enormous system capacity means I can leave the rig running unsupervised for days on end without a problem. Previously, this has helped with the 'fly by the seat of your pants' idea relative to meters and such. It is also quite useful for loading the system with nutrients (utilizing meters) and buffering pH and other changes. Larger reservoirs tend to be more stable than smaller ones.

I should still be able to leave it unsupervised for 4-5 days at need, maybe even longer depending on the stage of growth.

Thanks again for your interest and questions! If I've failed to address anything, feel free to ask.

Thanks again!

TCHarris32
Full Member
Posts: 56
Joined: Fri Sep 23, 2011 2:46 pm
Location: Indy

Newleaf, any updates here? I'm really wanting to do an outdoor grow next spring and I'd like to know what you guys ended up with. Thanks.



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