The Chronicle Herald (Provincial)
Grow all year long with a hydroponics system
A reader wrote in to ask whether at-home gardening units — the hydroponics units that everyone got at Christmas — actually work.
“I’m curious about these and not sure what size I’d need or want and wondering if people have success stories before I buy a unit,” she asks.
Becky Boutilier from Head of Chezzetcook and her mother both received a tabletop automatic hydroponic grow system for Christmas from her sister and they love it.
So far, she has harvested five crops of lettuce since the beginning of January, while her mother is growing fresh herbs for her kitchen.
“These units are very user friendly,” says Boutilier, noting the lighting triggers automatically and a little icon lights up when it is time to water or fertilize the plants.
It’s also worth noting that the units are super quiet, she says. The only sound you may hear from time to time is the trickling of water.
Although these units are a bit pricy, overall, she recommends them.
Boutilier knows what she is talking about when it comes to growing plants. She is a Red Seal horticulturist and founder of the upcoming Gardenia Meadows Vegetable and Flower Farm.
So, what exactly is a hydroponic system?
According to Marcel Gignac, a cannabis consultant based in Amherst, with more than 40 years of growing experience, hydroponic systems are used to grow plants using water instead of soil.
The plant’s root structure is suspended above the water-nutrient mix using clay balls or lava rock to support the plant. The water-nutrient mix is then delivered to the roots with either a drip system from above or with a spray delivered by air stones from the bottom.
Either way is effective, says Gignac, but delivering from the top will require a circulating system and the delivery from the bottom will require air supply. These can be purchased as readymade systems or easily set up with a five-gallon bucket and an aquarium air pump.
The types of plants you want to grow will play a big part in choosing the right equipment you need, says Gignac.
A simple set up to grow cannabis or tomatoes, for example, would be with a single plant per five-gallon bucket, while someone wanting to grow lettuce could use PVC pipe with holes drilled along the top for each plant.
The size of your growing location also must be considered, says Gignac. If setting up for an indoor garden of salad greens or small peppers, this could be done on a tabletop under daylight-rated flourescent or LED grow lights, while growing cannabis will require much more light as the plant can easily grow more than 12 feet high in a five-gallon bucket.
Hydroponic systems, when set up properly, can be relatively low maintenance with a weekly water-nutrient mix change and monitoring.
GOOD FOR WINTER GROWING
Gignac says having the lights on an 18-hour timer makes things pretty much hands-free for growing during the winter months. This is the biggest advantage to the average vegetable gardener, he says, being able to have an extra growing season each year.
Some people may even choose to garden both traditionally in the summer and hydroponically in the winter.
GOOD TIME SAVERS
While it is relatively simple to set up a table under grow lights and fill flats with a good potting mix to grow lettuce, you will still be required to water once or twice every day making it more time consuming than a hydroponic system, says Gignac.
A simple hydroponic system can free up a lot of time.
Boutilier adds that, if she just wanted to hobby grow in the summers, didn’t have much indoor space and wanted to do things as cheap as possible, she would skip indoor propagation and choose varieties of vegetables and herbs that can be started in the system and then replanted in the garden outside when the weather allowed.
GOOD LIGHTING IS IMPORTANT
Regardless of what type of set up you use for indoor growing, Gignac says the most important factor is the lighting.
Outdoors, the sun provides a full spectrum of light at approximately 1,000 watts. For indoor growing you want to try to duplicate that, he says.
Plants that are low to the ground, such as lettuce, can be grown under T5 fluorescent grow lights as they produce little heat and can be kept much closer to the plant, while a cannabis plant would require 600 to 1,000 watts, depending on your planned plant height after flowering. You need to provide two feet of space between the plant and light, he says.
STARTING OUT
When starting out your hydroponic system, Boutilier says your starting materials can be either seeds or cuttings from your favourite plants. There is no need to buy the special hydroponic seeds.
You then have to choose a growing medium to plant your seeds or cutting in. These could include gravel, hemp fibre, perlite or rockwool.
Plants do not take in all the nutrients in a growing solution, so salts can build up in the growing medium over time. Boutilier recommends flushing the medium and container every so often to maintain plant health and a smooth-running system. Salt buildup can raise ph, upset water and nutrient uptake by the plants and clog nozzles in the system.
Over the years, the focus on hydroponic systems was for the cannabis community and considered to be an advanced grow technique, but, with more interest in the home hobbyist, more commercial turnkey systems have become available for the beginning grower, says Boutilier.
“While arguments will continue over which is better between hydroponics or soil growing, it all comes down to personal choice,” she says. “Both have their benefits as well as their downfalls.”
But, like all growing, you only get out what you are willing to put in. Whether you want to get your hands wet or dirty the reward of growing your own food and consumables is second to none, she says.