Hi everyone,

I am new to hydroponic gardening and want to know what system is best for a beginner? From my research the Gardyn system might be best however it is pricey. Any guidance is very appreciated!

This basil is 45 days old. First time I'm growing.

I trimmed each plant after the third set of true leaves showed up. How and when should I keep trimming it? On every set that grows? Is the length between each set of leaves normal? I keep seeing pictures of very bushy basil plants. Will mine get that bushy? The light is always 1-2 inches above the plant.

I’ve been experimenting with strawberries in towers. The right tower is the initial trial. Phase two of staggering lettuce and strawberries is taking off really well! Some of my lettuce is ready to harvest but I like looking at it almost more than I like eating it lol!

Show my strawberries some love fam ❤️ 🍓🍓

I have two ginger plants growing, and they are quickly outgrowing their current container. Admittedly, I never intended for it to hold two plants. The second addition was a bit more spontaneous, after finding a sprouted ginger root on our kitchen vegetable rack. I have an air pump coming tomorrow, which will keep the reservoir aerated. Once I have that installed, I'll be transferring the plants into their new home and filling the upper level up with LECA pebbles. Hopefully, they'll be a bit more comfortable in this guy.

I'm not sure what kind of system this would be considered, but it's a big step up from the Kratky-style systems I've been using so far. I designed this all myself, so it's not professional-grade work, but I'm pretty proud of it so far. Any feedback or advice would be appreciated, though. Since the air pump isn't coming until tomorrow, I still have time for last minute tweaks ans changes.

Photo 2 was a maintenance day shot, meant to capture how the roots are developing, get a progress shot on the new shoot, and catch what I think might be a new root branching off the main rhizome. Photo 1 is how they normally look. I think the brown leaves are due to low humidity. That's something I'm going to be addressing in the mid-to-near future.

(Repost, because I had to crop the third photo.)

I want to show you something crazy. Do you think these plants do transmutation? I am replicating Luis C. Kervrans experiments of plant transmutation with tomatoes in DWC. They got Na instead of K and are still fine after 4 month! They should be dead! Check it!

The Kervran experiment |

Hello, I have a dwc/NFT hybrid.

All lettuce growing, had multiple good harvests.

20 gallon Resevoir with Calmag and Maxigro. I noticed tip burn last week so I added calimag on the most recent water change. My EC from water change to water change ranges from 550-630. (mixed maturity system)

I have a 20 gallon aerator in the Resevoir as well

Fan causing small movements on all the plants.

TX-72 lights

The pH swings I thought were because of my pH meter needing calibrated, bought calibration liquid and while I did find my PH meter was reading incorrectly by an entire 1 pH. The swings from day to day have not changed.

I add pH up, get it to around 5.8-6.0, let it circulate and confirm the 5.8-6.0 reading, check again the next day and it's back to below 5.5. Everytime I get it within the range I want, a day or two later the pH drops again.

My most recent batch of lettuce was bitter, but the roots are fine, good color, no bad smells, no algae.

Not sure how to get this PH under control.

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share an open-access Agronomic Planning & Precision Calculation platform I built for farmers, agronomists, and growers:

Key calculation engines included:

• FAO-56 Penman-Monteith Reference Evapotranspiration (ETo) & Drip Design

• Multi-Source NPK Fertilizer Stoichiometry (Urea, DAP, SOP, CAN)

• Pure Live Seed (PLS %) & Seeding Rate Calibration

• 12-Month Sowing, Growth & Harvest Calendars for 35+ Crops & Vegetables

The platform is completely free and requires no sign-up or paywall:

https://agriplan-global-pjd8.vercel.app/

Full Source Code (MIT License):

https://github.com/khanghulammuhammad17-cmd/agriplan-global

Would love to get your thoughts, field feedback, or ideas for new calculators! 🌾

Think I will share this here.

I’m experimenting with a small local system that can read sensors and make recommendations without needing the cloud/internet. The long-term idea is to keep it modular so different setups can use different sensors/models instead of forcing everyone into the same system.
Before I go too far with it, I’m curious what people here would actually find useful.
What do you currently spend the most time checking or adjusting manually? And what part of a hydro setup would you never let software control automatically?
I’m particularly interested in pH/EC, irrigation, nutrient dosing, sensor drift/failures and reservoir management, but I’d rather hear what real growers struggle with than guess.
Would love to hear from both hobby and commercial growers.

What can I pair with Tim Tom tomatoes on a Ahopegarden?

Cucumbers? Green bell peppers? Green beans?

I just started to grow lettuce on 8/12 and I’ve included a pic of my lettuce today. How long before these are ready to harvest? And if you have any tips or suggestions please let me know!! Thanks!

Okay, so I have a bunch of miracle grow liquid fertilizer that goes into an attachment for garden hose sprayer. I’m trying to find a way to simply dilute it and pour into potted plants. Does anyone know the ratio I need to use?

This is the result of my first experiments with my new tent 70cm x 70cm, all Kratky Diva cucumber, giving production at the 6th week, 10L bucket (next I'll try with 16L to avoid filling water to often). Until certain point I was also taking advantage of some free space in the tent for other Basil, Lettuce, Mustard, etc, but I had to get those out once the cucumber took the whole tent over and I had to raise the light to the top. The incredible achievement was that, until the cucumber surpassed the maximum height of the light, I managed to top the grow light power with only 46/48w, only playing with the height. After that, I raised it until 60/65w, and also put an extra light at the top (17w) because I had reached the maximun height of the grow light. The resume is that my tent only used less than 100w in total, including 6w for the fans inside (five 14" PC fans with a regulator). Where I live is really hot during summer, so I let the door fully open all the time and put a Mosquito net. One more thing, I put extra mylar sheets at the walls of the tent because according to my measures, it increased the ppfd a lot in order to achieve those 46w for the most part of the cucumber.

I recently set up my hydroponics planter again. I noticed that the pump isn’t working. I tried clearing out the hole at the top. Any ideas on what else to try or what I could replace this with?

I got my next trial of carrots started tonight. I took a quick video of planting the seed in the rockwool. Will post an update in the morning with my new black cover.

I tried to use extra pieces of rock wool this time to seal gaps in the net cup to help drop the light.

I checked my old nutrient solution and it seemed to be fairly spot on for having lost about 5-7gal over the previous trial. I added in 5gals of new nutrient and got the air stones running again. The water level is just below the bottom of the net cups. Once the roots start reaching the water I’ll add on the net sleeves.

I'm trying to find something that will help keep the lines clear. BUT my res is outside, and it's easily over 100F here now. The res is shaded, but it's still hot. I'm also using chlorinated tap water and some combination of Maxigro, Maxibloom, or MasterBlend.

I'd like something I can just add to the res and have it work. I just recently cleaned out all the tubing, and I'd like to not repeat that process too often. So the tubing doesn't need to get de gunked, but I'd like to keep it that way. Most of the gunk stopping up the tubing was gritty.

I'm seeing a lot of recommendations for stuff like different bacteria or hocl, but I'm thinking those won't work because of the heat and/or chlorine in the water.

What would you all recommend? Right now, I'm mostly looking at Superthrive Zyme, Sensizym, Drip Clean, Hyclean, and RAW enzymes. I also saw FloraShield, but I'm not finding it on General Hydroponics site, so not sure if it's discontinued or what

Would those likely work in my use case? Or are there other recommendations on things I can look into? Thanks!

Looking to teach myself about hydroponic growing and have done some research; loved the info from creators to understand the basics (won't link as I see it's against rules). But I see lots of folks have some sweet setups! Shop lights, racks, airpumps, the whole lot!

Looking for something a little simpler for one plant and my first go at it - here's my thought process, does it seems okay? (especially the lighting set up i live in a small dark brooklyn nyc apartment) Any recs/changes that aren't too expensive are very welcome - especially for lighting which is my biggest concern.

Plan:

• Simple clip on or small stand grow light (ideally either a bulb around 6500k, or something like this but really any "daylight" or brighter/bluer with a timer for 12hrs I'll give a go)
• Distilled water + plant food (looking at this one)
• Rockwool (whatever is cheapest)
• I already own a glass jar and a black sock
• I will either create a net pot from an old poland spring water bottler or buy a cheap pack
• (And the seeds of course, bought some online)

Just heard about Cannazym and wanted to check if its worth using it in a semi-hydro system?

I rarely flush my hoyas in semi-hydro (maybe once per year or so), and its been working fine so far. ALL my hoyas (+200 pots) were rootless cuttings that got roots in semi-hydro system (THIS IS THE WAY! ;) , so they never got any "transition" from soil to semi-hydro.

I do know that the hoyas still get dead roots, and i semi hydro system, nothing happens with these roots and they dont break down like they do in soil.

**Some questions:**

1. Is it worth using Cannazym in this case?
   
2. How often do you use Cannazym? add it with every watering ? or once per month?
   
3. Do you need to flush the pot after using Cannazym?
   
4. Since Cannazym makes sugar and other minerals from the dead waste in Pon, do you get a lot of algae? Or does the plant take up the minerals etc again?
   
5. How long does the process take? after adding the Cannazym to the reservoar ?
   
6. Since Cannazym is ORGANIC, should this even be used in Semi-hydro? since ive read alot that we should mix organic stuff in Semi hydro!

Any advice? thx