Posted: 4/12/2009 9:44:49 AM EDT
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I am finishing up the final design of my greenhouse and am thinking about just running it with Hydroponics as it seems to just be easier.
Anyone have any experience?? Main advantage that I found is that with late fall and winter greenhouse use, I won't have to open it up as much to keep it taken care of. I can just go out once every few days and pick/water. It will be a little more than I wanted to spend on my greenhouse, but in the grand scheme of it all it is just a speed bump. |
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Main advantage that I found is that with late fall and winter greenhouse use, I won't have to open it up as much to keep it taken care of. I can just go out once every few days and pick/water. . If you have an automatic watering system and it quits working, if you haven't been out to check on it in 2 or 3 days, you will may loose all your plants. It is a daily job keeping hydroponics working. If it were my source of food, I would be at it every day. It doesn't take a lot of time every day, but it does need your attention more than every few days. It is however, a good way to grow lots of really good food. You will get back every penny that you spend on a greenhouse. Go for it. |
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I was just hoping to prevent heat loss by opening it up everyday.. I can walk by it to check to make sure that it is still working. I am not worried aobut that so much as losing the heat that it has built up. I am going for a passive system with water and stone as my heatsink.
I will post up some pics while I am working on it. |
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Quoted: I am finishing up the final design of my greenhouse and am thinking about just running it with Hydroponics as it seems to just be easier. Anyone have any experience?? Main advantage that I found is that with late fall and winter greenhouse use, I won't have to open it up as much to keep it taken care of. I can just go out once every few days and pick/water. It will be a little more than I wanted to spend on my greenhouse, but in the grand scheme of it all it is just a speed bump. Hydroponics, while they SOUND easier, are actually not, in my opinion. You still have to monitor closely. You will need to be in that greenhouse every day, and you will have to actually know MORE how to look at a plant and judge its status, than you would if it were growing in something solid, because the uptake of nutrients is immediate, which means damage from too much or too little is also immediate. You will also have to know more about plant biology and chemistry than you would if you were growing in a regular greenhouse environment. Anyway, I have no idea about your level of knowledge or experience, and it may be just the right thing for you, but I would visit a hydroponic setup before I took the plunge. I understand both, but I would grow in a soil-less, like pro-mix, if it were my choice. Regardless, you're going to have to spend time in the greenhouse every day. kitties |
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I have never done anything soil-less before.
I have been running my garden for about 15 years.. starting out with open ground and am now running in raised beds. I don't have any issues with dirt so maybe I will just keep that up. Reading up on the Hydroponic systems, it sounded like it would be fun.. I think I will just keep with what I know. |
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I have never done anything soil-less before. I have been running my garden for about 15 years.. starting out with open ground and am now running in raised beds. I don't have any issues with dirt so maybe I will just keep that up. Reading up on the Hydroponic systems, it sounded like it would be fun.. I think I will just keep with what I know. Don't be discouraged by any of what you read here. There is a lot ot learn about hydroponics, but you don't have to learn it all at once. You can still grow some good crops without being a expert. You don't have to spend a lot of money buying fancy growing systems if you want to build your setup from scratch. There is plenty of information on the Internet to get you started. All you have to understand are the basic principals. Much of it is trial and error. When we put togethar our first system, every bit of it came from Home Depot and Walmart. The nutrient components were bought at a feed store and mixed from a formula in a book by Raymond Bridwell printed in 1989. The information was much simpler than most of that out there these days. |
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Quoted: I have never done anything soil-less before. I have been running my garden for about 15 years.. starting out with open ground and am now running in raised beds. I don't have any issues with dirt so maybe I will just keep that up. Reading up on the Hydroponic systems, it sounded like it would be fun.. I think I will just keep with what I know. If fun is what you're after, and you have experience with gardens, then go for it. Maybe do it kind of small at first, so if you don't like it, you haven't invested a big gob of $$$$. Nothing wrong with trying it. From your original post, I couldn't tell if you knew anything at all. Somebody who doesn't know N from P from K has no business getting into hydroponics, IMO. But you DO know. So why not? At the very least, look up somebody doing hydroponic growing locally, and go see their setup. All learning is good. I say small at first because, in my experience, if you're a gardener, you LIKE working with dirt––with EARTH––even if it's a soil-less media like pro-mix. Putting your hands in dirt is satisfying. At least, it is for me. The artificial environment of hydroponics is not the same for me. It feels kind of like gardening in space or something, if that makes any sense? It doesn't give me the same sense of satisfaction, partly because it fails to give me that re-connect with my rural roots, and that in-touch-ness with the seasons and the Earth and where I fall in the scheme of things. Gardening, for me, is a bit like standing beside the ocean––you feel how small you are, and yet you feel connected. Sorry if that's too woo-woo tree-hugger for ya. I know that's not the norm for ArfCom, but that's the way it is for me. Anyhow, I have years of professional greenhouse experience, and I like greenhouse growing, but for my food, I prefer to grow it in the Earth. Okay, I amend and futz around with that earth, but still...the principle holds for me. If a fun new experience is what you're after, try hydroponics. No reason not to if you have the expendable income and the interest. And if you do, take pics and educate all of us, will you? Kitties |
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Well after thinking about it...
I think I am going to try a fill/drain system with a 4x4 PVC fence tube with 3" mesh baskets. By quick pricing, I think I can build it for about $60 out of pocket.. I have a bunch of the parts on hand already.. so it would be a fun try.. If it works great, if not.. well.... I am not out a huge sum of cash. I will post pics of my progress along the way. Thanks for the insight guys and gals |
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Can't much speak to the issue of 'getting back to the soil' as I haven't had a real hankerin to get down in the dirt since I was about seven or so. BUT, if you want to grow more more in less space there is nothing better than a hydroponic greenhouse. I don't buy the mantra of some that it's more difficult. I submit that it's easier. Hey, I don't need shovels, cultivators, rototillers, trowels, pitchforks, etc. Best of all I don't need to use such caveman implements! The hardest part in hydoponics is building your systems and that's really just a one time investment. And if you weren't confident in 'rolling your own' there's a myriad of systems to be found on the web in exchange for only your wallet. More time spent in the hydroponic greenhouse? Not even close! Read: NO WEEDS! And what gardener on this forum doesn't go out and check their garden on a regular basis? What gardener here who has a spare moment to relax with not much to do doesn't go out to their garden and putter around anyway?
A couple of inexpensive meters (TDS & ph) and your GTG. Easy to check (not needed every day). You get the feel for it after a while. Electricity down? Not a problem for most systems as there can be a reserve of water for the plants that can keep them in good stead for a few days. Pumps are simple inexpensive aquarium pumps. Ours pull 24 watts to 65 watts and don't even need to be running 24/7. Water usage? Way less. No evaporation. Recirculating all the time. The wife had been after me to build her a greenhouse as she wanted to do hydroponics. Finally got it done and built four systems to fill it. Last summer was our first experiment with it. Huge success, for us anyway. Plants didn't go in until late June and we were overwhelmed with tomatoes, lettuce, and cucumbers. This year got most everything transplanted in mid April ( needs to be earlier yet - shooting for Feb next year). Tomato plants were about 3" one month ago now about 30". Is there a learning curve? Of course - what doesn't have that? Most of the time a few minutes a day is all you need to spend. Many times you can skip a day or two. The wife and I are leaving this weekend for a short trip. Will be gone two full days - no worries. One of the most important characteristics of any greehouse, hydroponic or conventional, is the season extension. We live at 6200' and have winter. We didn't add any heat to the greenhouse last winter and the tomatoes didn't freeze out until Christmas time. Lettuce went right on through the winter. Don't expect the tomatoes to do much growing or ripening when it gets around 40 deg at night inside but they did fine until it got really cold 0 -10 outside. Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking conventional outside gardening. If we were going to maximixe our vegetable production we'd also have a big outside garden for the easy more hardy crops. We just don't have the time to do much more than we do - both of us work. To sum it up - easy, easy, easy. Read, read, read. The internet is your friend. |
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I will post pics of my progress along the way. I'd love to see pics as you progress with this. I find hydroponics interesting but will probably never do it for the reasons that Kitties so eloquently outlined. Same here. Would love to see the setup, in progress and results of this. |