There are probably hundreds of different kinds of growing medium, anything that a plant can grow in is considered a growing medium. There are manmade as well as organic (natural) mediums. Even plain old AIR can be an effective growing environment for roots.
I have been asked many times what growing medium is the best. This is like asking what is the best color? Or what is the best kind of vehicle to own. Sometimes the answer depends on the job you need it to do. You wouldn't try to use a soiless mix in an Aeroponic system and you don't plow a field with a Rolls Royce limousine. However, if you want to build a Non-Recovery Drip hydroponic system then the soiless mix would be an excellent choice, and a John Deere tractor can handle the field (save the Rolls for a night on the town, pick me up at 8). What I'm trying to say, is that the best growing medium for your purpose depends on many variables. The type of system you are using, what kind of crop you are growing and local environment are just some of the many determining factors involved when choosing a growing medium. There may be several mediums that will work equally well for your particular needs. Many times it boils down to availability, price or personal preference.
I have listed the most popular types of growing mediums below, click on the name to view details about the general use, advantages and disadvantages, and particular characteristics of the specified growing medium.
Oasis cubes
Expanded Clay Pellets
Rockwool
Coconut Fiber
Sand
Gravel
Perlite
Sphagnum Moss
Water
Vermiculite
Fiberglass Insulation
Saw Dust
Soilless Mix(s)
Air
Lava Rock
Oasis cubes
These lightweight pre-formed cubes are designed for propagation. A very popular medium for use when growing from seed or from cuttings. This product has a neutral pH and retains water very well.
The cubes are meant to be a starter medium and come in three sizes up to 2" x 2". They can be easily transplanted into practically any kind of hydroponic system or growing medium (or into soil).
Coconut fiber
Coconut fiber is rapidly becoming one of the most popular growing mediums in the world. In fact it may soon be THE most popular. It is the first totally "organic" growing medium that offers top performance in hydroponic systems. Coconut fiber is essentially a waste product of the coconut industry, it is the powdered husks of the coconut itself.
There are many advantages - it maintains a larger oxygen capacity than rockwool, yet also has superior water holding ability than rockwool which is a real advantage for hydroponic systems that have intermittent watering cycles.
Coconut fiber is also high in root stimulating hormones and offers some protection against root diseases including fungus infestation. Dutch growers have found that a mixture of 50% coconut fiber and 50% expanded clay pellets is the perfect growing medium.
One word of caution about coconut fiber, you must be careful when you purchase coconut fiber. There is a commonly available, lower grade of coconut fiber that is high in sea-salt and is very fine grained. This lower grade coconut fiber will lead to disappointing results when used in a hydroponic system.
Soilless Mix(s)
There are many kinds of soiless mix's containing a vast assortment of ingredients. Most contain things like Spaghnam moss, Perlite and Vermiculite.
These kind of growing medium are usually considered organic and are frequently used for container gardening wick systems and on-recovery drip systems. They can be used in recovery systems, however most of these mixes have some very fine particles that can clog pumps and drip emitters if you don't use a good filtration system (NOTE: The professor says that you can use panty hose as a filter, use on the return line and on the pump inlet to filter out the fine particles).
Most soiless mixes retain water well and have great wicking action while still holding a good amount of air, making them a good growing medium for a variety of hydroponic and organic gardens.
Can i use regulator gravel for my hydroponic system?
Pea gravel good or not?
Danny, your trying to compare 2 completely different types of hydroponic systems. The gravel your talking about using has zero water retention capabilities and will require either a flood drain system or very frequent cycling of a drip system. On the other hand the perlite/vermiculite method has a very high level of water retention capability and is not suitable for flood drain but is ideal for a drip system.
Hydroponics is all about maintaining the nutrient solution your feeding your plants. Doesn't matter if your ebb & flow, NFT, DWC, drip or any other version you can think of, it all boils down to knowing what your feeding the plants. Different age plants require different concentrations, different plants require different concentrations. Take a tomatoe and a pepper like this guy has. Seedlings for both plants will run in the 300 ppm range but thats about where the similarities end. Tomatoes like it rich and will go into the 2000 ppm range while peppers never go much over 750 ppm. The ph is similar to most plants as a range of 5.6 - 6.0 is optimal for nutrient absorption.
I check my resvs. daily. Most days that's all I do in the garden. Stick a meter in, add a few cc's of PH down if needed (rarely use any up) and off I go. Maintenance of resvs is the most important thing your gonna do in a hydro system. Feed the plants a ph balanced diet thats concentrated enough to match their intake.
Ive successfully grown tomatoes, peppers, basil, oregano, chives and leaf lettuce. Good crops for all but they each have their own requirements. Running one system to start out with I might suggest some leaf lettuce and basil. Requirements are similar enough and they are both fast growing plants so you get to harvest with in weeks of your first planting.
Get your "feet wet" and then go on from there with your wish list. The leaf lettuce I have currently is getting it's 6th harvest tomorrow and will be done with. Ive got some pepper seedlings that now have four sets of true leaves and I want them under the 400mh for a couple of weeks until they are ready to go to the 600hps chamber to finish out. The advantage I have with net pots and eventually buckets with the flood drain method I use is versatility. I can change around things constantly to optimize growth without ever harming a plant. 3 systems with 3 different lights, all flood drain, is whats working for me currently.
Hydroponic Gardening Howto & Tips
**
Hydroponic Gardening involves growing plants with the essential elements needed for the plant to grow.
**A hydroponic gardening system can be outdoor or indoor.
**The essential elements are: nutrients, water, light, habitat.
**The rate of growth of a hydroponic plant can be up to 50% faster than a soil plant grown under the same conditions.
**The reason for this is that the plants get their nutrition fed directly into their roots from nutrient rich water. Since this water is so high in nutrient content, the plant does not need large roots to search for nutrition. And since the plant expends less energy in growing roots it has more energy available to be productive above the rootline! Hydroponically grown vegetables are healthy, vigorous, and consistently reliable. This form of gardening is clean and extremely easy, and it requires very little effort.
**Hydroponic systems are normally categorized as passive or active. An active hydroponic system moves the nutrient solution with a pump. A passive hydroponic system relies on the capillary action of the growing medium or a wick.
In a passive system the nutrient rich solution is absorbed by the medium or the wick and passed along to the plant's roots. But a downside with this method is that they are usually too wet and do not supply enough oxygen to the root system for the best growth rates.
Hydroponic systems are also characterized as recovery or non-recovery. In recovery systems, the nutrient solution is re-circulated for reuse. In a non-recovery system however, the nutrient solution is not recovered.
You may be unsure of whether to buy or build a hydroponic system. If you have an 'engineering mind' and want to build one, consider buying one first just to get familiar with the inner workings. Buy a system which does not cost a lot of money. It will give you a better understanding of how hydroponics works and the hands-on experience can be worth the cost of the system as you will be able to reuse the parts when you decide to build one.
**Hydroponic Gardening allows you to grow approximately two to ten times the normal growing yield in less than half the space and half the time, making it very popular among Indoor Gardeners.
**Of all soilless methods, water culture, by definition, is true hydroponics. It is also the simplest active hydroponics system to set up on a small scale. In this system the plant roots are totally immersed in a nutrient solution. In a water culture system the roots grow directly into the reservoir as opposed to having a remote reservoir. The actual design of the system is limited only by the imagination of the builder. The system must provide means to (1) support the plant above the solution, (2) aerate the solution, and (3) prevent light from reaching the solution (to prevent the growth of algae).
**Wick systems are passive systems, meaning it has no moving parts and the nutrient solution remains in one place. Plants are fed through capillary action from a wick drawing nutrient solution into the growing medium from the reservoir. The biggest draw back of this system is that plants that are large or use large amounts of water and nutrient may use up the nutrient solution faster than the wick(s) can supply it. In this case additional wicks may be used as a supplement, or another technique can be utilized.
**Drip systems are probably the most widely used type of hydroponic system in the world. They are similar to drip irrigation systems popular with commercial farmers for their ability to conserve water through direct feeding. Operation is simple; a timer controls a submersed pump, which turns the pump on and off. Nutrient solution is dripped onto the base of each plant by a small drip line. In a recirculating drip system the excess nutrient solution that runs off is collected back in the reservoir for re-distribution.
**The Ebb and Flow (or flood and drain) system works by temporarily flooding the grow tray with nutrient solution and then letting the solution drain back into the reservoir. This action is normally done with a submerged pump that is connected to a timer. The timer is set to come on several times a day, depending on the size and type of plants, temperature and humidity and the type of growing medium used. The drain cycle improves the oxygen contact with the plants roots. Using the right medium will ensure that moisture will be available for the roots so that they do not dry out between cycles. One of the main attractions of an Ebb and Flow system is the ability to containerize your plants and physically move them around. This aids in continuous production scenarios and enhances the control of a grower utilizing a veg (blue) and bloom (red) room scenario. The main disadvantage of this type of system is that unless your medium ensures moisture retention there is a vulnerability to power outages, since the only way for your plants to access food is through the action of the pump.
**The Nutrient Film Technique (NFT) is a water-cultural technique in which plants are grown with their root systems contained in a plastic trough through which nutrient solution is continuously circulated. Work on NFT cropping was pioneered by Allen Cooper at the Glasshouse Crops research Institute in Littlehampton, England, in 1965. The term nutrient film technique was coined to stress that the depth of liquid flowing past the roots of the plants should be very shallow in order to ensure that sufficient oxygen would be supplied to the plant roots.
**Feel free to experiment by building your own hydroponic system. As long as you have oxygenated nutrified water at the proper pH it doesn’t matter how you feed them. The possibilities are endless! Be sure to enclose your reservoir so as to prevent evaporation and control feeding times via timers in the case of a top-drip or ebb and flow setup.
**A hydroponic gardening system can be outdoor or indoor.
**The essential elements are: nutrients, water, light, habitat.
**The rate of growth of a hydroponic plant can be up to 50% faster than a soil plant grown under the same conditions.
**The reason for this is that the plants get their nutrition fed directly into their roots from nutrient rich water. Since this water is so high in nutrient content, the plant does not need large roots to search for nutrition. And since the plant expends less energy in growing roots it has more energy available to be productive above the rootline! Hydroponically grown vegetables are healthy, vigorous, and consistently reliable. This form of gardening is clean and extremely easy, and it requires very little effort.
**Hydroponic systems are normally categorized as passive or active. An active hydroponic system moves the nutrient solution with a pump. A passive hydroponic system relies on the capillary action of the growing medium or a wick.
In a passive system the nutrient rich solution is absorbed by the medium or the wick and passed along to the plant's roots. But a downside with this method is that they are usually too wet and do not supply enough oxygen to the root system for the best growth rates.
Hydroponic systems are also characterized as recovery or non-recovery. In recovery systems, the nutrient solution is re-circulated for reuse. In a non-recovery system however, the nutrient solution is not recovered.
You may be unsure of whether to buy or build a hydroponic system. If you have an 'engineering mind' and want to build one, consider buying one first just to get familiar with the inner workings. Buy a system which does not cost a lot of money. It will give you a better understanding of how hydroponics works and the hands-on experience can be worth the cost of the system as you will be able to reuse the parts when you decide to build one.
**Hydroponic Gardening allows you to grow approximately two to ten times the normal growing yield in less than half the space and half the time, making it very popular among Indoor Gardeners.
**Of all soilless methods, water culture, by definition, is true hydroponics. It is also the simplest active hydroponics system to set up on a small scale. In this system the plant roots are totally immersed in a nutrient solution. In a water culture system the roots grow directly into the reservoir as opposed to having a remote reservoir. The actual design of the system is limited only by the imagination of the builder. The system must provide means to (1) support the plant above the solution, (2) aerate the solution, and (3) prevent light from reaching the solution (to prevent the growth of algae).
**Wick systems are passive systems, meaning it has no moving parts and the nutrient solution remains in one place. Plants are fed through capillary action from a wick drawing nutrient solution into the growing medium from the reservoir. The biggest draw back of this system is that plants that are large or use large amounts of water and nutrient may use up the nutrient solution faster than the wick(s) can supply it. In this case additional wicks may be used as a supplement, or another technique can be utilized.
**Drip systems are probably the most widely used type of hydroponic system in the world. They are similar to drip irrigation systems popular with commercial farmers for their ability to conserve water through direct feeding. Operation is simple; a timer controls a submersed pump, which turns the pump on and off. Nutrient solution is dripped onto the base of each plant by a small drip line. In a recirculating drip system the excess nutrient solution that runs off is collected back in the reservoir for re-distribution.
**The Ebb and Flow (or flood and drain) system works by temporarily flooding the grow tray with nutrient solution and then letting the solution drain back into the reservoir. This action is normally done with a submerged pump that is connected to a timer. The timer is set to come on several times a day, depending on the size and type of plants, temperature and humidity and the type of growing medium used. The drain cycle improves the oxygen contact with the plants roots. Using the right medium will ensure that moisture will be available for the roots so that they do not dry out between cycles. One of the main attractions of an Ebb and Flow system is the ability to containerize your plants and physically move them around. This aids in continuous production scenarios and enhances the control of a grower utilizing a veg (blue) and bloom (red) room scenario. The main disadvantage of this type of system is that unless your medium ensures moisture retention there is a vulnerability to power outages, since the only way for your plants to access food is through the action of the pump.
**The Nutrient Film Technique (NFT) is a water-cultural technique in which plants are grown with their root systems contained in a plastic trough through which nutrient solution is continuously circulated. Work on NFT cropping was pioneered by Allen Cooper at the Glasshouse Crops research Institute in Littlehampton, England, in 1965. The term nutrient film technique was coined to stress that the depth of liquid flowing past the roots of the plants should be very shallow in order to ensure that sufficient oxygen would be supplied to the plant roots.
**Feel free to experiment by building your own hydroponic system. As long as you have oxygenated nutrified water at the proper pH it doesn’t matter how you feed them. The possibilities are endless! Be sure to enclose your reservoir so as to prevent evaporation and control feeding times via timers in the case of a top-drip or ebb and flow setup.
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