Advantages of Growing Hydroponically

[KUSH]

No soil is required.
Soil borne diseases are virtually eliminated.
Weeds are virtually eliminated.
Fewer pesticides may be required because of the above two reasons.
Edible crops are not contaminated with soil.
Water use can be substantially less than with outdoor irrigation of soil-grown crops.
Solution culture hydroponics does not require disposal of a solid medium or sterilization and reuse of a solid medium.
Solution culture hydroponics allows greater control over the rootzone environment than soil culture.
Hydroponics is often the best crop production method in remote areas that lack suitable soil, such as Antarctica, space stations, space colonies or atolls, such as Wake Island.
In solution culture hydroponics, plant roots can be seen.
Hydroponics is considered high-tech and futuristic and so appeals to many people.
Hydroponics is excellent for plant teaching and research.

[stickyfingers]

you can play god unlike when you grow outdoors

[harvester]

No soil is required.
Soil borne diseases are virtually eliminated.
Weeds are virtually eliminated.
Fewer pesticides may be required because of the above two reasons.
Edible crops are not contaminated with soil.
Water use can be substantially less than with outdoor irrigation of soil-grown crops.
Solution culture hydroponics does not require disposal of a solid medium or sterilization and reuse of a solid medium.
Solution culture hydroponics allows greater control over the rootzone environment than soil culture.
Hydroponics is often the best crop production method in remote areas that lack suitable soil, such as Antarctica, space stations, space colonies or atolls, such as Wake Island.
In solution culture hydroponics, plant roots can be seen.
Hydroponics is considered high-tech and futuristic and so appeals to many people.
Hydroponics is excellent for plant teaching and research.

Hey there kush. Don't mean to be a bitch, but to say that weeds are VIRTUALLY eliminated is wrong. They are completely eliminated. If I ever found a weed in one of my DWC grows I'd be very surprised, or even in one of my coco grows I'd be very surprised too.

Great post though, and sorry for being pedantic.

[Helping Hands]

You need a full light spectrum ( Blue & Red for growing), then the yellows & oranges for flowering.

There is a NEW FULL GROWING SPECTRUM LED GROW LIGHT on the market, I believe you are going to hear a lot of good things about it. It offers the growing spectrum of a (HPS) lamp, with out the drying out heat. Ultraledlights.com
They should have it ontheir page by 2/27/08

CHECK THIS OUT!

Color Temperature
In scientific terms, Kelvin temperature is a measure of the color of a light source relative to a black body at a particular temperature expressed in degrees Kelvin (°K).

In simpler terms, it is the degree of warmth or coolness of a light source, not with regards to the physical temperature, rather to the visual temperature of the light. The higher the degree K, the bluer, or "cooler" the lamp appears. The lower the degree K, the more "warm", or red the light appears.

Incandescent lights have a low color temperature (approximately 2700°K) and have a red-yellowish tone; natural daylight has a high color temperature (approximately 6000°K) and appears bluish. Today, the phosphors used in fluorescent and high intensity (HID) lights can be blended to provide any desired color temperature in the range from 2800°K to 6000°K.

LED lighting can also be blended to provide any desired color temperature except LED lighting is measured in nanometers.

Color Rendering Index (CRI)
The Color Rendering Index (CRI) is a rating scale for light sources (lamps) from 0 to 100 to indicate how accurately colors can be perceived under a light source. The higher the CRI, the more accurately colors appear. Technically, CRI ratings should only be compared for lamps with similar color temperatures (Kelvin ratings)

A specific example may make this a little clearer. Tungsten light -- 3200K -- is a full spectrum light, that is, it is emitting light over the entire visible spectrum. Red, orange, yellow, etc. Sunlight is also a full spectrum light, but at a much higher Kelvin rating, but still contains red, orange, yellow, etc. Many other light are also full spectrum xenon, carbon arc, but have different proportions of the various wavelengths.

Each of these full spectrum light sources contains light at a near infinite number of different wavelengths, at which can be measured in nanometers. Visible light being the region between 400 and 750 nanometers.

A very specific color would have a very specific wavelength. For example, a ruby laser has a wavelength of 694nm.

By combining different LED wavelengths a full spectrum can be achieved.

Our New LED Grow Light offerers the spectrums needed to grow full beautiful, lush plants and for only pennies of what the costs are with other type lighting.

[Claxacle73]

rnnice... i did some research on this one a couple years ago and concluded that it wasnt going to be so great for MJ, i would assume the same for tomatoes, because the fish waste is very high in N and not so much PK so it would be difficult to provide a good environment for flowering w/o having an affect on the fish... probably why the author is growing lettucern

[TheQleaner]

This may be old news for some, but check it out..

http://www.theqleaner.com/images/icons/icon_pdf.gif THE AMAZING POT FARM!! (http://www.theqleaner.com/files/eBooks/Miscellaneous/THE_AMAZING_POT_FARM.pdf)

[bobthejoiner]

soil is easier and not exspensive just a hobby not a business.just my thoughts.if i had loads of cash and time i would but i aint.such is life

[makedavine]

Hydroponics has taken plant cultivation to the next level. You will be able to grow additional hydroponic vegetables in a lesser space. This is despite hydroponic vegetables being larger on average, their roots are smaller which enable this to occur.

[kenshamkinghall]

really learn alot

[smashedbyhashish]

soil is easier and not exspensive just a hobby not a business.just my thoughts.if i had loads of cash and time i would but i aint.such is life

IMO I can spend just as much on soil & pots has a aeroponic system, & even more. Most hydro systems pay for them selves in no time & I never got to put that $ out again. Soil on the other hand is expensive & you buy it every time you grow. I am currently growing in soil, & just recently made a aeroponic system for less than 50$ that I just harvested 2oz's from. My soil cost me much more. I am certainly going to make the switch to hydro.

[christopher99]

Good information regarding hydroponic growing.

I am got lots of help from this blog. I thought I would like to share this. Not sure how long this link helpful for you.

redd.it/mfjig

[Mars126]

LEDs in Floriculture
LED technology, i rst used in the mid-1980s, has come a long way and may make its way into the greenhouse in coming

years.

Light-emitting diodes have been around for decades. Sometimes we see them used individually, such as power indicators for
stereos or televisions. Other times, dozens of them are clustered together to form an array, such as the red light of trafi c

signals. In horticulture, LEDs were i rst used for plant-growth studies in the mid-1980s on the space shuttle and in space

stations. At that time, LEDs were only available at a high cost in a relatively dim red. But LEDs have since advanced to the

point that we may see them in greenhouses in the next decade.Potential BenefitsLEDs have several advantages compared

with traditional lighting sources.
First, most LEDs emit a narrow range of light; only red or only blue, for example. This might seem like a disadvantage at i rst,
but it actually enables the combination of different LEDs into an array to produce a specii c light quality.
For example, we know that green light is less efiicient at eliciting a photosynthetic response compared with red or blue light.

Therefore, we could design an array based on plant responses to light.

Second, LEDs are much more efi cient at converting electricity into photosynthetic light when compared with tradi-tional

artificial light sources. One recently published report states that LEDs consumed about one-third the amount of energy as

high-pressure sodium (HPS) and metal halide lamps that produced the same light intensity. Because they produce less heat,

LED arrays can be placed closer to plants than HPS lamps, which enable a higher light intensity without an excessive
increase in plant temperature.A few other advantages of LED systems: They have a long operating life (at least 50,000 hours),

can be easily dimmed if desired and turn on instantly; there is no warm-up period, unlike HPS lamps.
Finally, LEDs don’t pose as much of a disposal problem as lamps that contain mercury or other heavy metals. With all of

these advantages, why don’t we see LED arrays used in greenhouses today? Cost.Current Drawbacks

Although the cost of LED arrays continues to decrease, and light intensity for individual diodes increases, they are still cost

prohibitive for commercial greenhouse applications. Small LED arrays can already be purchased for home use, but their light
output is quite low and, given their cost, aren’t economical for low-intensity photoperiodic lighting.
However, LEDs are beginning to be used in Japanese commercial plant factories that produce vegetable transplants.
We face a “which came i rst, the chicken or the egg?” quandary with LEDs: Because there is very little demand for LED arrays

for plant growth, they require a lot of labor to manufacture, so cost is very high. Because they are expensive, demand for

LEDs is low and restricted to specialized situations, such as research on growing plants in space (Figure 1) or
other scientii c experiments. With adequate demand, manufacturing can be automated, and in theory, costs
can dramatically decrease.Many plant-growth studies have been performed with LEDs as the sole light source, but few have
studied LEDs as sunlight supplements. Research for greenhouse applications is therefore needed to determine desirable LED

array spectrums and their impacts on plant growth and plant morphology.

[David Harritz]

There are many advantages by planting the plant with the helps of the hydroponic. The contaminate is not wit soil in edible crops. The use of the water is become too less owing to the use of the hydroponic. The hydroponic is very much useful to develop the roots of the plant in the air as compared to the soil plant in the outdoor.