Washington Hydroponics

Progress Earth Wheatgrass Kits Coming Soon!

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 17:20:33 GMT

Things are coming together and sooner than you know it we'll be launching our online store! In addition to the already amazing line of products we offer, we're excited to announce that we are now an authorized retailer for Progress Earth Wheatgrass Kits.

Progress Earth is a collective of people and energy aimed at rectifying the human imbalance in Earth. By marrying new technologies with primal process we hope to help create an arena suitable for man, and in harmony with nature, in order to bring balance to human endeavors.

Progress Earth is an honest attempt at creating a truly sustainable corporation- a company that produces more than it consumes, that creates more than it wastes. By integrating sustainable and moral concepts into our modern economic model and articulating a reallocation of our idea of “progress” it is possible to bridge the gaps between our societal potential, ecological footprint, and economic expectations. This is not “environmentalist” propaganda, but a challenge to the lack of collective will and recognition we have for the calamities we are creating and our respective place in the natural existence that has birthed us all…so the Earth may be healed.

Wheatgrass is an amazing source of nutrition. In just one ounce of wheatgrass juice is the equivalent to 2.5 lbs of vegetables! Some of the other benefits include:

-Increases red blood-cell count and lowers blood pressure.

-It cleanses the blood, organs and gastrointestinal tract of debris.

-Stimulates metabolism and the body’s enzyme systems by enriching the blood. Restores alkalinity to the blood.

-The juice's abundance of alkaline minerals helps reduce over-acidity in the blood.

Learn more about Progress Earth's Wheatgrass Kits here.

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If You Love Tomatoes, You'll Love Learning How To Make Them Bigger, Healthier and Tastier

Tue, 25 May 2010 22:08:18 GMT

What a lovely, luscious fruit tomatoes are. Red and juicy with a variety of flavours and colors, tomatoes contain health-enhancing components such as lycopene, which helps maintain healthy cardiovascular systems.

Many tomatoes are grown hydroponically. Hydroponic tomatoes can taste as good as tomatoes grown in rich soil outdoors. The benefits of growing hydroponically include being able to control and extend fruit production, as well as being able to augment the supply of natural sugars and other components that plants use to produce especially tasty tomatoes.

Hydroponics growing in controlled environments gives growers ability to harvest produce year round. For commercial purposes, the ability to produce summer crops all year means being able to provide fruit, flowers and veggies out of season when they command higher prices.

You’ll be pleasantly surprised to find the amazing range of Advanced Nutrients plant growth products that will help you grow great tomatoes outdoors, indoors, hydroponically, and in greenhouses using modified or total hydroponics techniques.

Tomatoes are relatively easy to grow indoors or outdoors, but they have specific nutritional and environmental needs.

Here are some factors influencing tomato growth:

Temperature - Tomatoes do best within a range of 55-85 degrees F. Tomato plants can be severely damaged or killed by prolonged cold or even a brief exposure to frost. Tomatoes can handle high temperatures, but are damaged by prolonged temperatures over 93 degrees F.
Nutrients - Tomatoes need properly-designed nutrients that are easily absorbed, properly balanced, and rich in nitrogen and other components.
Light - Whether grown indoors or outdoors, tomato plants need exposure to full, strong light for at least five hours each day.
Pollination – If tomatoes are to bear fruit, they need to be pollinated. Unless growers are going to engage in artificial pollination, the plants must be accessible to pollinators, which can include insects and wind. Obviously, it is difficult to provide pollinator access to plants grown indoors or in greenhouses.
Overall environmental conditions - Tomato plants suffer when there are windy conditions, extreme heat or cold, polluted air or soils, or presence of insects, blight or disease. Tomatoes need adequate water, but they do not need to be drowned. Avoid overwatering as much as you guard against drought.

GET A HEAD START ON GROWING HEALTHY TOMATO PLANTS

The easiest way to start to grow tomatoes is by purchasing seedlings or transplants. If you grow from seedling or transplant, you should treat your plants with Advanced Nutrients products such as No Shock and Jump Start. These products help plants grow faster and better survive the stress of early life.

It is of course possible to grow tomatoes from seed. This method adds a couple of weeks to the total growing time, but it has several advantages. One advantage is that there are many heirloom types of tomatoes available by seed that are not available as commercial seedlings and transplants. You can select specific varieties of seed tomato that are perfect for your growing needs and situation.

Growing from seeds is less expensive than buying seedlings and transplants. It is easy to plant hundreds of seeds and select the best sprouts for a price that costs far less than buying a couple dozen seedlings or transplants.

Experienced tomato growers use specialized techniques to ensure the success of seed-grown tomato crops. One of these techniques is called pre-germination. Pre-germination increases the rate of successful germination. If you intend to sprout tomato seeds for use as outdoor plants, the pre-germination process should begin approximately 7 weeks before the last estimated frost in your area.

One pre-germination technique involves putting a piece of paper towel in the bottom of a flat-bottomed container, and dampen the towel with warm water. Put seeds on towel, cover the container and place it in a warm, dark spot. Other growers use peat pots or miniature rockwool cubes to pre-germinate seeds in.

It is useful to use a diluted solution of Advanced Nutrients Jump Start as part of water applied to seedlings, sprouts and early plants. This provides nutrition and other components that give seedlings and young plants healthier metabolisms so they grow faster and stronger.

Because seeds, cuttings, transplants and seedlings are susceptible to diseases which in some cases can kill growth before it even starts, many growers treat seeds and early sprouts with Advanced Nutrients Piranha, Barricade, and Scorpion Juice. These products strengthen seeds, seedlings and plants while also providing a protective barrier that fights off diseases and pests that can kill crops early on.

Check your seeds frequently, keeping their grow media damp but not wet. Seeds should sprout within 5-7 days. If seeds are on a paper towel, they need to be replanted into peat pots, rockwool cubes/slabs, soil or other media. This should be done only after the seeds have sprouted to show a white “rootlet” that’s about half an inch long.

Growers who intend to grow their seedlings in soil often use an early root zone mixture that is lighter and more aerated than regular root zone media. This allows young plants to navigate the media with their delicate, beginning root systems.

During the earliest weeks of growth, it is very useful to feed plants with Advanced Nutrients Iguana Juice Grow, and Organic B. These all-organic feed formulas that create fast early growth and set your plants up to deliver huge, tasty, organic harvests.

If you are going to grow outdoors, transplant seedlings into larger pots with good drainage about three weeks prior to when the last spring frost is expected for your area. Plants should be kept in bright sunshine.

If you have been growing plants indoors or in a greenhouse or other protected area and you intend to move them outdoors, they have to be “hardened off” before they are placed permanently outdoors. “Hardening off” refers to the process of getting plants used to full sun and full outdoors conditions.

Hardening off consists of placing plants in an outdoor environment for incrementally longer and longer periods of time until they can handle being outdoors all day and night. Depending on your local climate, hardening off can take from one to two weeks to complete.

TRY THESE GREAT IDEAS FOR MAKING A PERFECT ENVIRONMENT FOR YOUR TOMATOES

It’s important to properly set up the soil for plant growth. Soil to grow tomatoes in should be at least a foot deep, rich in organic matter, and slightly acidic in pH. If pH is not ideal, it can be altered using various additives, including Advanced Nutrients pH Up or Down. Maintaining a proper pH is essential for plant health. The pH of root zone media greatly affects the way plants can intake nutrients, which of course greatly affects growth. Gardeners can buy pH testing equipment at most garden shops. pH is a more crucial factor in hydroponics growing than it is in soil growing.

Mulching is another soil alteration that benefits tomatoes. Mulch keeps pathogens from getting to lower leaves, retains soil moisture, and limits weed growth. Organic mulches are the best. Three or four inches of organic mulch should be applied about two weeks after outdoor planting or when plants have reached a minimum one foot in height.

As with all crops, tomatoes need proper nutrition to maximize growth rate and yield. Tomatoes have an interesting mix of nutritional needs: most crops require high nitrogen and low phosphorus/potassium fertilizers during the first 7 weeks of growth, but tomatoes benefit from high nitrogen and relatively high phosphorus during that period.

Tomatoes derive benefit from frequent feedings. Most fertilizer products don’t give you the flexibility needed to accommodate special needs of individual species. Advanced Nutrients gives you full range flexibility including a nutrients calculator, multi-part formulas, and specialized additives so you can give plants precise amounts of key growth and yield components.

For example, many growers give a ratio-graded mixture of Heavy Harvest Spring, Summer and Fall to tomatoes throughout the growing season.

Others give a mixture of Iguana Juice Grow and Bloom, which provides the proper ratio of targeted nutrients when plants need it.

It is very useful to give plants extra phosphorus, potassium and other fruit-boosting growth components during the weeks of growth when flowers are setting and tomatoes are being formed. This creates more flowering sites, more tomatoes, and larger tomatoes.

We invite you to taste the delicious difference in your tomatoes when you use Advanced Nutrients products such as Big Bud, Connoisseur, Sweet Leaf and other products that make more tomatoes, bigger tomatoes and tastier tomatoes.

Please note that you can contact our technical experts to find out exactly how to use our broad range of products to give you the most and best tomatoes you’ve ever grown.

Tomatoes are very easy to grow hydroponically. Growers use the same nutrient and additive inputs as they would when growing tomatoes in soil.

The indoor hydroponics grower can have a constantly renewed batch of seedlings, early plants, mature plants and harvested plants in cycle year-round.

Growing indoors means growers have to provide many of the environmental and growth components provided free by outdoor growing.

One of the main inputs that indoor growers have to provide is light. High intensity lighting with a balance of two High Pressure Sodium lights to every one Metal Halide light is best for producing bushy plants that give big yields of luscious tomatoes. You can safely give tomatoes 16-20 hours per day of high intensity light during their early growing season, and can give them 13-17 hours of high intensity light, perhaps with a greater emphasis on High Pressure Sodium lighting, during the bloom and fruit season.

As noted earlier, the pH of the nutrient solution is crucial for hydroponics success. Because hydroponics plants are most often grown in sterile root zone media that doesn’t contain any of its own nutrition, the grower has to provide adequate nutrition and maintain the proper chemistry of the nutrients water so plants are able to absorb nutrition. Having and using high quality pH and ppm (parts per million) meters is essential for growers who want to be successful at hydroponics

For more information on growing tomatoes and to read the complete article from Advanced Nutrients, go here.

See our full selection of Advanced Nutrients products here.

How to Choose The Hydroponic Grow Lights that Are Right For You

Tue, 18 May 2010 17:38:56 GMT

Choosing what kind of hydroponic grow lights you will use for your grow system is one of the most important decisions you will make as a hydroponic grower. Photosynthesis, the process by which your plants will process nutrients and grow, relies entirely upon the availability of quality light. Choose the right light, and you will enjoy a faster harvest and a bigger yield time after time. Choose poorly, and you will most likely see your plants struggling.

Here are the four most common hydroponic grow lights used in modern gardens, and the benefits of each.

Fluorescent Grow Lights
Fluorescent lights are typically used in smaller or amateur gardens, and are extremely limited in their usefulness. Since they only produce white light and are low intensity, they can't deliver the range of light needed for most plants to grow to their potential. They are therefore only really useful on seedlings and clones. Since they do not give off much heat, they can be placed as close to the plant as you'd like, but most hydroponic professionals recommend a distance of between four to six inches. Fluorescent grow lights are typically very inexpensive, but their bulbs must be replaced frequently, which can add up to much more cost over time.
High Intensity Discharge Grow Lights
Because they offer a broader range of colors on the light spectrum, and thus more closely imitate natural sunlight, High Intensity Discharge (HID) lights are much more appropriate for general hydroponic growing. They do, however, produce a great deal of heat, which may require purchasing cooling fans to keep your plants safe.

There are two kinds of high intensity discharge lights: metal halide grow lights and high-pressure sodium grow lights. Metal halide lights can emit light on the blue end of the spectrum, and are more ideal for the vegetative stage of plant growth, while high-pressure sodium lights emit light on the red end of the spectrum and are more commonly used for the flowering stage. High-pressure sodium grow lights are also ideal for use on fruit bearing plants and vegetables.
LED Grow Lights
A LED (Light Emitting Diode) light emits illumination through processing a current in one terminal and out another, forming a simple semiconductor.

LED lights have a number of practical advantages over more common grow lights. Because they produce such little heat, they have little risk of burning your plants; they do not require you to additionally purchase cooling fans. LED grow lights require a larger up front investment, but since they can last between seven to ten years before you need to replace them and use a fraction of the energy of other kinds of lights, they can actually save you money in the long run. Some studies even show that LED lights are even more effective for hydroponic gardens.

LED lights are typically offered in a variety of colors to use at appropriate stages of vegetative growth. There is also available a green LED light, which is "invisible" to plants, and would therefore allow you to observe and maintain your hydroponic garden without interrupting your plants' photoperiod.

View original article from Advanced Nutrients here.

Feed Four Families with this Hydro Greenhouse

Mon, 17 May 2010 18:45:06 GMT

“Grow your own food!” is easy to say, but what exactly do you need to do to make that happen? We asked the indoor garden and greenhouse design and construction experts at Good Green Builders to draw us up a plan of a greenhouse that could feed not just one, but four families! So if the initial set-up costs of a family food production facility seem prohibitive, why not collaborate with your friends, split the investment, and enjoy the harvest together. Happy days!

This hydroponic greenhouse is designed to feed four families with fresh produce throughout the year. With the collective financial investment and sweat equity of four different families, a shared greenhouse an easy way to connect with friends, family and/or neighbors and help the environment by cultivating your own food. Initial costs might seem high, but with a properly built structure and some TLC you will be able to cut your trips to the store down exponentially. Not only will you be saving money in the long run, you will know what you are consuming. In this issue we’ve chosen a 12’x24’ structure to demonstrate what type of facility would be needed to produce enough lettuce, bell peppers, tomatoes, and cucumbers for four families throughout the year.

Budget

There are many different types of greenhouse structure kits on the market today. You can find kits for greenhouses this size for around US$500. This would be a simple kit, only providing building materials for the actual structure. Other kits for this size of greenhouse range in the $2,000 to $4,000 range. These structures will provide you with a more aesthetically-pleasing greenhouse with better ventilation. Much of this budget is dependent on how technically inclined and handy you are. For practicality purposes, we will figure that the four families in this collective will complete all of the work, therefore minimizing the labor costs.

A conservative budget to get your hydroponic greenhouse fully up and running will be around $5,000 to $8,000. Many of these kits don’t supply a foundation, hydroponics systems, electricity, water, and many other factors that go into this budget. The further distance your greenhouse is from utilities (e.g. electricity, water), the more expensive it will be to run them to the greenhouse. When considering your budget and which features you’d like to include in your hydroponic greenhouse, remember that it is always easier to add internal features than it is to add size to your greenhouse.

Site Location & Preparation

When selecting a site it is important to ensure there is ample sun for the majority of the day. It is essential to have an open spot where the skies are clear to the east, west, and south. If you are unable to have completely clear skies facing these directions, you will reduce the maximum plant growth in your greenhouse. A little shade is acceptable, as this is a family-run project and you are not building a greenhouse for commercial production.

When considering the site for foundation preparation you should ensure that the site is level. As mentioned earlier, greenhouse kits don’t come with foundation kits, although most of them will tell you how to prepare a foundation. One simple solution is to use treated 4”x6” wood for your foundation. It is important that, while fastening these together, the foundation remains square and level. You can fasten these with decking screws or, even better, galvanized lags that will penetrate connecting wood to at least two inches. Anchoring your foundation is very important. To do this you can drill half-inch holes every 3 feet in the 4×6 and pound 24” rebar into the ground. You want to make sure that the rebar is flush to the wood so that they won’t get into the way of the actual greenhouse structure. Also, ensure that your foundation is slightly above grade.

Preparing the Floor

For your flooring, you want to use something that will drain easily but that is also easy to walk on. A simple option is gravel. Before you lay in the crushed rock, you want to ensure that you lay down black ground-cover fabric to ensure that all weeds are kept out of your ideal environment. It will actually benefit you if you lay this down before the foundation is set up, because otherwise the weeds will enter in through the corners of the foundation. The next steps are to secure the greenhouse to the foundation. From here you can follow the instructions of your greenhouse kit.

What’s for Dinner?

For this greenhouse, tomatoes, bell (sweet) peppers, cucumbers and lettuce are being grown.

Tomatoes

Tomatoes are started in 4” rockwool and are placed on rockwool slabs so the roots have more room to grow. The slabs are wrapped in plastic, so it is important to cut slits in the plastic to allow excess water to leak out. The slabs are placed directly onto the gravel so they can drain well. They are top fed from drippers. If you want more insulation under the rockwool slabs, you can put foam underneath so they aren’t touching the ground. This is not completely necessary, but it can help control the temperature of the root system. The rockwool slabs are 3’ long and can house 5-6 tomato plants. Each tomato plant will produce around 20lbs of fruit each season. You will need to train the young tomatoes to grow up onto a trellis system so that the plants can support the fruit. Rockwool is a good choice because tomatoes’ root systems can thrive in the small space and don’t need as much volume to be effective. As well, tomatoes are annual plants so you can spend the extra money for the rockwool as the rockwool will suffice for the entire season. Rockwool is a proven media for tomatoes and will promote vigorous growth. The tomatoes are planted in September and are pulled in July. This gives you time to clean out the greenhouse and start fresh for another year of crops.

Cucumbers

Cucumbers are started in 4” rockwool cubes and are grown in 5-gallon pots, two cucumbers per pot. Coir is the chosen medium for this because it is cheap, effective, and it is a byproduct, so we are preventing waste. Also, with coir you have the option to treat and re-use it for the next growing season. The cucumbers will need a trellis system to support them when they start to produce cucumbers. They are top fed through drippers from the main nutrient reservoir. In this greenhouse there are 20 cucumber plants: you can expect to produce 20-30 cucumbers per plant each season.

Peppers

Just like the cucumbers, the peppers are planted in 5-gallon pots, with coir as the grow media and a top-fed dripper system. You can expect to produce about 20 peppers per plant each season.

Lettuce

The lettuce is grown in a NFT system: it is the most effective technique for growing leafy greens, because lettuce has such a fast turnaround. The only media needed for this system is the media that you propagate your seeds in. You can either buy or make a NFT system. There are five 4”x4” troughs with 10 growing sites in each trough. The troughs should be placed about 4-10” apart, depending on the stage of growth that the lettuce is in. With this system, you should be able to crank out at least 10-15 heads per week or about 250 per season, depending on how you set it up and if you are constantly propagating and have a cycle going. In hotter months you can expect to cultivate your heads of lettuce in about 8 weeks, from seed to final product. It will take about 13 weeks in winter months. This will need a separate nutrient reservoir, which is constantly circulating. The troughs are set up on a slight slope so that they drain back into the reservoir. Make sure that you have the reservoir covered so that you don’t have a build up of algae.

Grow Environment

Ensure that you have vents on either side of the greenhouse for proper ventilation. Put screens around the vents to guarantee that no pests enter your greenhouse through these vents. Keep in mind that a very fine screen will inhibit proper airflow. One solution is to build a box wrapped in a fine screen so that there is more surface area for the air to pass through. Also, install multiple oscillating fans to ensure proper air movement.

The desired temperature is 65°F (18°C) at night and 75-80°F (24-27°C) during the day. The better quality polycarbonate product used will make heating and cooling easier.

If you have good air movement in your site, simple vents will suffice at moving air around your greenhouse and cooling it. The most consistent way to cool your greenhouse is with an electrical fan, pulling in cold air and pushing out the hot air. Another economical way to cool your greenhouse is to have an evaporative cooling system. This works very well in areas of low humidity and high temperatures. For areas with higher humidity and lower temperatures, it isn’t as effective. An evaporative cooler will be able to lower temperatures by 5-7°F (14-15°C). A last resort to cooling is using shades. They are are sold in different colors and densities, but the white fabric is the most effective cooling shade for the light that it cuts out. Usually they are applied in the spring and are taken off in the fall when the temperatures start to drop.

View original article from Urban Garden.

Aeroponics & Bubble Buckets

Tue, 11 May 2010 00:50:41 GMT

Aeroponics is the process of growing plants in an air or mist environment without the use of soil or an aggregate medium. Aeroponic growing is considered to be safe and ecologically friendly for producing natural, healthy plants and crops. One of the main ecological advantages of aeroponics is the conservation of water and energy. In comparison to other types of hydroponics, Aeroponics offers lower water and energy inputs per square meter of growing area.

This particular hydro system you see here is an areoponic deep water culture system, nicknamed bubble buckets because it's made out of buckets. This system is very easy to setup as it allows you to arrange the buckets how ever you need, depending on your grow room. This system also allows you to grow large plants in a short time.

In the bubble buckets pictured here, we are growing tomato plants. Check back with us later this week for more pictures and updates. And, if you're interested in setting up your own bubble bucket system or have questions be sure to contact us! *The bubble bucket grow systems will be available for sale on our website soon.

Welcome

Tue, 04 May 2010 17:25:49 GMT

Welcome to our site and to our brand new blog! We're happy that you've visited and hope you are able to find the information and products that you are looking for. Our goal for the blog is to be your resource for new and helpful information about the hydroponics industry. If you ever have questions about anything posted here, please leave us a comment or send us an email via our contact page.

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