Category: Hydroponic Growing Tips

Preventative Pest Control is the Best Pest Control

Pest control is often a topic shrugged off by novice indoor gardeners.  You might think, oh its indoor, there are  no bugs in here.  WRONG.  You cannot assume things like this when it comes to indoor gardening.  It is better to plan for gnats, flies, aphids, spider mites, and other plant eating bugs before they wipe out your crop with out you noticing.  Don’t underestimate the damage a bad pest infestation can cause.  It may seem like they are only eating a few leaves or slightly discoloring leaves.  The point is all that degradation adds up and what do you have to show for it? Worse crops, bug infested food or flowers, and lower yield!  The point of indoor gardening is to control for a better grow.  Be preventative in your pest control and you may never have to worry about an infestation.

Try using an organic garlic spray to ward off bugs.  Post up yellow sticky paper to catch flying insects.  The yellow sticky paper is great almost anywhere you put it.  I have put them under the lips of containers to catch fresh gnats in the soil.  If you place them up higher you may catch bigger flies.  Try to use organic and natural pest control so you don’t affect the quality of your crops.  Hydro shops also sell predatory bugs that will eat your pest infestation and then eat themselves.  This is a method I have not had to use, but it is one of the most natural pest controls.  Buying live lady bugs or placing them in your garden when you find them around the house will help eliminate small bug populations.

Another method of preventative pest control for an indoor garden is an enclosed growing environment that pests cannot get into.  People may not realize the importance of closed chambers, but they can certainly help isolate a pest problem.  If you anticipate a possible aphid or spider mite problem try a very light solution of a spray like AzaMax to ward off any pest infestation attempts. I’ve wiped out whole aphid colonies with only off-brand Neem before as well, but I’m sure that won’t work for all.

Green Moral of the Story: Preventative pest control can save you many headaches from dealing with nasty bugs and sprays.  Preventative pest control can also ensure your crops will stay healthy and yield at their highest potential, and that’s what we’re after.

Get General Hydroponics AzaMax at Amazon today to protect your indoor garden investment. You can also read customer reviews here.

Safety tips: Building the Grow Space

Here is a list of a few tips everyone should consider when putting together a hydroponic system or a hydro grow room/box.

1. DON’T OVERLOAD YOUR CIRCUITS.  This goes for circuits, outlets, custom wiring(check the max load), timers, extension cords, and surge protectors.  Its easy to get a room to use enough electricity to trip your circuit.  If the power is too great you could start an electrical fire.  High pressure sodium and metal halide lights 400 watts and over may need to be plugged into a lighting controller that is wired to the house electricity or plugged into the dryer socket.   If you are doing wiring to the main circuit box make sure to shut the power down and have a clear plan of what you are doing.

2.  Keep outlets, surge protectors, timers, light controllers, ballasts, and all electronic components off the floor.  Make sure electronic components are out of reach of sprayers, drip hoses, and any reservoir that could crack or spill.  Plan for the worst!  Keep your electronic components away from the water!

3. Line the room or box with a water proof floor and walls so if something does break or water is spilled it doesn’t ruin the floor or create mold.  If the liner is something like mylar or black and white poly it will be very easy to clean up the water.  Even if you think you have a really tight hydroponic system that will never leak or spill, you are probably wrong.  At some point in time through filling up multiple reservoirs and changing nutrients you will most likely spill something on the floor.  It is much better to already have water proofing there to prevent a mess and mold possibility and its easier to clean up.

4. Turn off fans open or caged fans that you are working by.  I’ve cut my fingers on computer fans in my mini veg box and clipped my ear in one trying to pull a bulb out from deep in the box.

5. Wear gloves – Wearing gloves can protect you and your plants from stress.  Human hands constantly rubbing on your plants is not good.  It may not show negative effects, but it will unlikely show any positive effects.  We want our plants in the best condition possible all the time.  The gloves will also protect you from sprays or bugs on the plant and the possibility of an allergic reaction.

Safe growing!

The Importance of a Reliable Ballast

Recently when I was away from my house and garden for almost two weeks, I learned a valuable lesson about the importance of a good ballast.  The ballast is the box that cord set comes out of for HID lighting.  Ballasts usually come with metal halide and high pressure sodium lighting systems so if you are using a high powered lighting system in your hydroponics garden, you most likely have a ballast.  As a novice I didn’t realize the importance of a good ballast.  I learned my lesson when a large crop of berries was wiped out because of a ballast failure.

I was using a cheap ballast that came with the kit and did not even have casing to cool the outside temperature of the device.  It was an old fashioned magnetic ballast.  The ballast died while I was gone on vacation and when I came back the berries had been sitting under darkness for days, like a three or four day solar eclipse.  To make matters worse the berries weren’t using any energy because there was no sunlight, but the water pump for the nutrient reservoir was still running on schedule.  The berries were being pumped with nutrients every day during their bloom phase while they were receiving no light!  There was no way for the berries to use the nutrients being fed to them.  They were just starting to bloom so they mostly died and there was no fruit for all the work I had put into them.

The lesson here is no matter if you get a magnetic or electronic digital ballast, make sure its GOOD QUALITY.  Your crop may depend on the reliability of your ballasts.  Hopefully indoor gardeners all over can read this tragic story of loss before they make the same mistake I made.

Product Review: AzaMax – Controlling Spider Mites


Lately I’ve had a pretty bad infestation of spider mites and aphids and I have been looking for the best solution for my plants without getting into nasty chemicals that will affect the taste of my food at harvest.  Gnats are another common indoor gardening pest I have had trouble with.  A simple solution for gnats is the yellow sticky paper that you can put along the walls and on posts in the containers of your plants.  Spider mites however don’t really fly around or get attracted to the bright yellow colors.   They seem to just be attracted to the pretty green leaves of my plants!  Flattering… except spider mites are gross and I would not like to eat them, regardless of how much they want to eat the leaves of my plants.

I tried spraying some solution of Neem PY onto my plants and it takes a few days to kick in but it slows down the infestation for sure.  Neem makes the bugs slow and frankly just plain stupid.  The bugs aren’t killed instantly, so don’t feel like you’ve been cheated because all your bug problems are still there.  The neem makes the bugs not hungry and unable to reproduce.  The bugs will eventually starve to death and the babies will hatch damaged or will eat the neem on the leaves right away and become affected.   The Neem PY wouldn’t stop the infestation completely but it certainly crippled them.  No matter how much neem I used the spider mites kept coming back.  One time I used too much neem too close to harvest and I could taste its tangy flavor on my food.  It wasn’t as horrible as a I thought and was better than eating mites, but I would rather have the best food possible not just “okay” food.  Thats why I grow my own!

To get the infestation in check I picked up some of General Hydroponics’ AzaMax because two other indoor gardeners recommended it to me.  I figured it would work like Neem PY but it was actually amazing how much stronger it was.  I foliar fed the AzaMax to my plants and than poured some solution into my hydro reservoirs to ensure the plants would be bug proof.  After about two days it seems like almost all the spider mites have died or stopped moving.  It definitely helped control the gnat problem too.  I have not harvested the food the AzaMax has been applied to since it is new but I will be sure to write about how it has affected the food flavor and aroma if at all.    If you decide to go and try AzaMax I would try foliar applications at first to see if you can rid the problem that way.  This is especially good if you are still in the grow phase and the fruits you will be eating or picking have not started to form yet.  AzaMax is a little pricey for how much it recommends to use but I promise it does work well.  I will most likely continue to use Neem PY and AzaMax as a preventative and reactionary pest control solution.

Another good feature of AzaMax is that it is OMRI (Organic Materials Review Institute) approved.  Sometimes labels can be questionable since any company can label their products “organic.”  Look for the OMRI or other official organic labels.  Make sure to look up and research any product you think is suspicious or may be claiming to be organic.  You can take a look at the OMRI web site here.  Even though some forms of hydroponic systems use inorganic parts, I still think it is best to get the closest thing you can to organic every time.  I believe this can yield a more natural and usually sweeter tasting fruit or vegetable.

Get General Hydroponics AzaMax at Amazon today to protect your indoor garden investment. You can also read customer reviews here.

GUIDE: Setting Up A Simple Drain Table Part 1

This guide is as detailed as possible so that people that are just starting with hydroponics can understand it.  There are ALOT of pictures – You were warned.

Left side – Soil container strawberries Right side – Rockwool cubes waiting for fresh clones

It is very easy to go to a hydroponics shop and just pick up a drain table and an assembly for it to sit on.  This may also include a $100 reservoir to go with the system.  Hydroponic parts add up fast and thats where Do it yourselfers try to save.  By building your own simple drain table you may be able to save money on your hydroponic setup.  The saved money can be used to get bigger containers and more medium for your roots.  The type of table I am going to show you how to build allows you to freely move your plants around in their containers.  This table is useful for soil and hydroponics alike because it allows the excess water and nutrient run off from watering/feeding to drain into a run off container that can hold many gallons so it rarely has to be changed.  It can greatly reduce the amount of maintenance needed daily in between harvests.

Blue tub is for the water to drain into after it goes through the plant.
The clear tray is like a table for your plants. The lid of the container is what the tray sits on, on top of the blue tub from the previous picture.
The blue tub from the first picture can fit two of the clear trays which have about 6-8 inch tall walls.
Another view of previous image.

This is a variation of the table I am making for people with less space. For this version the lid of the blue container would be latched on and the clear tray would sit on top with a drain going to the blue tub.

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Continue reading this guide: Part 2

Over Fertilization : Too Many Nutrients

down turned fringes.

I have a few house plants I like to mess around with when I get new sets of nutrients.  In the picture I have my purple passion vine in a condition that is starting to show signs of over fertilization.  These house plants only need nutrients every 2-4 weeks at most but sometimes I’ll hit it every week for a few weeks at a time to see if the growth jumps.  The plant is mostly rooted in the container so it is at its max requirement for nutrition.  I water it every day pretty much.  During today’s daily watering I noticed there was water in the tray and the plant had leaf fringes that were down turned.  This plant naturally curls its leaves some, but i could tell the difference in structure right away.

The down turned leaves could be a sign of over fertilization or nutrient salt build up.  These can both be fixed by simply watering with plain water every day until symptoms disappear.  Good consistent soil waterings can wash the extra salt build up in the plants roots.  If you are running a hydroponics system then do a reservoir change and drop the PPM (parts per million) of your nutrient solution.  If you don’t have a ppm or EC meter there is no need to worry.  Just fill the reservoir up by a set amount of gallons or liters and pay attention to the amount of nutrients added per gallon/liter.  The packaging for the nutrients should say what they recommend to use for soil or soiless grow mediums.   I usually cut their recommended mixture in half to be on the safe side.  You’ll especially want to use a low end estimate if your plants are showing signs of over fertilization.  In a hydroponic reservoir the solution can also be dropped to one fourth the recommended solution to rinse out salt build ups.  Make sure to top off the tank with fresh water or 1/4 solution to keep the levels high before the next reservoir change.

Notice down turned fringe and leaf structure is curled inward.

Do I need a Nursery or Hydroponics Shop?

A common confusion can arise about the difference between a nursery and hydroponics shop.  A nursery will sell things geared mostly towards outdoor gardening and flowers or trees and shrubs.  These shops usually will carry things like simple trays, drip pans, some pest control, moisture meters, shovels and gardening tools.  Nurseries will also have things like trellis, trimmers, stakes, gloves, soil, and usually low quality fertilizers.  Although some nurseries carry very high quality nutrients for outdoor gardening.

A hydroponic shop carries the most advanced gardening tools available.  A hobby indoor gardener would get most of their supplies at a hydro store.  Hydroponic stores carry the best tools for indoor gardening and hydroponic setups.  Hydroponic stores will have high quality hydroponic nutrients, water pumps, air pumps, carbon filters, inline fans, circulation fans, cloning supplies, Co2 enrichment supplies, grow lights, timers, and full hydroponic systems.  A lot of this stuff is usually on display so you can see how it works before you buy.  Never be shy to ask questions.  The clerks at the shop should be happy to explain the products to you to make sure you get the most efficiency out of your indoor garden.

The possibilities at hydro shops are endless.  If you have no intentions of setting up a hydroponic garden there are still things at the shop you may find interest in that you could not get a nursery.  For instance if you know you are going on vacation for a week or more but don’t want to lose your beautiful hard work  to a drought – your solution may be a hydroponic based solution.  At the store you may want to buy a water pump and tubing to set up a hydroponic drip system for your outdoor garden, indoor garden or even your window garden! The folks at the hydro shop should be able to point you to what you need to set up an automated watering system.  An automated watering system means less time needed by you for the care of your plants.  That allows you to free up time for more plants or less time per day in the garden.  I’ll be posting some articles about hydroponic drip systems in the future.

Hydroponic Systems as Scientifically Perfected Nature

Hydroponic systems are able to increase plant yield and in some cases plant quality because the plant’s growing conditions can be controlled closer to the plants optimum growing conditions. A few of the conditions that benefit from hydroponic systems are:

Roots – Roots can not only be seen in some hydro systems but they are able to grow in a high humidity conditions.

Water – The plants water needs are met more often and systematically than hand watering or outdoor growing with the rain and good ol hose!  Hand watering a large container garden can be very time consuming.  Attention to detail may be beneficial during watering because drowning the plants feeder roots with too much water at once could be harmful to the plant.  Hydroponic systems usually are characterized by automated waterings and feedings which could reduce the stress of constant human handling not to mention the convenience factor.  It’s not always convenient to water your whole garden by hand when your plants need it, humans have lives to fulfill and water as well!

Nutrient content – Nutrient content is one of the best features of hydroponic systems because of the precise control the grower can manipulate.  However, nutrient control is an art form that must be tailored to every hydroponic set up and plant selection.

The goal of hydroponic gardening is to increase yield and plant vitality.  Hydroponic growing can be very simple or very complicated, the beauty is in the versatility of hydroponics.  Look for more to come on how hydro can outgrow soil.