Using Analog and Digital Timers to Automate Your Garden

  
This 24 hour timer allows you to set the digital time and has 6 different on/off settings. You can also choose what days for the timer to run. This is useful if you are going on vacation for 2 weeks and you are still feeding your garden regularly with a dry day at the end of the week for the soil to dry out and expand root growth. The dry period will reduce the risk of over-saturation problems.

Electronic timers have a variety of uses in the grow room.  I use relatively cheap timers from a department store, but the turnover rate is rather high.  If you plan on leaving your system running for a few days without checking it, you may want to invest in the high end timers to ensure they will not die or malfunction on you.  The cheap timers come with a battery backup so the time is not lost in case there is a power outage.  That does not mean that the device plugged in to the timer will still run at its designated time.  There will not be enough power for that.  All the battery does is ensure the device plugged into the timer still comes on at the right time given the power comes back on.

SAFETY TIP: Keep electronic components, surge protectors, timers, extension cords, and all devices with a plug off the ground of the grow space.  Hang them high on the wall where they will not possibly be sprayed.  Also make sure they are not in the path of ANY potential flood. You can also make a waterproof box for your electronic components. DO NOT OVERLOOK THIS STEP!!  IT COULD SAVE YOUR LIFE AND YOUR HOUSE!

Digital Timers are useful for things like air circulation, water pumps, and sometimes air pumps if you need your aeration cycled.  If you are trying to manually control temperature and wind a timer will come in handy.  It will allow to set precise on/off timings for your fans.  Make sure to check the timer you buy to make sure it has what you need.  Some do not have the 3 prong connection and can only use smaller 2 prong cords.

SAFETY TIP: I know what you are thinking, “I’ll just get a plug converter to make the larger size fit.”  DO NOT OVERLOAD SURGE PROTECTORS, TIMERS, OR OUTLETS.  Do not attempt to give a circuit something it is not rated for.  Using the right size electrical components is a good and SAFE habit to get into from the start.  Losing your house to an electrical fire while you were gone is not worth saving a few dollars on a timer or extension cord.

Most people will use digital timers to control their water pump.  The timer will tell the pump when to run so you can control your watering and feeding schedule without being there.  You can set any type of schedule you want with timers.  You will have full control without ever being present.  Many cloning systems need timers to have a mister or fogger automatically raise the humidity every day.  Digital timers can also be used for lighting systems to precisely control the light cycles.

Analog timers can be used when you need many intervals of on/off cycles.  Things like aeroponic and bubbleponic cloners might use something like this.  These timers also work fine for lighting systems.  Just push down the pins or put the on/off pins on the times you need.  Pay attention to the timers clock and the order of times.  Not all analog timers have the times in the order they would happen.


Introduction to Drip Systems

Drip systems are an extremely important component to any top level gardener using soil or top feed systems.    Drip systems can be used outdoors to irrigate small or large gardens and lawns.  They are a great investment for indoor gardeners because it takes the manual labor out of watering and feeding.  It also benefits your plants by ensuring they receive water every day in proper amounts.  The extra time will allow you to create a bigger garden or simply spend less time with your garden for the same benefits.  Indoor gardens must consider the gardener and the plants needs because the relationship is dependent on each other.  If someone feels they are spending too much time in the garden for little reward they may be discouraged and give up the greener lifestyle.

Submersible pumps like this one have rubber suction feet to stick to the bottom of your water or nutrient reservoir

I’ll start by explaining the heart of the drip system.  The most expensive part of your drip system is the water pump.  There are submersible and non-submersible water pumps.  Small gardens and reservoirs will usually use a submersible pump.  If you are setting up your first drip system a small submersible pump should be enough.  Water pumps in the US are rated by Gallons Per Hour(GPH).  The GPH rating of your water pump will come into play when you are deciding what size water pump you will need.  I’ll explain how to calculate the necessary GPH for your drip system in a later article.

The thick blue storage tote is the container or reservoir for the water.

Creativity might be handy when deciding what to use for a water reservoir.  If you are at all concerned about your health, and you most likely are if you have decided to grow your own food, you should try to stick to food grade plastics for all the parts in your garden setup.  You can buy reservoirs at hydroponic shops, but they can have a high ticket.  It is easy to find something around the house or at local department stores to use as a reservoir.  You can also go to US Plastics to order food grade plastic.  A bigger reservoir can mean a longer span in between reservoir changes and topping off with water to compensate for evaporation.  I always get reservoirs with lids or make my own.  Lids will help to prevent algae from growing in your water.  It can also keep pests and other contaminates out of your solution.

The next important piece of the drip system is the air pump.  The air pump brings fresh oxygen from the room through an air tube and out of a submerged air stone.  The air stone will help to keep the reservoir full of oxygen.  The water will bubble and agitate the water so it does not become stagnant.

Drill a hole through the reservoir wall towards the top so you can put tubes and cords through it.

If you are making a home made drip system, you will need 1/2″ tubing for the water to transfer from your submersible pump through the drip lines.  Use a hole puncher made for drip lines to poke perfect holes in the 1/2″ tubing.  The holes are for connectors to be put in to make bridges between 1/2″ tubing and 1/4″ tubing.  Most drippers connect to 1/4″ tubing.  The great thing about homemade drip systems is you can customize them to your hydroponic setup.  No matter what type of garden you have, a drip system should be your next upgrade.  If you already have a drip system than be sure to watch for the upcoming articles about building bigger and more advanced drip and top feed systems.

The air pump delivers fresh oxygen via air tubing to the water or nutrient reservoir

You can get all sorts of connectors to for the tubing so anything is possible.  When the 1/4″ tubing is secured to the connectors attached to your 1/2″ tubing you are ready to add drip emitters, drip lines, or sprayers.  Whatever you choose as your water delivery method, make sure there is somewhere for it to drain off.  In recirculating systems the run off goes back into the water reservoir to be used again.  It’s more economical this way for water and nutrients if you are using them.  The other option is a run to waste option.  I have also put a guide up for building a simple run off table.  Its a very simple design that anyone can build.  Homemade hydroponics can be easy with the right knowledge and the right set of tools.  Refer to the pictures below for more details and if you would like to know more about drip hydroponics check back in the next few weeks to get some in depth knowledge.  Sign up for the RSS to get the articles sent to your favorite feed reader or email address!

Inline drippers have 1/4" tubing on both ends so the drip line can continue running to the final destination. The Red dripper will drop 1/2 gallon of water per hour into the medium while the pump is on.

The open ended 1/4″ tubing will deliver the most water per hour, but small pumps have a hard time holding a steady stream for multiple 1/4″ tubes. Distance also slows down the performance of the pump
Stakes are used to hold the drip lines in place. Make sure the medium is secure around the stakes. Try not to damage roots when placing stakes in growing medium.

Choosing the Right Set of Grow Lights

This post will no where near cover everything you need to know about choosing grow lights.  This post will give you some very helpful hints and considerations to take into account before spending money on an expensive system.

-Number of chambers : Will you have all your plants in one space for their whole life time.  If so you may want to consider a Metal halide Bulb and Ballast for the grow cycle and a high pressure sodium/metal halide conversion bulb for the bloom phase.

-Amount of Space : If your grow spaces are large you will need high powered lights so that all the plants get light.  Keep in mind 400 watt and higher MH and HPS bulbs will benefit greatly from air cooled hoods which require strong inline fans to cool.  The cost of these items may raise your initial setup fee but will pay off by the first harvest by the success of the crop yield and quality.  Without an air cooled hood a 400 watt HPS bulb must be 3-4 feet away from the plants to keep temperatures down.  With an air cooled hood some plants can be nearly touching the glass.  If you have a high powered inline fan the plants can most likely grow up to the hood.  This makes a big difference in yield because light is diminished at higher rates at farther distances.

-2′ x 2′ or 3’x3′ gardens can bloom under 400 watts

-3’x3′ or 4’x4′ gardens could easily use 600 watts

-4’x4′ or 5’x5′ gardens can use 1000 watts of light

-Number of plants: Depending on your style of growing you may want to get a set of 2 lights instead of one big light.  3 x 600 watt lights can outperform 2 x 1000 watt lights in the exact same conditions.   The three 600 watt lights can cover a greater area without losing light from distance.

-Height of Grow Space: If your grow room or grow box is not very tall and you are also concerned with heat, you may want to use compact fluorescent tubes from the hydroponic shop.  You can get high powered tubes for grow and bloom phases.  The height of the ballasted light set is only a few inches so it can fit in short places.  Its great for the grow phase or a mothering chamber.  The bloom tubes will flower plants but sometimes they are lanky unless you use a product like BushMaster.

Confusion about Food Grade Plastics

Food grade plastics should be a minimum requirement in all hydroponic systems. When designing a home hydroponics set up or buying one from the local hydro shop, check the labels and do your research. If you don’t demand food grade plastics you could be digesting harmful chemicals and toxins with every harvest. It may also be beneficial to your plants to use food grade plastics so they don’t absorb deadly contaminants.

I use plastics with a Number 2 or Number 5 on them for the parts in my own hydroponic setup. Reservoirs, flood trays in a recirculating system, and plant containers are all possible examples of things that require these type of plastics. To find out if your drip lines, water pumps, and emitters are food grade plastic you may have to contact the manufacture. If you are unsure of a product’s quality I would stay away from it until you can do further research. High grade food plastics can also have an FDA approval which should be easy to research.

Remember: Always check the quality of the plastics you are using and double check their qualifications. To clarify the information here I have provided a link to The Daily Green which has an outstanding explanation of the 7 types of plastics.

Soil-less Growing – Happy Medium

Soil-less growing is the alternative to growing in soil or hydroponics.  Some soil-less grow systems could be considered hydroponic.  An example would be a top feed system in rockwool cubes placed on rockwool slabs.  I would also consider a container plant using hydro clay as the medium would be a soil-less grow.  These systems can be easily maintained using a  water pump to feed water and nutrients to each container or plant.

There are a multitude of reasons to choose a soil-less grow over a soil grow and vice versa.  First, soil can be VERY messy.  Accidentally knocking over a container that is pre-filled with dirt for a fresh transplant costs minutes of cleaning and a loss of soil.  You can also contaminate your soil with whats on the floor if you try to put it back in the container.  Soil is also a nesting haven for a lot of different bugs like gnats and crawling insects.  Gnat nests buried in soil can be hazardous to your plants.  The bugs can eat at the roots of your plants without you even knowing.

Simply switching the growing substrate to hydroclay or hydrorocks can help to control the problem.  There are a wide variety of mediums to choose from when growing soil-less.  There are also rockwool grow cubes, coco coir, and perilite.  You can always mix a variety of things to create your own soil-less mix to create the environment you want for your plants root system.

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: Building a Simple Drain Table – Part 2

This is part 2 of the DIY Drain Table Guide. Look at part one here.

Okay after you have the right size tub and trays for your set up you can get started.  The size you get depends on your needs but I recommend getting a really sturdy bottom tub(drain off tub where waste goes).  The tub should be able to withstand the pressure of water with out bowing out enough to make your trays fall and CERTAINLY without cracking or breaking.

If a water container you have in one of your hydroponics systems is too weak to withstand the pressure of water constantly pushing on it could crack or break and leak the potential GALLONS of water all over your room and whatever electronics you may have on your floor(Even though all indoor gardeners should be making sure all of their electrical parts are placed on the wall or above where water could potentially spill or spray on them RIGHT?)

You’ll want to use a drill to drill holes 1 or 2 inches wide in the lids of the containers.  Position the hole so that they will drain into the tub the lids will be sitting on.  Refer to the pictures below.

Notice there is a two inch hole drilled into the lid of the container with a two inch diameter PVC joint connector put through it as a drain hole.

Hole from above
Sealing the drain so water is FORCED through PVC.
To seal the PVC elbow drains in place you can get water proof silicone or a type of strong water proof caulking and apply it with a caulking gun.

Let the sealant set long enough that its not loose – this could take up to 24 hours so BE PATIENT.  Better things come to those who wait. Once the bond is tight you will be able to sit your trays on top of the lids and the drain wont fall off under the pressure of your plants plus extra water.  

Position your tray on top of the lid like you will have it in your final set up.  You want to put a hole in the space where the PVC hole is so the water from the tray drains out of the hole and through the PVC drain down into the bottom tub/reservoir.

This is pretty much what you’ll have at the end – You can drill holes where the white circles are to drain the clear tray.

A drill should work fine if you are careful not to crack the plastic.  It shouldn’t be a problem either way considering you should be using containers sturdy enough to hold a lot of weight over long periods of time.  If one of your containers break your plants could end up submerged in their own dirty waste water.  You want to plan and account for things like this in the planning of your hydroponic set ups to ensure safety of equipment, plants, and most importantly you and your house.  

Another way to put holes in the plastic trays is to burn a hole.  BE VERY CAREFUL WITH THE FIRE! I heated up a glass rod with a camp fire starting torch – one similar to what you use to start a grill.  Once the rod was glowing orange I pushed it through where the PVC drains were to make a perfect hole.  

Good luck in your constructions and please comment or contact me with any questions.

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

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.