Azamax is an OMRI Certified Organic Pest Control solution. You simply mix a little bit with water and spray it on your plants to provide a pest and fungal barrier.
How Long Does It Take Azamax to Work?
7-21 days.
The first week of Azamax applications will pretty much stop the reproduction of your spider mites, aphids, or other pests. You need to reapply Azamax to your plants every 7-14 days.
You will still see the bugs, well what looks like bugs, but you will notice they aren’t really moving. Their dead bodies will still be on the leaves of the plant so make sure to spray your plants before harvest, and then give them a good rinse after harvest. You don’t want to be eating dead bugs!
If this sounds gross to you, think about what commercial farmers have to deal with. Now do you understand why they just use harsh pesticides to wipe out all the insects. If you grow your own food, you can be sure you are not ingesting harmful chemicals. Not to mention your food will taste and smell better. There are plenty of advantages to using Azamax over a harsh chemical pesticide.
Where is the Best Place to Get Azamax?
Get the best prices on Azamax at Amazon. You can also find the perfect hydroponic nutrients on Amazon. If you are interested in learning more about hydroponics or gardening in general, search through some of the 100’s of books Amazon has. I’ve picked up three or four used books from Amazon and they were all in perfect condition. They seemed brand new! Don’t be afraid to make purchases at Amazon, they have great customer service.
Every gardener is always looking for new nutrients to try. If you prefer real natural fertilizer, Annie Haven’s Moo Poo is for you. Moo Poo is an all natural soil conditioner made from life stock manure. It is also known as manure tea.
The Moo Poo comes in tea bag sized pouches that you let seep into water for a few days before use. It is a really simple process for some really strong organics.
One tea bag can make as much as 5 gallons of nutrients. If you are using a hydroponics system, I suggest using one tea bag for 10 gallons or more. You can really make these go a long way.
The natural tea is perfect for all kinds of plants. You can use it indoors or outdoors. It is good for container gardens, outdoor gardens, and even hydroponics.
Hydroponic gardeners will be able to get 90+ gallons of fertilizer out of the 9 pack which is only $22. Thats the same price you are paying for nutrients now.
There are three types of manure tea from the ManureTea.com shop. You can choose from horse or cow manure for your vegetable garden. There is also an alfalfa mix for roses.
Pura Vida is a pretty well known brand of hydroponic nutrients, and has been tried by a lot of different gardeners. Pura Vida hydroponic nutrients are great for indoor gardening because they come in liquid format. You measure out the desired amount of nutrients, and pour them into a gallon of water. After mixing the nutrient solution, it is ready for use.
You apply Pura Vida nutrient solutions with normal irrigation. The best time for feeding is usually in the morning, when the plant is just starting its metabolic processes for the day.
Note: The Pura Vida Organic Solution was OMRI Certified Organic. The Pura Vida Grow was not organic. The plants did not seem to notice the transition.
The first things you need to know about the Pura Vida combo is there are micro nutrients built in. It is a two part solution, but only one part per phase. One part per phase is talking about the growing phase of the plant, Grow or Bloom.
You only need to use the grow for the first part of their life. You only need to use Bloom for the second part of their life.
If you are new to hydroponics, I recommend starting with that type of simplicity. You are making up for the simplicity with the quality of nutrients.
Advanced Gardener’s Box: There are instructions for an aggressive two part formula on the back labels of these bottles. The PPM of the nutrient solution is MUCH higher than the one part formulas. Only experienced gardeners should attempt the aggressive formula once you know how to grow your particular variety of plant. It is very easy to salt lock your plants with this aggressive formula. You need to do frequent water changes to ensure balanced PH.
The Negatives:
I tested the nutrients in a large variety of hydroponics systems including three different drip systems. On the drip systems that used drip emitters, about 1 in 10 drip emitters would clog from the organic material. One way to defeat those clogs is to mesh out the chunks of fertilizer before you pour it in your reservoir. There are also pre-filter systems that can catch some of those pieces.
In open-ended 1/4 inch tube drip systems, with no drip emitter, the nutrients worked beautifully. The key to success with the open-ended tube system is to lower the ppm of your nutrient solution while buffing the number of regular feeding times as the plant grows and expands it’s root system.
The open 1/4 inch tube allows the root systems to get optimal amounts of aerated water. Use an aeration stone in your reservoir so the nutrient solution stays oxygenated and moving. The open ended 1/4 inch tube allows the water to connect with more air molecules before landing in the plant container. This system works for hydroponics, soil-less, and even soil growing methods. Talk about versatility.
Overall
Consider trying these nutrients if you have never used them. The bottles cost a little more than the lower end hydroponic nutrients, but thats for a reason. Do not under estimate the strength of these nutrients. Make sure to lower the ppm of your nutrient solution so you do not get salt locked plants. These nutrients can go up to three weeks with no water change in a 15gallon + reservoir. However, you should monitor your PPM for optimal conditions. Water changes every 12-14 days with a standard plain water rinse out is typical.
Look for the OMRI Certified bottles at your local hydro shop or you can order them online.
Why should you use hydroponics to increase your yields? The same reason you started a garden! If you have ever had a successful harvest, you know the feeling I’m talking about. Some growers are discouraged by organic fertilizers when it comes to hydroponic gardens. Fear not growers, water soluble organic fertilizers are available online and at local hydroponics shops. Some greens can even be grown using tiny amounts of fertilizers. Basils, lettuce, mesclun, and other leafy plants can be grown organically in hydroponics system with very little fertilizer.
Organic indoor gardens can be maximized with the use of hydroponics. Organic hydroponic systems are like normal hydroponic gardens, but with a little more care to detail and quality.
The seeds for this plant were started in soil. The container with the soil was planted directly into a mini DWC System for extremely explosive vegetative growth.
The salad mix in the picture was started in a jiffy pot full of soil. When the seeds sprouted, the jiffy pots were put into a mini DWC system. The roots grew through the soil and into the DWC environment. There was explosive root growth when the roots entered the high humidity environment.
The salad grew very fast under simple CFL lighting. Small hydro setups can produce big results with the right knowledge.
This is a single 3 inch jiffy pot full of soil. Each Jiffy yielded at least 2 or 3 servings of salad greens under only CFL lighting.
Many indoor gardeners are looking for organic pest control answers. Some growers forget about certain natural resources they should be using to help avoid pests. Natural pest guards are plants like garlic and fly eating plants. The indoor gardener faces a mini pest that is hard to detect and multiplies rapidly. The dreaded spider mite! Spider mites are indoor grower’s worst nightmare. General Hydroponics offers an OMRI listed pesticide that can kill spider mites. The solution can be used up to the day of harvest and can be sprayed on fruits and veggies.
I have played with Azamax myself to find if the residue would leave a taste on my harvest. The taste of Azamax will be left on your food depending on how you applied Azamax. If you can avoid bugs the last week of harvest you should be able to effectively rinse it out of the plant. Some growers use a final flush solution to clean their hydroponic plants. Mixing Azamax in the nutrient reservoir is effective for preventative pest control, and quick solutions. It is easy to put too much Azamax in your reservoir, but it is also easy to fix. Just add more plain water to your reservoir to help offset the percentage of Azamax.
Foliar applications are the quickest way to kill bugs using Azamax. I use 5ml Azamax per 2L of plain water for foliar applications. Using Azamax as an organic bug spray is very effective against spider mites. DO NOT WASTE YOUR SPRAYS! If you spray too much Azamax on your plants you will be left with a funky tasting food. The key is moderation and effective aiming. Mist the whole plant very lightly from a foot away to give it a spider mite shield. Directly spray the areas with the most spider mites. Spray the undersides of the leaves to kill hatching babies. Spider mites multiply very rapidly, but Azamax will slow down their reproduction. Azamax can affect the taste of your crop if you use too much. Follow the preventative pest control measures to move Azamax to your last resort.
Before harvest time spray your plants with plain water. Start spraying them 2 or 3 days before harvest to rinse off the Azamax residue. Don’t spray them under intense lighting because you will burn the leaves. Try feeding your plant only plain water right before harvest to flush the remaining Azamax. Finally dunk your crop in water as you cut it down to remove the rest of the dust, pests, and sprays.
Get General Hydroponics AzaMax at Amazon today to protect your indoor garden investment. You can also read customer reviews here.
Hydroponic Economics wants to know how your experience with Azamax has been! Kick off the conversation in the comments section below.
The cheapest pet snack I can think of is salad greens. Organic greens are a fun snack for your pets and are easy to grow. You can even feed your pets the weaker salad leaves that you were going to cut off anyway. Instead of throwing those extras in the compost or garbage disposal, toss them to your best pet friends! They will certainly appreciate the snack and gain the nutrients they need.
Fresh Greens on top of a guinea pig home.
If you have a lot of pets it is very easy to create a small container garden to provide fresh snacks for them. A small container garden is also very cheap and can be automated. An automated container garden for organic pet food is very economical and easy to set up. A small recirculating drip system can be built for about $30. Thirty dollars is a small price to pay for a garden system that will last years and provide many harvests of fresh greens. Assorted seed packs of salad mixes are very cheap($2-$5). One pack of seeds may last you a whole year depending on the rate you use them. You can’t get fresh organic pet food that you can trust at that price!
There are many manufacturers of organic and natural pet foods and it may be necessary to buy these for daily nutrition and feeding. Stay tuned- I’ll be posting a detailed guide on how to efficiently grow organic greens for your pets.
Check out Organic Authority for more information on the benefits of feeding your pets organic pet food.
Guinea Pig Enjoying Organic Pet foodGuinea Pig Finishing Organic Pet Food
AzaMax by General Hydroponics has a lot of different uses and applications. Today I will be focusing on the reservoir applications for recirculating and run to waste type systems. The amount of AzaMax to use depends on the size of your hydroponic system and type of infestation you are dealing with. For a minor to severe spider mite infestation, only the weaker end of the product recommendations are required to eliminate the problem without over affecting crop quality. Believe me, I’ve seen a few different pest control options, a lot of the products do work like they say, however you may have to live with the slight taste of bug spray on your prized fruits and veggies. AzaMax is one of the few hydroponic solutions that is safe for the reservoir and can be mixed right in with the nutrient solution. When the plant absorbs the solution this way, it pest proofs the plant from the inside out. The inside out method is useful because the solution can be applied at any time without getting residue on fruits or veggies close to consumption. It also ensures there will be no light burn on the leaves from the water magnifying the light.
Be warned – The AzaMax solution may change the color of your water a bit to a more milky color. This is natural and also happens when you mix it with water for foliar applications. Since AzaMax has the nice little measurement cup added to the bottle you can squeeze up the same amount or a semi precise amount without busting out the glassware. For my reservoir applications I try about 5 ML of AzaMax for every 5 or so gallons of water. That is about 1 Ml per gallon of water which is about .034 fl oz. The solution I use ranks below the lowest end of the spectrum according to AzaMax’s chart that comes with the bottle. Remember, those tables are guides and your application may vary from what others use. The solution I mention is what I use as my preventative measure! If you notice pests for weeks after your initial application, try adding more AzaMax on your next reservoir change.
Get General Hydroponics AzaMax at Amazon today to protect your indoor garden investment. You can also read customer reviews here.
Stay tuned on pest control with HPE – I’ll be posting more articles about AzaMax and its many uses in the future. I’ll also be posting some good home made natural pest remedies soon. If you have any comments or questions about AzaMax feel free to email me or reply with a comment below. Stay Green!
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.
One of the main reasons I chose to start an indoor gardening project was to produce my own fresh, good-tasting, safe food. Some stores sell fresh produce, but my area lacks in availability for year round fresh fruit. Strawberries were one of the first things I tried to grow in a hydroponic system. Once you learn the basics of hydroponics you could set up a system to grow tropical fruit inside your house! If you have a big back yard you could even create a tropical green house with the sun and the addition of high power grow lights. Once you are familiar with all the equipment available you can create any environment for any plant. You can tend to plants with very delicate environmental needs.
If you do not trust the source or are unsatisfied with the quality of your local produce then start a hydroponic or indoor gardening project to perfect the fruit of your dreams! Anything is possible if you learn enough about the plant requirements. I try to find books on Amazon.com about organic gardening and plant care. The books on Amazon don’t cost very much and are usually pretty detailed. Buying a book centralizes large amounts of information for you to consume. Searching on the internet for the information you need is fast, but sometimes it is not detailed enough if you are just beginning. If there is a topic you are confused about or don’t know where to start, try getting a book to get your feet wet. On the other hand experience is the most valuable knowledge you can get. Good luck green thumbs!
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.
