plant growth – Hydroponic Economics

Plant Growth: How Do Plants Grow?

How DO plants grow? Did you ever stop and think about it? When you notice little movements from day to day, you know your plant is growing. It seems like those leaves just pop out of no where doesn’t it?

Today you are going to learn a little horticulture 101. You are going to find out exactly how plants grow. Plant growth is an interesting topic, because before we had microscopes, there was only speculation on how plants grew. There are a few key terms we must define:

Horticulture: “A process by which a plot of soil is prepared for the planting of seeds, tubers, or cuttings.” About.com Archaeology. We are going to let horticulture encompass all of hydroponics as well.
Meristem: The Meristem is the part of a plant that is capable of cell division.
Cell Division: The process by which cells multiply. The cells multiply by constantly dividing. (No pun intended).

Where Does Plant Growth Happen?

Plant growth can only occur where there is cell division. Cell division occurs at the Apical Meristem. You can think of this as the top node. It is the node that is just popping up. If you have ever topped your plant to bush it out and spread the top nodes, you cut the apical meristem.

Apical Meristem

The apical meristem can be cut to make two new top branches. The meristem doesn’t physically split into two branches. The two shoots below the apical meristem, both become apical meristems. It is actually a cool trick for the plant to make two apical meristems, because if another one got cut or damaged, it could continue growing. You’ll find that if you chop off both of the other two apical meristems, you will have four apical meristems.

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Does Music Affect Plant Growth?

When I saw people were searching for this on Google, I just had to write a post about it. Below is an excerpt from Suite 101 about Early Research on Plant Growth and Music.

Early Research on Music and Plants

Dorothy Retallack, a researcher at the Colorado Woman’s College in Denver, published her work on music and plants in 1973 in the book The Sound of Music and Plants. In one experiment, Retallack found that plants thrived when she played a tone intermittently, but died when she played the same tone constantly. In another experiment, she found that plants grew better when she played “soothing” music on the radio, whereas rock music affected plant growth negatively.

Another of Retallack’s experiments sought to discover what kind of classical music plants liked best, finding that plants exposed to North Indian classical music leaned towards the speakers, while plants exposed to the modern, dischordant classical music of composers such as Schoenberg leaned away from the speakers — but not nearly as much as the plants exposed to harsh rock music.

Read more at Suite101: Does Music Affect Plant Growth? http://www.suite101.com/content/does-music-affect-plant-growth-a282993#ixzz1D7pmfkaJ

Isn’t that interesting? I didn’t find the study report, just the reporter’s view on it, but nonetheless, its interested to hear a scientist make claims like this.

What do you think?

You could try your own experiment or research more about the topic. I figured it would be insignificant gains at best, but anything is worth a shot! Here is a link to a experiment you can do yourself.

Leave your results and thoughts in the comments below. I can’t wait to hear what you have to say!

Grow Box Guide: How to Build A Grow Box

Build Grow Box — Here is an example of a Grow Box made out of a dresser. It is very easy to do because the frame of the grow chamber is already made.

So you want to start an indoor garden but don’t know how to build a grow box. Building a grow box is actually simple once you understand the mechanics. Today you will learn every thing you need to know to build your own grow box.

The following guide will walk you through the basics of constructing a grow box out of an old piece of furniture. A lot of indoor gardeners are also very enthusiastic about recycling, so this should really hit home for a lot of you. The dresser grow box could be considered a grow cabinet, whatever you want to call it, the function is the same.

5 Reasons You Need Grow Box Plans:

1. Grow Room Ventilation: There is too much to say here. You will obviously need some sort of exhaust. The size of fan you need depends on the size of your grow box or grow room. This simple grow box uses PC fans which can be wired to an old PC power supply very easily. You can also control the timing of the fans by putting the power supply on a timer.

WARNING: Do not use the biggest power supply you can find. Stick to a smaller power supply with low wattage because the fans use very little power. If you do not know what you are doing, use a pre-made fan that you can just plug in. For 20 bucks you can get a dryer type ventilation fan that can be attached to ducting.

2. Reflective: Reflectiveness should depend on your budget. Aluminum foil is probably the cheapest material, but it certainly doesn’t reflect the most light. Since you will likely be using small grow lights, you will want to get the most out of it. White poly or Mylar are the premium choice.

3. Water proof/Bug proof/Mold proof: Water proofing is one of the most important things about building a grow box. All hydroponic systems should be in water proofed grow boxes, or outdoors where they can’t possibly make a mess. I’ll discuss bug proof more in the next point. Mold proofing takes a little common sense. Don’t use carpet for the floor of your grow box or anything dumb like that.

4. Air tight: You will want your grow box to be air tight so that light doesn’t escape, bugs will have a harder time getting in, and you will want control of the ventilation.

5. Odor control: Some people enjoy having fresh herbs, vegetables, and fruits growing in their house, but don’t want their house to smell like a garden or green house. Some people just don’t like that smell. You can get a carbon filter for the unwanted smells, but you will need to get an inline fan, which could dramatically raise the price.

Electrical Components

Please make sure all of your electrical components are away from possible water sources. You should place your outlets on the out side of the grow box and hung up. The last thing you want is water in your electrical components.

Key Components

Grow Room Fan — The small desk fan provides plenty of air movement in this small grow chamber.

Indoor Grow Lights: CFLS — Here you can see two of the small ventilation fans and a few 23w CFLs. You want to get the most surface area of each bulb facing towards the plants.

Mother Nature has Wind, You Should Too

Fans are not just for cooling your high powered grow lights and ballasts. I use fans in every grow space to create wind. Wind will help to move the air around in your room so it does not stagnate and get used up. Plant leaves like oxygen and breathe like we do. They need a constant supply of fresh oxygen to be used at any given time. If your air never moves, your plants are losing all the extra oxygen they could be pulling from fresh air. An exhaust duct with a strong inline fan will move some air from negative pressure, but it is no where near what the plants are used to from Mother Nature.

Take a look out your window. If there are trees around you, see if their branches are blowing in the wind. Think about how brutally bent you’ve seen some trees and plants after a storm. If the plant is not uprooted or snapped, it seems to recover from the storm. You do not want to create a wind tunnel that has your plants curving to the ground, but a nice breeze is a good idea. The best thing about indoor gardening is you become Mother Nature. That means you choose the time and strength of the wind.

I use desk fans of various sizes to control air circulation in my indoor garden. I look for fans with various speeds that can be easily hung in the space I need. Letting the fans sit on the ground causes loud vibrations that get annoying after a few hours. I suggest hanging inline fans as well for the same reason. High power inline fans can get extremely loud if not hung.You can decide the location of the fans inside your grow room. I like to position at least one towards the center of the light so the hot air is pushed where the exhaust fan can pull it out. Another good place for a circulation fan is close to the intake fan. The circulation fan will move the colder fresh air where it can be used by all your plants. Check your plants needs to make sure this won’t make your medium too dry or too cold. Sometimes having a warm ballast in the room is needed for heat depending on your complete cooling system.

Wind will make your plants tough and force them to thicken their stems. Thicker stems can be beneficial for supporting a plant’s weight and ensuring the proper amount of nutrients and water to each stem. If your plants never experience wind they may be limp or droopy. If you do not introduce a plant to wind early, it may develop too thin and weak. A plant that is weak will suffer stress when it is first introduced to heavy winds. It should eventually adjust and strengthen its stem, but you may be diminishing your yield from a lack of planning. Starting seeds inside that will be transplanted outside need to be hardened off. You must gradually expose them to more light and wind until they can handle the harsh outdoors. You may have two fans of different strengths placed in two different spaces in your grow room on two different time settings. Having this much variation would vary the speed, and direction of the wind throughout the day. That type of air circulation is closer to the real experience for the plants.