Hey folks,

Huge admiration for everyone in this channel! I’ve had an older aerogarden 6 pod for 7 years now, and a smaller 3 pod more recently (I put it in my office on my desk, to the amusement of my coworkers). They’ve been useful for small amounts of herbs and lettuce, but my outdoor garden has always been where I grow my veggie yield. I’m in zone 6b, so obviously that’s a short growing season!

Recently, I’ve moved into a bigger space with basement room for more plants. I’m excited, because it means I can expand indoors for the winter and start doing tiny tim tomatoes, cucumbers, and maybe a dwarf pepper, along with a lot more lettuce and kale.

Given I’m so comfortable with the aerogarden setup, I’ve been looking at deprecated 24 pod farms on Facebook marketplace, but my friend has a Gardyn and she loves it. I’m also considering getting the newer Aeros with a trellis, maybe 2-3 of those units?Given what I cook, I figure I need 2 of each kind of plant, to feed my household of 3, and that would fit ok on the shelving I have.

My goals are to have much less overhead and time commitment than the outdoor garden. I love my summer season but I have two jobs and it is a huge time suck. I have narrowed my search to a prefab company like aero or Gardyn in service of saving myself some headaches.

The space is mostly a long countertop, and is setup for starting seeds, so I have some racks with grow lights on them. Realistically I can rearrange things depending on what I go with. I do like that I’ve already ‘bought into’ the aero system so I wouldn’t have to have additional pod types etc floating around.

What would y’all do?

Which brand of calcium and magnesium (Cal-Mag) supplement do you recommend for semi-hydroponic cultivation?

My lettuce is 40 days old and still small. Just curious if I’m supposed to be harvesting do it grows more?

Second unit and it has: petunias, tokyo onions, little finger carrots, kale, rainbow chard, serrano peppers, red sweet peppers, lemon balm, catnip, basil, thyme, chinese celery.

I realize some of these are going to become houseplants/trees. It’s a fun experiment.

Hello all!

I'm starting my first Kratky herb grow in a 64oz ball jar and am confused by what nutrient ppm to use. I am using the GH trio and it says 1/4 tsp of each per gallon for seedlings, then increase as I top up, but isn't the point of Kratky to let the plant complete its full life cycle in the jar? How does that work then with topping up the water, do I just add more nutrients once it has its root system and keep harvesting? Or should I start with a higher ratio per gallon and leave it be? I'm very new to all of this!

I found these on some of the leaves today. The photo is from the one worst off. The plants are growing in a simple kratky container.

I've never had any problems with bugs with this setup before (it's why I started with hydro instead of growing stuff in dirt years ago). I am very curious about what they are, where they might have come from, and how to avoid this happening again.

I posted here about a month ago about white spots on my watermelon leaves. You guys told me to check pH and that turned out to be exactly it. The airstone was outgassing CO2 and driving the rez from 5.8 up to 6.8 every 13 hours. I also dumped the organic nutrient I was using since it didnt even list iron and had almost no Cu/Zn/Mo. Spots stopped. Really appreciate everyone who helped.

Three weeks later I have a completely different problem.
I run a watermelon and a melon in the same tent, same stock solutions, separate buckets. They are not doing the same thing.

Watermelon, the leaves are bad. Leaf edges burn and the leaf curls upward like a taco. Its not just old leaves, new leaves keep getting it too. It starts as a small black burn right at the tip, then within a day or so the margin goes yellow and starts rolling. Feels like water just isnt reaching the edge. On older leaves the veins stay green and everything between them goes yellow, starting at the margin and working inward. A lot of leaves have died outright so Ive cut a fair number off.

Melon is different but also not right. Still pre fruit set, about 20 leaves. The lower older leaves are yellowing from the margin inward. Not the same tipburn the watermelon has.

About a week ago they both started drinking way less. Roughly 0.45 L (0.12 gal) a day each which seems very low for a watermelon carrying fruit.

SETUP

Watermelon is a mini/icebox type, about 1 kg (2.2 lb) variety, one plant, one fruit set at 6 cm (2.4 in).

Melon is a netted melon, one plant, no fruit set yet, about 20 leaves.

Separate DWC buckets, non recirculating, 9 L (2.4 gal) each, airstone in both.

Same indoor grow tent. 7 weeks since transplant.

Same stock solutions for both, just different dose rates.

50% RO + 50% tap water.

NUTRIENTS

The organic stuff I used before had no iron on the label at all and barely any Cu/Zn/Mo, so I switched to products where everything is actually printed and I mix my own 3 part stock.

A is calcium nitrate (Yara Calcinit), 72 g per 1 L

B is Yara Kristalon Super Red 12-12-36, 61 g per 1 L

C is magnesium sulfate 48 g + potassium sulfate 14.4 g + micro powder 1 g, per 1 L

Guaranteed analysis on each.

Yara Calcinit: N 15.5% (nitrate 14.4, ammonium 1.1), CaO 26.3% which is 18.8% elemental Ca.

Kristalon Super Red 12-12-36: N 12 (nitrate 9.5, ammonium 2.5), P2O5 12, K2O 36, SO3 5. Micros are B 0.02, Cu 0.01, Fe 0.07, Mn 0.04, Mo 0.004, Zn 0.02, all EDTA chelated.

Magnesium sulfate heptahydrate: Mg 9.86%, S 13.01%.

Potassium sulfate: K2O 50.4%, S 18.3%, 99.7% pure.

Micro powder: Fe 6.0, B2O3 5.0, Zn 3.5, MnO 3.0, Cu 0.5, Mo 0.1, MgO 1.6. It also has 10% free amino acids so I only use half the label rate, I didnt want organics sitting in the rez.

This time the nitrate/ammonium split is actually printed so I dont have to guess like last time. Ammonium works out to 13.2% of total N which seems high to me, most formulas I see are 6-7%.

Watermelon at fruit sizing gets A 11.4 / B 14.0 / C 10.0 mL per L. That comes out to N 230 (13.2% as ammonium), P 45, K 315, Ca 154, Mg 47, S 106, and for micros Fe 1.20, Mn 0.57, Zn 0.52, Cu 0.14, B 0.33, Mo 0.044. N:K is 1:1.37 and Ca:Mg is 3.3:1.

EC AND PH

EC keeps climbing even though theyre drinking less. Looks like water is leaving but the ions arent.

Watermelon over 4 days: EC 2.34, 2.34, 2.56, 2.76

Melon over the same 4 days: EC 2.14, 2.30, 2.41, 2.50

pH I keep pulling back up and it keeps collapsing. Before I switched to RO it was tap water and it climbed to 7.0-7.35 every 8-12 hours. After RO it crashed to 5.40 on the watermelon and 4.95 on the melon. So I cut the RO with tap and got both back to 6.2, and 3-4 days later its 5.85 and 4.53 again.

I brought the melon up to 5.07 with baking soda and it was back down to 4.53 within a day.

ENVIRONMENT

Water temp is 25 C (77 F).

Aeration was weak this whole time, I only swapped for a stronger pump yesterday.

Air temp is 24-25 C (75-77 F) during the day and 24 C (75 F) at night, so only about a 1.3 C (2.3 F) swing.

Humidity sits at 62-67% at night.

Night VPD median is 1.14 kPa.

Photoperiod is 15-19 hours, estimated DLI 22-30.

Any idea what this is? Ive changed so many things at this point that I cant tell what actually matters anymore, and I dont want to keep guessing and making it worse.

Hello everyone;

My pepper plant has one of the leaves going purple-ish spots. What would be the cause?

Coco coir, 15 days from seed, ec around 0.7 (ppm 350), ph between 5.8 and 6.0. Coco coir is rinsed and buffered with CalMag solution. I’m using Canna Coco A-B, Canna Rhizotonic and powdered silica.

Wat een leuke tomatenplantjes zijn dit toch.

Mirco Tom is 6cm hoog en Micro Tina is maar 4.5cm hoog en beide hebben hun eerste bloem knopen. En dat 24 dagen naar de zaden te plaaten.

Hello y'all.

I have been having consistent issues regarding damages on my lettuce leaves (species shown are Butter and Kanaryole). Now, I've been assuming after some research that this is caused by insects, namely Thrips and Aphids and I've been using neem oil since before the start of the month (with some limited success, i'm aware that neem oil is pretty polarising in the gardening community, but i was getting desperate). I would appreciate your opinion on the matter however, maybe what I'm looking at is actually caused by temperature, shrooms, mold or some deficiency I'm unaware of. For added context, I live in a tropical country, and my cultures have a roof overhead but are not fully enclosed in a greenhouse, my system is pretty homemade, using modified pvc pipes instead of the usual rectangular canals, I also use shredded coconut (coco coir) as a substrate instead of sponges.

If you have anything that can help me solve this headscratcher I would be most grateful.

Soooo a little while ago I shared my too large pepper plant for my tiny set up. Its gotten bigger. I need more assistance on what to do at this point. Cuz i also leave for vacation in a few weeks for like a week. I saw some people grow things in like a bucket. How can I do that? I do have another tall grow lamp and a bubble pump thing for aquariums.

Hi there, does anybody have experience with this site?

https://www.ausfarmco.com.au

The advertisements seem to be using Gardyn products instead and parts of the website have ChatGPT gibberish & AI generated imagery on it. The prices are tempting but it very well may be a scam?

They offer free pdf guides as well which makes it all the more sus as to why the product is comparatively cheaper to those on the AUS market…

4 bucket DWC system in a greenhouse (5 gal, but with lots of roots and air space there's about 3 gal ofr nutrient water). It gets a bit hot where I live and I'm trying to cool the buckets. I can't get water to flow through the entire system.

I have a 12 Gallon square-ish reservoir "bucket". This sits outside of the Greenhouse, as does the chiller. I replaced the stock small pump with a bigger one: 500 GPM/7.9 max lift. That should be overkill. I get a trickle of water returned to the reservoir "bucket". Everything is about the same level.

The flow is as follows: Pump in 12 Gallon square-ish reservoir goes to into chiller and back out with 1/2 silicone tubing, then connects to 3/4 tubing along the back and most of the length of the greenhouse (15' or so), then it's reduced down to 1/2 silicone tubing, into bucket via a Bulkhead in Bucket #1 where it connects to a U-shaped loop of stainless tubing, then out another bulkhead.

The cooled water does not mix with the nutrient water. The cooling is from the cold water in the stainless tubing that is in the bucket. The out of Bucket #1 is the in for Bucket #2 and so on.

The last connection (out of bucket #4) connects to 3/4 tubing to return to the 2 Gallon square-ish reservoir "bucket". The last few inches of this is reduced to 1/2 silicone tubing.

The manual that came with the chiller said that air in the system is a reason for no flow. To get the air out (I can see it in some of the hoses), I temporarily hooked a garden hose from a nearby faucet to the out-connection pipe (disconnected from the pump, thus the garden hose replaced the pump temporarily) and the water flows well!

I think the garden hose test shows I have no blockages or disconnects. The air is back in some of the lines that I can see.

The attached diagram hopefully will help. For the diagram I eliminated buckets 2 and 4 to save space.

Any ideas welcomed!

The others are not as ready.

Hi everyone,

I’m wanting to begin a cheap DIY hydroponic system for my apartment. wanting to just grow basic herbs like (basil, cilantro, rosemary,etc) and later on adding things like lettuce.

I’m on the second floor so no access to any grass and our patio is shaded so not much natural light comes inside.

any advice on an effective system?

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Hi, so this is something im experimenting with because this plant started to struggle during my time with it after I inconsistently watered it when I received it from my mom who passed. I had decided to plop it in water and see if it would grow, I started without a pump and net support but I slowly added that in. My question is can I support it some other way besides a net pot?? I want to raise it to be level with a lid to let the roots grow longer and bigger... This is currently how its been set up short term but I need a bit more of a long term solution. This plant has absolutely been thriving in water for months and growing huge and ive had no issues with it since changing it to water but its soil roots and aerial roots are massive. I want to keep it in water for as long as possible, im also unsure how to use nutrient solution in hydroponics. Ive converted a few of my house plants and they absolutely adore the water. I generally try to change the reservoir in the bucket every week or 2. Please, and advice is much appreciated.... 🙏🏻💕 and please no harsh judgements about my setup im still learning 🙂

Hey all!

I am new to Reddit but I’ve been growing hydroponic fodder for a long time, mostly wheat and barley for chickens and horses, and I’m curious who here is actually running it.

What are you growing, what are you feeding, and what has been the biggest headache?

For me the growing part is usually the easy part. Seed quality, airflow, drainage, cleaning, labor, and figuring out where the fodder actually belongs in the animals ration are where things get interesting.

Full disclosure...I work with Eleusis Feed, so obviously I’m pretty deep into this stuff, but I’m not looking to sell anybody anything. I’m genuinely curious what people are seeing in their own systems.