The idea behind growing hydroponically is to maximize production out of minimum resources. Since your plants will be getting all of their resources from the water you supply them with, you must put everything the plant needs in the water supply. I understood a little about the N-P-K ratios found on all commercial pre-mix fertilizers, but for hydroponics you must understand at least a bit about the micronutrients as well. Then you have to understand a bit more about PH and Total Dissolved Solids (TDS). You also have to understand a bit about what's in the water you're using.
Hydroponic fertilizers are recommended because they contain at least some of the micronutrients the plants will need that you might not otherwise find in regular soil based fertilizers. They are also designed to be water soluble. There are pre-mix fertilizers that are available that take most of the guess work out of it, but I wanted to go with a system that is a bit more customizable so I went with the General Hydroponics Flora series, which is a 3 part solution. Once I learn a bit more about this stuff I can move on to other solutions that are cheaper, but for now the Flora series does what I need it to do.
I don't really have to get this detailed at this point because the basic mix recipes that are on the bottles are probably good enough, but I want to be able to try different fertilizer ratios to see what works best on particular crops so that I'm not using any more of this stuff than is needed.
My seedlings are doing pretty well for the most part. I had to remove the bush beans and zucchini because they outgrew the seedling tray. The tomato and lettuce seedlings haven't done much since they sprouted. I didn't adjust the PH of the rockwool or the water I used, so I think this is the problem. I splashed them with a bit of PH adjusted weak nutrient solution I mixed up, so we'll see how they do from here. In a week or so I plan on starting some more seedlings.
I almost have my fill and drain system ready to go. After I get this going I'll start working on my DWC buckets.
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