Feeding Schedule for Baby Herbs
by Craig
(Seabeck, Wa. State; USA)
Years ago I had my hydroponic feeding schedule down, somewhat, and was reasonably comfortable with it. I'm now deciding to try it again with super stock after a ten year period of dormancy. One thing I'd like to know is: What is the optimum nutrient watering schedule? I mean how often, for how long, and with how long in between allowing for drying before re-irrigation or feeding? Is this night and day? The plants right now are two weeks old and are about three inches high on average (and seem reasonably healthy). I'm putting them into my Jetstream 6-tray system now and just don't remember what their feeding schedule time-wise is all about... Please help me! Craig
Answer: Craig- whenever using rockwool, make sure to first pre-soak the rockwool in pH adjusted water before you put your plants in. Rockwool has a naturally alkaline pH that will mess with nutrient availability. Pre-soaking will also help the nutrient solution get into corners of the rockwool where they would not have made it before if you start with bone dry rockwool. Your plants constantly take up water and nutrients to grow (even during the night). Without a steady exchange of fresh water and nutrients around the roots, you may end up with a pH problem or a low oxygen problem. My advice is to irrigate your medium both day and night.
Rockwool absorbs water quickly, and tends to hold onto a LOT of water. This means you can irrigate it with less nutrient solution than other mediums (expanded clay pellets, for example). For a drip system, the proper rate of irrigation would be about 1 drop per second. This should equal one or two gallons per hour. With a drip system the irrigation is constant....there is no "watering period/drying period" cycle.
For lettuce and baby herbs, such as oregano, sage, basil, cilantro, mint, etc.....a 50% strength nutrient solution should work very well start to finish. For most hydroponic nutrients, this comes out to 600 or 700 parts per million (ppm) on a TDS meter. Heavier feeding garden plants (such as tomatoes) can be started 700 ppm as babies, but should be increased by 100 ppm every nutrient change (through veg AND flowering) until you begin to notice the slightest burning at the very tips of the leaves. This is known as the "perfect greenhouse burn" and indicates the maximum strength nutrient solution you should use on your plants. For heavy feeding plants, this is usually around 900-1200 ppm.
Keep in mind, ppm reading will vary a little from one TDS meter to the next. It is better to err on the side of low nutrient solution strength and work your way up rather than burn and kill all your plants. Hope this helps, and Happy Growing!
AffordableGarden Design&Setup
Hi everyone, Jason from Jason's Indoor Guide here. When I got started with hydroponic gardening more than 24 years ago, my first garden used rockwool cubes and B.C. Nutrients....and I remember thinking to myself yeah, sure, there may be a lot of advantages to gardening with hydroponics, for example there are very few pest problems, therefore very little pest control, no weeding, no plowing or tilling the soil, no soil testing or having to add things into the garden soil, no watering the garden....but for someone who just wants to grow their own vegetables and have more control over their food supply and the quality of the food that they eat, the cost of constantly having to buy grow media and hydroponic nutrients makes this an expensive hobby for most people...
Epic Nutrient Change
I suppose when you take into consideration how much money you save NOT
having to buy food at the grocery store, it is surely cheaper to grow
your own food hydroponically even with the cost of high quality
nutrients. Nevertheless, I didn't have a whole lot of money to work with
and I needed to make my efforts as affordable and effective as
possible....and in the last 24 years I HAVE learned a thing or two!
As you browse through Jason's Indoor Guide, you will notice all of the
systems that I use personally are homemade systems. As I got 3 or 4
years of experience under my belt, I quickly adopted a preference to
standing water systems and systems that use expanded clay pellets or
lava rock, because the media is re-usable and it eliminates a huge
operating expense. So once a hydroponic system is built, garden
maintenance is minimal- check and adjust the nutrient solution daily,
and to change it completely every 2 weeks....and the biggest operating
cost is the hydroponic nutrients. (and the electric bill, lol)...
Homemade Cloner
And, regarding the cost of the nutrients....I experimented for about 3 years with making different compost teas and nutrient teas, but there is still a lot of expense $$$ associated with making high quality nutrient teas....like kelp meal, liquid seaweed, rock dust, bat guano, un-Sulfured molasses, worm castings. You can eliminate a lot of this expense by becoming an expert at making high-quality colloidal humus compost, and use your properly made compost as the basis of your hydroponic nutrient solution.
Unfortunately, I have been gardening for over 24 years and I have only
just recently mastered this difficult skill....and even then, only
because I happened to find a very easy to follow, high quality technique
and decided to follow the instructions to the letter. I produced more
high quality compost in just one week than I was able to use in a whole
year! If you can master the technique, I highly recommend it. It is one of the top 3 things you can do to
increase the productivity of your food production efforts, while at the
same time decreasing the amount of effort required to grow all of your
own food, and decreasing the total cost of operating your food
production system.
And when I say decrease operating costs, I mean decrease them to almost
ZERO, especially if you are producing your own nutrients...
High Efficiency
Hydroponics
The ultimate solution to eliminate the cost of your hydroponic nutrients: Imagine a hydroponic system that does not require you to buy any nutrients, does not require you to make your own compost, and does not require you to brew your own nutrient tea. Seriously! No cost and no effort as far as providing nutrients to your plants! Plus, at the end of the gardening cycle you harvest all of your garden vegetables, PLUS YOU HARVEST FISH from the system--->
Aquaponics
This solution is aquaponics. If you are serious about producing all of your own food and being self-sufficient, this is the ultimate solution for reducing expenses (as much as possible), reducing the total amount of work required, and maximizing the productivity of your gardening efforts. I have been gardening for over 24 years, and it is the perfect food production solution in my opinion.
Besides mastering how to make high quality compost, learning aquaponics is one of the top 3 things you can do to increase your garden productivity, reduce your total costs, and reduce your total work. The product that I learned from is called Aquaponics4you. With all of my hydroponic gardening experience, the first time I came across the Aquaponics4you product I knew immediately that it was something very special! Place an aquaponics system outdoors and use the sun instead of grow lights, and you have reduced every garden expense to nearly ZERO!
The Same System/ 10 Weeks Later!
