Homemade Hydroponic Nutrients
by Naveen
(Dubai)
I am a fresher to this concept, would like to grow beans, tomatoes, and some herbs. What is the best way to go about making homemade hydroponic nutrients, and what is the dosage required?
Answer: Naveen- this is a question I get quite a bit, actually. To start, let's go over a few problems you will have to confront. First, a hydroponic fertilizer needs to provide everything your plants need....Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium, Calcium, Magnesium, Sulfur, Iron, Boron, Molybdenum, Chloride, Manganese, Copper, and Zinc.
Second, the ratio of these nutrients will be different for different crops. For example, your beans and tomatoes will do best with extra Phosphorus, while your herbs will do best with extra Nitrogen. Your nutrient strength is likely to be different for different crops also. For example, tomatoes and beans should be fed a "full strength" solution (about 1200 PPM), whereas your herbs would do very well on a 50% strength solution (about 700 PPM).
Third, you will need to have some way of testing the nutrient solution strength and the nutrient solution pH every day so you can maintain your nutrient solution properly. For testing the pH, you can either use an inexpensive pH test kit (a small, clear vial with dropper solution), or you can purchase a pH meter.
Testing your nutrient solution strength will be a little more difficult. Usually, you would use either a TDS meter (total dissolved salts) or an EC meter (electrical conductivity). These meters can be expensive. Also, these meters are more accurate measuring professional, chemical based hydroponic fertilizers than they are measuring organic based fertilizers. I guess many organic substances used by the plants as food do not show up as "fertilizer salts".
If you need to mix up your own homemade hydroponic nutrient solution, a good place to start would be compost tea. No matter where you are, you can usually make up some kind of compost. Compost usually has a decent mix of N-P-K, usually has at least SOME Calcium, Magnesium, and Sulfur, and often has most of the micro-nutrients as well. If you can add some kind of seaweed to your compost tea, that would be most helpful. Products like liquid seaweed (MaxiCrop) and kelp meal contain many micro-nutrients and some plant hormones.
To brew compost tea, start with a pound or two of compost in a 5 gallon bucket. The compost can be placed in a sock or piece of t-shirt to keep most of the debris out of the water. It is beneficial to include an air bubbler in the bucket....beneficial micro-organisms will only increase in an aerobic environment.
To this, add any liquid seaweed or kelp meal you have....about 1/4 cup would be good for a 5 gallon batch. Finally, add about 1/4 cup of un-Sulfured molasses to give the micro-organisms something to feed on. Raw sugar can be used in place of molasses if needed. Brew the mix for two days (or at the very least one). Shake the bag of compost every once in a while to make a nice, strong tea.
When you go to use the compost tea, you will want to dilute it some with plain water....simply test the nutrient solution strength with your meter to determine how much you need to dilute the solution (keeping in mind what crop you are feeding it to). This is a very basic recipe. For crops that prefer more Nitrogen, you will want to add a source of Nitrogen to the tea (such as composted horse manure or cow manure). Clean wood ash can be added for additional Phosphorus, but only in small amounts (wood ash can change the pH of your nutrient solution a lot).
Be sure to always check and adjust the pH of your nutrient solution whenever you check and adjust the nutrient solution strength. If you would like to read a little more about making up your own fertilizer, check out this post, where I describe a nutrient made mostly of worm castings, bird guano, and bat guano. I hope this help!
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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!
