Hydroponic Ivy Growth Encouragement
by Solomon Mansoor
(Los Angeles)
I am about to build a restaurant in downtown Los Angeles. Part of my design calls for an indoor brick wall 16' high, receiving no sun at all, where I would like to plant NOW a hydroponic Ivy system and nurture it's growth during construction. I plan to open in 7 months. The idea would be to protect the ivy by day with a plastic sheet wall, and then turn on grow lights at night with the plastic down.
Two questions. Any cool Ivy recommendations?
Any cheap but effective lighting recommendations? Thank You!
Answer: Solomon- First of all, I love the idea. Most Ivy varieties thrive in near full sun; however, they will tolerate shade. This makes them a very good choice for an indoor plant. You may even want to incorporate a few ferns into your green wall! They would require the same lighting and hydroponic nutrient strength- about 700 ppm of a 10-10-10 formula, and would add a great bit of variety to the area. The Ivy itself can be all one strain, or a combination of dark green and variegated varieties. A combination of different shades of green, or a combination of two different leaf shapes would also be very eye-catching.
The more light your Ivy plants receive, the more quickly the plants will grow....and they will use slightly more nutrients also. While slow growth might be preferable once your restaurant opens (for ease of maintenance you can reduce light and fertilizer), you may desire faster growth rates in the 7 months leading up to your grand opening. Fast growing varieties can add two or three feet to their length in one year.
If you use sizable Ivy cuttings to start with (for example, 3 feet in length), you will be able to cover about 5 feet of your wall with each Ivy plant by the time you open. For more coverage, you will need to either start with longer Ivy plants, or you will need to plant some of the Ivy into the center of your wall....and somehow figure out a good hydroponic system for feeding and watering these Ivy plants. Hopefully you have time to consider this before building your wall. I have pictures here of at least one wall-hung hydroponic system. Others can be designed using many different techniques.
One other method of growing to consider would be to plant the Ivy at the top of the wall, and allow the Ivy to hang down as it is grown. This encourages faster growth of the runners, as long as you prevent them from coming into contact with the wall and attaching themselves. Once you have substantially long runners, you can then train them onto the wall in any position you like and allow them to attach to the wall. This method is used by commercial growers who produce Ivy for florists for use as fillers in flower arrangements.
If having a skylight is an option, this would be an excellent solution for lighting your Ivy wall. Or, if the wall can be positioned near a South facing picture-glass window, this would also be very good. In the absence of any natural light, you have two options. You can use a 400 watt or 600 watt metal halide light, which would cover a larger area and encourage a faster growth rate, or you can use fluorescent lights....which would support slower growth rates and which illuminate a much smaller area effectively. Be sure to follow the links above for more information on each lighting option.
Lastly, I am no Ivy expert. With a little additional research, you may be able to find a faster growing Ivy variety. I hope this helps Solomon, and Happy Growing!
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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!
