A cost analysis of fertilizers for hydroponic/soilless growing in 2022
Why fertilizer costs matter Fertilizer can be one of the largest expenses of a hydroponic growing facility. This is especially true when boutique fertilizers are used, instead of large scale…
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How to reuse your coco coir in soilless growing
Why reuse media Buying new media and spending labor to mix, expand, and even amend it can be a costly process for growing facilities. Dumping media also involves going through…
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Are Iron chelates of humic/fulvic acids better or worse than synthetics?
Why Fe nutrition is problematic Plants need substantial amounts of iron to thrive. However, iron is a finicky element, and will react with many substances to form solids that are…
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How to make a stabilized ortho-silicic acid solution with only 3 inputs
In a previous post, which you can read here, I gave a procedure for the preparation of a stabilized mono-silicic acid using from potassium silicate. The procedure called for the…
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The Potassium to Calcium ratio in hydroponics
To have a healthy hydroponic crop, you need to supply plants with all the nutrients they need. One of the most important variables that determine proper nutrient absorption, is the…
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A simple cheatsheet for macro nutrient additions in hydroponics
In hydroponic growing, we are often faced with the need to adjust the nutrient concentrations of a fertilizer reservoir or foliar spray directly, in order to increase the quantity of…
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Standard hydroponic formulations from the scientific literature
When researchers started looking into growing plants without soil, they started to look for mixtures of nutrients that could grow plants successfully so that these formulations could be used to…
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Differences between labels and actual composition values in commercial hydroponic fertilizers
Whenever I am hired to duplicate a company’s fertilizer regime based on commercial products, I always emphasize that I cannot use the labels of the products as a reference because…
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Nutrient availability and pH: Are those charts really accurate?
When growing plants, either in soil or hydroponically, we are interested in giving them the best possible conditions for nutrient absorption. If you have ever searched for information about plant…
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Understanding Calcium deficiency issues in plants
Calcium is one of the most difficult elements to properly supply to plants as its absorption is tightly linked to both chemical and environmental factors. It is very easy for…
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