Articles

Comparative Product Testing

At Simply Hydroponics, we’ve always strived to provide our customers the best information possible and not the product hype of the moment. That’s why we haven’t jumped on the LED lighting bandwagon or pushed the overly complex and overly priced nutrient formulas promoted by some popular product lines. As a hydroponic retailer, we are bombarded with product info from manufacturers [ read more ]

Using CO2 Successfully

by Eric Biksa Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is a colorless, odorless gas that is found in small quantities in the air, and is essential for plant life, without it plants could not survive. Carbon dioxide is absorbed by the plants and during photosynthesis the CO2 is is split into it’s basic elements, carbon and oxygen. Small amounts of oxygen are used [ read more ]

GROWING MEDIUM 4

Gravel This growing medium has been used for years and works well. Many or the earlier hydroponic systems that were commercially available to the public were gravel based ebb / flow (flood and drain) type systems. Gravel supplies plenty of air to the roots, but doesn’t retain water, which means that the plants roots can dry out quickly if they [ read more ]

Expanded Clay Pellets

This man-made product is often called grow rocks and is an extremely good growing medium. It is made by baking clay in a kiln. The inside of the clay pellets is full of tiny air pockets (much like lava rock) which makes this a light weight medium (some of the pellets even float). The pellets are great for ebb & [ read more ]

GROWING MEDIUM

by Professor Hydro There are probably hundreds of different kinds of growing medium, anything that a plant can grow in is considered a growing medium. There are manmade as well as organic (natural) mediums. Even plain old AIR can be an effective growing environment for roots. I have been asked many times what growing medium is the best. This is [ read more ]

Bato Bucket System Plans

Bato buckets are one of the most popular hydroponic containers on earth. Cut flower growers in Europe use them almost exclusively. They are affordable, reusable and can be easily connected together making a Bato bucket system endlessly expandable. Bato buckets can be used with a large variety of different growing mediums. [ read more ]

Ebb & Flow System (Flood & Drain)

This system uses two 5 gallon buckets or equivalent. One is filled with growing medium and the other holds the nutrient solution. The plants are watered by lifting the bucket containing the nutrient solution. This allows the solution to flow into the bucket containing the growing medium and Plant(s). To drain, simply lower the nutrient bucket and gravity drains the [ read more ]

Article 6-4 The Most Important 2 Weeks

By Steve Berlow When asked to write my first article for Maximum Yield Magazine, I immediately thought of all the great things I could write about that could help the hobbyist hydroponics grower. Having spent over 10 years helping hobbyist hydroponics growers in Australia, there was so much that I could write about, but was there a single topic that [ read more ]

Article 6-1 Strawberry

One of the highlights of early summer is the sweet juicy taste of a fresh picked strawberry. Hydroponic strawberries are making a big impression! Grown without soil in a nutrient solution, hydroponic strawberries are the taste of the future. Canada consumes far more strawberries than its annual production of approximately 30 million tonnes. The bulk of imports come from California [ read more ]

Article 6-1 Soiless Salad

Perhaps some of the most versatile and easy to grow plants in hydroponic systems are lettuce and the huge range of salad greens we have available these days. It was not so long ago that the average fresh salad consisted of iceberg lettuce with a few slices of tomato and cucumber. But we now have a huge range of colored [ read more ]