Hydroponic Seeding Techniques

Many people skip starting their own seeds for their Hydroponic kits in Chennai because of the time and effort to get them started, but there are some great reasons to start your growing own seeds hydroponically. For Hydroponic technology in India, It’s so much easier to just go to the store to pick up some seedlings to pop into your system and get growing, right?

The reason that we find nursery or store-bought saplings lacking for Hydroponic technology in India is that: you’re limited to what you can grow in your system. You have to choose from the options available at the store. However, if you start your own seeds, you can grow anything. This means you can grow your favorite heirlooms or even rare plants that aren’t found at many nurseries.

Adding seeding to your overall hydroponic system design means that your plants won’t go through any trauma or root damage from being transplanted into your system. This process may also introduce diseases or bugs into your hydroponic system, from the store.

The first time you start your own seeds for your hydroponic system may be a bit more expensive in the beginning because you need to buy more materials. Seeds need water, light, oxygen, and heat to grow. You really don’t need anything too special to grow your own seeds for your Hydroponic kit.

Inside of your grow tray, it can be beneficial to use a pot that works for your Seeds and their future as seedlings in your hydroponic set-up. You’ll want to use starter cubes, cocopeat or something like an Oasis plug. The key here for the seeding in your hydroponic system design is to use something that can withstand being immersed in water without dissolving, as it could clog up your system after transplanting.

Step by Step Instructions for Sprouting Seeds in a Hydroponic System

The first thing that you’ll want to do is to soak your starter cubes in clean water for about an hour. After they’ve been given a chance to soak, put a few seeds into the cube’s hole. You’ll want to add several just in case you have some seeds that don’t germinate. Once they sprout, you can thin out the weaker plants to allow the strongest to grow.
Prepare your grow tray with about an inch of clean water or nutrient solution that is at half strength. Arrange the light source and heating mat as needed. You can keep the lid on to keep the heat and moisture in the tray.
Put these planted cubes into the grow tray and add water or the half strength nutrient solution as the level goes down in the grow tray.
After about four days, you’ll start to see some sprouts emerging.

What is Vertical Hydroponic Gardening

Vertical gardening, simply put, happens when you grow plants in layers that are one on top of the other. This method is useful for those who are looking to economize on space, since you can grow upward almost indefinitely thereby increasing plant capacity within a restricted space. With the introduction of hydroponics in India , vertical farming has become much simpler since soil is done away with.

Hydroponics farming in India can be done vertically or horizontally. When done vertically, hydroponics farming in India will require the use of grow lights since all the plants will not have adequate exposure to sunlight. With the incorporation of lights in a vertical farming project the cost of setting up the farm will increase drastically which is why vertical hydroponic farming hasn’t gained much traction in India yet.

Vertical hydroponic farming is also being increasingly used to lend aesthetic appeal to indoor and outdoor walls. The primary issue with doing it outdoors is on account of the hydroponic system design , all the plants may not get equal exposure to sunlight hence the wall will have uneven growth. When done indoors once again grow lights are a must and they must be positioned such that the entire wall is covered with light. Ideally indoor greens walls tend to be suitable for growing plants which require less light like ferns and moss.

With developing hydroponic system designs and increasing awareness about Vertical farming and hydroponics farming in India, there is a lot of untapped potential in this market. Get in touch with FutureFarms to get started now!

Epic Gardening – Hydroponics

You want to grow hydroponically!

There are very few things that can take your gardening to the next level quite like moving to Hydroponics does. However, whether you’re totally new or just adding onto an existing system, you need an overview of all your choices before you start on hydroponic system design.
In this article, we’re going to review the parts of a hydroponic system, the 5 main methods of hydroponics, and factors to choose the perfect system for you.

The If you’re familiar with any one of these techniques, you know that these are very broad categories, and each has dozens of variations in layout and design. Growers have a lot of choices when it comes to choosing a system! In India, small-scale and large-scale Hydroponics has now gathered momentum, with more people becoming aware of hydroponic system design and the use of hydroponics kits.

Back to making your garden epic, through Hydroponics, There are a few important factors to choosing a technique and/or system that fits you:

Location – Your location is integral and starts with, and is not limited to, light – it dictates temperature and sunlight angles. You need to understand the consistency of your temperature. Do you need to have protection for your hydroponic kit?

Crops-Two important factors to consider are what crop varieties you can grow and how you plan on building capacities to maximise the returns of your hydroponic kits, which leads you to:

Platform– Depending on what type of crop you want to grow, you can pick between an NFT and/or DWC unit.

Hydroponics and Grow Lights

Artificial lighting for plant growth has been one of the best additions to the agriculture-technology marriage. Replacing the sun as the light source has been a long and hard journey, juggling efficiency and power consumption v/s cost. In the current scenario, lights exist in adjustable and plant-specific spectrums with customizations available in all aspects. The current research into lighting technologies has brought forth more regulation and better standards to look for when discussing the right lights for a setup. We will discuss these specifications and the power that hydroponics and lighting offer growers in this post.

Lighting for indoor growing has 3 main bulb types:

1.Metal Halide or High-Pressure Sodium bulbs

2.CFL and T5 fluorescents.

3.LED

Light from the spectrum which consists of IR-VIBGYOR-UV is emitted in grow lights. These are emitted in various ratios usually 60:40 Blue to red or 80:20 red to blue, the former is used for leafy growth and the latter for flowering growth.

The general rule for lights being put in a hydroponic System design is that leafy plants get about 30W per sqft and flowering plants get 50W per square feet. This is a very rough figure and even the actual wattage output from a LED light is hard to monitor. The accuracy of these values is overstated by manufacturers. The important values to note are the Photosynthetic active radiation that plants can take in which is measured in Micromoles per cm.

Hydroponics Technology in India can greatly benefit from the introduction of artificial lighting to enable year-round growing in indoor farms. For example, someone doing Hydroponics farming in Hyderabad or places with extreme climates would be best placed to use indoor growing with lights to reduce the dependence on seasons for rain and a good crop. They could use these advanced lighting systems coupled with climate control and hydroponics can help hyper localize produce sourcing and bring clean, traceable food sources right to the doorstep of consumers.

Production with lights would ensue much lower turnaround times, 24X7 growing ability, ability to grow without any constraints of climate and cyclic seasons. It would also be able to provide the ultimate in protected environment to grow plants without the use of any kind of pesticide or insecticide.

Indoor lighting systems are the future of food production with more research going into bringing out better and more efficient lighting systems that are cost effective and have the right kind of PAR and ppfd values.

The current problem with the industry inhibiting the uptake of LED or other light-based growing systems is the high price off-of the hardware and electricity. There is also no standardization in the ratings given to the light systems and their specs, for example, some manufacturers claim’s of a 2000W output could mean an actual output of 465W but another player could claim and actually deliver an output of 600W.

It is important for more research to go into the efficacy of lighting systems and more manufacturers would need to come together to standardize and bring normalcy to the LED industry.

Beginners Guide to Hydroponic Kits

The first step to setting up your first hydroponic garden is selecting a system that best fits your needs.
Important factors to consider include: how much space you have, what you want to grow and how much, cost, and how much available time you have to spend maintaining the system. These systems can be built from individual components which would require an understanding of hydroponic system design and have the components purchased separately, or you can buy a complete setup kit from online retailers or in a hydroponics store.

Places like Bangalore, with limited spaces in Urban areas, are ideal for the adoption of Hydroponics! Hydroponics in Bangalore would be beneficial due to the productivity that’s now available from within homes or offices.

Just about any plant can be grown hydroponically, but for beginners, it is best to start small. The best choices are herbs and vegetables that grow quickly, require little maintenance, and do not need a broad range of nutrients. Fast-growing plants are best since they make it easy to assess how well your system works and tweak it as necessary. It can be a real letdown to wait months until harvest time only to find out your system is not working properly. Maintenance-free plants are great for beginners because they allow you to focus on learning about your system—you can move on to more complex vegetables later. If you are growing a variety of plants, it is also important to make sure that they are similar in their nutrient requirements, so that they grow well together.

Some plants that work very well for beginners just learning the basics of hydroponic gardening include:

Greens such as lettuce, spinach, Swiss chard, and kale, Herbs such as basil, parsley, oregano, cilantro and mint

These plants would work best in NFT Hydroponic systems! To get started, you can look to invest in a reasonably priced but good quality NFT Hydroponic system. These kinds of Hydroponics systems can be purchased online in Bangalore from quality retailers like FutureFarms.

Another option for a beginner would be to build your own Hydroponic system. When you build your own hydroponic systems, you are creating a new environment for our plants to live in. Without understanding what a plant needs to survive and hydroponic system design, it will be hard for you to grow strong and healthy plants. You’d also have hard time troubleshooting problems that arise in your homemade hydroponics system.

It’s important to know all of the different variables that go into your system. This way, you can figure out how to optimize them and have everything work in harmony. A well-designed system is definitely a beautiful thing to see…everything runs automatically, creating a utopia for your plants!