Featured Story

Hope everyone had a good holiday break, and decided what New Years resolution to break this year. After a four day trip to my mother’s and a blizzard that buried our car in 4 feet of snow, and I’m back to let you know how the plants are doing.

The basil is starting to look like basil now, the leaves have started to get that ruffled shape around the edges, instead of just the perfectly round leaves they were last week.
One of the pepper plants have begun to sprout a few new leaves and is well on its way, while the other 3 seem to be doing just fine.
Read more »

News

Terry Fujimoto sees the future of agriculture in the exposed roots of the leafy greens he and his students grow in thin streams of water at a campus greenhouse.

The program run by the California State Polytechnic University agriculture professor is part of a growing effort to use hydroponics — a method of cultivating plants in water instead of soil — to bring farming into cities, where consumers are concentrated.

Because hydroponic farming requires less water and less land than traditional field farming, Fujimoto and researchers-turned-growers in other U.S. cities see it as ideal to bring agriculture to apartment buildings, rooftops and vacant lots.

“The goal here is to look at growing food crops in small spaces,” he said.
Read more »

Hydroponics

Highly demand for salad vegetables all-year round has led to the creation of a massive greenhouse development in Kent in the UK.

Seven high-tech greenhouses - each one covering land equivalent to about 10 football pitches - are being constructed at a cost of 80 million pounds on a 91-hectare site in the county of Kent, Thanet, in southern England.

The project is a joint venture between the UK’s biggest fresh produce supplier, the Fresca Group, and three major specialist Netherlands companies. They are Rainbow Growers (peppers), A&A (cucumbers) and Red Star Trading (tomatoes) that had watched the consumer trend, seen the value of the UK market and initiated the scheme.

The aim of the venture is to produce home-grown tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers all-year round and the project has been given the name Thanet Earth that the developers hope will reflect its “Planet Earth” green credentials.

Up to now, the increased call for salads in and out of season has been met by transporting produce from other countries in Europe or further still. The Thanet Earth plan will help to reduce the “food miles” required to meet the demand, says Fresca. It will also mean much greater freshness because the interval between picking tomatoes and other crops and their arrival in the shops will be much shorter.

Each of the computer-controlled 140-metre-long greenhouses is equipped with environmentally approved combined heat and power units instead of conventional boilers, and these will have several benefits, such as providing electricity.

Reducing energy use and resulting carbon emissions are, indeed, part of the UK government’s long-term plans.

Insects are expected to play their part in the scheme.Worker bees are going to be released into the greenhouses to pollinate the plants, and natural predators such as wasps will be used to deal with pests.
Advanced hydroponic techniques are to be used to grow the plants that will eventually number more than a million when each super-size greenhouse is fully operational.

Hydroponic growing techniques are relatively common in various countries including the Netherlands but, said a Fresca spokesman, they have not been tried on such a massive scale in the UK before.

Thanet Earth is expected to be fully functional by 2010.

Planting will start in September and by October the first produce will be start to appear on supermarket shelves.

Source

Tips and Tricks

Once again, Michael Straumietis, of Advanced Nutrients has a bunch of tips for those of us who don’t quite know everything about hydroponics. The advice given this time around is about generally getting the biggest yield from your garden. No one technique will make your garden have massively different results, but add together a bunch of techniques and you have a huge difference.

Disease Prevention.
By protecting your garden and taking necessary precautions against disease you will help ensure great plant growth. Using a hydroponic nutrient system that contains salicylic acid. This compound helps beef up the plants natural defenses against disease. Keeping some fungicides nearby wouldn’t hurt either.
Being able to attack a fungal infection as soon as it starts may be what you need to save your crop should fungus break loose in your garden.
Read more »

Pest Control

Predator and parasitic wasps can be a great addition to your garden, indoors or out. Some species of wasp feed off of garden pests, and will be better for your garden (and you) that dousing it with chemicals.

Parasitic wasps dispatch garden pests in a unique, if not gruesome manner. When a parasitic wasp reaches maturity and needs to lay eggs, first it finds a suitable host. Read more »