3 ms·

This is a good write-up. Note that anyone pondering using indoor hydroponics to grow appreciable quantities of food should think on this first: > "It’s been l

This is a good write-up. Note that anyone pondering using indoor hydroponics to grow appreciable quantities of food should think on this first: > "It’s been less practical to grow bulk vegetables, such as spinach. Brazilian spinach has been fairly successful in terms of growth, but it takes about a month for a cutting to grow to maturity, and we need about four plants to make a salad, so we’d need several racks of bins to make a dent in our vegetable consumption. Also, in general our herbs have had less pests than leafy green vegetables." Growing food is a pretty complicated, and often underappreciated, skill. Humans learned to control fire and make tools well before, i.e. many thousands of years before, the first farmer-based civilizations began to appear. Producing an appreciable amount of food indoors in a cold climate in the winter months might require several thousand watts of lighting, a fairly large space, signicant amounts of nutrients, and decent control of airflow, temperature and humidity. Constant daily work and inspection is required to avoid insect infestations and mold outbreaks (cleaning is critical). Many flowering and fruiting cycles in plants are highly light-period-sensitive so that has to be carefully managed as well. Expect to put in hours of labor every day, without fail. As a result, most simple indoor hydroponics setups are geared towards things like lettuce which just produce leaves. If you can manage to get good yields of things like tomatoes, chilis, strawberries then it's quite the accomplishment. Some people even manage potatoes and carrots, which seems to be the trickiest of all (root development being the issue). Outdoor hydroponics is a lot easier with full sunlight, and while many people will say 'just use soil' in many areas good soil is hard to come by. Indeed, some people say the most valuable and arcane farming skill is the generation of high-quality soil (which requires the composting arts, plus knowledge of mineral substrates).

justinwp 4y ago
> Expect to put in hours of labor every day, without fail. This is absolutely not true. I have a home hydroponics setup in my garage on two tiers of a home depot storage rack covering about 24 sq feet. We eat the equivalent of $10-15 worth of leafy green veggies and herbs every single day. The produce I grow is far superior in taste and more diverse than what is available at the grocery store. My maintenance includes every 3 weeks topping the water/nutrients and checking pH. This could be extended to 5 weeks or more if I went from DWC to Kratky method, basically just turning off some of the circulation pumps. I probably spend about 10 minutes a week pruning, adjusting air circulation, etc. Everything is controllable from my phone (water pump, aeration, lights, etc).
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  That sounds like a nice setup. I once worked with a system that was about 10X bigger and geared towards fruits a & flowers, it required a lot of management, but was quite productive. Cherry tomatoes are a good option, they mature fairly quickly.
nrb 4y ago
> Constant daily work and inspection is required to avoid insect infestations and mold outbreaks (cleaning is critical). Many flowering and fruiting cycles in plants are highly light-period-sensitive so that has to be carefully managed as well. Expect to put in hours of labor every day, without fail. I don’t have any experience with industrial-level hydroponics, only my ~40 plant indoor system, but these problems might only be ones of scale. The only pest I need to deal with is fungus gnats which “Mosquito Bits” added to the reservoir solves completely for a few seconds of effort every month. If you spot algae starting to bloom in the reservoir just toss in a touch of 3% H2O2. LED lighting and water pump are managed by timer switches with day/night phases. For maybe an hour or two a month of effort, I get to supplement my meals with food harvested from 20 feet away that were almost entirely grown through automation with less water than a single shower takes. It feels like sci-fi to me! I’d encourage anyone who is considering it to take the leap.

justinwp 4y ago

> Expect to put in hours of labor every day, without fail. This is absolutely not true. I have a home hydroponics setup in my garage on two tiers of a home depot storage rack covering about 24 sq feet. We eat the equivalent of $10-15 worth of leafy green veggies and herbs every single day. The produce I grow is far superior in taste and more diverse than what is available at the grocery store. My maintenance includes every 3 weeks topping the water/nutrients and checking pH. This could be extended to 5 weeks or more if I went from DWC to Kratky method, basically just turning off some of the circulation pumps. I probably spend about 10 minutes a week pruning, adjusting air circulation, etc. Everything is controllable from my phone (water pump, aeration, lights, etc).

photochemsyn 4y ago
That sounds like a nice setup. I once worked with a system that was about 10X bigger and geared towards fruits a & flowers, it required a lot of management, but was quite productive. Cherry tomatoes are a good option, they mature fairly quickly.

nrb 4y ago

> Constant daily work and inspection is required to avoid insect infestations and mold outbreaks (cleaning is critical). Many flowering and fruiting cycles in plants are highly light-period-sensitive so that has to be carefully managed as well. Expect to put in hours of labor every day, without fail. I don’t have any experience with industrial-level hydroponics, only my ~40 plant indoor system, but these problems might only be ones of scale. The only pest I need to deal with is fungus gnats which “Mosquito Bits” added to the reservoir solves completely for a few seconds of effort every month. If you spot algae starting to bloom in the reservoir just toss in a touch of 3% H2O2. LED lighting and water pump are managed by timer switches with day/night phases. For maybe an hour or two a month of effort, I get to supplement my meals with food harvested from 20 feet away that were almost entirely grown through automation with less water than a single shower takes. It feels like sci-fi to me! I’d encourage anyone who is considering it to take the leap.