Mother's Mini-Manual HYDROPONICS
(Page 4 of 7)
NOTE: Whenever the medium has the ability to retain moisture for more than one day, it will probably tend to build up excess levels of nutrient salts over a period of time. To prevent this, every third watering should be a plain-water flush, to wash out excess salts.
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WATER
For the small grower, any water that's good enough to drink is going to work quite well in your garden, since plants have a much higher tolerance for impurities than you do. You can test water simply by putting some cut flowers in a vase of the sample being tested: if they last the usual time before wilting, the water is almost certainly safe for irrigation.
NUTRIENTS
The feeding of plants is the heart of hydroponics. Feeding plants well and with personal attention is what makes your homegrown vegetables superior to almost any other produce. You can learn to adjust the nutrients to suit your climate, location, crop variety, and varying weather conditions.
The subject of nutrients is both the easiest and the hardest part of home hydroponic gardening. It is easy because there are at least two good quality commercial plant food mixes suitable for your needs:
Dr. Chataliers' Plant Food
P.O. Box 20375
St. Petersburg, Fla. 33702
and
Hydro-Garden's Chem-Gro
P.O. Box 7172
Colorado Springs, Colo. 80933
You can get good results with either of these products (or from several others), and feed a good sized garden for less than 50 cents a week. All you need to do is dissolve the dry mix in water, one pound per 100 gallons (1 or 2 teaspoons per gallon), then feed and water your plants at the same time.
When you begin your first garden, we recommend that you start with a prepared plant food mix. Later, once you get into the swing of things, you may decide to learn how to mix your own tailor?made plant food, or tune up the prepared mix you purchase.
This brings us to the hard part . . . learning to mix your own hydroponic formula. Mixing your own is cheaper, more flexible, more fun, more educational, more challenging, and more satisfying. It is also more trouble to do and more difficult to understand.
CHEMICAL MIXTURES. The plant food recipes given here are only representative of the hundreds of available formulae, but they can be counted on to give you good results. After the chemicals are carefully weighed and measured, break up any lumps, and mix very `thoroughly together into a fine powder. Never allow nutrients to get damp or wet before using. When making a solution, stir powders vigorously into water, but don't be surprised to find a certain amount of undissolved solids, especially when using superphosphate. Trace elements are given in a separate formula.
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