Total-control Indoor Gardening with Modern Hydrop

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From chemicals dissolved in soil moisture or a hydroponic nutrient solution, the plant obtains much smaller percentages of six or seven major nutrients needed to fuel its complex metabolism: NPK, plus calcium, magnesium, and sulfur (and perhaps nickel). The plants also require tiny (but essential) amounts of another seven or eight micronutrients or trace elements: chlorine, boron, iron, manganese, zinc, copper, and molybdenum.

Nutrients are needed in different proportions by different plant types and at different stages of development: typically, a great deal of nitrogen in early vegetative stages, more potassium when stems are developing, and more phosphorus in bloom and fruiting stages. About all organic gardeners can do is till-in compost and dig phosphorus-rich bone meal into soil around tomatoes and mist the plants get it. A 10-10-10 balanced chemical fertilizer with superphosphate top dressing on tomatoes is the conventional counterpart. Hydroponic nutrients, however, can be custom mixed to match each crop's specific requirements.

Let me describe how this stuff works by relating a recent experience with a 1 1/2" peat pot of (obviously unthinned) watermelon seedlings that I rescued late last spring from a display of sickly looking plants in a supermarket parking lot. Four spindly jaundiced little plants were growing from the pot. I nipped out the weakest and the most spindly of the four seedlings and broke out the peat pot's sides. Then, I packed the rootball in expanded day pellets inside a 6" mesh-bottomed pot, immersed it in cool water, and agitated it till what little there was of its original peat/vemiculite growing medium was washed out. I left it to drain overnight and next morning found a pair of very dejected-looking little melon plants drooping over the sides of the pot.

To perk them up, I selected the three—part FloraGro system by General Hydroponics pure chemicals, but perhaps the most advanced and painstakingly formulated hydroponic nutrient system in the world. For melons, the instructions specified- 2 teaspoons per gallon of FloraGro, the 2% N, 1% P, 6% K green solution; one teaspoon of FloraBloom, the 0-54 pink solution; and 1 1/2 teaspoons of 1, 1 FloraMicro, the murky brown fluid that rates 50-2, plus manganese, zinc, and other micronutrients. Using a nifty tubular 10ml./2 tsp. pharmacists fluid measure sold by Lee Valley, I measured out the fluids and added them to a gallon of my sparkling mountain stream water. I set the melon seedlings in a mixing bowl and poured in nutrient till the pot floated ... just. After a good two hours' soak, I came back to remove and drain the little seedlings and set them on heating cables under my fluorescent Gro-lite battery.

Have you ever seen plants smiling? I swear that these little guys were doing just that! In just a couple of hours in the nutrient bath and a shot of light energy, they'd turned their leaves up to the light, pulled stems up from where they'd been drooping, and looked to be grinning from stem to stem ... if plants have a stem, that is, For the rest of the week, they got a twice daily soaking in melon-special nutrient in the most elementary hydroponic system: a hand poured flood-and-drain or ebb-and-flow system.

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