Learning about Hydro, do i have it right?

The only experience i have growing is with soil but hydro seems more cost effective when DIY.

Basically a ebb&flow has the plants in w.e medium you choose inside the pots which have some sort of holes in them. the plants sit atop a bin or tub which gets water pumped in from a res for a 5-10 minutes 3-4 times a day to moisten the medium and then the water is leaked back into the res and any extra water pumped in leaks through a drainage tube so it doesnt overflow?

do i have the system right?

pretty much yeah. water should be under 70 degrees F at all times.

Inside your solution resevoir you have airstones which keep the solution aerated. It is this extra oxygen disolved in the solution that makes hydroponics work.

Hydroponics is easier than soil gardening once you have the basics down. It costs a little more but the yields are triple those of soil gardening. There is, however, a learning curve and some people give up before they have the basics down. Your first hydroponics crop should, in my opinion, be approached as a training crop.

With soil you have to deal with each plant individually. In Hydroponics, when you do something to one plant, you do it to all of them at once thus there is less work. The flip side of that is if you screw one plant up, you've screwed them all up.

With hydroponics you are responsible for everything they need. Correct PH, correct amounts of fertilizer and the right formula of nutrients. You must also keep your system clean, keep your humidity and temperatures in control and your solution resevoir cool.

Hydroponics is a lot faster because your accelerated growth rates shorten the vegetative time. I used to vegetate my girls 5 or 6 weeks with soil, with my hydroponic garden I vegetate about 10 days to 2 weeks. That knocks weeks off the total time it takes to do a crop.

Snicklefritz

The only experience i have growing is with soil but hydro seems more cost effective when DIY.

Basically a ebb&flow has the plants in w.e medium you choose inside the pots which have some sort of holes in them. the plants sit atop a bin or tub which gets water pumped in from a res for a 5-10 minutes 3-4 times a day

Click to expand...

That depends on the medium you are using. not all of them need to be watered that often, rockwool and coco-coir come to mind.

to moisten the medium and then the water is leaked back into the res and any extra water pumped in leaks through a drainage tube so it doesnt overflow?

do i have the system right?

Click to expand...

Well... partially. The water does get pumped, it doesn't leak back out, it flow right back into the res through the same tube that put it there when the pump shuts off. The overflow serves just one purpose, if something happens and your pump puts more water than necessary on the table the overflow will stop it from running on your floor. VV

GreenThumbSucker said:

Inside your solution resevoir you have airstones which keep the solution aerated. It is this extra oxygen to the roots that makes hydroponics work.

Hydroponics is easier than soil gardening once you have the basics down. It costs a little more but the yields are triple those of soil gardening. There is, however, a learning curve and some people give up before they have the basics down. Your first hydroponics crop should, in my opinion, be approached as a training crop.

With soil you have to deal with each plant individually. In Hydroponics, when you do something to one plant, you do it to all of them at once thus there is less work. The flip side of that is if you screw one plant up, you've screwed them all up.

With hydroponics you are responsible for everything they need. Correct PH, correct amounts of fertilizer and the right formula of nutrients. You must also keep your system clean, keep your humidity and temperatures in control and your solution resevoir cool.

Hydroponics is a lot faster because your accelerated growth rates shorten the vegetative time. I used to vegetate my girls 5 or 6 weeks with soil, with my hydroponic garden I vegetate about 10 days to 2 weeks. That knocks weeks off the total time it takes to do a crop.

Click to expand...

Does it knock off flowering time also or just mostly veg ?