What to Think of for Hydroponics Gardeners
Hydroponics is a new way of soulless culture of plants, also known as nutrient solution culture. The core is to fix plant roots straight in the colonization basket inside which nutrient solution replace natural soil to provide plants with water, nutrients, oxygen, temperature and other growth factors, so that plants can grow normally and complete its entire life cycle.
With the advantages of intensive cultivation and precision, this kind of new technology cultivates plants which win the admiration of domestic and foreign plant consumers. These plants have the strong points of being clean, elegant and pollution-free. When plants begin to grow as seeds, a growing medium also plays an important part. It can be put on the bottom of a pot if we grow plants on soil, it helps to promote matrix ventilation and accelerate the leakage. In hydroponics, it helps to fix the root of the plants. Therefore, you should take it seriously as to what kind of growing medium you are going to choose. It is advisable to use gravel, peat moss, sand and the alike. We do not recommend using rockwool and we should definitely avoid using vermiculite, with which asbestos fibers are mixed to bring about disasters to one’s breathing system.
Throughout the life of plants, nutrients are quite important. They fall into two broad categories-macronutrients and micronutrients. Macronutrients refers elements whose total amount counts for more than one ten thousandth of the total weight of biological elements, including C, H, O, N, P, S, K, Ca, Mg and so on. Among all these, C is the most basic elements, C, H, O, and N as the basic element. The amount of C, H, O, N, P, S accounts for 97% of the total protoplasm. The first three are important components in organic compounds such as carbohydrates, protein, fat and organic acids, which are products of photosynthesis. Nitrogen constitutes an important element of protein, which constitutes the cell membrane, nucleus, the main component of various organelles. All these elements are quite important to plant growth. Micronutrients refer to elements which are needed by plants of a small amount but they play an irreplaceable important role.
Another thing that is of paramount importance is light. Different plants and plants of different growth period need different light. When in the growing stage, plants are most in need of blue spectrum light, which can be supplied by High Pressure Sodium (HPS) lights. When in the maturity stage, plants are most in need of red spectrum light, which can be supplied by Metal halide (MH) lights. However, since most plants experience these two stages, we need a light to cover these two stages, which can be fulfilled by LED grow lights.
LED Grow Lights Bring Vital Innovation to Crop Cultivation
In today’s life, extreme weather are coming more and more frequent, thus farmers are crying out for new ways to cultivate plants, especially indoors. Then LED Grow Light that consist of light-emitting diode is a very good choice, because it can help plants to grow better and faster. Hydroponics is an innovation in cultivation that soil is replaced by nutrient solution. However, when we are using this method, a few factors must be collocated well, such as heat, light and nutrient solution. By using LED Grow Light, the cultivator can control the light as then need, no matter when sunlight is not sufficient for plants to thrive or plants only need one kind of light. LED Grow Light can provide any kind of light the plants need or not.
A gardener may ask why we should choose LED Grow Lights, the answer lies in that LED saves much power than normal lightening system of which over 85% power are wasted .As for the traditional lightening system, superfluous heat need many expensive cooling machines to maintain a suitable temperature.
Another aspect cultivators may worry about is that LED does not look as brighter as normal sunshine. That’s a commonsense error. That light “appears” to be bright does not means the light is definitely bright from the scientific view.
We can never judge a book by its cover. It is the same case with the brightness of grow lights. We can never tell whether one type of grow light is better than another due to the difference of brightness. For example, HID grow lights look brighter than most other lights, but for the plants, they do not need the brightness as the light source. What they need is light of specific wavelength, which can be perfectly offered by LED lights, which look less bright but provide all the necessary lights of certain wavelength that are conducive to the growth of plants. To put it in this way, HID’s brightness is a result of some unnecessary lights like green and yellow, which do no good to plants at all. However, LED lights produce all the necessary spectrum lights. 95% of their lights are savored and made use of by the plants.
In a word, we should judge the quality of a grow light from the intrinsic side instead of some physical attributes.
