Natural rooting sponges

These sponges are the best thing I have ever used for cuttings and seedlings, I went from cuttings taking at least two weeks to fully root out of rock wool cubes to them taking a week in these sponges. Not only that the cuttings grew better and healthier too.
Benefits include:
They have much improved absorption of nutrients and maintains an ideal water to air ratio.
Environmentally friendly-biodegradable .
Improve water retention compared to other products.
They insulate your plants fragile new root system against cold.
Contain beneficial bacteria and microbes to really get those roots going.
They typically cost around £9 for fifty sponges in a resealable pouch and this is a bit more expensive than alternatives such as jiffy pellets or rock wool cubes but they do the job so much faster that they are worth every penny, not only that but success rate is also improved making you more productive saving wasted plugs and plants.

Mapito growing media

Mapito is a rock wool media that plants roots simply thrive in. It gives the plants a great air to water ration and is becoming very popular with indoor growers. This substrate is really well suited to hydroponics systems such as Wilma systems and aqua farms.

 It is worth noting that many growers who are experienced with using Mapito often rinse out the media in order to lower the EC value.

This media should cost around twenty five pounds per 60 litre bag

Perlite and its uses

The advantages of using perlite are faster germination and rooting of cuttings due to better air to water ratio. Faster growth due to increased nutrient uptake,better drainage and aeration. Perlite is completely sterile, neutral ph at around 7 and is from a natural source.

For propagation from cuttings

 Mix equal parts of perlite and compost and place in your pot then firmly place in your cutting and keep well watered with a weak feed solution, once the cutting has rooted you can give it its first feed.

For propagation from seed

Mix one part vermiculite to nine parts perlite, this will give you a nice lightweight mixture. Put the mixture in your seed tray and sow your seed then cover with the same mixture. Water and then place on window sill once seeds have germinated give them their first feed.

Container planting

Use perlite instead of sand or gravel in your medium for the drainage and aeration. Just add a few handfuls of perlite to help with root growth, help protect against bad weather  and help with re-wetting.

For cut flowers

It supports the stems, offers aeration when water is added and looks good too because you can change the colour by just adding food colouring.

Hydroponic growing

Perlite can be used for all your planting requirements from seeds to cuttings and is widely used in hydroponics. If you are wanting to use it for irrigation use at least three centimetres of perlite in the bottom of your tray taking the place of gravel or sand. If you are using a dripper system you should completely fill your pots with perlite remembering to use to cover base of pots with horticultural fabric, stopping particles blocking up your drip lines.If using beneficial microbes it is best to run the system for about twenty four hours to allow the microbes to colonise reducing the stress on the plants when they are added. When mixing perlite with a medium such as soil or coco fibre I would say to use a fifty fifty mix  breaking up the density of the medium.

    I would say that because of the many different uses perlite has, it has to be the best thing to add to your soil, the  benefits for your roots are better drainage and aeration, its no wonder plants that have been grown with perlite are much stronger and healthier than ones without. Using perlite will transform the way your garden grows and make sure that you get the very best out of your plants.

Article source @ http://knol.google.com/k/dean-wright/perlite-and-its-uses/wdrig96hig2m/1

The Atami Wilma hydroponics system

The Atami Wilma system is an active hydroponics version of the drip irrigation system. Plants grown in a Wilma system benefit from all the positives of hydroponics coupled together with the flexibility growing in pots brings.

 In the Wilma system plant pots are placed on a tray that sits on top of a nutrient tank, simply fill these pots with your chosen media be it coco, clay pebbles, rockwool, soil or even a mixture and your plants. In the nutrient tank sits a pump that pumps your solution to a dripper for each pot to feed your plants, the timing and frequency of watering can be changed by use of segmental timers to automatically feed your plants.

 The solution will work its way through your chosen media and over your plants roots before draining through the pot on to the tray and then back in to your nutrient tank pulling vital oxygen with it all over the root zone.

 The Wilma system can be used as a simple auto watering irrigation system of a proper re circulating hydroponics system giving this dynamic system multiple uses.

The big positives to the Wilma are obvious but i will list them for you anyway:

Plants take up more water and nutrient than simple hand watering methods resulting in bigger healthier plants.

The Wilma comes in many different sizes making it suitable for growers with all size growing areas.

The Wilma takes far less maintenance than a hand watered garden sometimes making it possible to go for a week without having to fill up your nutrient tank.

The Wilma is a flexible system with it been in pots, plants can be moved around under lights for example unlike some other systems.

Tips

Always use the correct dripper for the growing media you have chosen, For instance when growing in clay pebbles you would use the flood dripper as the clay does not hold a great deal of water. For more capillary media such as soil or coco you would want to use the arrow drippers.

If using your Wilma with a media such as coco you would treat it as a basic irrigation system .

If using clay pebbles you would run your system as a re circulating hydroponics system and run your pump twenty four hours a day.

In my opinion the Wilma works much better when using just clay pebbles with roots receiving much more oxygen making plants healthier thus equals bigger yields.

Article source: http://neilstuart1978.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/the-atami-wilma-system/

The joy of gardening

There is nothing better in the glorious English summer time than going out in your garden and mowing the lawn or tend to your plants. Everybody does it, first sight of sunshine and all the neighbours come out in their shorts mowing the grass ha.

I spend hours in my garden so i like it to look as nice as possible but with as little work as possible to be honest. I like to get the kids involved which they love and is far more constructive than video games!! My little girl would spend all day playing in the mud and digging weeds out our garden. My garden is a busy one with lots of children toys all over the place,paddling pools and sand pits as far as the eye can see but that is what your garden is for at the end of the day.

I grow lots of strawberry in my garden, one plant a friend gave to me two years ago has turned into a giant strawberry bush which produces enough strawberry for the whole street! Next season i will have that many i will have to start selling them to Tesco ! There are lots of different things that are so easy to grow in your garden you really would be missing out if you did not just give it a go. I have tried lots of different types of gardening methods and at the

 I have used an auto pot hydroponics auto feeder to grow a couple of  pepper plants in my green house and I have to say that the results I gained from growing this way have been amazing and cant wait to try this method on other crops I intend to grow this next summer. I have a water collection system in place from the gutters of my garage that I use for watering my plants as this is healthier for the plant and does not contain any heavy metals or man made elements that can be harmful.

Next thing I will be landscaping my garden with is a hot tub and I do not care how many plants I have to cut down to fit it in! I do love my plants and greenery but come on if it is a choice then hot tub will win every time.

The winter garden and indoor growing

After summer has passed and the weather changes we notice a big difference in our garden. The flowers have died off for another year and trees loose their leaves but there are ways to carry on growing through these times, indoor gardening!

I have grown plants indoors for several years and it really is quite easy, all we need is sunshine. You may think this impossible during the winter but you can buy sun in a box today in the form of grow lights. Grow lights are lights designed with the correct colour spectrum in them to grow plants coming in different forms for each stage of your plants growth. High pressure sodium vapour (like flood lights) are an ideal light to flower plants under. I have a few different types that I use, I start with a 250w  blue CFL to grow my cutting or seedlings this is an ideal veg lamp that gives off very little heat so is ideal for fragile young plants. After roots have taken hold I switch light to a 400w metal halide which again has a blue spectrum ideal for veg but gives me more watts of power to really get my plants into overdrive. Once I am happy with the size and structure of my plants I switch lighting again to a 600w high pressure sodium grow light which is full of red spectrum light exactly what your plants love in the flowering phase of their growth.

Most indoor growers tend to just use the high pressure sodium from start to finish and this is a viable option, all I would say to that is that yes your plants will grow this way but no where near as well as plants grown with the different lighting spectrums.

As well as a light you will need an extraction system in place in order to cool down your grow room as grow lights give off heat as well as light and this can be harmful to your plants.

If  you are going to try and grow through winter be sure to do your research and be sure to only buy equipment from reputable shops who know what they are talking about so you know what you are buying is going to work for your situation.

what hydroponic system i choose

 Growing plants to most of us is a complete mistery the last time i grow any thing was at school when i grew water cress in tissues, now i want to give growing 

things again. I was going to go out and dig up my garden to have my own growing area but before i went ahead i had a look on the internet for some ideas and was 

amazed to learn that you can grow pretty much what ever you like in the comfort of your own home. I found a blog that was on about this guy who transformed 

his celler into an alotment by useing grow tents and grow lights. 

 Now i have been out and looked at the many different ways you can grow indoors and this is what i have come up with, by far the easiest way is to fill up some plant

pots with soil and use miracle grow or some thing like that, if you want to grow something to its full potential hydroponics is the way. Hydroponics is a lot more 

advanced technique than soil growing as it uses water tanks and pumps to feed the plants and no soil is used. With growing times reduced dramaticley when using 

hydroponics it makes it a very good choice for me as i can get more growing done but the trouble is there is alot of different hydroponic systems you can choose.

  The first hydroponic system i have looked at was the NFT which looks like a good system but your plants dont get much room grow in the smaller tanks that i was

looking at. I also read that if the pump stops working it doesnt take long before the plants suffer and die very quickly so i ruled out the NFT.

I briefly loooked at the IWS but that was too big for what i was planning on i only wanted to use a 1.2m tent so i looked at the wilma hydroponic system.

The wilma system looked like the one for me as they have a good range that will fit into the tent i wanted the one i went for is the big nine which will fit the 

tent perfect. The good thing about this system for me is that you can use a medium so if the pump stops working some moisture is retained in the medium giving

you more time to sort out the problem with out plants dieing. The wilma big nine hydroponics system is a dripper system meaning your feed solution is 

being dripped over your growing medium constantly so is being filled with oxygen which is good for your plants.