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| | | Home»Conditions Suitable to Hobby Hydroponics |
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| | | | Conditions Suitable to Hobby Hydroponics | | | | | |
| Conditions Suitable to Hobby Hydroponics
Hobby hydroponic systems are generally operated in the environment of your home. Two limiting environmental factors on yields are temperature and light assuming that nutrition is provided at relatively optimum levels. Generally, temperature in homes is favorable to most growing. However, you can achieve more optimum ranges for your plants if you have a hydroponic unit in a spare room or basement where you can control the temperature apart from the rest of the home, For cool-season crops like lettuce the night temperature should be about 55 F and the day 60 to 65 F. For tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers a good temperature range is 65 F at night and 75 F during the day. Night temperatures should be about 5 to 10 F. less than day temperatures. Range of temperatures is much wider for herbs than above crops. Use of air conditioning to keep temperatures within these ranges during the summer with hot outside daytime temperatures will benefit your crops. Optionally, you could also move your hydroponic system onto the balcony or even in the back yard and take advantage of the natural sunlight and temperatures.
The choice of light quality and intensity is important since natural sunlight will not be available. Light of at least 5500 lux (510 foot candles) is preferred for a period of 14 to 16 hours per day. Keping in mind the quality and intensity, the High-intensity discharge (HID) lighting is preferred over fluorescent as it is much better. Within this category of lights, the metal halide (MH) light with a wider spectrum is better for indoor growing. We want about 60 watts of light per square foot of growing area. Calculate the wattage of light required by multiplying 60 watts by the total growing area. Such lights, complete with reflectors and ballasts, may cost from $600 to $800 depending upon the wattage.
Ambient carbon dioxide levels of about 300 ppm (part per million) are required for plants to be grown indoor. Levels in your house may be lower than that, especially in the winter months when outside ventilation is at a minimum. In such cases using a small CO2 generator that operates on natural gas to enrich the environment with CO2 would be beneficial. These small units cost from $350 to over $500 depending upon their capacity which is a function of the volume of air in your growing room.
Some modern homes may exchange the air in the house efficiently through the central heating-cooling system. In this case no enrichment is required since carbon dioxide levels may be adequate. However, to achieve higher crop yields, carbon dioxide enrichment up to 1200 ppm will be beneficial.
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