Sophia Roberts: Okay, so today we're going to talk about hydroponics i'm really excited for this to be honest, I didn't know much about it before, but I think it's a really interesting topic, and of course the hearts and love because happy valentine's day.
Sophia Roberts: So.
Sophia Roberts: we'll start with the land acknowledgement as an organization within a land grant institution dig the campus garden coalition at UCLA acknowledges gabrielle you know tanga people's.
Sophia Roberts: As the traditional land caretakers of the two longer which includes Los Angeles Basin and the South Channel Islands.
Sophia Roberts: What is hydroponics basically it's just like growing plants normally except, there is no soil and it's interesting because a lot of times we talk about soil has been.
Sophia Roberts: a really important part of the process, like in the regenerative agriculture, workshops and.
Sophia Roberts: A lot of our workshops, we talked about how important is to have healthy soil because that's usually where most of the nutrients come from.
Sophia Roberts: But the idea with hydroponics is that you grow them in an aqueous solvent basically just means water based that has the nutrients added to it.
Sophia Roberts: So the plants don't have to go like searching for it they're just kind of in it, and this works well with a lot of plants, you can see the strawberries here works with tomatoes lettuce faisal Rosemary.
Sophia Roberts: And, quite a few plants.
Sophia Roberts: There are a lot of benefits, since you don't have to be planting them in the soil, you know six inches apart, or whatever it is for the plant.
Sophia Roberts: You can kind of punch them together more than you normally would and you can get much higher yields because you're able to have so many crops in the in the water.
Sophia Roberts: And because of the efficiency of the nutrients just already being they're being sucked up into the plant roots 90% more efficient, which is quite a bit.
Sophia Roberts: And grows faster, so all pretty great things.
Sophia Roberts: And we're going to go over a few of the different hydroponics methods, the first one is deep water culture, so we have a little video here.
Justin Haggard (he/him): I don't think it's sharing the sound.
Sophia Roberts: Okay um.
Sophia Roberts: Okay, one SEC.
So let's take a look at what we're gonna need.
Sophia Roberts: He didn't say anything important, the first thing we need is a nutrient reservoir which houses our nutrients houses, the water and also has the plants roots suspended in that water.
I tend to get mine from home depot or lowes because you can get sizes, ranging from 15 courts up to around 20 gallons which is more than enough for almost anything that you need at home.
I would recommend probably the rubbermaid brand or the starlight brand is your best bets for durability.
Now the next thing we need is our nutrients and our water.
let's just assume for time sake that we've properly pH the water.
We have added the correct amount of nutrients and everything's good to go as far as our nutrient solution and I will cover that in another tutorial but for now let's just assume that this is already complete.
Alright, so if we were to place a plant in this right now, it do Okay, but as time went on, it would start to suck oxygen out of the water, because the roots need oxygen to survive.
In time, it would run the water completely out or sorry it would suck up all the oxygen and the water would not be suitable for plant life anymore So what we need to do is add an air pump and you can buy these at.
petco and aquarium store anything like that they're very cheap and i'd recommend just buying the cheapest one you can find because even the cheapest one is more than enough for what we need it for.
Now the next thing you're going to need is something to spread that air throughout your nutrient solution, and what we use for that as an air stone.
They again are found at your petco your aquarium store and they come in either a 12 inch long.
lines or these three inch diameter discs and you could buy either it doesn't really matter what you buy as long as it's spreading enough oxygen and air throughout your nutrient solution.
Now the last part of that equation is going to be the line that connects the two, and it seems simple but there's a couple things to think about here, the first thing you want to think about.
is getting one eighth inch airline tubing make sure it's airline, because then it's bendable enough to have to so I can navigate through your little system.
Now the next thing to think about is that it is opaque and needs to be opaque, because if a light is hitting a clear soon you're going to get some algae growth in there and it's just really going to be a hassle to clean out and just avoid it altogether, by getting an opaque to.
Okay, so we have our growing media as our next thing to consider now, I would say, for anyone starting out to buy hydrogen.
And what hydrogen is is it's an expanded clay palette kind of Brown and it has some black specs on it.
It is by far the best growing media to start out with because it's the nerd meaning it's pH neutral, so it won't mess your nutrient solution up at all.
It is reusable and it's inexpensive So if you can't find that locally, you can always order it off Amazon or any hydroponic store online we'll have that for you.
The next thing you have to think about is what you're putting your hydrogen into, and for that I recommend something called net pots that part's basically look like a cup that has.
Excuse me a bunch of holes kind of cut into it, it creates a mesh and what that mesh allows your plan to do is have a strong and robust root system.
If you were to have a normal Cup which has some holes drilled in the bottom there only be one direction for your plants routes to grow, but with net pots, you can actually.
Have roots spreading out from all different areas of your network which is really great and it promotes a vigorous root system.
So, now that we have our entire system built, we have our growing media selected the next thing we need to think about is how to get our plants in the system.
So, for that will take a top down, look at this system, these two black holes that you're seeing are drilled in or cut in to the surface of your tote.
I tend to use a whole software this, but you can just cut it with scissors if you don't feel like you're buying that bit, because it is kind of expensive.
The next thing you're gonna have to do is drop the hydrogen into the net pots put your little seedling in as well, and then pop that into your system and when it's all said and done, it looks something like this.
Now.
This is the beauty of deep water culture, all you have to do is grab a couple ingredients from home depot's and petco.
And you can have this system that produces really healthy really vibrant plans for a long, long time and it doesn't really even take too much effort.
The only thing you need to worry about is changing the water.
Every month or so and in the meantime, making sure that the water level stays constant so you just have some mixed nutrients waiting and, as you see a drop the best thing to do is just.
pour a little bit extra in and you're good to go so.
that's the basics of deep water culture, if you want to cost breakdown i've put a rough one here, and you know this is going to change depending on.
What kind of materials you decide to use if you want to use party cups and cut some slits in them, you can substitute that out for net pots, if you want to use a different girl medium, you might save some money.
And you might already have a reservoir at your House but that's the basics of deep water culture.
All right.
Sophia Roberts: Okay, there we go.
Sorry.
Sophia Roberts: Okay, can you guys see the pros and cons slide.
Okay.
Sophia Roberts: So.
Sophia Roberts: That video.
Sophia Roberts: It wasn't the most engaging but hopefully you got the idea that.
Sophia Roberts: It doesn't take a lot of work once you have the.
Sophia Roberts: materials that you need and it's pretty simple.
Sophia Roberts: doesn't require a whole lot of you know, expensive materials so that's pretty nice but it doesn't always work out as well as other methods, because the pH won't always stay balanced.
Sophia Roberts: You have to maintain the water levels and check on the temperature and so there's a lot of things that you had have to check on.
Sophia Roberts: To make sure that things are going okay.
Sophia Roberts: um.
Sophia Roberts: yeah also.
Sophia Roberts: out so it's cool that you have some experience with this so feel free to like add any notes or anything.
Sophia Roberts: yeah so the next necessary to talk about is Wick, which is a little different than.
Sophia Roberts: The can recent merge it because, in this, you have like a rope that's point up the nutrients to the plant.
Sophia Roberts: And there's no pumps or anything you just use the the wiki itself kind of as the vessel that's transferring the nutrients.
Sophia Roberts: and
Sophia Roberts: yeah it's really interesting.
Sophia Roberts: Is picture this picture on the right is I don't know what kind of plant that is iris but um you know it looks looks a little funny.
Sophia Roberts: and
Sophia Roberts: So basically you you just.
Sophia Roberts: You can use like using materials.
Sophia Roberts: As you see, the pros and cons.
Sophia Roberts: Like you probably have a water bottle that you might be able to like cut in half.
Sophia Roberts: So it's like pretty low effort and it's cool that you don't have to like by the.
Sophia Roberts: Like the tubes fancy tubes you just use the Wick.
Sophia Roberts: um but because you have to connect it you don't want to do it with a large crop that you're trying to get a super high yield for and you may just want to try it with like a few pieces of lettuce or something.
Sophia Roberts: And then i'll hand it over to iris.
Iris Yip: Okay, the next one is the nutrient film technique and this one is a bit more complex it's best for growing plants that grow quickly so like lettuce bazell mostly like salad Greens.
Iris Yip: Okay, so there's five parts to this, the first part is at the bottom it's the reservoir with your water and your nutrients.
Iris Yip: And the next part is an air pump here to being in an air system, which was talked about in the video and this allows the plants receive oxygen.
Iris Yip: And then next part is a water pump which is like.
Iris Yip: A little black box, you see there that connects up to the second level of the plants are.
Iris Yip: And then, what this says is that it allows the plants to get like a constant small flow of water, so they reads they're always like submerged a little bit.
Iris Yip: Before fourth part is the Channel on top.
Iris Yip: With the plants are any things like a PVC pipe for that.
Iris Yip: And the last part is some default offensive it's like in that part.
Iris Yip: So the pros of nutrient film technique or that use low water and nutrient consumption and there's a consistent flow of water which helps prevent salt buildup in the area.
Iris Yip: But then the cons are a little more work than some other methods and it doesn't do as well for plants that need a lot of support or cancer or treat systems like to meet its.
Iris Yip: Fourth, is the APP influence system which is basically just the nutrient film technique system, except now you have a timer so instead of the plants being submerged in water all the time you get.
Iris Yip: You get in a bottle of water for like a bit of time, so four to six times a day the timer will go off and the water will cycle through to the top so it's get water for like 10 to 15 minutes and then after that it shuts off and the water drains down.
Iris Yip: Okay, so the pros of Evan flow or that is greater surface area to growing a plant, so you can grow more plants, but then it's also a bit higher risk because there's like.
Iris Yip: there's like a timer system and that could break in breaks then your plants can like flooded with water or they have no more water, which is not good either and.
Iris Yip: there's potential for self buildup in the breeds because they're not submerged into all the time and unstable pH levels because water is not constantly flowing.
Iris Yip: The fifth is the drip system which is similar to drip irrigation.
Iris Yip: But now with hydroponics.
Iris Yip: This one is like a bit more complicated and you probably wouldn't do it if it's your first time starting off with hydroponics.
Iris Yip: But it's so cool to look at.
Iris Yip: This is the type of hydroponics usually see in like a larger scale commercial operations.
Iris Yip: And what you need here is.
Iris Yip: reservoir a water pump and then.
Iris Yip: trip and mentors over each of the plants, so the water drips down to the bruins, so this is like a lot like your irrigation, for instance.
Iris Yip: Okay, so the pros of this system is that you have high control and it's less likely to break.
Iris Yip: And it uses less water than other forms of hydroponics which already is lot smarter than like normal curling so that's pretty cool.
Iris Yip: But the card is a little extra if you're listening at home it's like a bit more work and.
Iris Yip: You really would want to do if you're just turning off.
Iris Yip: Okay, and the last one is aeroponics and aeroponics isn't actually hydroponics but it's like really close, so I created a here.
Iris Yip: And set of hands getting like water directly.
Iris Yip: They get up in the air, by being with misted so.
Iris Yip: What he does here is.
Iris Yip: Like a miss nozzle and then, and then it looks sprays, the water in the air and then that's other plants get water.
Iris Yip: This is also a bit more complicated so you're probably not going to want to this.
Iris Yip: And the pros and aeroponics but that reads get more oxygen.
Iris Yip: You need less nutrients and this less plant to plant contact which helps with minimizing disease that show them the con is that it's not as easy to use as other methods.
Iris Yip: And the one thing that I found which is really interesting is that NASA has done a lot of work on funding and researching hydroponics methods.
Iris Yip: And one of the things they've done is the advanced plant habitat, which is a habitat for growing plants aboard the international space station.
Iris Yip: So what they did was they took seeds and they broke them up into space and another growing them and does like a one minute video right here about what they're doing.
Iris Yip: As we prepare to send humans back to the moon and onto Mars, the need for astronauts to grow fresh food in space is greater than ever.
Iris Yip: play at habitat oh two or pH 02 is an experiment launching on Northrop Grumman 14th resupply mission to the international space station.
Lifting off from nasa's wallops flight facility in Virginia pH on to will study the growth of radishes inside the space station advanced plan habitat an enclosed growth Chamber that lets us study how plants behave in microgravity environment.
The way the Chamber works requires little maintenance from the crew.
It uses LED lights up porous clay material and a fertilizer solution to deliver water nutrients and oxygen to the plants roots.
inside the Chamber our cameras and more than 180 sensors providing a constant stream of contact to researchers at the agency's Kennedy space Center in Florida.
Things like water distribution atmosphere content moisture levels and temperatures, are all automated.
The successful growth of radishes will help us better understand what it takes to grow a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables in states, something that astronauts need to not only remain healthy, but also to remind them of.
Iris Yip: Okay, here we go sorry, this is the little short but those are the six methods of hydroponics basically.
Iris Yip: Does anybody have any questions any comments concerns.