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Hydroponic Trends in 2025 · Hydroponics Daily

• 0:00
  Hi, welcome back to Hydroponics Daily with me, Dr. Russell Sharp.
• 0:03
  Across the table from me, I've got a special guest, a very nervous Matthew Wallace,
• 0:09
  who's our global head of sales. How you doing, Matthew?
• 0:12
  I'm not so bad. How are you? Oh, you sound very gravelly there, Matthew.
• 0:17
  You feeling all right? This isn't going to go well. This is painful,
• 0:20
  isn't it? Very painful for you. Right.
• 0:23
  Today, we're going to be talking about the trends in 2025 because Matthew's
• 0:27
  on the road speaking to growers,
• 0:28
  speaking to grow shops and people in the hydroponic industry and he's always
• 0:32
  coming up with interesting findings and we're going to summarise them today.
• 0:36
  How does that feel Matthew? Sounds good to me.
• 0:38
  Okay so the first one I picked up from speaking to you is that spider mites
• 0:43
  seem more of an issue this year. Would you agree?
• 0:45
  I mean a lot of growers like to care and share between the community,
• 0:49
  between passing genetics between each other and they
• 0:51
  like to pass pests alongside that as well i think
• 0:54
  there's a lot less breeders so to speak so the
• 0:57
  breeders that are around seem to be cultivating their own type
• 1:00
  of spider mite oh blimey so i think as well as
• 1:03
  people might get confused between different types of mites and
• 1:05
  that that could be an issue and then mites overwintering in
• 1:08
  the uk that's more of an issue now don't know about in the
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  us seeing a lot more russet mites being targeted or if not so much targeted
• 1:17
  but being apparent in in in growing environments more so do we have broad mates
• 1:22
  in the uk not 100 i don't think it's managed to get itself into hydro or the
• 1:27
  people aren't educated on what a broad mite is.
• 1:30
  Cool. So that was the first issue that I picked up on. A lot more spider mite
• 1:33
  type products being sold.
• 1:35
  The second one is people moving away from high EC feeds due to burn,
• 1:40
  or certainly reporting more burns due to fertilizer.
• 1:43
  That seems to be a common thing. Well, the high EC fertiliser that are around
• 1:47
  in the industry seem to be sort of sold as easy to grow with.
• 1:53
  But what they don't realise is with the high EC value is that it can cause other
• 1:57
  problems further down the line if the grower would like to use any other sort of, you know,
• 2:02
  let's say a pest product or even adding extra fertilisers and not paying attention
• 2:07
  to the high EC value already found in the cocoa or substrate.
• 2:11
  Great and i think a lot of products that are like high in sugar content like rock resonator,
• 2:17
  any sort of like resonator type products they they
• 2:21
  contain a lot of molasses or sugars and that's going
• 2:23
  to have an osmotic effect as well as the mineral salts in the fertilizer so
• 2:27
  yeah i find a lot of growers tend to hear the word molasses and then try and
• 2:32
  do it themselves and then wonder why the plant's dead and everything's all clogged
• 2:35
  up they don't know how to suspend it within solution yeah it can be a problem
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  especially if your water's cold as well that can can solidify.
• 2:44
  Big big one we've had this year in the uk is a
• 2:46
  lot of foreign growers leaving the uk and hydroponic growers
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  and there's a lot of change as much as we can say on that anything we can say
• 2:54
  matthew about the foreign growers leaving or i'll probably skip that one yeah
• 2:59
  skip that one for now he's not prepared to talk about that one you can dm him
• 3:04
  directly if you want to a lot of diversification into house plants.
• 3:07
  We can certainly talk about that.
• 3:09
  A lot of people think this is an avenue they should be going down. What do you think?
• 3:14
  Yeah, a lot of growth shops now are sort of picking up with the house plant market and.
• 3:21
  The issue is, for me, when I see it, is the scale of which they're trying to
• 3:26
  achieve when you've got a lot of other sort of establishments already doing this.
• 3:32
  And obviously, shops need to look at the import of these plants more so than growing.
• 3:38
  I believe that, you know, there's a little bit more money to be made,
• 3:41
  if not savings. A lot of them seem to grow. If they grow houseplants, they'll make money.
• 3:46
  Yeah, I think if that was the case, a lot of others would be doing it as well.
• 3:49
  Yeah a lot of the house plants come in from the canary islands in europe and
• 3:53
  but some of the big vertical farming players i know they're experimenting with
• 3:57
  house plants they call it like you know.
• 4:00
  Experiments but they wouldn't be doing it unless they think there was money to be made in
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  it i think for a growth shop you have to be careful as well because
• 4:05
  if you people go in there and see pests and diseases
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  yeah there's a you know there's that's the.
• 4:11
  Other thing with shops is obviously if you have plants in your.
• 4:14
  Shop you have to bear in mind that a lot of your customers.
• 4:17
  That are coming in are bearing pests so you
• 4:21
  know bear that in mind and please make sure you keep an eye on them
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  daily and obviously treat as such because
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  you don't want customers coming in and seeing your house plants and also
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  seeing the additions to that as well
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  being the pests especially like fungus gnats they're
• 4:35
  very difficult to control very much so one is
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  for the uk is we've got no uk trade shows
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  in the uk really apart from grower grower days
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  at hydro shops that seems yeah that seems
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  to be the only expo that seems to be happening now a
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  lot of them have turned tail i think through
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  certain events that have happened at the actual shows
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  themselves but yeah we'll have to sort of
• 4:59
  wait and see if anyone wants to pick up the mantle into
• 5:02
  2025 i think in america there are
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  it's always been a lot more buoyant the
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  even before certain crops were
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  legalized they there was a good trade show
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  sort of circuit the uk it's died
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  off but we still got things like green tech
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  in amsterdam which i think is a fantastic show there are
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  shows in prague and barcelona and well
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  not anymore that was the last one oh yeah about bilbao certainly barcelona and
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  prague are pretty cheap to get to probably cheaper than going to somewhere like
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  edinburgh for us wouldn't it so oh massively so i mean you can get a flight
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  to amsterdam especially yeah for
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  about 25 quid yeah if anyone's going to Greentech gives a shout because.
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  We'll be there it clashes with another one of our farming shows but we should be there,
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  and yeah i think the time could
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  be right for a uk trade show if anyone wants to set one up
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  we've talked about things in the past don't we matthew like yeah small scale
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  grower events and even masterminds as well
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  yeah leading more towards the educational point than necessarily
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  free samples and a beer yeah that's never
• 6:08
  been our sort of go-to strategy is it we always educate
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  or serve don't sell that's our mantra and then
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  the other one is sort of i think we think it's not happened yet in 2025 but
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  i think there's going to be a consolidation of distribution networks we've seen
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  a lot of companies either only decide they're only selling through distributors
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  or they're no longer selling through distributors or they're the grow shops
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  have become a distributor.
• 6:34
  Where do you think that one's heading uh i think
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  that's you know obviously wholesalers or
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  distributors safeguarding what they can due to
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  an industry not really on the up it's not on the
• 6:46
  down at least it's sort of plateaued but yeah
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  i think we'll have to just sort of wait and see what happens in 2025 really
• 6:53
  and what what stays what goes i think like advanced nutrients in america if
• 6:58
  i'm right they they distribute themselves but in the uk they use a distributor
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  don't they so yes yeah that's correct and then certainly some people have gone
• 7:06
  the direct to grow shops now so yeah That's interesting.
• 7:11
  So they're the six themes I've seen for 2025. Anything else you think is coming
• 7:16
  down? Not off the top of my head, anything.
• 7:18
  Any new products out there? We've seen some magic potions, haven't we, recently?
• 7:23
  Some plant extracts. We've seen a couple of bits and bobs. There's nothing really,
• 7:28
  you would say, was exciting.
• 7:31
  Nothing's setting on fire, is it? No. A few questionable ones, but there always is.
• 7:35
  But yeah, there's not really anything to be shouting about yet in 2025.
• 7:40
  We'll have to wait and see and see if anyone wants to have a go at making something new.
• 7:45
  Yeah let's hope that there's not another range with an a a b a cal mag a ph up a ph down and a.
• 7:54
  Unfortunately there probably will be about 10 yep but there you go let's let's
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  try and keep it novel and interesting and unique and advance the industry thanks
• 8:03
  very much for your time matthew and hopefully what many more podcasts to come
• 8:08
  featuring matthew wallace thank you very much And finally,
• 8:11
  a big thank you to our community of growers in the United States who've been using Goldleaf.
• 8:17
  Goldleaf is now well established in the United States and it's got a really
• 8:21
  devoted following of growers who just love its simplicity, but more importantly,
• 8:26
  the fantastic yields and crop quality you get from it when you grow hydro crops with it.
• 8:32
  To this end, we are now looking for more brand ambassadors who can help us spread
• 8:38
  the word and grow our community of growers and help educate and support other growers.
• 8:44
  So we're very open to what this might mean depending on your skill set and where
• 8:52
  you spend your time, like whether you're on Instagram or you spend your time on Reddit.
• 8:57
  If you're a grower with thousands and millions of followers or you're just well
• 9:02
  experienced or someone who's just starting out in hydroponics,
• 9:05
  there could be potential for you to work with us in some form.
• 9:10
  And so please, if you're interested in becoming an ambassador,
• 9:14
  please get in touch. As I say, you don't need to be.
• 9:18
  An expert grower you could be someone who's very
• 9:21
  early on in their journey and and we would
• 9:24
  be open to working with you enthusiasm i say
• 9:27
  in business it always trumps everything as long
• 9:29
  as you're enthusiastic it doesn't matter how much knowledge you've
• 9:33
  got i'd rather employ somebody who was enthusiastic
• 9:36
  and had a will to learn than someone who spent 40
• 9:39
  years and was dull as dish water so if
• 9:42
  you're interested in you know you might be looking at
• 9:45
  you know you might be saying oh i can get you to this
• 9:48
  many followers and or you might
• 9:51
  be saying you know i just want to help other people and i i
• 9:54
  want to improve crops improve healthiness of
• 9:58
  people and increase you know there might be you might be
• 10:00
  in a food desert you know like places like detroit or somewhere
• 10:03
  like that where you know access to fresh food
• 10:06
  at a decent price is an issue and you might be having
• 10:09
  an urban farm that helps people get fresh food
• 10:12
  and stuff like that so we'd be very interested you might be an organization and
• 10:16
  you might not be a person on their own and then if you're
• 10:18
  outside of the us we'd also be interested to hear from you in the
• 10:21
  uk we're not quite sure how brand ambassadors would
• 10:25
  work you know whether it would be an influencer style or
• 10:28
  even you know or some other way of remunerating you for your efforts but we're
• 10:33
  you know we're very happy to work with people and spread the joy spread the
• 10:38
  wealth and things like that so yeah if you're interested get in contact with
• 10:42
  me i've rambled on far too long get on to your next podcast thank you very much.