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Laughable Hydroponic Fails from Dr. Russell Sharp · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hi, welcome back to Hydroponics Daily with me, Dr. Russell Sharp.
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  And today I'm going to be talking about my own personal hydroponic fails.
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  Epic fail. Why am I talking about this? Because one, it's just funny.
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  Some of these stories are pretty hilarious.
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  And two, I want to avoid coming across as an expert on every single topic.
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  I'm just giving my opinion on certain topics.
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  Some topics I would consider myself an expert on. others I'm
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  not and I'm just doing some research and giving my opinion
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  and that's to differentiate myself from you know certain confidence
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  men who claim to be you know the the answer to every one of your ills the likes
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  of John Kempf in America who sells carcinogenic fertilizers and claims to be
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  a soil biology expert or Graham Sate in Australia who no real qualifications
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  but again cells carcinogenic fertilizer.
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  So just to prove that I'm not an expert on everything, I am not the messiah.
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  I'm just a bit of an idiot sometimes. So I've got seven epic fails that I've done.
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  The last one is an absolute doozy. It's my latest one.
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  And then I've got an extra fail that one of my colleagues did,
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  and that is even more hilarious.
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  So let's go through them. The first one, i so
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  i've told a previous episode that i rescued some heirloom
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  tomatoes from a seed bank in amsterdam and it
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  was the blaby special tomato and i grew them
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  up a and released them to the general public and put a press release out to
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  the the leicester mercury and other national newspapers that took it up and
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  said it had a very distinctive yellow collar around the top of the tomato that
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  made it distinct from other types
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  of tomatoes and then the british tomato growers got in touch and said.
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  Yeah, that's not a distinct feature. That's just you not growing your plant very well.
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  So it's actually a symptom of just poor quality growing.
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  And so that was not a good look. So if you do get yellow collar or yellow shoulder
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  around on your tomatoes, the top of the tomatoes, then that's a sign that your
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  pH of your grown media is too high or your fertigation solution or you've got
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  very low potassium levels.
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  If you're using a standard hydroponic fertilizer, that won't be
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  an issue because they're chock full of potassium but the
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  fertilizers i was using back in the day were not i was using miracle grow
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  so that was bad the second one is when
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  i've grown all these plants for a study and then a very esteemed professor called
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  felix fackers who's really high up in copper now the biological treatment company
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  professor felix fackers came into my grow room that he was sharing with me and
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  he said russell your plants are covered in two spotted spider mites.
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  And I says, are they? He says, yeah, but look at this webbing.
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  I thought, isn't that just spider's webs? I didn't know any better at the time.
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  He says, no, look very close, you'll see them, two spotted spider mites.
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  And I was being funny. I said, God, you've got good eyesight,
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  Felix, if you can see two spots in the back of them.
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  He didn't find that funny because my plants were in fact in his.
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  So yeah, that was an epic fail and I had to ditch all those plants.
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  It was choicier tonata, a plant that,
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  grows very very well from all the way
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  from like florida all the way up to canada it's
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  extremely long tolerance of where
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  it will grow in gardens and i was doing a study on
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  ornamental plants at the time i had to ditch them all because
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  choicier was seemed to be just loved by spider
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  mites even more than other crops the third fail was
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  when i started growing a rare plant called prunus africana i got some seeds
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  started growing them in the uk i had two really big plants that were nearly
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  as tall as me so they were about six foot three and i moved jobs i moved from
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  lancaster university to malton
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  college and i became a lecturer and i was teaching students horticulture.
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  And one of these students was an absolute bellend and
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  i happens in the class i told him
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  that this prunus africana plant was very rare very very
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  unique and you know it was my pride and joy and obviously
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  the next day this plant had died so
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  yeah something had happened don't ever tell anyone
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  how rare your genetics are how rare your plant is because you never know what
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  will happen you could get stolen could get sabotage as in this case and so that
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  was an epic that was epic failure number three epic failure number four i've
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  talked about before that was buying seeds off eBay and I bought ginseng seeds,
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  grew them for about three or four years, and then realized they weren't ginseng at all.
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  They were Pennsylvanian ash, something like that, completely useless plant,
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  has no monetary value and is useless in the UK because no one would grow it
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  as an ornamental, and no one cares about Native American trees like.
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  Pennsylvanian ash and certainly was not ginseng so
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  does grow in a similar location though so but
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  yeah that was an epic failure number four a very
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  expensive failure number five was when
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  i was making a lot of seaweed extracts in
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  east anglia norwich that's
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  on the far east of the uk and i live in the center of the
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  uk and i was making hundreds of
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  thousands of liters of seaweed extracts we had a factory there and then
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  the actual waste product that the the plants
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  sell walls that are the waste product when you're making seaweed extracts i
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  was finding was really good in my garden so i was transporting it back home
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  and it was because the worms were going crazy for it it was a really good mulch
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  and would last years in your garden so it was really good at building up the
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  soil structure soil biology so i filled my i had a big peugeot what do you call it.
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  Two by four and like suv
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  at the time but with not a great engine that was
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  the key point here and but it
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  was a big car and so i would fill it up all these bulk bags
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  and and troughs and buckets and i'd fill
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  load my car just loaded with this wet seaweed
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  deck waste and my car
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  broke down on the a14 where there was no hard
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  shoulder nowhere nowhere to no rescue area where
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  you could get picked up and yeah my car broke
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  down and that cost me a lot of money to fix the
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  car so that would class as a hydroponic or
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  certainly a horticultural mistake don't fill your overload
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  your car with abs with mulch and seaweed
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  extract number six i've talked about before that.
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  Was when i tried to grow the world's largest potato had it
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  growing for about 10 months in my conservatory my greenhouse
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  attached to my house told everyone i'm growing the world's largest
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  potato or my family my niece and nephew said
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  oh my uncle's growing the world's largest potato and when
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  it came to harvest it i videoed it and it was just me
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  digging up 600 tiny little potatoes epic
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  fail okay this is the last one and it's
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  the most recent one is when i decided to control aphids
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  in my grow room so we're growing black grass which is a weed it's a major important
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  weed and we've got loads of plants black grass in our massive grow rim and they
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  got aphids even though we have inlet filters somehow an aphid got in and it's
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  propagated and so all the plants got.
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  Got covered in aphids so i could spray insecticide
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  and we did for a while but the insect seemed to be resistant to
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  even very very high doses of insecticide so we
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  tried biological control that didn't work either and so
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  i decided right aphids cannot survive
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  conventional wisdom says aphids cannot survive without
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  a host they're not like spider mites or thrips
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  that can lay dormant as pupa or as eggs
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  they have to have a living host so if
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  i just kill off or take out all the black
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  grass plants leave the compost in the pots and so
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  again after two weeks or put new
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  plants in after two weeks then that will control the
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  aphids i spoke to a entomologist friend
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  of mine and he said yep as long as you
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  give it a couple of weeks pump the temperature up
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  in the grow room then there's nothing for the aphids to
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  live on and so they will dehydrate and die and then you
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  can just start again so yeah I did that and then
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  I went into my grow room yesterday didn't I haven't
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  been even checking my plants even though on this podcast I say check your plants
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  every day for pest and disease I just assumed that the
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  I controlled all the aphids and this is just a brilliant
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  example of why you just need to control your plants look at
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  your plants every day with a microscope with a hand lens because
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  they are absolutely covered in aphids now i have no idea what happened there
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  this shouldn't have happened because there was no green bridge as it said for
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  the plants to get from one plant to the other there's no aphids flying around.
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  There's yellow sticky traps so these aphids must have laid dormant in the grow media.
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  And that that is annoying because
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  i'm gonna have to start again and it's put me back my
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  project back two months and you know
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  it's a big important project this one because you know we're
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  trying to look for a biological method of control
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  and a disease that costs billions of pounds every year
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  so it's you know it's a big potential money spinner if it works this project
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  and i've completely set it back to step one again so i'm a bit upset with that
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  i've got to kill off all my plants again let's start again because these blooming
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  insecticidal resistant aphids are back again okay So that was my epic fail number seven,
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  probably my most annoying one, but maybe my anger will fade over the coming
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  weeks and maybe my spider mite or my yellow collar, my yellow-shouldered.
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  Stupidity we'll we'll go back to number one of all
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  my epic fails and i said my bonus epic fail was
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  is not through me it's through a colleague and
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  that was when we were phd students at lancaster university and she was going
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  on holiday for two weeks and so she she needed she thought well i need to make
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  sure my plants are well fed while i'm away so not she didn't ask anyone and to look to them.
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  I think she did ask someone to water them, but she decided she would just feed them.
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  So she fed them pure, undiluted, liquid miracle grow as a drench to the roots.
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  And obviously, the next day, someone said, person X, I know you're on holiday,
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  but all your plants have keeled over and died. All your tomato plants have keeled over and died.
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  She didn't realize, even though
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  she's done a degree in biology and she was doing a PhD in plant science,
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  that pouring pure undiluted fertilizer on your plants was not a good idea so
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  that was an epic fail and if you've got any epic fails then please do get in
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  touch i'd love to hear them,
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  i'll happy to share them we could compile a list and i could share them anonymously
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  or i could give you a shout out if you want a shout out so that's been hydroponics
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  daily for today saturday the 12th of april thank you very much for listening
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  as always and see you tomorrow for a sunday edition thank you.