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Spring Onions and Hops: Revolutionizing Hydroponics in 2025 · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hi, welcome back to Hydroponics Daily with me, Dr. Russell Sharp,
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  the inventor of gold leaf, or as called in the UK, liquid gold.
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  And as well as inventing or formulating fertilisers, we also test our fertilisers,
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  our biostimulants and our biopesticides.
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  And this year in 2025, I've decided to focus on two quite interesting plants.
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  And I'm going to talk about why I've chosen these and what I think is really
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  interesting about them.
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  So the first one is spring onions, or as
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  i'm told they're called in north america scallions however
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  i think most places in the world they call them spring onions
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  and the thing about spring onions is
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  they're in the allium family and so other plants
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  that are in the allium family include garlic leeks shallots
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  and your standard bulb onions the specific
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  chemistry in alliums the thing that gives them their very sharp
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  taste is a sulfur containing compound and so
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  when you feed alliums with high
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  sulfur fertilizer you get a a
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  stronger taste and a better product so this feeds
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  in really well with gold leaf which is a fertilizer that
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  contains every essential nutrient and very good
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  levels of sulfur a lot of one part
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  fertilizers don't contain sulfur the two elements
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  that will be lacking from most one part fertilizers
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  out there apart from gold leaf or liquid gold is sulfur
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  and or calcium especially the crystal
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  powdered fertilizers they often contain no
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  sulfur so the gold leaf stands
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  a really good chance of producing a bumper crop in spring onions
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  or scallions also at eutrema we
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  make a product called liquid gypsum which contains high
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  levels of sulfur and lime sulfur which by.
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  Its nature its name contains sulfur it's the
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  lime sulfur is good for as a soil
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  sterilant to control diseases which of which in the allium family
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  there are lots such as root rot and the liquid.
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  Gypsum is good at flocculating improving soil structure
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  so as well as providing sulfur could help with.
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  The growth of the root system through
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  there the other things we want to experiment with with
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  spring onions i want to look at deep planting because i think
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  we can increase the amount of the etiolated the white tissue
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  the force part of it like you know when you
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  force rhubarb or endive it goes white the white
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  part of the spring onion i think can be improved increased i think
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  we can improve germination rates by playing around with some
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  funky things and i think mycorrhizae as well these
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  are alliums so they've got really thick roots so i think inclusion of a mycorrhizae
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  will help and the other reason i want to focus on spring onions is that in the
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  uk the spring onions that you buy in the supermarket it dog poo to put it mildly
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  they're covered in dirt which is bad because there's that dirt that soil will contain.
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  Potentially pathogens, human pathogens. It will contain pesticides and it's just not very nice.
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  They're very expensive, the spring onions in the UK currently.
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  They're tiny, but more importantly, they're flaccid and nobody wants a flaccid spring onion.
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  And I refuse to believe that the best option for the UK is Egyptian,
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  Israeli, Moroccan, Mexican spring onions.
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  I think we can produce spring onions here in the UK, potentially hydroponically, and
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  get them in the supermarkets and the
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  shops all year round and the other reason
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  i think spring onions are a good option is that they produce
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  a crop in six to eight weeks so we can get lots of experiments done
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  with a quick turnaround in a greenhouse or r&d
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  greenhouse and we can produce good results and
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  then finally the reason i'm focusing on spring onions is
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  because we have a lot of carrot growers carrot crops are
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  probably our biggest earner at utreema we we
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  focus on indoor crops outdoor crops arable
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  crops field crops greenhouses sports turf
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  even water treatment we've got we
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  sell products into loads of different sectors but carrots
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  are probably our biggest crop in the uk
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  and there's a big carrot and onion conference it's held once a year and it's
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  about it's in about 10 months time so i'm hoping to have loads of data and crucially
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  loads of spring onions that i can take to the the conference with all the different
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  treatments and meet all our current carrot customers and potentially get some
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  onion customers as well once they see the results.
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  So spring onions, if you want to get involved with any spring onion trials.
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  Dm me email me i'm more than happy to to put
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  together a merry band of spring onion growers i'm super
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  excited i've got spring onions germinating left right and center
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  at the moment the other crop i'm focusing on
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  is hops and that is because we have
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  a customer who came and saw us two weeks ago and he was really happy
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  because he'd been using our biostimulants our amino
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  acid products and seaweed products and he'd
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  won hop grower of the year with the hops he'd grown
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  using them and and fires of
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  other rosettes at the hop growers
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  association of the uk
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  or whatever it's called and he'd improved the
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  establishment of his crops and he managed to get a harvestable
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  crop in 2024 when there was loads of rain in
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  the uk and there was hail stones at the
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  time when they were harvested everybody else's hops went
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  brown and mushy and his survived and he used silicon as well we provide him
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  with a silicon product and so he was really happy and he wanted to he wanted
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  to know more about the products and how they were made and come and see our
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  grow rooms and our labs and so i think hops would be a great one to experiment
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  with so we're going to set up a,
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  grow room we're going to produce mudder plants and help him with his cuttings
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  and his propagation because that's an issue he's got this super duper new hop
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  variety that's only in the uk and a select few growers and so he wants to propagate
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  that and multiply it up so we're going to help him with that.
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  I think we've got some good ways of doing that.
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  We've got some experiments we are excited about with that. And then the other
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  thing is that hops, the hop family is the cannabinaceae, and obviously lots
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  of growers in North America.
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  Grow plants from that family and we can't grow them in the uk so.
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  Hops are the the next best thing for that they're very
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  similar genetically the way they grow is
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  very similar they produce female flowers they're photoperiodic
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  and so and they succumb to
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  a lot of the same pests and diseases so there's loads of experiments we can do to
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  optimize the agronomy on hops and potentially translate some
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  research that's useful and you wouldn't
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  have thought of if you were just growing the other crop so
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  they're the two plants species we're going
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  to focus on this year another reason we focus on spring onions
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  is when you do these experiments you get
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  lots of produce at the end of them and i've done
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  it before where i've grown loads of wasabi plants and thinking yeah everyone's
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  going to want wasabi or i've grown well you
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  know really hot chilies and then
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  nobody wants them wasabi and super
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  hot chilies and then you go around my village and you know
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  the a lot of people in england like
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  really bland food that's not going to come as a surprise to
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  many of the north american listeners you know
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  britain's famous for loving bland boring food
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  and so the idea of
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  having like carolina reaper chilies or wasabi is
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  like people turn their noses up at them even though they're really expensive
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  produce so but everyone loves spring onions you know people from china japan
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  north america europe everybody eats spring onions and they go in all sorts of
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  dishes and obviously i love beer as well so hops if i can get grow some great hops and get some.
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  Some nice batch brewed ipa in return then i'll be more than happy come the end
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  of the year so hydroponics daily for today is why we'll be focusing on spring
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  onions and hops in our r&d grow rooms and greenhouses in 2025. Thank you very much.