Latest / Hydroponics Daily / Top 10 Plants to Avoid in Hydroponics

Transcript

Top 10 Plants to Avoid in Hydroponics · Hydroponics Daily

• 0:00
  Welcome back to Hydroponics Daily. Today we're going to talk about the most
• 0:03
  difficult plants to grow hydroponically.
• 0:05
  I'm not saying don't grow these, I just say that actually, it does say crops
• 0:09
  not to grow, but certainly not to grow if you're starting out in hydroponics.
• 0:13
  So there's got 10 different types of plants here, and I've written a blog post
• 0:17
  to go into more detail about these. You'll find that on the Eutrema website.
• 0:21
  The first one is aquatic plants. It might sound logical that you should grow
• 0:27
  aquatic plants hydroponically because there's loads of water.
• 0:30
  Running around however the problem is you get loads
• 0:32
  of algae growing in them so things like water chestnuts water
• 0:36
  lilies you struggle to control the algae anything you
• 0:38
  put into control the algae will also kill or harm the
• 0:41
  aquatic plants so they're more difficult than it would seem we've
• 0:45
  tried to grow aquatic plants and freshwater seaweeds and
• 0:48
  it's it's really difficult the second one
• 0:51
  is this one these words you might not be familiar with calcicoals and
• 0:54
  calcifugias calcifuges are acidic loving
• 0:57
  plants they like acidic soils and calcium coals they love alkaline
• 1:00
  or calcium rich soils that's difficult
• 1:03
  because the ph they require is different to
• 1:06
  what's optimized in the fertigation solution that's been optimized for
• 1:10
  other crops and so you'll need to raise or lower
• 1:13
  the ph and you might also have to adjust other
• 1:16
  nutrients to give them more or less of those nutrients so
• 1:19
  as a first timer definitely don't start growing rhododendrons
• 1:23
  which would be an example of a calcifuge or lilacs
• 1:26
  or orchids that thrive in
• 1:29
  high pH for examples of calcicals the third
• 1:32
  type of plants to avoid would be trees any perennial crops
• 1:36
  so this would include cherry trees bonsais they
• 1:39
  get very tall apart from bonsais obviously tree crops
• 1:43
  like avocado they so you you're
• 1:46
  limited in a grow room how tall can you go and the extra.
• 1:48
  Expense of growing a large plant they grow
• 1:52
  for multiple years as opposed to lettuce which grows for
• 1:55
  eight weeks probably the most and so you'll get a build-up of pest and disease
• 1:59
  and that's difficult to control in a grow room so they're difficult soft fruit
• 2:04
  strawberries are were notoriously difficult to grow hydroponically there are
• 2:08
  a company a couple of companies now doing it commercially and but they are difficult
• 2:11
  because compared to lettuce where you just need to focus on leafy growth,
• 2:15
  Soft fruits, you have to control pollination,
• 2:18
  you have to control flower development, fruit development, harvesting the crop.
• 2:23
  So it's a lot more complicated.
• 2:24
  Soft fruits, things like raspberries.
• 2:27
  But probably the easiest of all the ones on this list, actually.
• 2:30
  Fifth one, parasitic plants like rafflesia, which has never been grown outside of its natural habitat,
• 2:39
  never mind hydroponically, or things like mistletoe, which needs a tree to grow
• 2:44
  on, and you've got a combination of two plants there.
• 2:47
  You need to get a good infection of the host plant and their perennials,
• 2:51
  again, so parasitic plants would be a world of pain if you tried to grow them hydroponically.
• 2:56
  If you could grow rafflesia hydroponically the
• 3:00
  world's largest flower then you would be a
• 3:03
  rock star in the world of horticulture but your chances
• 3:06
  would be very low sixth one might surprise you
• 3:09
  is cereals things like wheat oats barley rice
• 3:12
  maize they're going to be really difficult because they're
• 3:15
  low value so you wouldn't actually get you'd be
• 3:18
  very doing very well if you got a profitable
• 3:21
  crop hydroponically they require wind pollination
• 3:25
  which you might not get inside a grow room and they
• 3:28
  have a long life cycle for an annual plans it's not like lettuce which
• 3:31
  is you know six to eight weeks this is like eight to ten months so in in many
• 3:37
  examples so cereals not the first choice and when people talk about hydroponics
• 3:42
  as sort of controlled environment agriculture there's virtually no agricultural
• 3:46
  crops that are grown hydroponically potatoes the seed potatoes are grown hydroponically,
• 3:51
  the actual main harvestable crops not, and none of the cereals are grown hydroponically.
• 3:56
  So Controlled Environment Agriculture, or CEA, should actually be called CEH,
• 4:00
  Controlled Environment Horticulture, because you're not going to grow cereals.
• 4:04
  You'll find that there are universities and some companies playing around with
• 4:08
  cereals grown hydroponically, but no one's commercialising it because it's so difficult.
• 4:13
  And they're grasses as well, and not many hydroponic crops
• 4:16
  are grasses that adds extra complexities as well
• 4:19
  carnivorous plants like venus flytrap
• 4:22
  sungeuse pitcher plants they're very difficult to
• 4:25
  grow hydroponically because they require they've evolved to like very low nutrient
• 4:30
  environments and when you add most hydroponic feeds they've got loads of nutrients
• 4:35
  in them and you also need to get insects in for them to eat so normally in hydroponics
• 4:40
  you're excluding insects and so that adds extra complexity,
• 4:44
  Root crops like carrots would be difficult because some of the mediums like
• 4:48
  rock wool don't lend themselves to the development of a root system,
• 4:54
  a strong tuber system, and harvesting them out of the rock wool would be even more difficult.
• 4:59
  And then if you think about something like potatoes, which is not strictly a
• 5:02
  root crop, scientifically it's
• 5:05
  a stem, but we consider it a root crop in agriculture and horticulture.
• 5:10
  There, you need to avoid any...
• 5:13
  Any light gets into the tuber and in hydroponics there's lots of light and the
• 5:17
  growing media is often allows light to diffuse if you allow light to get into
• 5:21
  a potato crop then it goes green.
• 5:24
  And that's not just a cosmetic issue
• 5:27
  green potatoes are highly poisonous they contain
• 5:30
  chemicals that are thought to be mutagenic to
• 5:33
  sperm and eggs in developing and and developing
• 5:36
  babies and things like that so you know not to be laughed at green potatoes
• 5:39
  don't eat green potatoes people so root crops are.
• 5:41
  Difficult to grow hydroponically arid zone plants like cacti succulents
• 5:45
  but many other plants that grow in arid zones they
• 5:48
  will be difficult to grow hydroponically because of the abundance of water in
• 5:51
  hydroponics and these plants are not evolved to
• 5:54
  have lots of water around their root system so they need a lot more air
• 5:57
  and probably higher sodium levels
• 6:00
  which brings us on to halophytes which
• 6:03
  are plants that grow near the seaside or in seawater
• 6:07
  or brackish water in estuaries they will
• 6:09
  be difficult because you need to add sodium sodium is not in these
• 6:13
  fertilizers that sodium is not
• 6:15
  in there for a very good reason sodium is normally highly toxic to
• 6:18
  plants however halophytes have evolved to to
• 6:22
  to thrive or even require sodium
• 6:26
  so you need to add that in and sure table
• 6:29
  salt will work but that will also block up filters as
• 6:32
  it evaporates as the water evaporates the salty water and then
• 6:35
  your system becomes unsuitable for the growth of
• 6:38
  any other plants that you may want to put in there at the same
• 6:41
  time or afterwards you need to thoroughly clean out all that salt so not impossible
• 6:46
  to grow these 10 types of plants hydroponically but certainly not for the beginner
• 6:51
  and not for the faint-hearted probably a lot of potential if you can grow them
• 6:55
  so maybe target one of these and see and test your hydroponic skills.
• 7:00
  So that's your hydroponic daily for today.