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Roof Irises: The Perfect Ornamental for Hydroponics · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hello there and welcome back to
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  Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast for everything soilless cultivation.
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  I am your host, Dr. Russell Sharp, the founder of Eutrema Limited,
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  and my background is in ornamental horticulture.
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  I did my PhD on flowering in rhododendron and I really got into plants and plant
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  science because I was really enthusiastic about houseplants and bonsai when I was a kid.
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  I was a member of the Wirral Bonsai Society near Liverpool.
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  And so ornamental horticulture is sort of my passion when I started off in plant
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  science and then diversified into food crops and medicinal crops.
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  And eventually, after I became a plant scientist and an academic at universities,
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  it was far too much like hard work being a lecturer.
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  So I started my own company making biostimulants and
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  so i'm always drawn back to ornamental horticulture even
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  if we don't actually sell that much product into
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  ornamental horticulture and the reason
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  i'm talking about that is because at the recent trip i
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  went to at growy there's a big vertical farm there's
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  they're obviously growing leafy veg and microgreens for human consumption they
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  had like a timeline of the different types of crops they could grow in their
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  facility and then that were interested to them and they were like in the next
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  few years we'll look at berry crops and vine crops and.
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  Eventually medicinal crops and even cosmetics and
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  but and even at the end was mushrooms but nowhere
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  was it listed ornamental crops flowers and
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  things like this and i thought that was crazy because we were in amsterdam
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  the home of well the world center of
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  ornamental horticulture and they hadn't even considered that
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  well they might have considered it but they've thrown it out and for
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  me that would be like i would definitely go to ornamentals before
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  i would go to mushrooms or even cosmetics because
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  cosmetics you'll have a few meetings with some
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  cosmetic companies and they'll say oh yeah we're really interested because it
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  could increase our bioactive contents and stuff like that but
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  they're actually just looking for a good marketing story because cosmetics is
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  mainly marketing whereas ornamentals there's a real opportunity and i think
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  i've discovered the best ornamental to grow hydroponically if you wanted to
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  get into ornamentals there's obviously a niche there because no one else has grown,
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  certainly not indoors ornamentals really so roses might be growing hydroponically,
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  chrysanthemums things like this but if we're talking indoor cultivation hydroponics
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  i think this i've got a new species that particularly could be good and that is iris tectorum,
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  So check iris tectorum out. Go on.
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  It's a purple iris and it's from Japan and also Korea and China, as many plants are.
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  Debate about where it's actually native to. But it's a beautiful purple iris.
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  And the reason i believe that
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  it would be ideal for hydroponics is because
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  it grows on the roofs of houses
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  in china and mainly japan and i
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  thought this was amazing because it can plant
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  it there where there's hardly any nutrients and the
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  water availability will be you know very variable and
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  it can withstand these sorts of conditions without any soil it
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  is already being grown virtually hydroponically because
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  it's without soil and that's what on the roof of
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  a thatched roof made of reed that's where
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  it it would grow i'm also interested in
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  this plant because i'm always interested in
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  when people claim we don't need ornamental horticulture
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  so like um famously chairman mao
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  tried to get rid of all ornamental horticulture
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  make everyone's gardens into farms same in cuba tried to get rid of gardens
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  and put in something called organoponics which is not hydroponics it's just
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  growing food in your back garden really and even back in like famines in.
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  Ancient times the emperors would decree
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  that all the land has to be cultivated for rice
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  and other staple food crops and it was illegal in
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  japan during famines for land for be
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  to be used for growing flowers because they could
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  see no viable use for it and obviously we
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  know that it's extremely important for people's welfare psychology mental
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  health and just for society and
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  culture you have to have art and ornamental horticulture
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  is an art form and so then so
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  they grew them on their roofs which were not considered land there's also
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  conjecture but people saying that women would grow it on the
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  roofs that's the area they have control of for hair dye
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  face powder for geish geish's but that's controversial and not really been proven
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  the other reason that iris tectorum also known as the roof iris is of interest
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  is that there are loads of interesting chemicals in it so there are a.
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  Let's have a look iristotectorine which
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  i think is a flavonoid there is
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  a triterpenoid chemical so probably some sort of steroid in
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  the roots there's a cytotoxic properties that
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  could be used for treating cancer the rhizomes
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  have been found to contain isoflavones what are the sorts of chemicals loads
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  and loads of different chemicals loads of studies showing anti-cancer properties
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  neuroprotective properties of the isolates it's a it's a potentially toxic plant,
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  but that's because it's used in chinese medicine and so
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  you know show me the medicine that has no side effects
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  and i'll show you the medicine that doesn't work so being a medicinal plant
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  it must have powerful chemistry in there and
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  this is not an edible plant this is not something that
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  should be consumed if grown hydroponically but
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  is of potential for pharmaceutical companies for
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  those compounds and if you're going to grow it probably best
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  to grow it hydroponically because it loves being grown in
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  an inert media and fed with very little water it's also extremely tolerant to
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  stress and it can be grown outside in the UK in a pot so frost resistant as
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  well so a fantastic species there that you know would be a good one to start
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  if you're going to think of a new novel.
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  Ornamental plant to grow hydroponically because it's take a
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  lot of punishment it's also reported that irises grow
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  on thatch roofs in normandy in france and
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  i've never seen that but you know
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  it's there's a number of different sources that say that normally when
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  i'm normally when i'm going through normandy i'm rushing
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  to get somewhere else either in france or in the
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  low countries or germany so i don't stop off in many villages so if
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  you live in normandy if you know anyone in normandy
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  or you've been on holiday to normandy and you've seen irises
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  growing on thatched roofs then let me know be interesting to know
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  what species they use i would imagine it is a different species to the japanese
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  and chinese and korean roof irises also if you if you live in korea do you do
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  do you have irises on your roofs in korea or is it just japan and in certain
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  parts of China traditionally than where it's done.
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  So really interesting. If you're in North Korea, then do get in touch.
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  Do you grow irises on your roofs in North Korea, or do you grow kim jongilia,
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  kim sungilia, the orchids and begonias that are famous for the dear leader, and things like this.
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  So yeah, it'd be really interesting to know what you grow on your roofs there.
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  If you do have such roofs, which I'm sure you do in your small villages outside of Pyongyang.
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  Okay, on that bizarre twist to the hermit state of North Korea, I'll say...
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  Saijian that's goodbye in chinese
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  i don't know what goodbye is in korean japanese
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  what is it in au revoir in french
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  there you go whistle stop around the world tall but
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  iris is growing in on roofs but with massive
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  potential for growing in hydroponically can you even
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  use reed and it's not straw from
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  the field is it it's reed from marshes can
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  you use that as a hydroponic medium even interesting to
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  think you know it's long lasting it doesn't degrade it doesn't decompose
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  it sits on roofs for many years so yeah
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  another potential grown media we could try
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  out in the laboratory okay that's been great
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  if you found this at all interesting then please do
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  leave an apple podcast review because it helps tremendously if
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  you're listening on any other platform chill out relax it doesn't help
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  tremendously if you leave a review just listening helps
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  us okay and if you if you want to
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  check out any of the weird and amazing products that
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  utreema offer then check out utreema.co.uk
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  and if you can't spell utreema just look up wasabi because utreema is the latin
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  name for wasabi which does grow in japan as well but not on roofs because it
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  needs constant stream of nice cool water in its growing media all right and never ever dry out.
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  Never let your wasabi dry out. That's me bubbling on.
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  I'll end this podcast now. Thank you very much for listening. Goodbye.