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More Grocery Store Hacks: Growing Exotic Rhizomes for Less · 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'm your host, Dr. Russell Sharp, the founder of Utrema Ltd.
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  And in a previous episode, I talked about my experiments with microgreens.
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  And I found that if you go to a local health food store, whether that's a big
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  chain or an independent store, and you get things like spelt wheat, buckwheat.
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  Sweet corn mung beans
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  basically what should be going into your
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  healthy food basically as long as it's not roasted then
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  you can actually use the seeds for growing
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  microgreens or even full plants
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  so i was producing things like golden popcorn
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  and pea shoots and all sorts of
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  crops in microgreens with these store-bought seeds
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  which were vastly cheaper than i
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  could buy from seed companies at specialized even the ones that specialized in
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  microgreens so it was a very much a a
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  hack that could vastly reduce your your
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  production costs and your cost of goods in microgreen production and hydroponics
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  in general as i say avoid the roasted ones so don't go and buy some hemp seed
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  thinking that it's going to be you're going to grow that into cannabis plants
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  because you won't because they're roasted to stop that if you can find unroasted
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  then you could potentially.
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  Do that but that would be illegal so you wouldn't want to do that and
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  roast and peanuts are often roasted peanuts you
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  have to be careful they have to be really careful with the aflatoxins that
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  can grow on them the fungus can grow on it and i think
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  it does irreparable damage to your kidneys let
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  me just check that no not your kidneys your liver
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  it can cause liver cancer so that's why when you
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  buy peanuts you should always buy them from a
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  sealed foil container because
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  that is the that's the safest way of buying them never buy them
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  by the handful in the local market things like that anyway that's peanuts not
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  talking about that today on the continuing this idea of buying your propagation
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  material from a food shop a supermarket or a health food stock shop because
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  it's not just seeds that you can.
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  Buy to start your propagation material. You can buy spices and vegetables and
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  use them as your propagation material.
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  Now, if you're a small to medium-sized grower, this could be your best method.
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  But even if your supplier is taking the mickey with prices in large-scale production,
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  you could potentially use them.
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  So what's the first one we're going to look at? Well, rhizomes of turmeric would
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  be the first one because turmeric.
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  Even when you get it in Europe, when it's even when it's when it's
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  shipped in it's on the edge of its shelf life turmeric and
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  turmeric you want to have be full of the
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  active ingredients the health giving active ingredients which
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  lots of people take for many to supplement
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  their their conventional medicine and
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  they've got a lot of diseases as well so turmeric could be
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  a lot more bioactive if you grow
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  it close to where you consume it and it's
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  that orangey color that you find in the turmeric the curcumin
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  curcumin sorry that is being
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  heavily researched and it's in
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  the ginger family turmeric so again turmeric
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  can be grown just like ginger if you don't know how to
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  grow turmeric then potentially just follow
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  the instructions for ginger and following on from that obviously ginger
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  you can use store-bought ginger as
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  a starting material for growing a ginger crop and these are herbaceous what
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  we call monocots so like in the grass family so they're going to need a lot
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  more silicon than your conventional hydroponic crops and what else are you going
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  to do probably going to reduce the.
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  Calcium requirements that's going to be less but certainly
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  more silicon so a good potassium silicon source so
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  turmeric and ginger you could grow in very similar way and if you optimize for
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  ginger you're probably going to be optimizing for turmeric at the same time
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  it grows from a rhizome a modified root as opposed to a potato which is a modified
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  stem tuber okay we know potatoes are,
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  stems because they've got buds anything with buds is a
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  stem and potatoes go green if you put them in the light and therefore
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  that's another reason they are a stem not a root because roots don't
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  go green generally you can use store-bought potatoes for
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  growing potato crops however they can contain viruses from the mother plant
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  so that's why we tend to use what are called seed potatoes and here in the uk
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  we get seed potatoes from the black isle in scotland which sounds a dark and dangerous place.
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  I always want to go to the Black Isle, but it doesn't look like there's much
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  to do there. It's not even an island.
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  It is a peninsula in Scotland that's very windswept, quite high,
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  quite cold, and no aphids can tolerate those conditions. And so you don't get the virus transfer.
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  And there is no main crop potato crops around there. So you don't get the virus
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  coming in from the mother plant.
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  Other places around the world, high altitude places or fairly high altitude
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  places grow sea potatoes as well but you can grow potatoes from store-bought.
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  Tubers if you really wanted to and take
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  that risk same goes for garlic you can buy
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  the cloves of garlic and plant one not the
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  whole bulb one clove and you can get a garlic plant but you do risk getting
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  things like white rot and viruses and gray mold and that's why it's often advised
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  that you buy certified seed stock garlic but there's no reason why you couldn't just use garlic from.
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  The store if you wanted to and save money that's in
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  hydroponics or in gardening in general it's getting
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  quite close to the time where you would plant garlic i
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  think christmas day boxing day is it most people or
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  shortest day often people go out there and plant garlic so in
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  hydroponics could be any time of the year because it doesn't depend
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  on the weather and the current seasonal
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  conditions just heading back to the ginger family again
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  a rarer spice or
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  vegetable that is increasingly popular
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  in the uk in asian cuisine is galangal that is in the ginger family the greater
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  galangal is the most commonly used it's similar to ginger and turmeric and native
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  to southeast asia There is also the lesser galangal, another species altogether,
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  although that is less frequently cultivated.
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  But if you are a Michelin-style restaurant or supplying one,
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  then perhaps you would see benefit in growing lesser galangal as a very unique crop.
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  There's also a number of very similar plants in that sort of area that are eaten.
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  So yeah, high silicon, and then you could grow galangal, turmeric, and ginger.
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  There's an opportunity there for a hydroponic grower. There are another couple
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  of monocot tubers, so grass-like tubers.
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  They are edo, and edo is popular in Japanese and Chinese food as a tuber. it's like a,
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  probably like a hairy potato I'd describe it as, and then closely related taro,
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  which more people have heard of.
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  Taro is used a lot more widely around the world.
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  It's a staple food in African, Oceanic, and South Asian cultures.
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  So another couple of crops, Edo and taro, that you can buy from the supermarket
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  or from a health food shop or a market, and you can use them for propagation
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  material for your hydroponic setup.
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  When choosing the material, you should always be looking for the presence of
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  islets or buds because these are going to be where your new stems appear from and new roots.
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  Often they're removed because to prevent outgrowth
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  during storage and growth inhibitors can
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  sometimes be applied so often better to choose organic
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  options if available because less growth
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  inhibitors will have been used on them hopefully fingers crossed but
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  can't always guarantee that already mentioned potatoes but sweet
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  potatoes and yams they're another
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  good staple crop that could be grown with
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  plant material bought from the supermarket the advantage of
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  sweet potatoes in hydroponics is you can start them early
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  on in the year get the young plants growing from the tubers and
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  then plant them outdoors when the last frost has passed now
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  in the uk sweet potatoes are not grown widely because the
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  last frost is quite late so it's difficult to
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  get a crop before the first frost of the winter comes
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  around so you could potentially set up a nice little business growing sweet
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  potato plants hydroponically and bring you in some money around february march
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  time you could get pre-orders all through christmas and things like that so
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  sweet potatoes lots of people would want to grow sweet potatoes if they were available if they were,
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  conveniently priced and i think there is a limited supply very few suppliers
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  at the moment in the uk for example. I don't know about where else.
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  In America, I think most sweet potatoes are grown in South Carolina.
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  Lancaster Farms, I think they're a big producer.
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  Check those out. Yams.
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  Like here in the UK, if you grow Chinese yams, African yams,
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  Caribbean yams, there is a diaspora from those areas that will buy them off you.
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  And just a question of, is it economical to grow them hydroponically compared to imported crops?
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  So your best bets are the more rarer varieties,
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  the rarer species, like the purple yams, the water yams, the Chinese yams,
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  rather than the really large sort of Nigerian yams which are going to be really
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  easy to transport and dormant and producing vast quantities.
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  So probably look at those other options first. So there's just a selection of rhizomes, bulbs,
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  tubers that you can get from markets, supermarkets
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  or health food shops or local suppliers
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  that potentially could be propagation material for novel
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  hydroponic crops something to think about i think
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  for me if i was going to choose one it would probably
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  be a nice little business setting up
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  sweet potato growers sweet potato slips
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  that you know young plants that you could sell to people online in the uk and
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  there'd be a massive market for it because you can't you just don't get sweet
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  potato plants here in the uk and if you could if you could say right these are
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  going to be sent to you after what we consider to be the last frost of the spring.
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  And then giving you able to produce a good crop of sweet potatoes,
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  which are a healthy tuber, very popular ingredient.
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  I think that would be a winner-winner chicken dinner, really.
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  So that's been Hydroponics Daily for today, reducing your propagation costs
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  and giving you some ideas for novel hydroponic businesses.
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  Other things you can do to help the show, check out utreema.co.uk.
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  it's Latin for wasabi and which is one of my favorite plants another great plant
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  that you can if you've got fresh wasabi you can propagate it from the rhizome
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  just cut it in two keep on dividing it and producing new plants if you want
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  any help with growing wasabi let me know but until next time that's been hydroponics
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  daily thank you very much for listening goodbye.