Went to a surprise party near Vancouver a few years ago. The surprise was this mysterious medical marijuana grower on the redwood deck outside the party house.
The guy was built like a tank but had a very friendly face. He was wearing sunglasses even though sun was nowhere to be seen. All the while, the dude was rolling Cheech and Chong joints crammed with a quarter ounce or more of freshly-ground BC marijuana each.
No sooner did he roll, lick, light and pass his marijuana phatties, but he’d reach into an industrial-size ziplock, yank out a handful of sticky, perfectly-manicured reddish-green buds, and start grinding more bud. This guy was a human machine, manufacturing huge blunts! Over the course of the party, his weed was responsible for rocketing dozens of brains into outer space.
It is a sad truth that microbes are often associated with diseases and infection. Although it is a fact that there are a number of microbes that bring such an unpleasantness to humans and plants, there are also those that are considered benign or helpful. In nature, most plants often rely on several species of Beneficial Microbes to increase the availability of nutrients and to protect them against disease. That is why some reputable hydroponics companies take advantage of these benefits and manufacture and distribute hydroponics products that contain “super strains” of these microbes that are several times more potent than what you would commonly find in nature.
Climate Change Adaptation in Agriculture: Good Practice in Soil Management
Compost improves the physical condition of soils by promoting soil aggregation and preventing surface crusting, thus, improving water infiltration, plant root penetration and soil aeration. It also conserves the nutrients contained in animal manure, sewage sludge, and similar materials. It also supplies the plant growth hormones not found in inorganic fertilizers. It increases the buffering capacity of soils and minimizes the adverse effects of soil acidity and alkalinity. It reduces the cost of farm inputs with less chemical fertilization. It increases soil porosity and water-holding capacity.
Compost fertilizers improve the soil’s physical properties that help conserve soil moisture during drought periods. Rapid composting of organic materials available in vegetable farms will be enhanced with the application of Trichoderma.
I’d bet you’re as stoked as I am that the hydroponics industry has given us powerful technology so we can grow the most valuable plants indoors.
Indoor hydroponics gardening is even more impressive when you realize that your plants evolved for millions of years to grow only in soil outdoors. Growers could only grow from spring to autumn. They often lost crops to insects or climate, no matter how hard they worked.
Today, you and I grow potent, large buds…without soil, indoors, every month of the year, no matter what the weather’s like outside. It gets you to wondering about all those people who contributed to the success and pleasure hydroponics gives us. Just how did we get the power to make indoor growing far more productive and predictable than outdoor growing?
HYDROPONICS PAST
KINGS AND PIONEERS
To answer that question, you look back nearly 3,000 years to a place we now call Iraq. Back then it was called Babylon, the cradle of civilization.
Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II was bored with growing things in the ground like humans had always done, so he built the “Hanging Gardens of Babylon,” featuring massive “live architecture” arrangements of rare trees and plants.
The King’s engineers even devised a complicated pumping system to quench the garden’s 80,000 gallon per day thirst.
Centuries later, near what we now call Mexico City, the Aztecs placed handcrafted “floating gardens” in Lake Texcoco. In Europe during the 1400s, famed inventor Leonardo da Vinci studied how plants take in minerals from water.
Vaedynn of Advanced Nutrients in California shows the new, very cool Baddass Blades Wall Fan (16 inch) that can be controlled with a remote and can oscillate sideways, up and down, in a figure eight, or to mimic the irregularities of outdoor wind. Find a variable speed fan that can do all that!
`