{{:notes:compess:hydro2.png|}} =====Project===== As indicated in class, we will be embarking on a semester-long project that will involve aspects of collaboration, documentation, and learning. The project I have chosen is that of hydroponics. I want as much of the "who, what, where, when, why, how, and can" as possible. This is an opportunity to learn wiki syntax and make a nice looking collaborative document while participating in a long term class project. This needs the participation of the entire class. Different people can offer different skills, and working together and coordinating can yield some amazing results. =====Documentation Rules===== The following criteria should be kept in mind when contributing content to the wiki: * Never use a form of a word in its own definition * Use external hyperlinks only as citations * Content first, then formatting * There is only one empire, ours The above rules are attributed to Joe Oppenheim, who has utilized them in many of his own classes. They are utilized here with his blessing and acknowledgement. Additionally, please keep the following in mind: * Contribute only original content * A healthy wiki is an active wiki * Do not focus on just your contributions ====HOW MUCH==== by Marlin After we started this project I thought that I would see how much it would cost to start one. What do you want to grow, do you have the room, is there outside light or can you control the amount of light the plants get? The size of the plants you plan to grow will determine the size of the pots you need. The numbers of plants will also determine the type and size of lights you need.When decideing on lights they can cost anywhere from $35.00 to $300.00 for fluorescent, HID lights are even more expensive. Now we can think about timers for the lights they cost $19.00 to $100.00 depending on what you want manual or digital. Plant food do you want one for each grow cycle or combination that can mix/ What about organic or chemical? These are a lot decisions you need to think about, not to mention the time to check the water level and moisture level of the soil. Much more involved than I thought when I started this inquiry, think I'll pass for now. ==== Hydroponics. What is it? ==== by: Karl **Hydroponics in a nutshell:**. Hydro, meaning water and ponos, labor. A technology for growing plants in a nutrient rich solution with or without the use of a medium such as sand, gravel, perlite etc. which would normally provide mechanical support. "Liquid" hydroponic systems have no other supporting medium for the plant roots. "Aggregate" systems have a solid medium of support. Systems can also be further categorized as "Open" or "Closed". In an open system, the nutrient solution is delivered to the plant roots once and not reused. In a closed system, surplus solution is recovered, replenished and recycled. Production generally takes place inside enclosures designed to control the air and root temperatures as well as light, water and nutrients. These key components require equal attention. Failure can be attributed to the lack of attention to any one of these components. Hydroponics is one of many Controlled Environment Agriculture systems. Hydroponics can be capital intensive. But is also highly productive and efficient in its use of water and land and therefore protective of the environment. **A brief history:** The Aztecs designed floating rafts covered with dirt in which they planted food crops, the roots dangling in the water. The soil was taken from the bottom of the lake and said to be loaded with nutrients. The rafts would simply float around until harvest time. It has been suggested that the Gardens of Babylon were elaborate hydroponic gardens. The use of hydroponics was also thought to have been used as a means of growing off-season cucumbers for Emperor Tiberius during the 1st century, and seldom used for the following 1500 years. Terms such as water culture, aquaculture, solution culture and soilless cultivation were given to describe the research and experimentation which later came to be known as "Hydroponics". More later ====Why do it?==== Choosing to do Hydroponic growing in general, and as an alternative to traditional growing methods (using soil, etc.) Is based primarily on a few key factors. *Time: Hydroponic growing reduces the time to produce tangible plants because there's less need for constant care and upkeep resulting in a more time efficient growing system. *Weeds: Hydroponics includes growing plants in a sterile environment, therefore there should be no weeds, resulting in the plant being able to soak up the maximum amount of nutrients. *Light: A conventional garden is exposed to a variety of different types of light, some good others not. But with a hydroponic system, the controlled light results in maximum beneficial growing, yielding more plant life. *Cleanliness: The hydroponic system is basically self contained and does not involve the use of soil or other materials that make a mess, making hydroponic growing more enjoyable. The fact of the matter is, Hydroponics have been proven time and time again to be a successful alternative to soil-based growing, and with its benefits outweighing it weaknesses. It makes you wonder why people still use soil? (Cody DeWert) ====Sustainable?==== *Sustainability can be described as the world having enough natural resources available to future generations. In order to live you essentially need, you need food, land, water, solar, and minerals. When there is not enough of each the world becomes unsustainable. *Land is one natural resource that is depleting due to desertification. Farmers let livestock over graze their land and the soil becomes fragile so that it can't hold in as much rainwater. This leads to plants and crops dying. Once there isn't anything let to feed on farmers will move somewhere else leaving behind a desert land. *Using a method of growing referred to as hydroponics, we can decrease the amount of soil we are actually using. By saving soil we are preserving the land that we have. Bri =====Background===== ====Soil-based Growing==== Caleb Nabbed This onesss : D ====Hydroponic Systems==== **Wick system** - Nutrient water solution is pressure drawn through a tube into a tray containing a growing medium that mimicks soil. The plants then sit on top of the try under a light source. The water reserve also has a air pump that sits at the bottom of the water supply to help the nutrient solution through the wick tubes into the growing medium. The air supply also keeps the nutrients in the solution circulating. **Water Culture** - Water resivor system with nutrient solution, the growing medium sits suspended in the solution with the plants floating above water and the roots submerged in the solution. There is also an air supply at the bottom of the nutrient solution in the water culture method as well to keep the nutrient flowing through the water and not settling on the bottom. The roots in a water culture system are constantly submerged in water making this an ideal solution for plants that use alot of water. **Flood and Drain** - With this system there are two different containers one containing the plants and grow tray and the other containing the water and nutrient solution. The bottom of the grow tray container has a tube placed flush with the bottom of the container so the nutrient solution can flow into and out of the grow container. The nutrient solution reservoir has a pump system that sends the water/nutrient solution into the grow tray container, and as stated before the solution also re-drains back into the reservoir via the same tube. The submerged pump is usually on a timer system that would usually go off a few times a day. **Drip Systems** - Again a drip system uses two seperate containers to house the nutrient solution and in a sperate container the grow material with plants. **Bold Text** ====Aeroponic Systems==== Aeroponics is the process of growing plantae suspended in air with the use of water vapor to transmit nutrients. Aeroponics does not use an aggregate medium which is known as Geoponics or water which is known as Hydroponics. Aeroponics is commonly referred to as a type of hydroponics because of the use of mist. The word “aeroponic” is of Greek origin and is derived from “aero” which means air and “ponos” which means labor. W. Carter in 1942 was the first to research the idea of using water vapor to grow plants so he could examine the roots more easily. In 1952 G.F. Trowel used aeroponics to grow apple trees. The phrase “aeroponics” was not used until F. W. Went coined it in 1957 while he was growing coffee beans and tomato plants. Rob Kapela's =====Our Exploration===== ====Our Setup==== Limeron on power management. Pictures will be posted soon, but in general we will need to manage the power going to the lighting of the experiment so that a nature-like atmosphere is created to support our plants life. This will be done with a power regulating timer connected to our main power strip. Our lighting fixtures have legs on either side of a long flourescent bulb. Atop the legs is a crossbar with adjustable height via a nylon rope. Our plants will be directly underneath the light. Power will be turned on and off by our automatic timer switch mentioned above, each night at 9pm. It will be automatically turned back on at 9am each morning. We needed to increase the height of our lamps due to overgrowth of the plants around the 8th week. We did this by setting our lighting fixtures on top of two parallel boxes surrounding the plant containers. We assembled an herb kit for growing Cilantro plant(s). Sowing instructions call for full sun lighting, 1/4-inch seed depth, one- to six-inch spacing with a final growth height of 12 to 24 inches. -- Tom Doud and Chad Spencer ====Power Usage==== A power meter was put on the hydroponics setup for approximately a month following our transition to the blooming phase. The month timeframe gave us a good estimate for overall power usage in consideration of the 12 hours of light, 12 hours of darkness setting, and total power consumption was measured at approximately $15.00 a year (actually something like $13.80). ====Plants==== *Matthew Haas - Amaranth, Chia, Quinoa *Jason Dawson - Quinoa *Marlin Beschler - Chia *Karl Cook - Pepper, later changed to Chia *Quinton Clark - Basil, Super Seed, Flax *Caleb Nichols - Basil, Flax *Tom Doud - Celery *Jeffery Johnson (Limeron) - Cilantro *Brianne DeVaul - Celery *Shane Swimley - Stevia *Chad Spencer - Celery *Cody DeWert - Cilantro *Racheal Johnson - Pepper *Robert Kapela - Cilantro If you have questions or comments please let me know. Q's space \m/ =====Nutrition===== Our growing plants have the following nutritional and mineral characteristics. ====Chia==== ====Amaranth==== ====Cilantro==== ====Sweet Pepper==== ====Basil==== ====Kale==== ====Flax==== =====Data Collection===== ====Growing History==== ===Week 1=== We planted the seeds in the rock wool pods and in one yellow flower pot. The lights were hooked up above the plants and we sprayed the pods with water. ===Week 2=== Out of the 19 plants, 4 plants have started growing:\\ *Amaranth(Wedge)- 2cm\\ *Chia(Wedge)- 1cm\\ *Celery(Tom D)- less than 1 cm\\ *Kale(Brandon)- 1cm ===Week 3=== Plants are looking healthy but only the previous 4 plants have been growing. ===Week 4=== The plants were not watered over the weekend so the rock wool became very dry and the plants were at risk of being ruined. On Tuesday we decided to fill the bins up with water. We mixed nutrients in the water before we poured it into the bins. The nutrients will help our plants healthy and grow. Two more plants were added so we now have 21 plants. ===Week 5=== On Tuesday we changed the water/nutrient mixture in the bins. Almost all of the plants have started growing (shown in the picture below). ===Week 6=== 9/30/2010 Today we finally broke out the pH meter. The pH level of the water 8 in all the bins. We decided to change the nutrient water and we measured the pH again in the bins and it measured 6.9. The water won't need to be changed again until after break week. Also, the roots of most of the plants are showing and some of the roots are very long which is a good sign! ===Break Week 1=== During break week, Mr. Haas stopped in on Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday to take care of the plants. Mr. Haas filled the bins with water and a little bit of nutrients to the plants too. ===Week 7=== The plants looked very healthy. We changed the water in all of the bins on Tuesday but by the Thursday the ph level had risen to 8.4 to 8.9. When we measured the ph level on Tuesday the ph level was was 7.5. Lately it has taken a week for the ph level to rise to 8. So for the ph level to get higher than 8 was rather unusual. We didn't replace the water in the bins but we did add a little more nutrient water and added water to our soil plant. ===Week 8=== Nutrient water was added to all the bins and the soil based plant had water added to it too. We moved the soil based plant off the side and Mr.Haas brought in a light just for the soil plant. We moved the soil plant to the side because it was taking up alot of room since the other plants in the bin are growing so tall. Since the plants are getting so tall, we had to raise the lights. We stacked thew light bems in boxes which fixed the problem... for now that is. Soon we will have to figure out what to do when the plants get too tall! ===Week 9=== Mr. Haas had to raise the lights twice since since last Thursday since our plants are getting so tall. We changed the timers for the lights as well so now the plants are getting twelve hours of light and 12 hours of dark. rachel's space ===Week Y3=== After multiple weeks of constrained lighting to the plants, they have all chosen to not bloom yet. We shortened the amount of light to 12 hours of light, and 12 hours of dark and changed the mineral solution we were feeding the plants over from a growth-friendly solution, to a more bloom-friendly mixture. It's uncertain why we haven't seen any results yet, but we have only 1 week left to achieve any results. ====Growing Comparisons==== =====Additional Information===== ====Sources of Error==== Error #1: We did not give all plants enough room to grow with the setup we chose. We have lost many plants (perhaps close to 10) to date due to overgrowth of other plants nearby. Survival of the fittest, aye? Error #2: We did not begin with a solid concept of how tall the plants would grow, and therefore did not have a gameplan of what to do when they reached all the way to our lightbulbs. We had to compensate by elevating our lamps on random objects in the room. ====Links==== http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroponics http://www.cheapvegetablegardener.com/2009/02/hydroponics-101-introduction-to.html -- Chad Spencer ====Editing/Logo Design:=== Cody DeWert ====Photo's==== Cody DeWert {{:notes:compess:aaa.jpg}}{{:notes:compess:bbb2.jpg|}}{{:notes:compess:ccc2.jpg|}}{{:notes:compess:ddd.jpg|}}{{:notes:compess:eee.jpg|}}{{:notes:compess:fff2.jpg|}}{{:notes:compess:week-2.jpg|}}{{:notes:compess:week-3.jpg|}}{{:notes:compess:week-4.jpg|}}{{:notes:compess:week-5.jpg|}}{{:notes:compess:week6.jpg|}}{{:notes:compess:week622.jpg|}}{{:notes:compess:downsized_1012001423.jpg|}}{{:notes:compess:week8.jpg|}}{{:notes:compess:downsized_1019001424.jpg|}}{{:notes:compess:1021101626.jpg|}}{{:notes:compess:downsized_1026001631.jpg|}} {{:notes:compess:downsized_1028001425.jpg|}}{{:notes:compess:dscn0379.jpg|}}{{:notes:compess:1216001143.jpg|}}