I got an email from Aerogarden this morning announcing some gardening tips they're going to have on their Web site through out this month celebrating, "Indoor Gardening Month." Of course they'll all be related to their legal herbs but a lot of their information should be useful on our magic herbs, especially for those of you who are new and just getting started. They'll all include video as well. It looks like a pretty good schedule. 2/9 will be, "Pollinating peppers & tomatoes." 2/16 will be, "Harvesting herbs," which sound like it will include pruning 2/23 will be, "The advantage of lights, (Mylar and Extra vs AG7)." 2/28 will be, "Harvesting lettuce for fast growth and big ongoing yields." It might be worth it to get on their mailing list as it costs you nothing and from time to time they do offer us some bonuses.
Thanks Hank for the heads up on the aero site. That had some really good info for myself just starting out.
Kilgor: You're very welcome. There are a lot of us growing with Aerogardens and you can tell by some of their questions that a lot of them haven't got a clue. A/G has a lot of good information at their site. It's a very user friendly growing system for someone who want to grow for personal use but they aren't idiot proof. The sad part is that when they screw up they blame Aerogarden. That's not fair. I love mine.
I just ordered the aero garden elite. I Dont know where to start really as im use to growing in soil.Ill be growing some budda red dwarf auto,and some delicious seeds diavolo auto both fem. Obviously I wont use the neuts they supply,I was thinking of AN neuts.I have never grown this way but im assuming adding some more light would benefit my ladies. Any help or recommendations would be appreciated. doing research I see autos dont like a lot of neuts how much should I add to the gal rez? Will a ph meter be enough or do i need the whole tds ec meters as well. hope to here from one of you soon as i cant wait to get started but want a clear picture in my head first lol
Vaperman: If you have the model I hope you have, God and Aerogarden gave you all the light you'll need. If you have the hood with three flat high intensity CFL's you should be good to go on lighting. What will help is if you make some Mylar reflectors and adjust them so that they're reflecting the light back up and recycling what would normally be lost. You can get buds all the way down to the planting deck with this trick. You can use their nutes but it gets dicey with M/J. I've seen and had too many problems with their nutes. They're designed for feeding seven herbal varieties that obviously have different nutritional requirements than our favorite herb. At this point please let me put in a plug for Technaflora's, "Recipe for Success." I've been using it now for a couple of years and it seems to work very well with an A/G. I haven't had nute burn or some of the deficiencies folks complain about with other brands. I use them from germination to harvest and they're very user friendly. A thirty dollar starter kit will last you a long time with an Aerogarden. All you need is a set of measuring spoons and a gallon of good water. You will have to maintain the pH and check it daily to get the most out of your nutrients. All I have is a blue electronic Milwakee brand pH measuring device I got from my local hydro store. If you change your nutes weekly you shouldn't need to make any other measurements other than pH. If you keep it down to two M/J plants it's really pretty easy to grow in an Aerogarden. Where I see people having problems is when they add a third plant. That can make it tricky. I hope this helps.
Thank you so much Hank!! Yeah I got the aerogarden 7 elite with the 3 cfls and I believe the hood reaches 34".I will give the neutes that you recommend a shot and grab that ph meter.from what i see the aerogarden has not got any respect, however i have seen some amazing grows using this machine. Obviously we are not growing pounds at a time but it seems awesome to introduce ppl to the world of for all your help I will be checking in and report my trial and errors(and hopefully success .)I think im going to add an air stone for even more oxygen. A bit worried about inclosing the machine due to allege growth due to the small rez. Have you had any problems that way or any other concerns?
One more thing Hank(im sure there will be many More lol) I have some amazing strains for growing outside like I normally grow....Can I grow a rooted clone in this baby and grow it to maturity? (keeping hight under control naturally). Like if I grew a clone to lets say to 14" or so inches then forced it to flower.Would the rez hold the massive roots the the photo strain produces? She probably will grow to big but i figured i would ask.
Vaporman: can you clone in an Aerogarden, yes, but it's generally more work than it's worth. You can poke a hole in their growing medium just like you do with the others but it's a slower more tedious process than it is with a seed starting tray with a square or round holes insert, rock wool cubes and a humidity dome. You might want to go to their web site and get the official company line on cloning. As far as putting an already rooted clone in your A/G I've done it when they were in the smallest rock wool cubes and this is how I do it. A wet rock wool cube will compress a lot. I carefully roll it on a cutting board or other clean hard surface until its just about the same diameter as the planting hole in your deck, maybe just a little thicker. Then I gently push it into place and leave the rock wool cube about 1/4 to 1/2 of an inch above the surface of the planting deck so it doesn't fall through. Some times they have a tendency to flood over the top of the planting deck and I'll have to put one or two pieces of bamboo bar-b-cue skewer between the cube and the side of the hole for a drain. I top it off with a 2 or 3" white plastic net cup cover from the hydro store to keep it from forming mold on the surface of your cube and the base of your plant. The cover does help. At this point I have to assume that you grew the clone hydroponically or in something other than in dirt because you don't want to get dirt mixed into your nutes and have it eventually get past the filter and fry your pump. You can go from the Aerogarden to dirt but not the other way around. As far as the root size is concerned, one plant won't over tax your Aerogarden. It can usually handle two plants if they're small indoor strains but it starts to be tricky when you try to grow three. That's why a lot of us have multiple gardens so as not to overload them. As far as controlling their size: if it's a small inside strain you're growing you shouldn't have a problem. If it starts getting too tall, as in a couple of my last crops did with the progressive light schedule, then you can tie their stems off just below the topical bud with trout fishing line, gently bend and weight them with fishing weights and train them to grow horizontally. I've had a lot of good luck with this method as it isn't rocket science. Two more helpful things you can do in the tiny reservoir is: one, carefully stretch and wrap your pump and tower in a short woman's nylon sock, the kind they wear with flat shoes. That will help keep the roots out of and ruining your pump. You can get the socks from Wal-Mart for about $2 or you can buy a pump sock from the hydro store for $10 to $15 dollars. Your call. Second is to remove the plastic spars from your reservoir. Customer service told me they were for keeping its shape during the manufacturing process and shipping. I makes it a lot easier to service the tank when they aren't entangled in the spars. 'hope this helps.
Vaporman: the hood may reach 34" from the table's surface your Aerogarden is sitting on but I think if you look again you'll find the growing distance from the top of your planting deck to the bottom side of your hood to be 24 inches, or very close to that. Considering that they want 1 to 2 inches of space between the tops of your plants to the lights that really gives you a more practical 22 to 23 inches of growing height to work with. Outside, inside strains, I don't know. They have so many unique strains now a days. I've been growing from the seeds from a joint a friend gave me about five years ago. There are two very distinct varieties. I think they Mexican though becasue I have to speak Spanish to the seedlings. Just kidding. One is short and bushy with thick leaves on reddish stems and the other is tall and gangly but they both grow well in my Aerogarden. Eventually I'll probably try some of the new strains that were developed for indoor cultivation. But it's easy to be lazy when you're happy with what you have. Yes, you definitely want an aquarium air pump, a check valve, hose and an air stone in the bottom of your reservoir to super charge your plants. Wal-Mart has the five to ten gallon single out let pump for about $7. That's the smallest pump they carry and you just don't need the bigger one, (10 to 15 gallon size), unless you're running two gardens simultaneously. The 99 cents store has the rest of the stuff for about a third of what you'll pay everywhere else. I personally like the round 2" stones or the 5 incher. Any thing bigger gets pretty hard to fit. When you talk about 'enclosing' the machine, I'm dead set against that because it was designed to function in a room full of air. A room by the way that exchanges air well. If you put it in a small area you you start having other problems like mold and your plants running our of air; (using all oxygen and carbon dioxide). Of course, if you live in some of the more backward parts of the country you may have to be stealthy about it. 'hope this helps.
Thanks for all the help Hank. I do have to inclose it as far as keeping it directly out of eyes view but it will have air flow as well as a fan blowing on them.I just want to put like a breathable material around it kinda like curtain.Slide it to get access slide it back to hide it from view.My country suck when it comes to this i gota hide everything and my guerilla garden gets harder and harder every year to find just the right spot.
Oh by the way i found this surfing around on the net. Complete AEROGARDEN Grow Guide For Medical Marijuana | Household Hydroponics
Vaperman: I hope it gets around. There's a lot of good information there that will certainly help the folks just starting out. It's using a different light schedule and nutes brand but I know it works because that's how I used to do it. Thanks for keeping your eyes open and the heads up.
Yeah me too.It was a good read with good info.Im sticking with your recommendation about the ferts i found a hydro store conveniently 15 miles from my house lolThey were licking their chops when they saw me all wide eyed when i saw some of the stuff they had lol!!.Im germinating some red dwarf and ak-47 autos along with some northern lights for my outdoor grow.Just gota pick up ph meter and im good to go.Ill be hitting you up with some questions as i get into this aerogarden if thats ok.You seem real knowledgeable to it and have gained my trust lol!Thanks again for steering me in the right direction to improve my chances of a successful grow in the areo. Here is a fellow aero user who had a successful grow. some good info here as well http://forum.grasscity.com/indoor-grow-journals/204644-aerogarden-autoflowers.html
I saw this and thought it was a real good idea for the aerogarden.A automatic watering system to get you by for a couple of days if you're not home. AUTOMATIC WATERER I am always on the road due to my job and needed to find a way to refill the AeroGarden Automatically when I was gone. This is what I have come up with. Isn’t physics great! This is so simple!It is a 40 ounce plastic bottle with a tight fitting lid. Similar to one of those drink bottles you can buy With the plastic straw in them. The 40 ounces lasts about 2-4 days depending on the size of the plants. I also fill the AeroGarden right to the top before I leave home. Make sure the bottle has a flat cap so it will sit flat on the AeroGarden You will also need a hole Without a plant in the AeroGarden unless you want to drill a hole in your deck! Just put a hole through the cap from the bottle and attach a hose that extends out 1 5/8 inches. That is The height of the water on an AG6 when it is just up to the fill line.I tested several different size Hoses. The ID of the hose does make a big difference. I believe it has to do with the surface tension of The water and how fast the air can get in. 1. 1/4” OD x 1/8” ID – No Good. Just barely drips. 2. 3/8” OD x 1/4” ID – No Good. Just barely drips. 3. 7/16” OD x 5/16” ID – Not Bad but stopped several times. 4. 1/2” OD x 3/8” ID – Has been working great. Even though the hose fit very snug in the 1/2” hole I made in the cap, I used a little bit of silicone to Make sure there were no air leaks. Now for the physics. When the water level drops, water will come out of the hose as air can now get in. When the water level reaches the tip of the hose it will stop. Magic! Just like those pet feeders you can buy. Not that you need them, but here are some pictures of the unit. I am working on a one gallon unit that will sit off to the side of the AeroGarden using the same principle for when I leave on vacation for the week. The only difference is I will probably use a left over basket from the AeroGarden and silicone the hose into it. That way it can just be plugged into one of the holes when needed. Naturally, the gallon jug will need to be slightly higher than the deck of the AeroGarden and will be off to the side. At the end of the document is another idea for a design that uses an “Air” Tube besides the “Fill” Tube. I did not have a long enough piece of rigid tubing lying around so have not tried it. However, with the “Air” Tube you should be able to use smaller tubing for the Fill tube because the air will get in much easier but should still stop when the water level reaches the bottom of both tubes. The air tube can probably be pretty small in ID.
Vaporman: that sounds like a stroke of genius! I'd love to see some pictures when you get a chance. The only objection I've ever had to hydroponics is that once you start you're married to the crop until harvest. Everyone I know who has taken off for even a long weekend has had problems and lived to regret it. This may well be a solution. The guy at the hydro store tried to talk me into rigging a small float valve in my reservoir, a miniature of what you find in a toilet tank, attached to a separate reservoir to keep the water level up but this may be much better. Now let's put our heads together for a way to raise the growing height of the hood while we're gone. Depending on the strain you're growing, you don't want to come home and find it cremated after growing into the lights. And if you raised it too far I could see the plants getting scrawny trying to stretch to the light. Being retired, I just hibernate while I have a crop in progress but you may well be onto something here.
http://i836.photobucket.com/albums/zz287/aljc1970/aero%20auto%20warter%20system/IMG_0003.jpghttp://i836.photobucket.com/albums/zz287/aljc1970/aero auto warter system/IMG.jpg http://i836.photobucket.com/albums/zz287/aljc1970/aero%20auto%20warter%20system/IMG.jpg http://i836.photobucket.com/albums/zz287/aljc1970/aero%20auto%20warter%20system/IMG_0002.jpg
As long as the PH is good in the extended rez it should be good to go for at least 2 days. God willing lol! Ill keep ya posted when i actually test it out
Can't agree w/ya enough Hank...Got back from a 3 day trip, b4 I left my rez was completely full, 18 gallons, PPM's 990, PH 5.5, got home the grow box leaked out about half the rez...what a mess, but my re-veg grow was still good...