Dr. Nate Storey: Hey, this is Nate Storey with Bright Agrotech and today I want to talk
with you guys a little bit about hydroponics.
We've had a lot of questions about, "What is hydroponics?
How do I get started with hydroponics?
I'm comfortable with aquaponics but I don't know what hydro is, walk me through that process."
We figured we'd put together a little bit of a series for you guys just talking about
hydro.
Right of the bat, hydroponic production is soilless plant production.
Aquaponics is a form of hydroponics.
All aquaponics is hydroponics but not all hydroponics is aquaponics, if that makes sense.
Because hydroponics is using a formulated nutrient solution.
Instead of using fish waste, we're actually using fertilizer.
We're mixing fertilizer into our water at certain levels to keep our plant growth really
cranking along.
If you guys are familiar with some of our products, we sell the Spring System that is
a hydroponic kit so you can grow aquaponically with it but it's designed as a hydroponic
kit so that you just add a few tablespoons of our nutrient solution, you add your water
and the pump circulates it and the plants are happy.
In that regard, it's a lot easier than aquaponics.
It can be much, much simpler than aquaponics because instead of dealing with fish, now
we're just dealing with plants and the nutrient solution.
We don't have to worry about keeping fish alive, fish temperatures, keeping stocking
densities where they need to be, harvesting, all of that stuff.
All we're worried about is the plants.
Plumbing these systems can be very simple, think of it just as an aquaponic system without
the fish production element.
You've got a sump typically and then you've got your plant production apparatus, whether
that's a grow bed, whether you're using towers like we do or whether you're using a RAS system
or something else.
Now it's simplified in a lot of ways because instead of having to plumb in all of this
fish production stuff.
Now we just basically drop a pump in our sump tank, run tubing up to our towers and run
nozzles off of our towers and by the way, we can run filters because unlike aquaponics,
we don't have lots of solids circulating in our water.
We can take that water and we can filter it down with just a standard inline filter, run
it up and we can actually run pressure compensating drippers.
In aquaponics, we're stuck mostly with straight fittings, fittings that don't have membranes
or obstructions because the solids will clog those things up.
In aquaponics, it's really nice because we can put in two gallon per hour drippers and
we can know exactly how much solution we're delivering to each tower on a hourly basis,
daily basis, et cetera.
In that regard, it gets a lot easier because with off the shelf from Home Depot or Ace
Hardware, you can plumb together a system that requires less maintenance, typically,
and runs a little bit nicer than a traditional aquaponic system will, right off the bat.
Another benefit along those lines is that you don't need to cycle it.
With the hydroponic system instead of waiting six weeks to get your system cycled, instead
of waiting three to six months to have that real productivity bump that you see maturing
aquaponic systems.
With a hydroponic system, we add our solution and things are growing as good as they're
ever going to grow right off the bat.
Wrapping up, hydroponics is much simpler and can be a little bit easier than traditional
aquaponics for those of you that are already doing aquaponics.
For those of you that are just interested in getting started, hydroponics can be a very
simple and inexpensive way to get started growing plants without soil.
Stay tuned for more videos in this series.
We're going to walk you through just the basics of hydroponics, what kind of solutions are
out there, what kinds of solutions we use, different kind of kits that are available
including our Spring System kits.
We're going to talk about towers in hydroponic systems, we're going to talk about our commercial
hydroponic facility down in Colorado and we'll talk about some of the other really neat things
that people are doing with hydroponics using towers and kind of in this space.
Make sure you stay tuned, check out the Vertical Food Blog and if you enjoyed these videos,
please do subscribe.
Speaker 2: How would you like to grow fresh, great tasting herbs 12 months a year right
in your own home?
You can do this with the Spring, a vertical herb station from Bright Agrotech.
The Spring allows anyone, regardless of your skill level, to easily grow fresh basil, cilantro,
oregano, mint or any of your favorite herbs all year long.