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What hydro method are you using? The lazy one where the water just gets used up (kranksy or something)?
I’ve had rotten luck with squash family stuff getting fungal infections and aphid infestations when I’ve tried in dirt. Although my neighbours grow great ones. If if they do well in hydro that might be the ticket.
What hydro method are you using? The lazy one where the water just gets used up (kranksy or something)?
The zucchini in this post would be considered kratky hydroponic but they do well in pretty much any of the common systems. Whatever method fits your life will probably be just fine for the squash too.
My wife had an abortive interest in hydro and we have the stuff for kratky. Some wins might rekindle her interest, which might lead to more hard to dirt grow veggies later!
I’m all for taking back our food production for anything and everything it’s practical to grow. I’ve found that soil free methods offer the added benefit of fewer pests when used outdoors and effectively none when used indoors unless something hitches a ride inside. Less mouths sucking leaves = guilt free bountiful harvests for me/us!
Sometimes it’s nice to offload troublesome outdoor plants out of the garden and into some other method so you have more time and space to make the most of the outdoor spaces. The sky is the limit.
Gardening is sort of my coping strategy after burning out of a very high pressure and fast paced technical career. One of the things I enjoy about dirt growing is that because an entire ecosystem is supporting you it works fine tackled entirely intuitively.
We do have a bunch of outdoors that’s just concrete slab though, I’ve wanted to put intensive things like brassicas that you want basically all year round, or plants that are very sensitive to irregular watering (probably my problem with squash family stuff). The fussiness of hydro has put me off a bit, like even kratky needs topping up after a string of 35 degree shade temp days (although foil on the outside or doing it in styro might help there. But ahhh see! evil intrusive thoughts of optimisation!).
You’re right about the benefits, particularly for veganic growing. I use insect netting extensively but if ants bring aphids in there’s little I can do manage that, or crickets tunnel in and so on, so we often share a lot of what we grow haha. Realistically it’s probably less daunting than it is in my head, especially if I throw some basic automation with timers or whatever on.
I can definitely understand the garden and gardening being a cherished protected space. Everyone’s vision of that is going to differ yet we can all be successful, and I think that’s one of the most magical things about it!
One of my pet peeves is when people try to shoehorn everything into a one size fits all, my way or it’s wrong mentality. I’m not that way and gardening certainly doesn’t have to be that way whether it’s soil, hydroponic, aeroponic, etc etc.
The zucchini I’m growing is being done with my own homebrew methodology simply because I know it works for me and my life. I happen to like harvesting zucchini every 2-3 days, so in this case I’ve used a much smaller than “normal” reservoir that keeps me to that schedule. It keeps me motivated to keep the plants harvested and the tanks topped up at regular intervals without feeling like a chore. Other times I put them in huge over sized reservoirs, it just depends on what my vision for the space and the plants is at any given time. This time it happens to be “kratky” with a personal twist.
The right way is whatever works for you.
Too right, it’s peak “I took acid in highschool brain” but I try learn a lot of my efforts from the forest around me. It’s true that idk you’ll get a straighter, larger, and more vigorously flowering banksia or something if you feed the shit out of it and plant it in ideal conditions and so on. Yet there’s loads of examples of old twisted and gnarled survivors subsiting off whatever nutrients filter through to a crack in a boulder and and whatever sunlight filters down to it through the canopy.
I guess I should be less afraid to mess around with hydro in a similar way. The context I’ve always run into in is either intensive ag or stoners optimising the shit out of weed to create some plant that comatoses you if you smell it. That’s probably biased me to think it has to be really carefully managed or it wont work, and yet outside of like engineering and chemical synthesis I don’t think I’ve encountered much where that’s actually true.
You’ve inspired me to care a bit less and just have a go haha. Thanks :)
You’ve inspired me to care a bit less and just have a go haha. Thanks :)
Awesome! Best of luck with whatever you decide to try!
This is bananas, so impressive!
D’oh, I forgot bananas start out green, how silly of me!
Thanks for the compliment and the correction! 🙏🍌
Its amazing seeing this come out of home depot totes
If we have to be full of microplastic it should be homemade.
Praise Microplastic 🙏
All praise to microplastics, or as my body uses them, “replacement joint spacers.”
Who needs discs and cartilage when eventually plastic will fill the space anyway?
