Converting a Soil Greenhouse to Hydroponics: What Has to Change
Existing Glass Is the Cheapest Greenhouse You Will Ever Buy The logic for conversion is straightforward: the shell, the permits and the site services already exist, so converting should cost less than building new. That is often true — and the margin is thinner than it looks, because almost every system around the growing area […]
Plant Tissue and Sap Testing in Hydroponics: Sampling, Labs and Interpretation
The Plant Is Better Evidence Than the Tank Solution analysis tells you what you delivered. It does not tell you what the plant took up, and the two diverge constantly — with pH drift, root condition, competing ions, temperature and transpiration all sitting between them. When a crop looks wrong but the tank numbers look […]
Turnkey Hydroponic Projects: Scope Split Between Buyer, Supplier and Installer
“Turnkey” Means Whatever the Contract Says Two parties can sign for a turnkey hydroponic facility and mean entirely different things. One assumes everything is handled down to the first harvest; the other assumes delivery of equipment and drawings. The gap between those positions is where projects lose time, money and relationships. A turnkey hydroponic project […]
Hydroponic Sanitisers Compared: Peracetic Acid, Hydrogen Peroxide and Chlorine Dioxide
Pick the Sanitiser for the Job and the Hardware Sanitisers in hydroponics have two very different roles: keeping recirculating solution biologically stable, and disinfecting structures, media and equipment between cycles. A product that is excellent at the second can be damaging in the first, and the same chemistry behaves differently depending on pH, organic load, […]
Biological Control in Hydroponic Greenhouses: Release Rates, Monitoring and QA
Biocontrol Is a Programme, Not a Purchase Buying a sachet of predatory mites is easy. Getting a population established that survives contact with a real crop, a real climate and a real spray schedule is the actual work. Farms that treat biologicals as a direct pesticide replacement usually conclude that they “do not work”, when […]
Tipburn, Bolting and Other Physiological Disorders in Hydroponic Crops
Not Everything Wrong Is a Disease Brown leaf margins that look like burn, a plant that throws a flower stalk three weeks early, a tomato fruit with a black base that tests negative for pathogens — a large share of the problems that reach a grower’s desk are not infectious at all. They are physiological: […]
Trellising and Plant Support for Vine Crops: Wire, Twine, Clips and Labour
The Trellis Carries Everything You Grow A vine crop’s weight ends up hanging from whatever you chose to hang it from. Tomato crops can carry several kilograms per plant at peak, cucumber and pepper loads are similar in their own way, and that load sits on overhead wires that are themselves pulling on the greenhouse […]
Plant Spacing and Density in Hydroponics: Plants per Square Metre That Pay
Density Is Not Free Yield Packing more plants into the same square metre is the most tempting lever in any cropping plan, and it is also the one most often pulled one step too far. Add plants and you add seed, plugs, handling labour and transpiration load — but plant canopies begin competing for light […]
Grafted Seedlings for Hydroponics: Rootstocks, Healing and When It Pays
Grafting Buys You a Root System, Not Vigour Magic A grafted plant is two plants joined: a scion chosen for fruit quality and a rootstock chosen for its roots. The promise is real — better tolerance to soil-borne disease, improved performance in cold or salty conditions, stronger uptake under stress — but it arrives with […]
Drip Emitter Clogging in Hydroponics: Filtration, Flushing and Emitter Choice
A Blocked Emitter Is a Silent Yield Loss Tomatoes in Dutch buckets do not wilt politely when an emitter blocks. They keep standing for most of a day, then the slab dries unevenly, EC climbs at the root surface, and by the time the plant shows stress you have lost a measurable part of that […]