Hydroponics anyone?

[Santana28]

I was thinking about a project for the summer.... either creating my own home-brew of some sort, or a hydroponic growing system.

Has anyone experimented with it, and how would you rate your experience?

[Rick]

Funny you should ask. I have a hydroponics folder under my favorites. Hydroponically growing vegetables for market is one of my "self employment" options - something I'm researching.

I haven't experimented with it, yet, but I do have a degree in chemical engineering, so maybe I could answer some questions.

Anyway, here are some links I've bookmarked.

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Regarding home brew, I tried half-heartedly to do it once. It didn't ferment, but that was my fault.

I've tried some home brews that were better than anything you could buy. Try mead. It's made from honey. Very sweet and smooth.

Actually, your post made me wonder whether there were any homebrewing supply stores locally. There is one!

Here's a link for some around the country.

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And, here are some recipes:

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I might have to try this again.

[thod]

The only thing that you would grow with hydroponics is cannabis plants. The crop must be grown out of sight thus down in some cellar etc. The product is worth 1000x what you would get for vegetables. People do it all the time you can even buy the seeds mail order from Holland. I knew a guy with his whole loft converted for this purpose, for his self consumption only ofc.

[Rick]

I reckon I'm not that brave.

If I knew I could do it for sale and not get caught, I'd be on it. Big money. Several hundred thousand per year.

I knew a husband and wife 25 years ago that bought their farm, house, and livestock that way. The husband had been a ranch foreman and grew it on the back 40 til he made enough to buy his own place.

[iamnotspock]

I did hydroponics and still have my houseplants that way. Let me tell you it's not a good business unless you achieve some scale. There are a lot of startup costs.

Instead of cannabis, consider some kind of herbal med plants that also fetch good prices and can be done hydro. Dunno what they would be. But it's an idea.

[Santana28]

well, i'm just looking to grow a variety of food things to cut down on my grocery costs.. and just for fun, basically. i'd like to grow tomatoes, lettuce, peppers, cilantro, and the usual. i wonder how large you can go though.

[iamnotspock]

see, the thing is, it will lower your grocery bill... and increase your fertilizer, electric, seedling, container, filler, and other bills. and that is before the labor cost is figured in.

but, I grew a tomato plant indoors that took over my whole apt, so it is indeed FUN!

[Santana28]

see, the thing is, it will lower your grocery bill... and increase your fertilizer, electric, seedling, container, filler, and other bills. and that is before the labor cost is figured in.

but, I grew a tomato plant indoors that took over my whole apt, so it is indeed FUN!

well there has got to be some way to do it cheaply - like using styrofoam and plastic tubs and some sort of homemade fertilizer....

[brewmaster]

Home brewing is extremely easy and depending on how far you want to take it, you can make better beer than that commercially available. The reason for this is that breweries have to watch out for their bottom line, while hobbyists can make the beer as specialized with the best ingredients they can find, and therefore spare no expense. This even applies to craft beer. It is both art and science, and requires some serious thought on process if you go for the traditional methods of making beer. (mead is extremely easy and tasty as mentioned, requires less equip too)

As for hydroponics. My professional opinion is that it is an over-hyped waste time and resource and should only be done if you either A. are growing an illicit crop in tight spaces that doesn't allow for soil. Or B. are very limited in space and cannot use soil for some other crop. Plants like, and prefer soil, is about as simple as I can put it. But if you want to just do it for the sake of having a crazy hobby then go for it.

One of the reasons hydroponics grow such potent pot is because the plants are stressed and therefore put more resources to their reproduction organs. When grown without males this means more resin and therefore THC content from not making seed but being 'tricked' into reproduction. If you were to grow veggies, under the same concepts, you would have really nutrient rich flavorful veggies, but your yield would suffer.

[burazekun]

Go for the brew! lol joking. I used hydroponics on strawberry plants. The experience went well but it was a pain to maintain.

[Santana28]

Go for the brew! lol joking. I used hydroponics on strawberry plants. The experience went well but it was a pain to maintain.

ooh... now THEREs a thought - hydroponic home-brewed strawberry beer. is there such a thing as heaven??

[Rick]

Try strawberry mead - strawberries and honey.

Yesterday was my birthday, so, I got myself a homebrew kit.

Here's a couple of recipes I saw. Part of my posting this is my trying to talk myself into actually trying it.

Melomel -- Mead with Fruit

Royal Colors Melomel

Ingredients (7 gal):

19 lbs. alfalfa or other lightly flavored honey
10 pints blueberries
4oz lemon juice
10g Flor Sherry yeast

Procedure:

Heat 5gal of water to 160F (70C), add the honey, mashed blueberries, and
lemon juice. Raise the must to 180F (80C), hold for 15min, and chill.
Rehydrate the yeast in 1 cup of 90F (35C) water for 5 min. Divide the
must into two 4-gallon food grade plastic buckets and pitch half the
yeast in each. Ferment for one week and rack off the fruit into a 5gal
carboy and two 1-gallon jugs. Allow to ferment to completion and clear
(in my case this took 8 months), racking every 4 months. Bottle with
1/2 cup corn sugar per 5 gal.

Comments:

This is a semi-dry blueberry melomel that took a first place at the 1992
Mazer Cup. The mead is a beautiful purple with an intense blueberry
aroma when young. As it ages, the fruit aroma becomes more brandy-like.

Specifics:
OG: 1.099
FG: 1.009


Chapter 3: Melomel -- Mead with Fruit

Strawberry Melomel

Ingredients:

6 lb clover honey
4 lb alfalfa honey
12 lb strawberries
Red Star Prise de Mousse yeast
4 oz dextrose (bottling)

Procedure:

Start the yeast in about a pint of water with a few tablespoons of
dextrose. Be sure the starter solution and jar are sterile, and at 70-
80F before adding yeast. This yeast should start quickly--a few hours
at most.

Clean and hull the strawberries; chop into a few pieces. (Don't crush
them or you'll have an impossible mess at racking.) Put them into a
sanitized plastic-pail primary.

Bring 4 gallons of water to a full boil. Remove from heat and
immediately add the honey; stir thoroughly. (This will sterilize the
honey without cooking the flavor out of it.) Cool to about 150-160F,
pour over the berries in the primary fermenter. Cool to pitching
temperature (below 80F) and add yeast starter. Stir thoroughly to mix
and aerate.

Every day or two, push the floating mass of strawberries down into the
fermenting mead (the equivalent of a winemaker's "punching down the
cap").

After the strawberries have become very pale--probably ten days or more-
- strain out as much of the strawberry mass as possible, then rack into
a glass carboy. Be prepared for the racking tube to clog. (A stainless
"Chore Boy" over the bottom end of the tube will help.)

Ferment to completion. If necessary, fine with gelatin. Prime with the
4 oz (by weight) of dextrose dissolved in water; bottle using crown
caps.

Comments:

12 lb strawberries in a 5-gallon batch seemed like a lot at first, but
it has worked out right. This gives a pronounced strawberry nose and
taste, nothing subtle about it. You could use as much as 15 lb (3
lb/gallon) fruit. I used frozen strawberries...naturally, these are
mushier and more likely to create pulp that's hard to manage in the
primary, but they also release juice more readily.

The blend of honey was intended to be such as not to mask the strawberry
flavor. This turned out not to be an issue; you could shift the balance
more toward the alfalfa or other stronger honey.

Keep in mind that strawberries don't have a lot of sugar in them. They
contribute flavor but not much fermentable.

The mead fermented out in about 8 weeks. I have no real idea what the
true starting gravity was; it's just not possible to get a useful number
with the fruit in it. It finished at 0.991.

We were serving the mead and getting good reviews at 16 weeks from the
start of fermentation (8 weeks after bottling). After almost a year
from start, the strawberry character is still holding true.

[burazekun]

I'm more a Orange Blossom honey guy here. But I love the recipies! I gotta try the blueberry one sometime. I just wish I had a place more suitable for it right now.

[meanlittlechimp]

well, i'm just looking to grow a variety of food things to cut down on my grocery costs.. and just for fun, basically. i'd like to grow tomatoes, lettuce, peppers, cilantro, and the usual. i wonder how large you can go though.

So people actually exist who buy all that gear and really grow lettuce? I wonder if there are people out there who buy bongs and actually smoke tobacco with them too...

[thegnat]

Hydroponics look really cool IMO. No experience with them.

As for the home brewing class, I know some chemists that do it. And they've had good success with it. However, I don't know the specifics of how they do it. I haven't taken that *cough, class, cough* yet.

[Theodoric]

ooh... now THEREs a thought - hydroponic home-brewed strawberry beer. is there such a thing as heaven??

Well, Sam Adams has a Cheery Wheat Beer on the market, so the precedent for having a berry flavored beer or ale has certainly been set. It is quite good, but for the strawberry thing I think it might benefit more from a darker ale type rather than the more subtle wheat brew. Kinda like strawberries and dark chocolate.

Don't know much about homebrew. Something I would like to try at one point, but since I live in an apartment and do not have access to a cold storage area where it can ferment I really can't at this time.

And the hydroponics thing for a self employment type of thing seems pretty far fetched. Only two ways I can see it being sustainable and that is either growing cannabis and risk massive fines and jail time, or if you have enough capital to cover the large start up costs get several warehouses and enter the organic food business. People will pay nearly ten times the amount for something if its labeled 'organic'.

[gogurtdynasty]

I'm glad everything is essentially legal in California, nobody has to try overly hard to hide anything

our hydroponics shops are always stinky :-P

[Chainsaw Dundee]

You can grow semi/legal psychoactives that are still valuable. Salvia Divinorum, ephedra, ginseng, guarana, etc.