Hydroponic Farming

[bobby57]

having now read a lot .. and been to see a few farms we're ready to try some NFT farming on a few rai

I'm in 2 minds on self build DIY or buying the setup from one of the BKK suppliers or even a bit of mix and match..

what's puzzling me at the moment is many of the things I've read say square gullies are the only way

quote from something i found

"One of the biggest mistakes "not the only one though" is using oval guttering for your homemade NFT system, as the very nature of this system is to have a film of water "between 1mm & 3mm" over a fairly wide surface area, so as you can see, so using a round water gully is somewhat pointless."

however in books such as how to hydroponics by keith roberto it says round pipes are just as good.

the other thing is i know one of the main suppliers outside of bkk does a seminar every month all about hydroponics (i assume to encourage you to buy there kit)

as farangs cannot be a farmer anyway (only a consultant ?) can we go to the seminar with our wives and listen or are we reliant upon her in doors summing up the 8 hour session in a 3 minute conversation after the act

I've been at Hydro for a couple of years in Ban Pai, Khon Khen and still learning. ban Sai rubbish - I use Wesco who are very helpful. Built all my own stuff - floating beds and substrate beds. Ph a problem if you use concrete water storage!! Found that out the hard way! I got my Ph reader through ban Sai (lonh ago) @ 3000 baht.

Best of luck

[silentnine]

today we have been to another hydro farm/supplier . this one on bangna bkk bear the 32km inbound mark on the road. no idea what they were called

they wanted 37,000 baht for a raft system setup 2m*7.4m . seemed very expensive for 1 set. and not really the best quality.

was surprised at the huge amount of algae on everything they had also . i'd thought that one of the idea's of all this was to keep the tank dark etc to keep algae away but they had open tanks and the seed beds were more like an alagae plantation that anything else.

i'm sure i could replicate with a mig welder .

the pipes uses look so much like guttering ? is it? but where do you get a cover from to close them in i wonder.

or is it really special pipe for hydroponics ?

so my next step may well be find a local supplier for huge amounts of 'L' shaped metal or piping and learn to weld thai style.

our main water supply is from a well .. is this a problem ? will it be of beneift to push it thru a reverse osmo system 1st

Edited June 21, 2010 by silentnine

[thescot]

Silentnine ..... what is it you plan to grow?

[silentnine]

Silentnine ..... what is it you plan to grow?

various types of lettuce lettuce, rocket

Edited June 22, 2010 by silentnine

[thescot]

Plastic pipes are by far the cheapest way to go and very easy to work with. A few rai is pretty big to take on but if you get the basics right then it should be pretty easy. The hard thing will be getting the nutrients back to the main tank if you intend to do on a big scale and don't want to spend too much $$$.

The pics from behind my house is 30m long x 4 pipes and gives almost 600 lettuce holes. You will have to consider some type of cover to protect them from the weather/sun.

There is some vids on youtube of large set ups and thats maybe what you have in mind ...big big project to take on and lots of competition and you only need to look at the local supermarkets where there used to be the one hydro supplier a few years back to where there is now too many to mention which cuts into the profit if you want to do it commercial.

Good luck

[silentnine]

Plastic pipes are by far the cheapest way to go and very easy to work with. A few rai is pretty big to take on but if you get the basics right then it should be pretty easy. The hard thing will be getting the nutrients back to the main tank if you intend to do on a big scale and don't want to spend too much $$.

The pics from behind my house is 30m long x 4 pipes and gives almost 600 lettuce holes. You will have to consider some type of cover to protect them from the weather/sun.

There is some vids on youtube of large set ups and thats maybe what you have in mind ...big big project to take on and lots of competition and you only need to look at the local supermarkets where there used to be the one hydro supplier a few years back to where there is now too many to mention which cuts into the profit if you want to do it commercial.

Good luck

this weekend we're off to another seminar/tutorial session. more to learn about pitfalls than anything else i hope.

we're going with DRFT method as opposed to NFT. up until last night the plan was NFT. but after another learning curve i;ve convinced myself that any to do anything on scale that could be a viable buisness then we need to change the plan.

do you find using round pipes on your setup as opposed to square has any drawbacks ?

[silentnine]

i have read ( the more i read about hydroponics the more questions it creates) that part of the idea is keeping things as clean as possible.

some things even referring to the ideal environment being hospital like or sterile..

having the whole growing area closed off and keep contamination out. changing cloths before entering the garden zone.

and not allowing people to walk in off other farms where they may bring soil bacteria into the area.

how true is this ? my question relates more to the point of thai's love looking at new things. and they also love showing off what they are doing.

the result being lots of the locals will be doing walkin's and prodding the produce

is there a valid concern of them contaminating things if they walk of there soil based farm into a hydro farm.

or is the harmless curiosity safe.

[thescot]

To answer your question regarding things being sterile and clean. The more clean the better obviously but from my experience lettuce is one of the easiest and most forgiving veg as i am a wee bit lazy and have been using my blue plastic for over 2 years and never cleaned it once. I do clean the nutrient tank every few months or when required. Some of the big growers in BKK have a show greenhouse for visitors and don't allow anyone too close to their main growing systems. Bringing dirt etc into the growing enviroment i would think is more for the likes of tomatoes, peppers etc as they are more suseptable to diseases and not so much lettuce but i may be wrong?

Again good luck with it and i can assure you that there's always something around the corner to put you to the test ....bugs are a pain in the arse but can be controlled, with NFT - power cuts can be a disaster.

When i first started lettuce they would all grow long and flop over until i pulled them through the bottom of the growing cup to make them bushier and they then started to grow like a lettuce should.

The guy at Wesco in BKK is very helpful and knows a bit about hydro if you choose to get your chemicals from there.

[kanomk2]

Hello JungleBiker, if you grew carnations in cour slabs in a G-H in the north you could make some money.

Take Care, rice555

Hello Rice555,

Thanks for the tip. Actually the place I am interested to grow flowers is on the Bolovens Plateau in the south of Laos not far from Ubon Ratchathani. Land is 1,300 meters high. Good roads all the way to Bangkok and also flights from Pakse to Bangkok. Regarding the carnations - I assume you know about this because someone is already doing this - if so, can you recommend a place I could go to in the north to see how they are doing it? Also, do you know if there is a supplier of good quality planting materials (e.g. rooted cuttings) for carnations in Thailand or would I have to import them? (I have contacts of foreign suppliers but it would be a lot less hassle if I could get plants locally).

Thanks again.

JB.

Hi JungleBiker,

I plan to shortly start a farm near Suwannaket. It will be around 50 Rai organic/ Permaculture. Would be good to compare notes sometime although I am not considering the same as you it would be interesting. Thanks

[silentnine]

does anyone know where i can buy large quantities of Coco Coir , i wanted to use this as part of out growing medium, but am getting a lot of blank looks when i'm asking around for it.

or even perhaps waht is it called in thai .. that may be a starting point

Edited June 29, 2010 by silentnine

[rice555]

Hello silentnine, are you mixing with dirt or for growing hydro?

I don't know about CR, but it's for sale at most road side plant

stands here(Korat, not a local product) either powder or cubed

pieces which id suitable for dirt use or Coco World(google) which

has 2 plants in LOS for hydro.

Some of the other hydro threads give url's and contact for CW.

Can be bought by brick, bale or truck load.

rice555

[silentnine]

Hello silentnine, are you mixing with dirt or for growing hydro?

I don't know about CR, but it's for sale at most road side plant

stands here(Korat, not a local product) either powder or cubed

pieces which id suitable for dirt use or Coco World(google) which

has 2 plants in LOS for hydro.

Some of the other hydro threads give url's and contact for CW.

Can be bought by brick, bale or truck load.

rice555

i'm thinking about experimenting at mixing it with perlite on a nft & dft system although its used mainly on top feed systems i know.

it seems to be a very good medium if the root structure could bind with it to prevent it just flooding the system with brown goo..

maybee pearlite base halfway up the pot then a mix nearer the top.

I'm experimenting with different things like roof tiles, chicken pipe and all sort at moment to see what works best.

very opposed to paying out prices like 1000b for 6m lengths of nft guttering unless i can see a real difference.

especially after a recent visit to a farmer growing everything from lettuce to cantaloupe and even figs on hydro who had made everything himself.

[rice555]

Hello silentnine, why use something that can/will cause a problem if you don't have to? I'm no expert on growing lettuce/greens, I don't grow any, but from talking to people that do, coir is a NO-NO in a recirc system. Pearlite needs to be washed get all the dust/small pieces out at to not clog things up too. But you can wash after harvest and reuse.

I don't know if you read the thread by jaideeguy on using foam cubes, the Bangsai DTF systems were using them. If I were to have a NTF/DTF system, I would try to master using them.

If you want to do just busy work, thats fine, but to me time is money, I thing seeding a sheet of cubes is faster than filling cups with coir/pearlite/vermiculite to seed to germinate. Less time and material handling which saves time & money.

I just want to grow things, I don't want the extra project of building Rube Goldberg systems, adjusting the timer for my nute pump is my type of project, my X says it's in the mail, should be here soon. (see pix)

thescott and I have talked about this in our run to waste systems, just the filling of the "bag", it goes along the way you get your coir. Compressed blocks, a loose compressed bale or loose bulk bags/loose truck load.

This also gets into transportation costs of coir and handling when you fill the bags. If I could, I would buy the compressed brick in it's own grow bag. You can see them in adds, and CW offers them, but only in 10-K

units, 9-K more than I need at a time or can afford to spend on just a hobby.

But what I'm going to try is 1 14'-truck bulk bagged(loose, not compressed), you fill the grow bags directly, no need to soak to expand and then fill the bags.

Here's a couple of pix's of my friends system down by Chi Am, he bought the basic unit, but added on another section. I can go to one store here in Korat and buy everything but the barrel, they do have water tanks. The 2.5" PVC is flared on 1 end. If you want white PVC, have a large building supply to order for you, some where's around Bt.200 each pipe. This is a DFT sys. actually, the reducer in the drain end keeps the pipe from fully draining, if you loose power!

Remember the "KISS" principle, I'm still trying to master the bag system before I try something new.

rice555

[silentnine]

heres some pics of my test rig to get used to the nutrient mix and things.

anyone know where i can buy a ph/ec meter in or near to pattaya , my little monster just destroyed the one i had.

[thescot]

Silentnine,

I'll be very surprised if you can get either in or near Pattaya. I live in Pattaya and bought 2 x ph test kits the last time i was in BKK. I have one if you want 400bht (PM me). As for an EC meter i use a blue lab and think they are great but costly at around 6k and fresh gardens in BKK have them. If you want to avoid the BKK trip you can call them, arrange ATM transfer etc and they will EMS to you.

I've been ''playing'' with hydro for a few years now mix my own nutrients etc and have learnt lots of little tips with lettuce and other veg grown hydroponically. I'm willing to pass on any info or advice if you want as i've been through what you are doing with perlite as a medium, foam cubes, rockwool etc and know what works best here for me in Pattaya.

Please feel free to PM me any time and if you live here then even better.

[silentnine]

going to order a new PCTestr 35 i think for 5800 + vat .. that sound about right ? (measureone technology in bkk/Samutsakorn)

there trying to convince me to buy also there conductivity (1413 μS/cm KCl Calibration Solution) and ph(pH 7.00 buffer solution) buffer solution for 700 each ... do i need these . my old meter never got as far as needing a calibration b4 it was broken

and to me it seems its just as easy to measure the ph & ec) of another known in-home solution and just compare against that .. or have i got the wrong idea about its for

[thescot]

going to order a new PCTestr 35 i think for 5800 + vat .. that sound about right ? (measureone technology in bkk/Samutsakorn)

there trying to convince me to buy also there conductivity (1413 μS/cm KCl Calibration Solution) and ph(pH 7.00 buffer solution) buffer solution for 700 each ... do i need these . my old meter never got as far as needing a calibration b4 it was broken

and to me it seems its just as easy to measure the ph & ec) of another known in-home solution and just compare against that .. or have i got the wrong idea about its for

Can't help as i've never used a ph tester (eletronic) after reading that they require calibration and sometimes need replacement sensors ....plus the ph test kits i found are very cheap and never needs calibrating. You can buy loads of ph test kits for the price of just cal & buffer solution. Everyone to their own but if you do buy the meter you have mentioned then i would suggest you will probably need the solutions which are reccomended by the manufacturer. There is several different types of meteres out there and i have mentioned the EC meter i use because it is simple, robust, does not require calibration etc etc.

[rice555]

Hello All, for an option to growing lettuce: www.japanmelon.com

I'll try to get the article on low cost melon posted soon.

Watermelons(small red & yellow) being sold along the road here in pickups

are Bt.10. The melons in the www are going at Bt.220+- each. How much

does the grower get per melon?

rice555

[silentnine]

tesco , bigC & even friendship all seem to slashed the prices of there hydro salad from there normal 39b to 25b ..

wonder if this is to stay or just a glut in the current market

[silentnine]

i've got to very soon buy a huge amount of NFT tray/piping.

could anyone share there experience on price of this please ? as they seem to vary widely making me thing there are right places to buy from & wrong

also i've seen a few types. the ones with the removable top and also another that is a single pieces which i imagine would be quite hard to clean anyway.

prices so vary from 650b(for eastern hydro branded) to 1050b for 6m lengths . which still seem a little expensive to me

[rice555]

Hello silentnine, per your post #142, there's more growers, and the old big growers are getting bigger.

Per your post #143, it's been a while since I priced NTF channels here in LOS 9years ago, but if they

were imported, there is a 30% duty on plastic products. Again, I've not looked at who sales what and

where it comes from, but Fresh Gardens is/was owned by a company that extruded plastic doors, window

frames here in LOS. Accent was getting their's from OZ, ACK I don't know, this is all 9 years ago, and not

the way I grow, so not really up on who's who or who sales what.

I've been toying with setting up a small NTF to grow some greens I like to eat, the seed has been ordered.

I'd also like to correct the price of the watermelon in my last post, #141, they are getting Bt.15, not Bt.10,

now as the fruit prices are up from the drought in most of LOS.

It's real important to know/follow/have a market before you spend a lot of £ on anything, and if you have

a dirt farm family to help grow, it's going to be a "slow, long, hard" learning curve, thats not even bringing

nutes into the picture. If you haven't done it before, start small, you can always add more to the system as

demand increases.

I wish you good growing.

rice555

[rice555]

Hello silentnine, in the past I've listed Hydro Gardens in CO. and Crop

King in OH(US) as it's easy to find things there for me, they are good

references for supplies and prices that they post, some places you

have to @ to get a price.

The clipping out of CK's catalog gives the prices of what a lettucehouse

costs. You can also see what just the NTF system costs, and figure

what each 'hole' costs, and how much/long it takes before you start

running in the black. Don't forget the 'Growing Supplies' line also.

CK's catalog is a good read, if not, just for the pictures.

rice555

http://www.cropking.com/

http://www.cropking.com/HydroponicSupplies/index.php?main_page=

index&cPath=64_72&zenid=38bcb4608c41a43b9be57529a4d863a3

http://www.cropking.com/sites/CropKing.com/files/pdfdocs/CommercialCatalog.pdf

Another place from OZ.

http://boxsellhydroponics.com.au/index.html

[thescot]

All i have to add is that Rice555 is right about Fresh Gardens. When i talked to them the other month they confirmed that they manufacture their own and i know they also supply ACK etc who obviously make a mark up on the FG prices. If ordering lots i'm almost sure they will give you a MUCH better price coz i've played with them before and got decent discounts on other stuff.

[silentnine]

does anyone have any experience of using hydrogen peroxide in with there mix ?

i've read in a few books and on a few forums of the benefits it can give if used correctly.

however i'm being told i should not be sued as it causes iron precipitation

[thescot]

Keeping the topic alive .......some hydroponic chili pics and a pappaya tree bought from Kaset uni show.

thescot

[Grower]

Curious, where are you in Thailand? I'm presently growing 5 varieties of C. chinense and 1 annum (Jalapeño). I'm in west central, Ratchaburi. I've got a hydro set-up but for now I'm growing in the dirt. Temperatures during the summer generally stop pod production, even with shade cloth. Anyway, nice photos and nice looking peppers.

[thescot]

Curious, where are you in Thailand? I'm presently growing 5 varieties of C. chinense and 1 annum (Jalapeño). I'm in west central, Ratchaburi. I've got a hydro set-up but for now I'm growing in the dirt. Temperatures during the summer generally stop pod production, even with shade cloth. Anyway, nice photos and nice looking peppers.

I live and grow in Pattaya. I did grow in dirt but had problems with the soil. During the summer they require a misting 1-2 times during the day. My peppers are for sale (sold loads & almost finished) in the Pattaya forum and have more pics there.

[Grower]

Curious, where are you in Thailand? I'm presently growing 5 varieties of C. chinense and 1 annum (Jalapeño). I'm in west central, Ratchaburi. I've got a hydro set-up but for now I'm growing in the dirt. Temperatures during the summer generally stop pod production, even with shade cloth. Anyway, nice photos and nice looking peppers.

I live and grow in Pattaya. I did grow in dirt but had problems with the soil. During the summer they require a misting 1-2 times during the day. My peppers are for sale (sold loads & almost finished) in the Pattaya forum and have more pics there.

Yes, that took a while to work out. I spent months building up the soil with coir, wood ash, and compost. Out of 40 plants I've got 5 in the dirt (yard) and they seem to be okay; all but one are podding up. The others are in very big pots with a custom made composted soil. I've got a well over a hundred pods at this point and just took my first 6 orange Habaneros. Good flavor and proper heat. Growing C. chinense here has been a genuine challenge and I'm not quite ready to say I figured it out.

I looked at the Pattaya forum...interesting. Looks like you've got it down pretty well. Cheers and good luck.

Edited August 31, 2010 by Grower

[Bpraim1]

I have some extra Hyro nutes I wouls like to get ride of. I have two bags of each. 1KG bags imported from USA.

Very easy to use, no a+b mixes.

Let me know if you are interested, I have an ad in the class section. or PM

Brand is

MAXIGRO™

Dry Concentrated Nutrient

Use to encourage growth of seedlings and cuttings, and to stimulate rapid growth through the "vegetative" growth stage.

and

MAXIBLOOM™

Dry Concentrated Nutrient

Use for the reproductive stage in fast growing annuals. MaxiBloom encourages prolific flowering and fruiting, and increases yields and crop quality.

[Bpraim1]

I also have a PH metre pen I would also like to sell off. Don't need two.