C ommercial Growing
LARGE $cale HYDRO Reservoir MGMT: Take it to the Bank
By eri k b i k s a
Professional
Hydroponics
Reservoir
MGMT
TIPS N TRICKS:
In Issue 11 of Grozine we drew attention to the work American Hydroponics has done in bridging the gap between high tech
industrial growing technologies like N.F.T. (Nutrient Flow Technique) to home and market gardeners looking for an efficient and
friendly way to grow more of what they eat through hydroponic gardening in a home or backyard setting.
Michael Christian, President of American Hydroponics, has worked hands on and with other growers and of course on the
company’s own mid to large scale hydroponics growing projects that have to be economically viable because they are modelled to
provide a source of income, as well as as a steady supply of healthy fresh produce for home use.
Previous we shared some details about what helps make the NFT system itself so effective, after many years of refinements
and development.
This time, when we caught up with Michael, he was able to share some insights any grower should find useful. For commercial growers, the information is pure gold, because you need to weigh in on your cost of production more heavily versus home
hydroponics gardening.
While high quality herbs and lettuces fetch top dollar, they must still compete at some level with field grown produce-while
certainly not on quality or a pesticide-free grown crop*. This means you aren’t likely to afford the cost of higher priced speciality
nutrients that smaller scale growers use to in an attempt to maximize crop performance to get the most yield possible from the
space available.
*With the ability to harvest up to 24 crop turn around per year with NFT grown greens (two weeks in finishing system per crop), growers typically avoid
pest problems all together, or may terminate a crop and start fresh with a minimal expense or loss versus field growers who work with different economic
thresholds because they can only harvest an average of 5 crops per year versus Modern Hydroponics Farming.
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