Since 6th grade outdoor school in the Pacific NW, Fern has loved nature. The only problem in the NW is that it rains 3/4 of the year which is not the best growing condition for most plants.
Lighting is a specialty of Fern. With an ear to the ground with any new technology in the growing indoor market, Fern understands the science behind different types of lighting and the pro's and con's of each.
In the past 5 years, Fern has laser focused efforts on optimizing indoor growing environments to figure out how to provide the most fruitful bounty while grown indoors, all-throughout the year, while being as efficient as possible in every aspect.
Fern started indoor growing with the KISS method. Simply soil, locally produced nutrients and manual waterings. Only to better the system every grow after standardising optimum conditions. Slowly adding a timed drip feeding system, only to realize that this was the basics of hydroponics, with a different (cleaner) medium. So onto drip fed rock wool it was! But was too soggy for the NW so onto Hydroton, and a timed flood and drain table came online. With the want to having a larger reservoir then the Undercurrent Bucket system came to use. (While this system was leak prone it would give you a 5 gallon bucket of solid root balls).
Currently Fern likes to grow in a modified NFT recirculating hydroponic system using hydroton with the best success and low use of nutrients.
Fern has a personal focus on environmentally friendly Dutch inspired, "zero runoff hydroponics", and is soon to start investigating a fish derived aquaponics/nft system.
You will find that sometime during the vegetative cycle or bloom cycle that you will be tempted to “try something else” or add the newest “booster” or bottle with a “snazzy name and pretty picture” on the front and “amazing growth” guarantees on the back that you saw at your local hydroponics store. The thing is, when first starting out, K.I.S.S. is your best friend. Keep It Simple Stupid.
Don’t be fooled into thinking that adding more ingredients to the stew when you don’t have the basics down yet will fix a burned ham. After you have the basics confidently covered, then you will be able to see the benefits of the additives. Our choice for nutrients is by Canna.
As general rules say, keep the grow environment at a 10 degree variable range. Allowing night temperatures no lower than 68°f , (the plant will stop or slow overall growth tremendously at low temperatures). At the same time, do not allow the daytime temperature get any higher than 85°f, (or you will “heat stress” the plant which will stop growth without additional Co2 supplementation and possibly damage plant cells irreversibly).
The Humidity of the environment is represented by Relative Humidity %. A higher percentage means that the air-water mixture is more humid. This is variable by different temperatures and pressure of the air. It requires less water vapour to attain high relative humidity at low temperatures and more water vapour is required to attain high relative humidity in warm or hot air and.
