

Your Own Indoor, Hydroponic Grove - prostoalex
http://www.fastcolabs.com/3035102/your-very-own-indoor-hydroponic-grove?utm_content=buffer07698&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

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xnull2guest
The problem with this is that the grove will not be able to grow enough to
sustain (or come close to sustaining) even a single person. By the very, very
most optimistic calculations (best recorded growth in tropical greenhouses)
you need at a minimum 300 sq ft of space. But more realistically a 1000 sq ft
or more are required to sustain a person.

Then there's actually a ton of labor that goes into growing, picking and
correcting the plants. Just ask someone who has worked in a garden, tried
aquaponics or grown something hydroponically (weed or otherwise). Automation
can still only do so much, especially when it isn't at scale.

This relegates their grove to growing single types of plants very well.
Growing fruits requires more light than vegetables, but either way you're
looking at at least 40 watts per sq ft of space, usually much more (especially
since the light needs to penetrate down through the leaves). For even a small
setup of 8 sq ft you're looking at something that pulls 4 kwh of electricity a
day at minimum (around a half a dollar). Taking between 3 and 6 months to grow
some fruits you're look at a minimum of $75 a yield but probably closer to
$400-$500 or even more after you calculate the costs of HVAC (big), water
pumping and heating/cooling costs and chemicals (which are on the order of a
dollar-per-day expensive). And then a lot of the equipment needs to be
replaced and is very expensive, especially if you are running lights. Most of
those have a shelf life of around a half year, unless you do LEDs which are
extremely expensive investments. Of course this needs to be compared to the
yield but generally economies of scale, even organic ones, can produce goods
much cheaper. And hydro isn't organic...

The reason hydroponics is associated with weed is because you need to grow
something that costs more than your inputs.

~~~
jrapdx3
Having had experience with hydroponic horticulture, I believe you are correct.
Successful hydroponic farming is much harder than it seems it would be.

The amount of light energy required to grow plants properly is very large and
hard to supply with artificial light sources. Fruiting plants, like tomatoes,
have much higher requirements than leafy crops, like lettuce. Lamps are rather
inefficient converting electricity into light.

A 1000 Watt metal halide or high-pressure Na lamp is barely adequate to cover
a square meter (if the only light source). Calculate the energy cost of
running it 16hr/day for a month and it gives new respect for Mother Nature.

Another headache is plant nutrition. Vegetables grow fast and suck nutrients
out of their environment at an alarming rate. There are many systems but the
short version is reusing nutrient fluids requires constant chemical monitoring
to assure proper pH, mineral content. Automated equipment is out of the
question, and a home farmer very likely won't have the knowledge and lab
equipment to do it optimally by hand.

There are a whole bunch of other constraints, but the above is enough said.
Doing experiments is fun, but apartment-scale production of edibles is
definitely no more than a pipe dream.

~~~
exDM69
> A 1000 Watt metal halide or high-pressure Na lamp is barely adequate to
> cover a square meter (if the only light source).

1000 Watts of metal halide or HPNa? Per square meter? That's huge! You don't
need anywhere near that kind of figures for growing salad in your kitchen. If
you're working in a commercial gardening operation, then it's a different
deal. But then you're either growing weed and/or have a huge area so the W/m^2
figure goes down.

A single fluorescent tube in addition to natural light and your usual kitchen
lighting goes a long way.

Most plants are not very sensitive to pH figures nor do they suck up nutrients
like crazy. Automated pH and EC measurement would be nice, though. Even better
if this garden could automatically add in nutrients and acid if necessary.

Lessons from growing weed are not necessarily valid for food production.

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mark_l_watson
To be economically feasible, I think that light tubes, which capture sunlight
and route the light indoors, would be necessary.

I grow food in two ways.

I use "earth boxes" (very water efficient) to grow veggies on our deck - where
the wild pigs and other wild animals can't eat the plants.

I have about a 25x30 square foot area in a community garden. In return for
doing a lot of volunteer work keeping a 1 mile irrigation ditch free and
running (that supplies water to both the garden and a park) I get free water
and use of the land, for non-commercial use. In other words, I can just grow
food for my family and friends. Really hard physical work, but fun!

~~~
lotsofmangos
Considering the water, fuel and labour required in normal food production and
delivery, growing under LEDs at home could easily be economically feasible.
Especially since you don't have to beat the cost of production, but only match
the store price.

Also, I don't think these people would be expanding their operations if
growing under artificial lights was uneconomic. -
[http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/07/140717-japan...](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/07/140717-japan-
largest-indoor-plant-factory-food/)

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deanclatworthy
I think we will be seeing a lot more hydro stuff in the coming years and
hopefully it'll shed it's image as being used for growing pot. It's a much
more efficient way of growing than soil, often yielding 3x as much.

There's quite an active group over on reddit who discuss hydro issues
/r/hydro.

You can actually build a pretty decent home brew set up with minimal cost with
some careful planning.

~~~
ibisum
I've seen folks using the Space Buckets
([http://www.spacebuckets.com/](http://www.spacebuckets.com/)) technique to
grow tomatoes and other edibles - I think that the pot growing industry
definitely innovates and pushes the curve forward for these sorts of
techniques, so I hope the derogatory nature of associating with that crowd
doesn't prejudice someone against looking into the techniques. I could imagine
a lot of good things coming from homegrow/DIY hydro gardening - although I
have a huge normal garden which provides a family of 4 with more than enough
high-grade food, I'd still like to set things up for the non-growing season
every year. There's nothing quite like consuming food one produced oneself.

~~~
jrapdx3
By "non-growing season" I'm assuming you mean winter. If you don't live in the
Arctic Circle, or have temperatures to match, it's quite possible (I've seen
it done anyway) to grow some vegetables under glass even in pretty unfavorable
climates. Modern greenhouse materials are amazing.

With short days or chronically overcast skies, daylight still gives adequate
blue light such that supplementary high-pressure Na (reddish spectrum)
lighting can provide good enough conditions at low-moderate cost.

It wouldn't duplicate the lovely garden you describe, but might be better than
nothing at all.

~~~
exDM69
> If you don't live in the Arctic Circle, or have temperatures to match, it's
> quite possible (I've seen it done anyway) to grow some vegetables under
> glass even in pretty unfavorable climates.

I live 60 degrees northern latitude (still 1000 km to arctic circle). It is
not possible to grow vegetables in gardens like this (indoors, in warm, with
artificial light next to a floor to ceiling window wall). It is barely
possible to grow herbs and greens, as long as they have been germinated
earlier in the fall. Trying to start a seedling or a cloned cutting no longer
works when the length of day goes around six hours or so.

Of course, you can put in a huge amount of grow lights but that's no longer
practical to do in your kitchen.

~~~
jrapdx3
I was referring to an outdoor greenhouse, set up on a plot of land where a
large garden was mentioned. Oriented in a north-south direction natural light
is still plentiful even in winter, and supplementing with artificial light can
be effective.

You are right though, even a large south-facing window doesn't provide as much
illumination as a proper greenhouse, sharply limiting what can be grown.

BTW if you get 6 hours of daylight at 60 deg latitude, that's impressive. My
location is ~46 deg, but because of surrounding hills, and frequent thick
cloud cover, we effectively get barely 6 hours of daylight at the start of
winter, maybe less.

In the off season, we're relegated to getting what produce we can from the
grocery store, taste-free as it may be...

~~~
exDM69
> BTW if you get 6 hours of daylight at 60 deg latitude

6 hours was a guesstimate figure for when plants stop growing. That's for the
actual lit period, not sunrise-sunset times.

At the darkest period of the year, the sunrise is after 9am and sunset is
somewhere around 3 pm. Looking at the exact figures, it's 5 hours 49 minutes
on the shortest day of the year. If you work a regular day job, you'll never
see the sun for several months.

But effectively, that's pretty much perpetual darkness. During the midday,
there's a brief period of "daylight", but most of the time is just twilight
because the sun doesn't rise very high. The weather tends to be cloudy for the
whole period, last year there was 20 minutes of unoccluded sunlight in
December and one or two clear nights.

You learn to manage with the darkness in the winter and the light in the
summer but coping with the rapid change in spring/fall is the worst. Humans
are photosensitive animals, it really fucks up your mind.

~~~
jrapdx3
All of that sounds very familiar. Astronomical sunrise/sunset times aren't an
accurate guide to actual perceieved day length. Topological obstructions, like
nearby hills, and in our climate, overcast skies block or decrease sunlight
penetration.

Near my office, I've measured daytime illumination. At the least obstructed
spot, midday it was 40K lux in the sunny summer, but late fall 9K was as good
as it got when moderately cloudy.

In late fall it's identifiably daylight (if barely) at 9:00 and getting dark
by 15:00 even though sunrise/sunset times promise 8.75 daytime hours in early
December.

A couple of notable consequences are a high rate of seasonal depression, and
widespread vitamin D insufficiency. Light is a cue for circadian rhythm, and
people sensitive to fall/winter darkness often benefit with phototherapy. I'd
make sure to take vitamin D supplements too, usually 2K IU is a standard
recommendation.

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exDM69
We have a similar but smaller flood'n'drain type hydroponic garden at our
office (it's a brand called Zengrow, but that particular model is
discontinued). It's rather nice but not really a viable source of food.

Similar indoor garden products are very popular here in northern Europe
because the price of salad and veggies is outrageous during the winter months.
And also it's a nice aesthetic element when there's very little light or green
in the winter.

This garden looks nice but it's way too big and probably too expensive. It
will never be able to pay back its price in the food it produces.

So if the guys of this startup are listening, you should go smaller, at least
initially.

Apart from that, this kind of gardens are very nice and low maintenance. But
it's just a nice supplement, not something that feeds your family.

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5partan
Why not make this aeroponic? Even more yield in faster time, also the fishtank
suggests that this is an aquaponic system, very nice :)

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theRhino
see prev hacker news item - [http://miter.mit.edu/the-unexotic-
underclass/](http://miter.mit.edu/the-unexotic-underclass/)

lets solve some real problems?

~~~
thenomad
"How to feed yourself" is kind of the king of all real problems.

Currently this is being marketed at people with money, but research into
indoor / vertical farming is definitely attacking a real problem.

~~~
theRhino
straw man..

~~~
lotsofmangos
I had an idea for a Wicker Man parody where people who worship fallacies burnt
people alive in a giant straw man.

Do you think there might be funding available?

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aikah
Hydroponics, a great way to grow weed!

