Maintenance

The huge advantage of hydroponic systems compared to growing in soil is the limited living space for pests [46]. On the contrary, you also have less natural defense mechanisms against them, once they invaded your growing space. Hence, it should be your uppermost goal to upkeep a clean system.

Therefore, you want to clean your hydroponic system including all reservoirs, growing pots, boxes and tubing regularly and especially before starting a new growing cycle [5, 9, 27]. When exactly you should clean all parts of your system is hard to tell, because it depends on your system technique and included pumps, valves, tubes, etc., which show different susceptibility to deposit formation or even clogging. As a rule of thumb, every second month should be sufficient, if you designed and monitor your system carefully [5]. If your nutrient solution is (partly) exposed to (sun-)light, you additionally have to watch out for algae bloom [5, 9, 27], which will reduce the oxygen levels [46] and hence should be removed like all residues.

Which brings us to monitoring or maintenance, respectively. Parts of the plants coming off have to be removed as soon as possible, as pests and diseases are likely to enter your system through them [1]. Here it should be mentioned, that substrates may have a significant disadvantage compared to system techniques not relying on any, as cleaning is more difficult and they may provide perfect living conditions for pests and diseases [46].

You also need to check for your electric and electronic components regularly. E.g., a quitting water pump would lead to plant damages after only an hour in an aeroponic system; or malfunctioning fertilizer or pH-regulation feeder would mess up your whole nutrient solution despite having monitoring capabilities, rather quickly. The best way when including electronics is to prepare for all possible failures by including specified warning signals [3].

And of course also your plants want to be observed carefully. Check the plants' leaves, stems, flowers, fruits and roots daily if you are new to gardening in general or at least weekly, if you know your system and what you are doing – as soon as your plants' roots loose their white appearance and/or begin to smell; as soon as you discover bugs of any kind; as soon as you detect different colored or weird shaped spots or even parts... you should be highly alarmed and eager to find out what you are dealing with. Make sure to position your plants with enough space between each other and completely isolate the seemingly  infected ones. Read more about integrated pest management here.

Additionally, you obviously want to provide the best growing conditions possible, including suitable amounts of lights, temperatures, the right concentration of each macro- and micro-nutrient, fresh air for the leaves and an oxygenated nutrient solution. To get more details on the plants' needs, click here and for information on insufficiencies, click here.