Expected System Behavior

Not including huge hydroponic systems (with nutrient solution reservoirs exceeding 1000 l and more), the acidity and conductivity not only develop rather similarly between different setups and techniques over a timespan of several days. Also the overall maintenance remains fairly similar. So check out here, what to expect regarding gardening work when starting your hydroponic system at home.

Below, you will find the usually to be expected checking intervalls for the various aspects of your hydroponic system. Of course, this is just a general approach, but it may help you in getting a feeling when and how to do each activity when starting hydroponic gardening for the first time. Also, check out the proposed fuzzy logic approach to find out how to adapt the frequency of each gardening activity or even how you could include this approach into your programming.

• System Check: it includes checking for all your hydroponic system functionalities like sealing of the nutrient solution reservoir, functioning of all pump, tubes and the whole distribution system, properly working and calibrated sensors, charged batteries, clean growing space and reservoir, etc. When starting with hydroponic for the first time, it is recommended to check during the first week once a day and twice a week during the first month. As soon as you feel like you know how your system behaves, system checks should be done at least once a month and after each growing cycle.
• Nutrient Solution Checks: The nutrient solution is the easiest to adapt to your plants' desires. You can therefore adapt it frequently (once a week) if you have a rather big nutrient solution reservoir per plant (more than 2 liters per plant) to get the best results. Depending on how sealed the nutrient tank and your growing space is, it may even be sufficient checking once every two weeks. Similarly, if your nutrient solution volume is rather small per plant grown (less than 2 liters per adult plant), as your system rather runs dry than with a very high alkalinity. If you are new to hydroponics, it is recommended to note your nutrient solutions conductivity and acidity regularly at different times during the day and divers weather conditions, to get a feeling how your system works. Additionally, you should get a feeling of how fast your nutrient solution reservoir has to be refilled.
• Plants' Health Checks: It is recommended to check your plants once a week for signs of pests and diseases, insufficiencies, and the overall growing success. As soon as you identify something not going as planned, get help on the internet or expert books on how to countermeasure.
• Plant Family Check: This task only has to be done once in the beginning. Look into the plant family's ideal condition here and find out if and how you can grow them next to the exisiting families in your system. Hereby, you want to see the environmental paramter ranges to slightly overlap so that you can aim at the lower end for each of them (lower EC, lower pH, lower temperature, etc.). Keep track of the expected growth stages (germination, first leaves, second leaves, growth, ramification, flowering, fruiting, etc.), and how they seem related to the environmental conditions – next saison you will be able to get even greater results.

When applying the above suggestions on when to get active for the different aspects of your hydroponic system, you may want to adapt these timetables according to your systems state it is in. Suggested is a simply fuzzy logic approach, which uses a simple framework of "more or less" instead of a simple "yes and no" when trying to evaluate a situation.

Let's take the plants' health check as an example: If everything is according to the expected progress, the next check is proposed for the upcoming week. However, if pests or diseases are found, the guide assists to find the exact cause suggests countermeasures, and simultaneously updates the next necessary interactions accordingly to this treatment. E.g., the guide might propose a self-brewed organic spray against mildews, which has to be applied twice a day in the upcoming week. The week after, an additional checkup is suggested to specifically check on the mildews – if there everything turns out well, the normal interaction frequency is reinstalled. If the proposed treatment has no direct implications on the interaction frequency, doubled checking is still suggested.

The implications of this approach are still in development and will be released here, as soon as applicable for your hydroponic system. Until then, feel free to take this approach and to develop and integrate it by yourself into your hydroponic system.

Link to References