With the launch of the FLORATek 3 family in January 2021, indoor growers have a new choice for monitoring and controlling the water in their hydroponics systems. Coinciding with this launch, this article represents the first of many to help our customers better understand our products and hydroponics in general.
Growing plants indoors can seem like a pretty complicated process, especially growing with hydroponics. Plants have grown outdoors in the dirt for millions of years, yet the defining characteristic of hydroponics is that plants are grown indoors and without dirt. If plants seem to grow in dirt just fine, then why bother with hydroponics?
Well, there are many advantages to growing with hydroponics. First, indoor hydroponics offers you full control over every aspect of the growing environment. This offers obvious benefits for growers in the majority of the United States where seasons dictate what can and can’t be grown. Indoor growing means you can grow most plants and crops year-round.
Want to eat home-grown fresh vegetables in the middle of winter? Go for it! By growing your own food, you’ll be getting far more nutritional value out of it, not to mention the huge economic and environmental bonuses.
Plants and crops grown hydroponically can grow much faster than in soil. This is because you can precisely control the nutrients that your plants are getting. Most growers use commercially-available nutrient blends for the main nutrients (sometimes called macronutrients, or Nitrogen, Phosphorous, and Potassium) with other micronutrient blends sometimes being added to the mix.
It seems counter-intuitive, but growing plants with hydroponics actually consumes far less water than growing plants in soil. This is hugely advantageous for drier desert climates, where hydroponics can use up to 90% less water than soil.
With all of this being said, growing with hydroponics does have a fairly substantial disadvantage: it can be complicated, difficult, and time-consuming, especially for new growers. Being in control of every variable can be both a blessing and a curse. That’s because in order to control every variable, you need to measure every variable- and perhaps the most important variable in hydroponics is the chemistry of your water.
Most growers have to diligently check the pH and nutrients levels of their water every day by hand, then manually calculate any additional nutrients to be added. Sound tedious? That’s because it is. Want to be able to leave for plants for a few days? You better cross your fingers that your water stays balanced while you’re gone.
That’s where the FLORATek 3 comes in!
FLORATek takes over monitoring and controlling your water for you, so you can focus the other aspects of growing. It monitors the pH and nutrients of your water and determines the need for additional nutrients every single second. In my personal experience, I have been able to be hands-off my hydroponics system for over two weeks, all thanks to FLORATek.
FLORATek also uses an adaptive proportional feed control to make sure nutrients are added as efficiently as possible without adding too much. Do you know which nutrients to add first, and how long to wait before adding more? FLORATek does.
At Tetraponics, we believe that for many people and their plants, hydroponics is the best option. We also believe that hydroponics doesn’t have to be complicated, so long as you equip yourself with the right knowledge and tools.
And when it comes to controlling your water and making sure your plants are getting exactly the nutrients they need, we believe that a FLORATek 3 system is the best tool for the job.
Matt