Many of us have always dreamed about making our own hydroponic solutions to stop buying all those expensive solutions from the hydro fertilizer companies. Sadly, most people do not have the necessary knowledge to prepare solutions and coming up with an adequate formulation seems to be extremely difficult for almost everyone out there. As a chemist, I have the fortune of having the knowledge necessary to prepare hydroponic solutions and the initiative to teach you how to do this by yourselves in an understandable way. Through the past 6 years I have worked as a hydroponic consultant, lecturer and avid gardner and I believe this experience allows me to teach all of you how to design your own hydroponic solutions.
How do you make your own final solutions ? The first thing is to get away from the notion that doing this is extremely difficult. Certainly there are a lot of technical aspects that need to be known but I have taken them all and simplified them so that everyone can actually make their own hydroponic fertilizers with little or no practice. Within my ebook - which you can download freely at the end of this post - you will find detailed instructions on how to prepare your own hydroponic solutions using a spreadsheet I made that makes the preparation of these solutions extremely easy.
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-My ebook gives you the ability to take any formulation and easily translate it into the real amounts of chemicals you need to weight in order to prepare your final hydroponic nutrient reservoirs. All the chemicals I have included within the ebook are extremely easy to find - as they are very common fertilizers- allowing you to prepare ANY formulation you may want. You can now fulfill your dreams of preparing one solution for each separate growth stage controlling the exact amount of each single nutrient you add into the solution.
What you will find here is a very easy to use solution - made by a proffesional in chemistry - that will help you prepare fertilizers in the most cost effective yet flexible and satisfying way there is. You will now know exactly was is inside your hydroponic formulations and you will be able to pin-point and solve any nutrient related problems that may arise within your crop. You will also be able to easily discard problems as not being nutrient related since you KNOW the exact quantities of each nutrient you are putting into the solution.
So are you ready to embark yourself in the journey for total freedom and independence in the world of hydroponic nutrient solutions ? You can download my ebook here. Please leave any comments with any suggestions, questions or doubts you may have :o) Also if you want to share this ebook with anyone please direct them to my website so that they can download it themselves.
I have also recently made a great move forward by coding my own windows application to calculate hydroponic nutrient formulations. If you would like to learn more about this program and download it absolutely for FREE please follow the link shown below.
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I'm starting a Green house with two fertilizer tanks but don't know which salts I can mix together according to your spreadsheet file.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment :o) However I do not understand your question very well. You should have one reservoir and follow the instructions within the ebook to prepare the solutions. This spreadsheet is NOT meant to be used as a way to prepare two concentraded solutions (as you usually buy) but to directly dissolve solids and the separately prepared micro nutrient concentrated solutions (as specified on the pdf and the spreadsheet) into the reservoir and achieve the FINAL hydroponic nutrient solution concentration. Please follow the instructions within the ebook to prepare each batch of nutrient solution. I hope this helps :o) Thanks again for your comment.
ReplyDeleteBest Regards,
Daniel
Hello Daniel,
ReplyDeleteI am reading your blog and getting more and more enthusiastic. I read this post about creating my own hidroponic solution and I am confused a little bit.
That's clear if I want to create for example 100 liter of solution I have to dissolve the salts marked with yellow in your excel sheet.
That's clear as well when I create the stock solutions I have to dissolve the salts marked with blue in your excel sheet in 1 liter water and these stock solutions will be 100 times stronger than needed (I suppose this it, because households don't have slaces capable to measure miligramms or microgramms).
Clear that i have to use 10ml from each except iron, which is 100ml.
The confusing stuff comes when you state if more than 4000 liter of solution is needed, 10 liter water must be used instead of 1 liter to make the stock solutions. That means these solutions won't be 100 times stronger than needed just 10 times, and you must use 100 ml from each and 1 liter from the Iron... Am I right? I suppose you mention 10 liter container because of saturatin...
Sorry for the long prolog, but I want to be sure I understand your method completly.
Thank you for this excellent blog!
Kris from Hungary
Hello Krisztian,
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for your comment :o) You do understand the usage of the spreadsheet correclty and indeed, the restriction when using more than 4 cubic meters comes from the solubility of the salts. Making concentrated solutions of iron and the micronutrients that hold enough so that you could just make a 4000 L preparation from 100 and 10mL respectively is not possible, for this reason when dealing with such large solutions you should prepare 10 liters of stock solution and use 1L and 100mL respectively. However when dealing with solutions this big it is possible to simply weight the amount of micro nutrients for each preparation and add them directly.
I am currently working on a program that will take all of this into account and allow you to have a lot more flexibility in the preparation of your own custom nutrients. This free program will be released soon :o) Thank you very much again for your comment and interest !
Best Regards,
Daniel Fernandez
I was so happy when I saw your site and when I read your book. It is the only thing like it I have ever seen on the Internet or anywhere. Were as here we have very little money we could never afford the cost of standard solutions that are available in the market, You have made it posible for the masses. I haven't yet made use of it partly since I haven't found where to buy the raw material locally here in Thailand yet. I'm sure I could find sources on the Internet if needed if all else fails. On anther note I assume you could also use these formula or others to produce fertlizer to be used on standard soil as well? how much different would the formalas be if you did use soil? Anyway I thank You and the world thanks you as well.
ReplyDeleteScott Carlson in Thailand
how to prepare a 50% hoagland's solution?
ReplyDelete[Daniel, I posted this on the bghyro site at your post, but put it here again in case you don't visit there]
ReplyDeleteSuper cool! Thanks Daniel. I gave your book a quick read and like it.
I see you quoted Hoagland. I'd be interested to know your thoughts on the Steiner formula which emphasizes balance between ions and cations. It makes sense to me.
Anyway, to take it one step further, I have some chemicals from making biodiesel, and being a closet chemist and compulsive DIYer, I have been making my own constituent chemicals. eg Make K2So4 from KOH and HSO4, CuSO4 from CU and H2SO4, CaSO4 from CaCO3 and H2SO4
Any thoughts on how to add the trace minerals, other than things like kelp, etc. Or how to make CaNO3? I'm thinking nitric acid and CaCO3.
Small point, I thought gypsym was CaCO3, not CaSO4
Hello Paul,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment :o) I am glad that you like the website. I have used Steiner's formula a few times as well but I just have more experience using Hoagland's formula and therefore I base my developments on this work for most of the things I do. As you say, Steiner does put more emphasis on charge balance, a reason why it works better under some circumstances.
Regarding the way in which you are making nutrients I would have to say that it certainly doesn't make a lot of sense as it is bound to be much more expensive and energy intensive. In order to make metallic copper for example, copper is reduced in an electrolytic process from a solution that is usually mostly CuSO4 so what you are doing is taking a metal which was produced by using a lot of energy and turning it into what it originally was. It makes much more sense to buy the salts already made and purified. The same goes for making potassium sulfate from KOH and H2SO4, it is just way less energy intensive and cheap to buy K2SO4 already made.
My advice is simple, just buy the necessary salts which are mostly cheap and already purified under well-known industry standards.
Regarding Gypsum, it is confused sometimes for CaCO3 but it is in fact the dihydrate of calcium sulfate (CaSO4.H2O).
Thanks again for your comment :o)
Best Regards,
Daniel
Thanks Daniel.
ReplyDeleteYou're right on all counts - less energy and easier to just use the salts. And I was confused about the gypsum....:(
However, I just got off the phone with the chemical company I got my biodiesel stuff from and he says you need a $14000 license to buy any form of nitrates. And then the EPA or whoever comes knocking.
And the chemical/Lab supply places I found online were at least $10/lb for nitrates, which is expensive for any decent scale. I plan on 60 plants.
Are you in the USA? If so, where do you get CaNO3, etc? I'm stumped.
Hello Paul,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment :o) Purer nitrate grades are difficult to get because they can be used in the fabrication of explosives, as nitrates are powerful oxidants.
However you can easily get greenhouse grade nitrates from countless chemical suppliers across the us. Cropking sells nitrates online, you can buy a 50lb bag of calcium nitrate (yara) for a reduced price. Note that this is not calcium nitrate but a calcium nitrate ammonium double salt (my nutrient calculator contains this specific salt).
I hope this solves your problem. Thank you very much for your interest in my website,
Best Regards,
Daniel