Garden Culture Magazine: US 12

IN THIS ISSUE OF GARDEN CULTURE: 9 Foreword 10 Editor’s Pick 12 Product Spotlight 16 Watering Technique Errors 24 A Look at Medicinal Mushrooms

72 What is Sulphur?

29 Shorties

74 Homegrown Up A Wall

30 Your Inevitable Battle with Fungus Gnats

80 CBD Made Easy

36 Growing Big Things in Small Spaces

84 Light Matters - Part IV

42 What’s (Really) in the Bottle?

92 My Gardening Flaws

48 5 Cool Finds - Kickstarter to...

95 Freshwater Shrimp in Aquaponics

52 Brown Thumb

98 Kratom - From Obscurity to Center Stage

59 Who’s Growing What Where

104 Hydroponics Ousted from Organic Certification?

62 The Cannabis Battle

111 Better Butterflies Through Living Soil

66 History of Hydroponics - Part IV

113 Featured Art

e r ro rs In this edition, we will uncover some of the most common indoor gardening errors, so you don’t have to learn them the hard way.

Starting with the basics, in the article Brown Thumb, Evan Folds discusses the shortfalls of conventional “wisdom” in agriculture. In the aptly titled Your Inevitable Battle With Fungus Gnats, Everest Fernandez explores strategies to help you cope with, and avoid the pesky bugs. Grubbycup offers full disclosure on some of his own shortcomings as a gardener in My Gardening Flaws. Learn about how Kevin Fortey took on a new growing method in the Giant Veg World, the proper watering techniques suited for each growing method, common lighting errors, and much more.

Garden Culture™ is a publication of 325 Media Inc. ED I TO RS Executive Editor: Eric Coulombe Email: eric@gardenculturemagazine.com Senior Editor: Tammy Clayton Email: tammy@gardenculturemagazine.com V P O PER AT I O NS: Celia Sayers Email: celia@gardenculturemagazine.com t. 1-514-754-1539 DESIGN Job Hugenholtz Email - job@gardenculturemagazine.com Special thanks to: Albert Mondor, Andrew Abramson, Christopher Bond, Evan Folds, Everest Fernandez, Grubbycup, Jeff Edwards, Kevin Fortey, Kyle L. Ladenburger, Mary Michkin, Nicholas Di Genova, Stephen Brookes, Tammy Clayton, and Theo Tekstra.

Let’s face it, indoor gardening is not that complicated.

But, as a gardener, you NEED to do the work. Plants do talk to you, the trick is to learn as much as possible about their language, and spend a certain amount of time listening to them every day.

PUBLISHER 325 Media 44 Hyde Rd., Milles Isles Québec, Canada t. +1 (844) GC GROWS w. www.gardenculturemagazine.com Email - info@gardenculturemagazine.com

Someone once told me, practice does not make perfect.

Only correct practice will enable you to master something.

Pretty wise words from a football coach.

ADVERTISING Eric Coulombe Email - eric@gardenculturemagazine.com t. 1-514-233-1539

I would like to dedicate this edition to the memory of Jeff Edwards, gardener extraordinaire, who left this world far too early. He left behind a hydro legacy that will live forever. Thank you for all your support, especially for bringing so many fascinating little known facts in the series The History of Hydroponics. Part IV, the last instalment by Jeff, can be found on page 66. 3 Eric

D I ST R I B U T I O N PA R T N ER S • Sunlight Supply • Hydrofarm • Rambridge • Biofloral Website: www.Gardenculturemagazine.com

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I love reading books, blogs, and really anything I can on progressive growing techniques. And, Mama Editions has published some of my favorite “go to” books. The two mentioned below, are in my opinion, some of the best ever written on the subject. The more you know, the more you’ll grow.

- Eric Tigrane Hadengue and Michka Seeliger-Chatelain are passionate about books, and the social change that they can inspire. Thanks to this passion, Mama Editions took root.

Today, the team behind this forward thinking publishing house is bringing ideas to paper, with over 60 volumes in their catalogue exploring subjects as varied as shamanism to channeling, to indoor gardening. One of the latest explores the amusing and life changing journey of Bruno Blum, artist and rock music writer, in the descriptively titled, Die-Hard Meat Eater to Vegan. The more popular books have been translated into 10 languages, sowing knowledge around the world.

For the avid grower, there are two books in their roster that are indispensable.

Book #1 -

The Organic Grow Book Gardening Indoors and Outdoors

By Karel Schelfhout and Michiel Panhuysen A practical handbook revealing organic gardening techniques, a resource filled with innovation, as well as many secrets rediscovered.

Beneficial micro-organisms, bokashi or biodynamic compost, permaculture, vortex, power of the elements...

This opens the doors to a full-scale (r)evolution where productivity goes hand in hand with quality. With its broad array of unprecedented strategies and proven tips,

this eco-responsible and highly humorous guide is a must for all mindful gardeners, whether beginners, or experts.

Karel Schelfhout has been a recognized figure in the world of horticulture for over thirty years. He played a prominent role in disseminating cultivation techniques first used in the Netherlands, and subsequently switched to organic growing.

Michiel Panhuysen, a journalist published in several languages, specializes in organic and urban gardening.

The Organic Grow Book also includes an annually updated professional directory, the BioScope, listing addresses, websites, trade shows, festivals, and more than 400 professional entries.

Book #2 -

Hydroponics for Everybody All About Home Horticulture

By William Texier A richly illustrated, “bible” of hydroponic gardening that will surely help increase your harvests above and beyond what you thought was possible.

Whether their roots are in water, in the air, in coconut coir, or in clay pebbles - hydroponics allows you to grow healthy plants and harvest fruits and vegetables 365 days a year. From basic gardening tips for beginners to hightech installations and professional know-how, this comprehensive guidebook brings together everything you ever wanted to know about the art of hydroponics.

The latest edition also includes a chapter on current trends, and will answer all your questions about urban gardening, planted walls, bioponics, sustainable microfarms, and kitchen farms.

William Texier was born in Paris. He discovered hydroponics in 1985, and became passionate about the technique. With his friend Lawrence Brook (The creator of General Hydroponics Nutrients), he developed aeroponic systems, and conducted research in California. A research pioneer in the hydroponic industry, he invented and patented “bioponics” (organic hydroponics) in 2004. With his thirty years of experience, he is considered a worldwide authority on these innovative methods of gardening.

To this date, Hydroponics for Everybody has been translated into seven languages.

The Method Seven Revolution HPSx Transition pairs style with technical prowess to bring you the absolute freshest in grow room eyewear.

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The Dr.Earth® probiotics are a most complete “broad-spectrum” bio-active package designed to work synergistically with the raw organic nutrients that make up the Home Grown® formula. This spectacular blend builds soil health, promotes a superior harvest, with larger and more abundant, nutritious, and tasty crops.

Ideal for Organic Vegetable Gardens, Raised Beds, Indoor & Outdoor Containers, and Compost Tea. pH 6.5.

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Health, Garden, and Body all come together in this easy to read and understand book. It is no mystery that we are what we eat, and Milo teaches us how to do it on a daily basis. It is a practical book that discusses today’s real issues, the quality of the food we choose to consume, and what we grow. It teaches you how to grow the top 100 plants in America, and how to heal from them. A must read for the curious mind!

The DEva Embracing new digital technology at an affordable price.

• • • • • • • • • • •

First and only Silent Squarewave® electronic ballast (virtually no EMI) Surge protected, computer controllable, and generator safe HumidiGuardTM epoxy coated electronics for long life 97% reflective German Miro aluminium reflector (Wide angle reflector option coming soon) Includes Ushio Pro Plus 1000W DE HPS 2100 μmol/s lamp Passes both FCC Part 18 and Part 15 Class B EMI limits Arc tube plasma maintains a steady and constant temperature resulting in better colour

rendering, and improved lamp life Cool running with excellent heat dissipation Low frequency and highly efficient Built with high-quality tested circuits and components 3-year warranty

Raw power and light intensity is nothing without smart control. While the DEva can work any lighting controller, the RLC-1 can simulate sunrise and sunset, and gradually warms up your plants, just as Mother Nature intended. It can also capture data on incoming power, lamp life, voltage changes, brown-outs, and black-outs... thanks to a built-in clock with a 30-year rated battery backup.

• • • • • •

Timed control of up to 512 DEva 1000W lights over two zones Can control up to 256 lights simultaneously per zone No start-up surges Programmable sunrise/sunset Automatic lamp dimming and switch off when a preconfigured temperature is reached Each zone has 3 auxiliary switches to activate external equipment.

Designed and Sourced From the Ground-Up. All Revolution Micro products are manufactured at a stateof-the-art, ISO-certified manufacturing facility in Thailand.

Utilizing ” W x 96” L) pallet racking.

Designed to fit standard (42 age of n allows you to take advant racking for ver tical propagatio up to 50% . the cultivation footprint by overhead space, and reduce racking with w this tray to sit flat on pallet Specially designed features allo s runoff and r the edge. This trough collect a trough that hangs slightly ove g water. The 4x8 ad recess to reduce standin directs it towards the bulkhe pagation production e scale microgreen or pro Rack Tray is per fect for larg allows trays to be prop flats. The 93” leng th 20 10x een sixt ing dat mo accom 48” pallet. ies of 30 on a standard 40”x palletized ver tically in quantit

art , all phase, you VEG+BLOOM DOS, a 2-p Hydroponic Research brings al mixers. use with Dosatron propor tion hybrid powder nutrient for s at a dose concentrated stock solution Designed to be mixed into two rate of approximately 1%. sed buckets. drums, and easy to use pre-do Available packaged in 100LB n water, add the DOS container with clea No weighing necessary. Fill d. Turn key 00 gallons of ready-to-use fee a dose, and grow. Makes 3,0 for the production of cultivators alike. Formulated l rcia me com d nce erie exp chemistry for novice/ g beyond expectations. oil producing plants. Growin tice Garden Supply. arch.com. Distributed by Sols ese c-r oni rop hyd visit , For more information

packaging Hygrozyme’s newly refreshed Sipco is excited to launch ticultural g evolution of the original hor design as par t of the ongoin y are also e of use and convenience, the enzyme brand. For your eas ck it out 8 gal) tight head container. Che introducing their new 20 L (5.2 store! at your local indoor gardening powerful ition to any grow system. A Hygrozyme is an essential add istically to eficial enzymes work synerg blend of concentrated, ben n. Thanks to and keep grow systems clea ticultural enzyme formula break down organic debris, lleled results, it’s the #1 hor ara unp and e, anc form per ent its trusted formulation, consist rozyme.com. hyg at re mo in the industry. Learn

Water (H2O), the universal solvent, 2 molecules of hydrogen and 1 of oxygen, is the life-force that drives our planet, and so amazing, that entire books have been written on it.The simple fact that water acts differently to almost any other substance (density decreases when it freezes), has allowed life on earth to flourish. If this were the other way around and ice sank, it would be a very different world, possibly uninhabitable!

Sometimes, we need to go back to basics and... look at our water

So many times, as hydroponicists, horticulturists, or botanists, we look too far into a problem and try many exotic methods of figuring out why our plants are reacting in a certain way. We over scrutinise the nutrients, lighting, environment, and any other area that can influence plant growth. Sometimes, we need to go back to basics and look at what seems too easy to have been missed, we need to look at our water. So simple and abundant, we can often overlook one of the most important molecules in the universe. So we will follow in NASA’s footsteps and follow the water…

Before we get into common watering mistakes, we’ll look at the quality of water, and the errors that can be made in not understanding how to manage area-specific water.

Hard/Soft Water Whether you have have hard or soft water is easy to find with a quick Google search of your locale. If you live in an area where the water can come from one source or another, it’s important to monitor and use the appropriate nutrient, designed either to balance the calcium and the magnesium that makes water hard, or the lack of it, which makes water soft.

Very hard water areas would benefit from using a reverse osmosis filter to remove some of the minerals in the water, therefore softening it. Very soft water area growers can benefit from adding a small amount of cal-mag nutrient, which will help buffer the nutrient solution and prevent big pH swings. Lastly, if in a hard water area, the extra buffering from calcium and magnesium can mean it takes a lot of acid

to bring the pH down to an acceptable point (5.5 - 6.5), so using a nitric acid pH down in vegetative growth, and a phosphoric acid pH down in flower can help with plant growth at different times of it’s life cycle.

pH

The pH of water needs to be between 5.5 and 6.5 for efficient absorption of nutrients.

In hydroponics it’s best between 5.5-6.0, coco prefers 5.8-6.3, and soil likes 6.0-6.5. Common errors with pH include growers being too strict with a specific pH number, and adding large quantities of pH up or pH down.

This can lock out other nutrients and cause deficiencies, while in reality, it’s good to let the pH swing a little between acceptable values, so that the full spectrum of nutrients have the opportunity for complete uptake.

Over/Under Watering Possibly, the most common mistake that any grower can and will make. Firstly, I don’t like the term ‘overwatering’, maybe it’s being a little pedantic, but it’s impossible to ‘overwater’ a plant. It is however, entirely possible to run so much water through a plant medium, that it pushes all of the pockets of air (oxygen) out and suffocates the roots of the plant. This, is the number one mistake when cultivating plants, and if allowed to continue, can cause a succession of deficiencies and plant abnormalities. In the most severe of cases, it creates a breeding ground for pathogens, and the root zone becomes an anaerobic playground for Pythium and other root disease monsters.

Underwatering can just as easily lead to plant wilt and death as overwatering can, however, I have seen many horrific looking plants come back from the brink when given a healthy dose of H2O. Underwatering is essentially a lack of commitment from the grower, through laziness or mismanagement.

There are so many options available today, such as automatic feeders, gravity fed systems, and timers, that there is no excuse for any plant to lack water to the point of wilt. To hit home the point of underwatering, the plant will close its stomata during periods of drought, and essentially stop all processes to conserve what little water it has left. Your plant is in suspended animation until you water it, or it dies!

Water Temperatures An easy mistake to make, is thinking that water temperatures really don’t matter that much. Get the water out of the tap, add nutrients, check EC, check pH, and feed. A few days or weeks later, the grower is left 18

wondering why they’ve got deficiencies or fits-all approach that can be the downfall of it’s good root problems. When too warm, the amount many a top feeder. to let the of oxygen decreases dramatically, creating a pH swing a breeding zone for anaerobic bacteria, such Top feeding when a plant is young and lacks as Pythium. If too cold, the plant is unable little between an established set of roots is best practise. to take up nutrients efficiently, specifically A common mistake when top feeding is to acceptable phosphorus. The ‘Goldilocks’ temperature drench the pot with a lot of water, which over values for water is 18°C or 64°F. At these time can compress the media, pushing the air temperatures, the water is cool enough to pockets out of the pot. You’ll know if you’re hold sufficient oxygen, but warm enough to doing this, because one day you will think allow good uptake of all nutrients. Keeping an eye on water someone has stolen 2-3 inches of media out of all of your temperatures can pretty much prevent root rot and other pots. They haven’t, you’ve just been a little overzealous with rhizosphere pathogens. the top feeding. Chill out with the pressure hose approach, and lightly drizzle the media from the outside inwards.

Oxygenation The error of many a grower is not fully understanding the importance of oxygenation at the root zone. Whilst knowing that the roots require an oxygen rich (aerobic) environment, many growers will still saturate the media with water (overwatering), and forget a plant’s basic physiology needs. Therefore, getting the watering technique just right is essential for a healthy crop, and to do so, you need to understand the system that you use, whether that is simple hand feeding, or a sophisticated deep water culture system.

A second mistake that top feeders make, is watering with just enough to saturate the media and the roots. Over time, this will lead to an accumulation of nutrient salts, and can throw your EC/PPM/Cf readings way off, leading to nutrient burn. Always make sure that with each new watering, there is sufficient water being put through each pot, so that it ‘flushes’ out excess salts from previous irrigations. Lastly, it’s always good practise to flush with plain water, at least 3-4 times per cycle, to remove the accumulation of salts that occur, especially in warmer environments.

Hand Watering The most basic watering technique used throughout the world by millions of gardeners, and still one of the most effective when done correctly. Two types of hand feeding exist in the hydroponics industry - top feeding and bottom feeding. Top feeding allows the water to soak the top of the media and drain down, irrigating the roots along the way.

Bottom feeding, usually when the plant has an established set of roots, allows the roots and the media to wick the water upwards through the pot, using the amount of water that each individual plant requires, rather than a one-dose-

Bottom feeding, in my opinion, is better for your plants, and easiest to implement in a smaller garden. Bottom feeding into individual saucers is very exact, but most people will bottom feed into a deep tray containing a few plants. The main mistake when using this method is to leave excess water in the saucers or trays, putting the root zone into anaerobic conditions.

When done correctly, the media will absorb what it can to keep the rootball moist, with any excess siphoned off for the next irrigation, or disposed of. After a while, you should know roughly what the plants are drinking, allowing for accurate 19

amounts of water, leaving no waste, and nothing for the pots to stagnate in.

Flood and Drain (Ebb and Flow) Moving from hand watering to a system can make your life a dream, or a nightmare, depending on how it is approached.

Typically, growers will move from hand feeding to a flood and drain system for ease of use, and potentially healthier, more productive plants. The most common mistake made in flood and drain systems is to think the system will do all the work, while the grower sits back and relaxes… Mistake number 1!

It can take some time to configure a flood and drain system correctly, but the time spent here will pay dividends over the coming months. Firstly, you need to consider the media that will support your plants. Two common choices are

clay pebbles and a pebble/coco mix, typically 60/40. From here you need to decide on irrigation frequency, irrigation height, and irrigating time.

holding capacity) compared to a pebble/coco mix, which will require less frequent irrigation (higher water holding capacity). The second part to consider is the current stage of plant growth, as young plants need less frequent irrigations compared to mature plants. Third, we have our environment to take into account. During early vegetative growth, the temperatures should be lower than in flowering, and the humidity should be higher, therefore transpiration levels are

relatively low, and the plant requires less watering cycles.

Mid to peak flowering, temperatures are higher, and humidity tends to drop, which increases the transpiration rate, and means that watering frequencies also need to increase.

There are no absolutes when it comes to irrigation frequency.

What works for you with a particular plant and environment may not work for somebody else, so start with 2-3 irrigations a day* in pebbles, and 1-2 irrigations a day in pebble/coco mixes for young plants. Adjust as required for the environment, and keep a record of irrigation frequency for later adjustments and future growing. Plants showing signs of growth, and root systems becoming established are good indicators to increase the irrigation frequency. *A “ day” being when the lights are on, whether this is 24 hours, 18 hours, or 12 hours.

Irrigation Frequency Common errors in flood and drain systems include: • Increasing or decreasing irrigation frequency, because your calendar says it’s been 2 weeks since you last increased the cycle, and it’s now time…

• Not changing the irrigation frequency at all throughout the grow/bloom cycle.

• Your plants are showing signs of stress, so therefore you water them more frequently without doing a proper diagnosis.

• Watering often increases yield and size, so you water during the night, and too frequently through the day.

Avoid these common grower mistakes by making sure you follow proper irrigation techniques. It will save you a lot of headaches in the future.

Pebbles will require more frequent irrigation (low water

Irrigation Height and Duration A common mistake with irrigation height is not making sure the pots are on an even surface. Having some pots higher or lower than others results in different flood heights, overfilling some pots and under-filling others. Make sure your floor is level, this can be done easily by filling the pots by initiating a flood cycle.

While checking the flood height, it’s good practice to time the cycle, to avoid these mistakes of not allowing all the pots to properly fill during the flood, or leaving the water in the flooded state for too long.

If the floor is uneven, it’s probably worth investing in trays that will raise the pots up off the floor, tilting them slightly

to improve draining. These are then much easier to manipulate, and ensure all pots are the same height. Flood height should reach roughly two thirds of the way up the pot. Less and you risk not keeping all the roots moist, too much and you may keep media, such as coco, wet for too long.

A good irrigation duration for pebbles would be a couple of minutes before draining. For pebble/coco mixes, once flooded to the correct level, it needs to drain immediately to prevent diseases, such as root rot, from a lack of oxygen.

For a healthy, productive plant in a flood and drain system, you need to apply a hand feeding mentality of daily checks and investigation to the system. Only then will you see the improvements flood and drain systems have to offer.

DWC - Deep Water Culture There are two common mistakes in DWC, and unfortunately, not addressing either one of these will seriously hinder your plant’s growth. The first is using water that’s too cold, or too warm.

The second is not oxygenating the water adequately enough. If the roots sit in water that’s too cold (below 15°C/59°F), it will not take up nutrients. If they are in water that’s too warm (above 22°C/71°F), the water cannot hold enough oxygen. The golden point is at 18°C or 64°F. At this temperature, we achieve a good level of dissolved oxygen and nutrient uptake.

For good oxygen levels, simply moving the water around is not sufficient for increasing dissolved oxygen in the water. To do this, the surface tension of the water must be constantly broken to allow the oxygen to dissolve in. This can be done with air stones, air curtains, or a pump that pushes water to the surface and breaks the surface tension.

NFT - Nutrient Film Technique Common mistakes when watering or irrigating an NFT system include not using any spreader mat on the tray to help evenly distribute the flow of water. A spreader mat will ensure the water forms an even layer, and if allowed to drape over the edge, will remove any trickling effect. Stealth is wealth in this instance.

At the beginning, leaving the water pump on 24 hours a day before

As you’ll notice with DWC, it is impossible to ‘overwater’ as the roots are constantly submerged in water. The term overwater technically means that the roots do not have access to enough oxygen (the water has displaced the oxygen). You will notice that in the systems mentioned above, oxygen is always the critical factor when setting irrigation cycles or flood frequency, and it should be the number one point to keep in mind when irrigating any type of plant - in a system or hand watered.

To finish, if a cultivator is attentive, passionate, and open-minded, they will only make these mistakes once before learning from them, and making changes. Nothing can replace a perceptive grower, and that is the number one piece of information to take away from this article. 3

the roots are properly established can lead to ‘overwatering’ the rock wool. Immature plants do not have the root system to take up water like more mature plants, and so, require reduced irrigation. Either putting the pump on a timer or manually turning the pump on once a day for a couple of minutes to soak the rock wool is good practice at the beginning. The dry period will allow the roots to search, producing a healthier root mass.

“Empty your mind…

You must be shapeless, formless, like water.

When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup.

When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle.

When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot.

Water can drip and it can crash.

Become like water my friend.”

- Bruce Lee

Bio When the roots and plants have matured (the rock wool is covered in roots), the pump can be left on 24 hours a day.

A good amount of water to pump through is roughly 1 litre a minute, but this depends on how many plants are being grown, the size of the channel, and the environment.

Stephen is the manager for the UK hydroponic shops, NPK Technology.

Hydroponics and Science are Stephen’s obsessions, along with mountaineering and reading. Stephen studied a BSc in Outdoor Education, then went on to study his Masters in Public Health Nutrition, which he finished in 2014. In 2017, he embarks on his next level of study, doing a PhD on the effects of cannabinoids in humans. His passion project is the hydroponics podcast he co-hosts, NPK Live.

Favourite quote: “Everyone is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid.”

The use of mushrooms for their medicinal properties has been known for hundreds, even thousands, of years. Anecdotal evidence of their use can be traced back to almost all human cultures, especially those in Asia and Europe. The deliberate cultivation (as opposed to just foraging) of medicinal fungi can be traced back to at least the 12th century in China. Three of the more common varieties of currently sought after medicinal fungi are the Mikei Red Reishi, Chaga, and Turkey Tail mushrooms.

Reishi

Chaga

The Reishi mushroom is originally native to coastal areas of China. Note that in the west, we typically defer to the Japanese name for this mushroom, “Reishi.” In China, it is known as “Ling Chih.”

The Chaga mushroom, long used medicinally for its antioxidant properties, is actually a fungal parasite of trees.

Its preferred hosts are birch, beech, hornbeam, alder, and chestnut trees. Many folks have probably walked right by it without realizing what they were looking at. It appears as a hardened black, crusty mass on the outer bark of numerous deciduous trees in North America, and other temperate forests, such as those in the UK, Europe, Scandinavia, and New Zealand. It can sometimes be confused with a burl.

Of the six different colors that can be found, the red Meiki is the one most commonly foraged and cultivated. This waxy fungus is found in the wild growing on dead, decaying logs and stumps. The Reishi is a polypore fungus. Mushrooms of this type have spores on their undersides as opposed to gills. Many related polypore species are found throughout North America. They are usually smooth, and are often known as “shelf” mushrooms due to their platform-like attachment to trees and stumps.

For more than 2,000 years the Chinese have been using this medicinal mushroom to fight off a variety of afflictions including fatigue, insomnia, arthritis, and weakness from numerous causes. Some sources cite it’s healing properties being taken advantage of in China as long ago as 7,000 years.

More recently, however, the red Reishi can be found in medicines, compounds, and tinctures that may help individuals with hypertension, and diabetics suffering from both types 1 and 2. The immune-boosting properties of the Mikei Red may also help those with Hepatitis, and HIV/AIDS. According to a Cornell University publication, Reishi mushrooms are officially endorsed by the Japanese government as a treatment for various cancers.

Unlike the Reishi, which is nourished by dying wood matter, the Chaga feeds off of living trees. Left unharvested, the Chaga will eventually kill the host tree, over a long period of time. Proper harvesting is actually an act of good earth stewardship, and can allow up to 3 harvests during its life - both the tree and the Chaga fungus continue to live in a symbiotic relationship, providing us with both the environmental benefits of forests and a renewable source of natural medicine. However, excessive removal, whether through greed or lack of knowledge, is destructive, killing both tree and the fungal growth quickly.

Chaga, like numerous other mushrooms, medicinal and culinary, can be produced and cultivated in labs and commercial settings, and with the growing demand, may help ensure the long term survival of the promising polypore.

Turkey Tail Another widely-found fungus, that has also been used in Asian healing for thousands of years, is the Trametes versicolor, commonly known as Turkey Tail. In the UK, however, many refer to it as the Many-zoned Polypore.

If you find that Chaga products are helpful to your health, make sure you source them from a company that obtains them responsibly. And it’s in your best interest to steer clear of Chaga from trees growing along roads. The best health benefits will come from trees living as far from pollution as possible.

In the US, it has recently been given FDA approval in conjunction with trials being conducted at Bastyr University in California for patients undergoing chemotherapy treatments. The medicinal benefits of this particular fungus are thought to increase the immune system. Chemotherapy, of course, weakens one’s immune system, so the Turkey Tail will be given to try to quantify how patients with advanced prostate and breast cancer fare when the treatments are paired. 3

A new alternative to leather has been found in the natural fiber of pineapple leaves. The totally sustainable material came about while Carmen Hijosa, a leather goods consultant for the World Bank, was investigating ways to improve the leather export industry in the Philippines. But in doing so, she realized that leather is unsustainable, and started looking into possible replacements using local natural fiber resources.

The Philippines is the 3rd largest producer of pineapple in the world, and as a result, has a wealth of strong, flexible fiber that is actually problematic crop waste. Working with local weavers, Carmen created a non-woven substrate material with the properties of leather. It is sent to Spain for finishing into a certified vegan fabric known as Pinatex, perfect for furniture upholstery, footwear, bags, and accessories.

This didn’t come about quickly. The research and development process took 12 years, and is the work of a joint effort of people in the UK, Spain, and the Philippines. Pinatex isn’t just better for the country’s ecology, it creates new income streams for farming communities. Nothing like finding cash in your garbage!

Learn more: www.ananas-anam.com

Just one more side effect of supersizing and monoculture… lactose intolerance. It’s not from human evolution, but the cow’s. An A1 beta-casein protein prominent in Holsteins tailor-bred for super high milk production of low fat milk to be precise. Until market demand shifted to low fat milk a few decades ago, more dairies raised normal cows. And far fewer people suffered from lactose.

Almost all mainstream dairies raise 100% Holstein herds.

Meanwhile humans, goats, and normal cows carry the A2 beta-casein protein. This rogue protein from modern breeding was discovered in New Zealand, founding the brand, a2 Milk.

It’s available in New Zealand, Australia, the UK, the US, and China. Many lactose sufferers have no problem with milk from A2 cows.

No local source for a2 brand milk? Look for small dairies raising Jersey, Guernsey - anything but Holsteins. There’s a good chance milk from such herds won’t make people sick.

Sources: • www.bit.ly/A2-milk • www.bit.ly/wrong-milk • www.bit.ly/breed-shift • www.bit.ly/a2-brand

Fungus gnats are annoying for so many reasons, but perhaps the most vexing of all is that you unwittingly paid for the privilege of introducing them to your indoor garden. Coco coir, for instance, is invariably shipped in compressed blocks from their exotic country of origin and, more often than not, it’s expanded and rehydrated outdoors, completely unprotected from the mixed blessings of mother nature. At certain times of year, that big pile of coco coir languishing outside the manufacturer’s packaging plant, can become ripe for impregnation with thousands of tiny eggs laid by pesky little fungus gnats. Before you can say “infestation,” it’s bagged up, and on its way to your local hydro store.

Introduction Now—don’t get me wrong. I love coco coir. The same scenario could be applied to peat-based potting mixes, or the stuff that passes for “soil” at your local purveyor of indoor gardening treats. Some companies claim that they steam sterilize their coco coir or peat (also ridding it of beneficial biology such as Trichoderma), however, it’s rare.

So, if you suddenly find gnats flying around your garden, I’d wager that your unsterilized growing media was the likely vehicle.

While you digest that bombshell, let’s take a closer look at fungus gnats, and the damage they do. The adult gnats are commonly just two or three millimeters long, although they can grow larger, and look like miniature mosquitos.

It’s more likely that you’ll find them crawling around on your plants, pots, trays, and growing media, rather than buzzing around, as they’re very poor fliers. It’s also easy for novice growers to confuse them with winged root aphids, which are better fliers with a rounder, broader body and a long tail.

Fungus gnats (aka Sciarid flies) are usually from two insect families: Mycetophiliadae and Sciaridae.

The adult gnats themselves don’t do any damage. It’s their larva—hatched from tiny eggs laid by female adults in moist growing media—that cause all the issues—especially to young plants.

The larvae primarily feed on organic material, algae, and soil fungus. However, as their numbers grow, (they have a 28-day breeding cycle, and females can lay up to 300 eggs during their lifetime) their appetite broadens to include your plants’ roots and stem tissue. As they gnaw, unseen beneath the surface, roots are subjected to numerous wounds which, in turn, open up a gateway to secondary infections from the likes of Pythium, Phytophthora, and Fusarium. Seedlings and young plants are most vulnerable to this attack, and can even die. Older plants will stop growing, leaves will discolor and wilt, and nutrient and water uptake will slow.

All this from one and a half cubic feet of growing media that cost you over twenty bucks?

Don’t Waste Any Time in Declaring War Fungus gnats aren’t just going to go away by themselves.

On the contrary, if you don’t act quickly, what starts off as a few pests buzzing up when you shift some pots, or brush up against a plant, will soon turn into a major infestation.

The gnats seek moisture and humidity. If you top-feed your plants, then listen up! Constantly wet surface growing media is perfect for the gnats to lay their eggs on. Consider irrigating your pots from below (i.e. ebb and flow), allowing your plants to wick up moisture instead.

Whether you have fungus gnat issues or not, it’s always a good idea to allow your growing media to dry out more between waterings.

If you’re growing in stonewool (rockwool) blocks, try using block covers, or cut some squares of plastic sheeting to cover the top of the blocks. Not only will this help to prevent algae forming, it also helps to form a physical barrier between those frisky female gnats and potential egg-laying territory.

Adult female fungus gnat flies can live and lay eggs for between one and three weeks. At temperatures above 77°F (25°C) the complete life cycle from egg to larvae to adult fly takes around three to four weeks.

If you notice the gnats’ numbers growing quickly, try Azamax—a botanical insecticide, miticide, and nematicide.

It’s always good to have stuff like this on your shelf. You can use it as a foliar spray while you’re inevitably waiting for your local grow store to order in any beneficial insects.

Make up a medium strength solution—one fluid ounce per gallon—and foliar apply immediately. Work fast, wear a respirator mask and gloves, then get the hell out of there. Azamax isn’t available in Europe, so growers there often choose a product called Toppel, which contains Cypermethrin, a synthetic pyrethroid.

Nematodes

Two-Pronged Attack To get rid of fungus gnats, you should target adults and larvae simultaneously. For the adults, go with a hit of foliar sprays, and yellow sticky traps. For the larvae, I recommend nematodes and predatory mites. Some growers also treat their propagation blocks and growing media with mosquito dunks containing Bacillus thuringiensis Israelensis (BTI) as both a precautionary and reactive measure. One or two “dunks” per gallon of water. Many growers will water with BTI as part of their potting up routine, especially when using the types of growing media I mentioned earlier.

Sticky yellow traps are a really handy monitor for pests.

I recommend using them in your garden, whether you’ve seen bugs or not. Odds are a sticky trap will show you a pest before you would’ve seen it yourself. Lay them on top of your pots rather than hanging in the air and don’t forget to peel away the protective wrapper from both sides. I often find that I catch more gnats on the underside than on the top.

Parasitizing nematodes (Steinernema feltiae) are incredibly effective against fungus gnat larvae, and can decimate fungus gnat numbers in days, while causing no harm whatsoever to your plants. The nematodes enter body openings in many types of soil larvae, and use them to breed, killing the larvae in the process. Typically, you have about a week to deploy the nematodes, but they can last much longer if you store them in the fridge. Just keep them sealed, or at least, away from the butter. Ewwww.

Fill a watering can with dechlorinated water, add a clump of nematodes, and stir. Apply carefully, and evenly, to the surface of your growing media. I redirect the drain pipe of my ebb and flow table to catch the run-off, so I can re-apply to other plants. They won’t survive long sitting in water, so use it up right away.

Predatory Mites Predatory mites are awesome. The one to ask for is Hypoaspis miles, but note that it has recently been reclassified as: Stratiolaelaps scimitus. Whatever you prefer 33

FUNGUS GNATS

Tactical Top Dressing to call it, these mites are amazing for the indoor gardener.

They not only target fungus gnat larvae, but also springtails, thrips pupae, and other small harmful soil insects. They will reside around the upper surface of the growing media, and will ferociously eat fungus gnat larvae lurking in soil, peat, coco coir, and also clay balls and rockwool.

My best advice is to go buy yourself a tub of these mites today, and release them into your garden, whether you have seen any pests or not. They can last up to 70 days without food, so why not just let them hang out in your grow room on the off-chance? Usually they come packaged in sachets or tubes of peat and vermiculite. A 34-ounce container of Stratiolaelaps scimitus retails for around forty dollars, and can treat between 100-200 three gallon pots, so it’s not going to break the bank. Sprinkle it on the surface of your growing media, and you’re done.

Top Tip: Before distributing the mites into your garden, roll the tube back and forth a few times, and leave it on its side for ten minutes. This will create a more uniform spread of Stratiolaelaps scimitus mites within the peat-vermiculite mix before dispersal. If stored upright for too long, all the mites will try to make their way to the surface of the mix, which will lead to the first few applications getting all the goodies.

If you can’t get hold of predatory mites, then try a top dressing with diatomaceous earth, Growstone Gnat Nix, or Gnat Block by Flying Skull. Diatomaceous earth is fine for us to handle, but to a newly born gnat it’s like crawling over razor wire. Always wear a respirator when handling it though, as you don’t want to inhale the dust. It’s only really effective when dry, so try not to get it wet. Once again, flooding from the bottom is the preferred method of feeding. Some growers use neem cake in their soil mix, or neem seed meal as both a soil enricher and a preventative measure against fungus gnats.

If you’re growing in NFT gro-tanks, then be aware that capillary matting is also a favorite for fungus gnats so be sure to secure the tank covers well to avoid gaps.

Finally, don’t forget to secure your air inputs with intake filters or bug screens, and always keep your grow room clean and tidy! (Sorry if I sound like your mom, only cooler.) If you’ve been gardening outdoors, take a shower, and change your clothes and footwear before entering your indoor garden. A few extra minutes, and a little extra vigilance as part of your garden routine, can save you months of frustration further down the line.

Check out Everest’s personal battle with Fungus Gnats by visiting his rather awesome, super fast-paced YouTube channel: Just4Growers — all your growing questions answered! 3 www.youtube.com/user/Just4Growers/

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The year 2016 was very exciting and productive, with some notable personal achievements. For the very first time, in a partnership with the University of Nottingham, we grew hydroponically with an AutoPot XL system. Our challenge was to grow the UK’s largest bell pepper.

Back in March, I thought to myself, “How on earth am I going to do this?” When I first purchased the equipment, it felt like taking control of a car for the first time, daunting, but exciting - a new world to explore and discover. The world of soilless media was opening, and I had a lot to learn, but I needn’t have been so anxious, a new me was dawning.

Hydroponics Is Easy To get started, we needed to invest in some equipment.

We purchased a blue lab truncheon, which is essential in hydroponic growing. You need to know what the strength of the nutrient solution is before feeding the plants, and while they are consuming it. If the conductivity reading is too low, the plants may not be getting enough nutrients. If the conductivity reading is too high, your plants can dehydrate.

Having the right tools to understand the conductivity of the nutrient solution takes the guesswork out of feeding your plants. Reading the solution was simple, and the truncheon indicates the EC by its flashing lights.

XL inside our Keder greenhouse. This gravity-fed system is extremely versatile. It offered us an easy, and efficient watering system for growing both a giant tomato, and a selection of giant peppers.

In order to keep the plants healthy and happy, apart from monitoring the EC levels, maintaining a good pH is one of the first things that we needed to do. The pH of the area around the plant’s roots (the “root zone”) is what determines which nutrients the plants can uptake. If the pH of the root zone is too high or too low, your plants will not be able to take in certain nutrients. As a result, plants will show signs of a nutrient deficiency, even when that nutrient is present.

When planting the peppers into the Autopot in late March, our mycorrhizal inoculant was mixed in around the roots. For the first few weeks, we watered the plants around the root to encourage them to establish into the growing medium.

Once they were established, we filled up the tank with rainwater and our liquid feed, checked the EC and PH, and

The pots hold 25 litres of growing media, and have a built in AQUAvalve, which controls the flow of nutrients into the base of the pot. We used a 60/40 mix of coir and clay pebbles for both the tomato and peppers.

For our first pepper record attempt we set up the AutoPot GARDENCULTUREMAGAZINE.COM

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then ran the feed into the AutoPot base. This feed, which incorporated the new Nano product, was changed every two weeks to ensure that the plants were continually getting the best nutrients possible.

For the very first time in our growing history, we didn’t need to worry about the plants drying out. The reservoir did our job for us. In addition to the gravity feeding, we used SB Plant Invigorator as a weekly foliar spray to prevent insect infestation, which will ultimately reduce a plant’s ability to grow to its maximum potential.

The peppers grew to over 5 feet high, and once set, the fruits were supported via string tied up to the metal frames inside the greenhouse. The hydroponic system cut two months off the growing time compared to a traditional peatbased container system with hand watering.

So far, it’s all looking grand. But here’s what happened at the UK Giant Vegetable Championships with not only our first giant pepper attempt, but our first hydroponic grow too.

The Competitions The highlight of the gardening calendar year for any giant veg grower, ourselves included, is taking the giant vegetables to the various shows in Harrogate, Malvern, the East of England, and a Welsh show at Aberglasney Gardens. The UK Giant Vegetable Championships takes place at the Three Counties Showground in late September, welcoming almost 70,000 through the gates for the two-day event.

For the third year running, the Malvern Autumn Show played host to the UK National Giant Vegetable Championships.

This year’s event was sponsored by CANNA, and entries shot up 20% to a record-breaking 360 competitors. Our ranks swelled by almost 80 new growers.

A staggering four world records were broken, along with two UK records. Two new competition categories were introduced in 2016 for Heaviest Bell Pepper and Heaviest Red Cabbage, and it was in this second category that one of the world records was smashed. Triple world record holder David Thomas from Hayle in Cornwall beat the previous record by almost 4.5kg with his monster red cabbage weighing in at a staggering 23.2kg, the same weight as the average 7-year-old child. This record stood for over 90 years, set by Mr. R Straw in 1925.

Other world record breakers include World’s Longest Carrot (6.245m), World’s Longest Beetroot (7.956m), and World’s Longest Radish (5.023m) - all grown by Joe Atherton from Mansfield. My brother and I established two UK records for the Heaviest Bell Pepper (560gr), and the Heaviest Field Pumpkin (72kg).

TV Coverage A number of growers at the Malvern Autumn Show were featured on the BBC Countryfile Diaries programme, including Ian Neale (Snoop Dogg’s mate), and ourselves. It was a great honour to be asked to play a part. Presenter Margerhita Taylor helped us load up the giant veg to move on to the UK Giant Vegetable Championships where we won 4 First Prizes for the Heaviest Bell Pepper, Cantaloupe Melon, and Radish, and Jamie picked up the prize for the Largest Sunflower Head.

A Taste of Japan Our next exhibition was the Aberglasney Gardens Giant Vegetable Show in early October. A day before the event, we welcomed visitors from Japanese TV channel NHK to our garden as part of a programme showcasing Wales and giant leeks. It was our first experience of garden guests from Japan.

The NHK film crew followed us to the show at Aberglasney Gardens, where the presenters helped us lift and weigh the veg. The weekend of filming will be broadcast on NHK sometime in December.

The TV company was so impressed by the leeks that two weeks after filming they asked us to send two specimens to Japan to showcase during their live broadcast. Our giant leeks made the trip first class via British Airways. Crazy, I know, but all great publicity for the promotion of giant vegetable growing all over the world.

We are currently preparing for a talk on giant vegetable growing at the Scottish Branch of The National Vegetable Society on the 18th December 2016, where there will be a chance to win an Autopot XL system. If you have the chance to visit the event, we look forward to seeing you.

It looks like 2017 will be another busy year for us. We will sit down over the winter to assess what went well, and what didn’t, keeping our minds open to new developments and ideas.

Hopefully we can set some more records next year.

Following our record-breaking success this year, we are excited to announce that our unique formula of giant pepper feed will launch in early 2017.

Until next time… 3

guidelines for how fertilizer should be sold and regulated Trust is a delicate thing- Difficult to earn, and once lost, nearly impossible to restore. But how deeply do we trust the companies that make the products we buy? Our first inclination is to believe they are honest and transparent, not just because they care; it is the right thing to do from a business perspective.

This is especially true when it comes to regulated industries, such as the fertilizer industry. After all, the point of regulation is for the extra-governmental scrutiny to entice an industry into following the rules and, in turn, gain the trust of the public. But often, even in regulated industries, things may not always be as they seem, and the consumer’s trust can easily be taken for granted.

In the US, fertilizer is regulated by each state’s Department of Agriculture (DoA), differing from products that contain materials like pesticides and plant growth regulators controlled on the federal level under the EPA. Each state’s legislature must draft a fertilizer bill, and then pass it into law with the Governor’s signature.

Contained within the fertilizer bill are guidelines for how

fertilizer should be sold and regulated in the state, with the task of regulation and enforcement falling into the hands of the state’s DoA. Regulating commercial fertilizer products most often entails the following. The product’s label must be in compliance with the guidelines outlined in the fertilizer law and must be reviewed and approved by a representative of the state’s DoA. Once approved, the product is then registered, and the company will often be required to obtain a license or permit to distribute into the state. More often than not, both of these will cost an annual fee. I mean, where’s the fun in regulation if they can’t get some money out of it?

Manufacturers are also required to report how much of each product sold in the state within a certain period. The aptly named tonnage report filed with the DoA is calculated in tons and most states tax per ton sold. The collected funds are usually used to pay for regular inspections conducted in retail stores to ensure compliance from fertilizer companies. Unregistered products found for sale are forced from shelves until the product is registered, and the manufacturer is compliant.

The fact that each government creates and enforce fertilizer laws can often result in a lack of uniformity from state to state. For the most part, the many different fertilizer laws and regulations are rather similar. But, some inconsistencies can make registering a fertilizer

product, in every state, a difficult task. States that are near oceans and larger bodies of water are known for having stricter regulations that serve the interest of environmental protection. Entirely understandable, as it should be the mission and the duty of government to protect the environment through such regulatory means.

65 years ago, the non-governmental, non-profit association called the American Association of Plant Food Control Officers (AAPFCO) was formed to encourage more uniformity from state to state, an organization of which I am a current sitting member of the Environmental Affairs Committee. The AAPFCO consists of DoA representatives from the different states, as well as liaisons from the fertilizer industry.

The group meets twice a year, tasked with developing the framework, guidelines, and language for future fertilizer legislation. The state representatives, with help from industry, hash out and debate how fertilizer materials should be regulated. The results of the meetings are taken back to their legislators to help in the drafting of fertilizer laws.

The AAPFCO, comprised of both the state workers and folks from the industry means there will be a better chance that the laws will be written in a way that properly regulates the materials, without putting too much burden on the sector itself. The participation of as many states as possible will lead to better consensus and uniformity between the various fertilizer laws and regulations. The AAPFCO may not be perfect, but an important step in the right direction, since there are no overarching federal fertilizer management guidelines.

One aspect that has garnered almost complete state to state uniformity, thanks to the work of the AAPFCO, is the fertilizer labeling guidelines. Although some states include other qualifications for registration, the regulations regarding fertilizer labeling usually center around 6 aspects:

1. Labels must have the brand name and the grade easily visible. The grade is the percentages of Total Nitrogen (N), Available Phosphate (P 2O5), and Soluble Potash (K 2O), stated as XX-XX-XX (i.e. 20-20-20), and commonly referred to as the products NPK ratio.

2. The net weight/contents of the individual container.

3. Directions for safe and effective use.

The name and address of the manufacturer or distributor.

4. The “Guarantor” of the product, the information must be clearly visible. Usually represented as “Guaranteed By” X company.

5. Guaranteed Analysis. This section quantifies the amounts of each fertilizer nutrient in the product, as a percentage. Also referred to as the “Guaranteed Minimum Analysis,” products that test below the labeled percent can be found in violation, and risk a stop in sales or a fine. There are no clear consequences for going above.

6. “Derived From” ingredient list. For each fertilizer nutrient in the guaranteed analysis, there must be a corresponding ingredient from which the nutrient is derived. Called the derivation statement, it is presented on the label as “Derived From,” and is most commonly placed directly underneath the guaranteed analysis.

The “Derived From” statement is where things can get a bit murky, and where consumer trust is often taken advantage of. Though each elemental fertilizer nutrient claimed must have a corresponding ingredient listed from which it is derived, there are no rules that require proof that a specific nutrient is actually coming from the ingredient listed.

For example, say we have a fertilizer label that claims 5% Available Phosphate (P 2O5), and the derived from statement lists Ammonium Phosphate as the ingredient supplying the nutrient. The manufacturer could very easily be using a completely different source ingredient for the available phosphate, such as Monopotassium Phosphate (MKP), without having to claim the extra potassium that inherently comes along with it. The end user would have no knowledge of the real ingredient, not to mention the extra amount of potassium, making it difficult to pinpoint exactly what nutrients the plant is receiving. Although this is just one example, it can be done with every fertilizer nutrient and ingredient.

the manufacturer I think many growers would be Though it is in a company’s best surprised to learn how often this interest to provide a product that could very easily be is consistent and does not cause a happens in the fertilizer industry. using a completely One of the main reasons a company plant harm, it is also in their interest different source would actively mislead the consumer to keep their formulas proprietary ingredient is to keep the fertilizer formula and confidential. For this reason, I a secret from competitors. The idea of proprietary personally do not completely trust any mixed fertilizer product label. It is far too easy for a company to hide what information is very widespread, and manufacturers do is truly in the bottle, and these types of practices have not want to put every exact ingredient on the label become increasingly widespread. because it would be relatively easy for someone else to figure out the specifics and ratios of the formulation. By misrepresenting a nutrient through mislabeling it as a If you suspect the fertilizer you are using contains more different ingredient, the company can be more confident than what is listed, or just want to check for the peace of mind, there are labs all over the country that will that the true components of the mix are kept secret. do a complete fertilizer analysis for a reasonable price.

They may not be able to tell you if all of the ingredients Another point where consumer trust is sometimes on the label are correct, but they will be able to show broken is the fact that fertilizer companies are only you exactly which elemental nutrients are present, and required to list the nutrients and ingredients that they wish. More often than not, a fertilizer mix will contain in what amounts. If the company is hiding nutrients by leaving them off the label, learning about them can help nutrients and ingredients that are not on the label. Once you make better decisions moving forward. 3 again, this is done in hope of keeping the formulation a secret.

When a state inspector conducts a lab test on a product they will only look for the total amounts of each elemental nutrient to make sure the product meets the guarantees listed on the label analysis. They will not, and sometimes cannot, check to make sure the nutrient is from the specific ingredient listed. Labs do have the ability to decipher and separate different types of a nutrient source, such as Nitrate-Nitrogen compared to Ammoniacal Nitrogen. However, these types of tests are much too expensive for state labs to run on every fertilizer they inspect. So, the regulators simply turn a blind eye to these misleading practices.

Bio Kyle L. Ladenburger is a freelance garden writer who has worked in the gardening/hydroponics industry for over a decade. As an avid indoor and outdoor gardener he is well versed in nearly all types of growing methods with an overall focus on sustainability and the maintaining of healthy soils.

He holds a strong conviction that growing one’s own food is a powerful way to change our lives and our world for the better.

The trend to Grow Your Own is inspiring many designers to create products that will help achieve a perfect growing environment, with esthetics, and ease of use in mind. Some take full control of the whole process, hurtling us into the Jetson’s era of household automation. Although most of these small startups only offer shipping to the United States, they are great sources of inspiration. Perhaps the next funding campaign will be for wider distribution.

R E A DY TO D I V E I N ?

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Say hello to Grove, the only truly successful Kickstarter launch featured on our blog. A compact aquaponic garden that lets you dabble in aquascaping too. Fresh food and fun in a sleek bamboo cabinet.

Equipped with 3 LED fixtures optimized for the adjustable height grow bed, seedling tray, and aquarium.Variable spectrum, smart sensors, OS app control, preset or custom settings. Ships to the US and Canada. www.grovelabs.io. Original post: www.bit.ly/grove-post.

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R ES E RV E YO U RS BY PRE- ORDERING

The NIWA is definitely a cool hydroponic gadget. Take advantage of available sunshine growing near a window, or rely on compact CFL lights to ensure good plant energy.Though a successful Kickstarter campaign, this product is only available for pre-order.

WiFi-enabled, app connected, program your crop, and watch it grow. Automated, remote control, 5 liter reservoir, and 6 plant sites. www.getniwa.com. Featured on our blog: www.bit.ly/our-NIWA-post.

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SNEAK PEEK!

Though not yet available for sale, The Grobo has a unique, and desirable feature - the door is made from fluid glass, changing from clear to opaque at a touch. Instantly create night in the garden, or make your grow totally discrete.

Equipped with a carbon filter, environmental control, and 8-color spectrum LEDs with sunrise and sunset.

WiFi-enabled, app connected and fully automated. www.grobo.io. Featured on our blog: www.bit.ly/our-grobo-post.

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R E D U C E GA R D E N WA S T E

The 1st compostable plastic pot! SelfEco Garden officially launched in January 2016, and ships within the US. Molded from biopolymer PLA made from starchy plants, with distillation waste included as fertilizer. Readily composts in the ground, reusable for 6 months, and disintegrates quickly in a landfill.

Once seedlings are big enough for the garden, flip the tabs down to allow root growth, dig the hole, and plant. Not high tech, but definitely smart. More info: www.SelfEcoGarden.com.

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S M A R T O U T D O O R WAT E R I N G

The Edyn Water Valve is part 2 of a successful Kickstarter campaign covered here in Issue 9.

Paired with the Edyn Garden Sensor, the valve only activates irrigation when soil is dry. Healthier plants, and no over watering! No sprinklers running in the rain. Reduce water use, and save money.

WiFi connected, efficient remote management via smartphone.

Solar-powered, real time monitoring, built to withstand weather and common garden inputs. Available at Home Depot in the US, and online at www.edyn.com.

Our blog feature: www.bit.ly/edyn-post. 3

The sad irony of agriculture is that, even with the best of intentions, we generally work against what we would want if we were asked. From corn to cannabis - our crops are grown for yield and shelf-life, instead of quality and nutrient density.

Our fertility is artificial not natural. Our subsidies incentivize the wrong people, and the worst crops. And the list goes on.

At the risk of being cynical and pompous, agriculture has been co-opted by “experts” that do not know what they are doing in regards to progressive regenerative agriculture, and greed that values money over nourishment. Take, for instance, the fact that well over 90% of agriculture is conducted using manmade artificial fertilizers and toxic biocides. How do you think Mother Nature, the very source of all agronomic activity, feels about that?

Collectively, agriculture focuses more on what we want to get out of the plant, instead of what the plant wants to provide for people. Of course, this is why so many people grow their own gardens. The joy and challenge is profound and therapeutic, resulting in many levels of value to the grower and society at large.

Gardening is not obvious, so the market for consulting is quite large. Bad advice is bad advice, but our unwillingness to become our own experts in the garden can actually hold us

back. In full evaluation, the best tools for becoming a master grower are common sense and critical thinking. And it’s a lot easier than you may think.

A trip to the local USDA Extension Service for advice offers a great example. Any surface evaluation into the work of Cooperative Extension will notice only positive things. Take this passage from their website: “The hallmarks of the extension program — openness, accessibility, and service — illuminate how cooperative extension brings evidence-based science and modern technologies to farmers, consumers, and families.”

Who can argue with that? But make the connection that a call to the Extension “helpline” results in advice to use cheap synthetic fertilizers and toxic biocides. Rather than advising growing soil using organic practices, they recommend growing plants at the expense of the soil, and killing all of the problems created with toxic artificiality. It is quite a conundrum, not much different than our healthcare system being based on managing symptoms and reactionary medicine.

The point is not to demonize the Extension, or doctors for that matter, but to challenge us to think for ourselves. Does it make sense to use artificial materials to grow living things?

What we think, we grow.

For those just catching the gardening bug, there are some great books available that no doubt provide a good starting point for becoming a successful grower. But one cannot read a book and master the art, in fact, taking gardening books too literally can get you into trouble.

A good example is the famous “Square Foot Gardening” book. The general recipe calls for 1/3 compost, 1/3 peat moss, and 1/3 vermiculite by volume. The formula then proceeds to recommend the number of plants to sow per square foot.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand where this comes from – keep it simple – but it reduces gardening to an equation, and results in growers imagining that they are doing it “wrong.”

Gardening is not about right and wrong, only better and best.

Plus, it sends people driving all over town looking for the proper ingredients, when there are all sorts of ways to grow a successful garden. I owned a retail garden center for over 14 years, and I cannot tell you how many people came in looking for these ingredients and ratios; and how many people had their garden gridded out like an architect to plant in the right proportion to space. Not only does this cripple potential, but it does not invoke imagination and intuition, both vital components to successful growing.

processes involved in the ecosystem that can be of benefit, like soil microbes or beneficial insects. In fact, the average grower spends more time trying to discourage these processes than standing in reverence of them.

Most “mistakes” made when gardening are simple to fix. For instance, in my garden center it was my observation that most self-proclaimed “brown thumbs” were a result of simply overwatering their plants. The gardener thought they were helping, when they were just suffocating the roots.

Even the most complicated issues in the garden can be deduced with some critical thinking. Plants don’t lie, but unfortunately, they cannot verbalize their wishes - we must listen with those vital faculties of intuition and imagination. It is easy to simply do what you are told, but the magic of gardening can only be experienced through controlled and proper experimentation, and a little shot of rebellion. Gardening is not about following directions, it is more feel than equation. In fact, agriculture may have been the very first act of human rebellion.

Gardening is about reducing stress, not the anxiety of “getting it right.” As with just about any worthwhile endeavor, growing plants is about perspective and insight earned through making mistakes. There is much more to this than just growing plants.

It was also my observation that poor soil conditions resulted in great discouragement to the average backyard gardener. It is too easy to think that all we need to do is till up some ground, put the plants in, and water with some fertilizer. Residential development destroys soil fertility, and budget fertilizers amount to no more than fast food at best. This is a recipe for disaster.

For example, when we consider it our responsibility to grow a plant in the first place, then we are not imagining all of the living

There is nothing worse than putting maximum effort into a garden and getting nothing out of it. Hydroponics is a method

of growing plants that can take the guess work out of going to pay more for it and, just like with artificial fertilizers, growing by putting 100% of the responsibility for plant you will be required to add it to the garden forever. Without growth on the grower. It is the closest thing in gardening soil microbes present, there are no construction workers to an equation as one can automate or fertilizer factories. All responsibility their garden almost completely, falls on the human to grow the plant, GARDENING IS NOT when we really need to be getting out but it is still not without required ABOUT FOLLOWING of the way. This reality is why forests consideration. can grow trees with zero fertilizer or DIRECTIONS, IT IS For example, the majority of irrigation.

MORE FEEL THAN gardeners in the United States use EQUATION artificial budget fertilizers from Big Growing and leveraging the abilities Box stores. They are man-made of soil microbes is the essence of and salt-based, just like hydroponic fertilizers; but they brewing compost tea. Because microbes are so small, do not even contain the basic essential elements required it is very difficult to treat them with the respect that for plants to grow. They wouldn’t work in a hydroponic they deserve, and it creates a ripe environment for false system. authority. There are far too many “experts” in the field of microbiology given how little we really know. Estimates tell In other words, gardeners using these cheap fertilizers us that we know only 5% of bacteria and 10% of fungi based are actually taking advantage of and degenerating their soil on the rate of discovery. Thankfully, microbes self-organize. without even knowing it. Can you imagine an employee in the Big Box store talking you out of buying their fertilizer All “compost tea” is beneficial on some level. But many on these grounds? Too often gardening is about sales - not growers out there are using recipes born of anaerobic success. microbes or mycorrhizal fungi, both unable to survive in an aerobic compost tea brewer. This is not harming anything Comparing a soil and hydroponic garden can be a good way per se, but represents a hindrance to the type of yields of teasing out how to start becoming our own experts. and results we could be getting by pondering the processes Think about it. On some level, using artificial salts in a behind the application. living soil environment makes no sense, yet growers do it all the time at the suggestion of garden centers. But why The same sort of sentiment can be used with many buy a bag of good organic potting soil and dump artificial hydroponic growers who do not believe that organic salts on it? If we are going to use artificial fertilizers why options like compost tea can be used in their systems. not separate them in a recirculating hydroponic system? In Their mindset is sanitization using hydrogen peroxide and fact, many of the issues we experience in the garden are other cleaning agents in an attempt of keeping the hydro born of treating soil like a hydroponic system. system clean of any unwanted microbes.

In its simplest form, organic growing is about feeding soil microbes; but the microbes have to be there to be fed. This, in effect, is what makes “organic” growing more expensive.

Without soil microbes present in your soil garden, you may get a better result using organic inputs, but you are

Bottom line - if you are a grower, don’t be a follower. Apply advice you get with a grain of salt, and a critical eye. Let your plants tell you what is right or wrong. The reality is that if we only do what we are told, we will never learn a thing. And our garden, and ourselves, will suffer for it. 3

1) Dorchester, MA

Growing Community Twenty years ago, a 1-acre urban farm sprouted as part of a homeless shelter project in Dorchester, on Boston’s south side. The ReVision Urban Farm still helps the homeless, but has broadened their nonprofit work to include bringing food security and job skills into both their community and neighboring Mattapan.

Harvests here feed 22 families living at the ReVision House, flesh out food bank offerings, and are sold through their farm stands or CSA program. It’s always fresh, always affordable, and always local... produce grown to give a low-income community healthy options. The farms are worked by volunteers and enrollees in their job training program.

Happy anniversary, ReVision! Long may you grow.

More info: www.bit.ly/ReV-farm.

2) Bedminster, NJ

Growing Skills Raising a child with autism is a challenge. But what happens when they become adults? There are very few adequate programs in the US addressing their special needs past the age of 21. Somerset Hills Learning Center seeks to change this with career training that includes farming and hydroponics for year around production.

As part of a developing career advancement program for autistic people aged 21 and older, Somerset Hills bought a farm that will work with up to 24 students growing food for local restaurants. Agriculture is perfect for the autistic’s attention to detail and need for repetition.

Fresh skills for a highly challenged future.

More info: www.bit.ly/autistic-farmers.

GARDENCULTUREMAGAZINE.COM

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3) Easthampton, MA

Parkin’ It Putting hydroponically grown plants inside an old building isn’t anything new, but turning it into a public park is. That’s what happened at a vacant mill in western Massachusetts.

Now it’s Mill 180 Park, where the crops provide greenery, environment, and ingredients for the cafe in all seasons.

The team at Mill 180 designed their indoor hydroponic park to mirror an urban outdoor park, but it’s open and enjoyable no matter what’s going on with the weather.

It’s also located in a marginalized community, and if as successful as anticipated, they’ll be spreading out to similar neighborhoods around the US.

4) Dallas, TX

Growing Firsts It’s likely the first college ever saved from extinction by farming, but that’s exactly what happened at Paul Quinn College in a food desert south of downtown. First, the football program got the ax, then an organic farm sprouted between the goal posts. In turn, it created the country’s first urban work college.

We Not Me Farm generates over 20,000 pounds of fresh food a year, supplying restaurants and the Cowboys’ stadium with herbs, lettuce, and vegetables. The harvest also feeds students, and 10% is donated to the community.

It’s a business education at a liberal arts college that doesn’t focus on growing farmers, but career experience earned while the students help to pay their tuition.

An amazing story about rethinking education and urban issues. More info: www.bit.ly/PQ-farm, www.bit.ly/reinvent-PQ 3

Cannabis legalization is sparking societal change in the United States but antiquated federal law continues to stunt its growth.

On Election Day, voters legalized recreational use in California, Massachusetts, Nevada and Maine, and medical use in Florida, North Dakota and Arkansas. Arizona was the only state to to vote against a marijuana-related ballot question, failing to legalize recreational use.

Now, 28 of the country’s 50 states has legal cannabis for medical use.

Eight states and Washington D.C. have legalized it recreationally.

But there’s still a federal ban that makes cannabis a complicated business. And it’s unclear what happens next, especially with a Republican administration heading to the White House.

Dispensaries still have to operate in cash because federal law makes it difficult for banks to get involved in the industry. It would all change if the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration rescheduled cannabis. It’s currently a Schedule I drug, the same label it’s had for nearly half a century. That means it has no medical benefits and is considered as harmful as cocaine and marijuana.

The DEA was expected to finally reschedule cannabis in August.

While the Republican-dominated Congress hasn’t taken up the issue, the DEA had the ability to do it without Congressional approval.

President Obama, himself a smoker in his youth, said publicly in 2014 that marijuana is no more dangerous than alcohol. It seemed like the wheels were in motion to reschedule it, even without

help from Congress. Yet the DEA denied the change, saying that the Food and Drug Administration and Department of Health and Human Services conducted scientific and medical evaluations and determined that cannabis should remain a Schedule I substance. Obama, while raising support for cannabis in general, declined to push for rescheduling.

They did make one major tweak, allowing more research.

The University of Mississippi, ironically located in one of the country’s most conservative states, was for years the only university in the nation allowed to cultivate marijuana.

The DEA is now allowing numerous educational facilities to grow for research and opened up the door for an eventual reschedule.

So why was cannabis even labeled a Schedule I drug in the first place? Not surprisingly, it had to do with politics and President Nixon’s own racist policies.

In 1970 Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act and agreed to temporarily make cannabis a Schedule I drug while it was studied. Nixon assembled the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse to study cannabis. He loaded it with conservatives, including chairman Raymond Shaffer, the “law-and-order” governor of Pennsylvania. Declassified tapes reveal that Nixon wanted a rubber-stamped commission that would keep cannabis illegal.

Nixon blamed cannabis’ popularity on “Jewish psychiatrists” and Communists. “Homosexuality, dope, immorality in general — these are the enemies of strong societies,” Nixon said. “That’s why the Communists and the left-wingers are pushing the stuff. They’re trying to destroy us.”

In 2016, Harper’s Magazine published a previously unreleased 22-year-old interview with John Ehrlichman, Nixon’s White House Domestic Affairs Adviser. Ehrlichman said the War on

Drugs was a guise to keep public opinion against the antiwar effort and the black community.

“We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black(s), but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities,” Ehrlichman said. “We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

But Nixon’s hand-picked anti-drug commission made a surprising public revelation. It found that cannabis was not a danger to society and had no links to harder drugs. It recommended decriminalization. Nixon and Congress ignored the recommendation and it remains federally illegal today.

Between 2001 and 2010 there were eight million cannabis arrests in the United States, according to the ACLU. It costs taxpayers $3.6 billion a year.

Cannabis use is roughly equal between the black and white population, but African Americans are 3.73 times more likely to be arrested.

So what happens next? It could depend on the new Donald Trump administration.

Trump wasn’t asked much about cannabis during the election but did say legalization should be decided on a state-by-state basis. He didn’t provide any specifics. But he has tapped Jeff Sessions, who is ardently anti-cannabis, as the nation’s attorney general.

Assuming the Republican-controlled Congress confirms Sessions, the country’s top law enforcement official will be a man who in April said publicly “that good people don’t smoke marijuana.”

“We need grown-ups in Washington to say marijuana is not the kind of thing that ought to be legalized, it ought to be minimized, that it is in fact a very real danger,” he said at an April Senate hearing.

Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, said “Jeff Sessions is a drug war dinosaur, which is the last thing the nation needs now.”

Cannabis legalization advocates were counting on different results in the presidential election.

“If Hillary Clinton had won, this would have been the grand slam that everyone in the industry had been hoping and praying for for years,” Chris Walsh, editorial director of Marijuana Business Daily, told CBS News shortly after the election. “With Trump coming in, no one knows what’s going to happen. There are a lot of fears that he might crack down on the industry.”

While it’s tough to imagine them breaking up the thriving legal marijuana business and the tax revenue that comes with it, at the very least the new administration could dissuade Congress or the DEA from rescheduling.

If you’re wondering why Congress wouldn’t want to reschedule simply for tax benefits, it’s because the federal government is already collecting taxes on cannabis.

Marijuana businesses are required to file federal income tax returns. But they’re significantly limited in the amount of deductions they can take because the IRS argues their business consists of trafficking in controlled substances. It’s another reason why the federal ban hurts the cannabis industry.

“The tax burden is significant,” Derek Peterson, CEO of Terra Tech, told CNBC. “Companies in our business are paying anywhere from 40, 50, 60, 70 percent.”

Expect to see more states legalize marijuana but the industry won’t truly reach its potential until the federal ban is lifted. And the election likely set back that movement. 3

In Part III, we learned about exciting developments in the late 1930’s-1940’s when the Japanese invaded, and started using the first hydroponic farm in the South Pacific before World War II.

This autumn, Jeff Edwards, the author of the series The History of Hydroponics, a seasoned veteran of the hobby hydroponic industry, a hydroponic history enthusiast, and creator of HydroponicGardening.com, passed away. The world lost a great person, someone who helped shape the industry of indoor gardening as we know it. Jeff was like the grand professor of Hydroponics. A historian with an endless drive to educate and motivate people to know more - politics, gender and race equality, environmentalism, food security, and of course, the complex world of cannabis regulations.

Jeff always had a passion for our industry’s history. When I asked him if he would be interested in writing one long, or maybe a two part article on the history of hydro, he didn’t hesitate in saying yes. I should have known he could never keep it that short. So far, Garden Culture readers have enjoyed three installments of the History of Hydroponics. And we always looked forward to learning the details unearthed by Jeff.

His third installment happened to be too long. So, we chopped it in half, giving us all this last chance to read more. An industry rich with history, this part only brings us to the first “Entrepreneurial Era” of hydro, just skimming the surface of the efforts to help WWII. It is the most complete history ever written on the subject. Sadly, he will not be able to finish his story, himself.

Jeff’s teachings live on and, hopefully, someone will carry the torch and finish the “long” article.

You will be missed. - Eric Coulombe

A number of entrepreneurs took up hydroponics early on, as a direct result of Dr. Gericke’s work. The first with any measure of success being Ernest W. Brundin, a University of California graduate of Montebello, California. A well-to-do businessman, Mr. Brundin was taken by the early accounts of Gericke’s work, and independently started his own greenhouse tomato farm, experimenting by himself at producing commercial quantities of soilless grown tomatoes. Once established, his one-half acre was producing 40 tons of tomatoes a year, and he believed he could eventually produce 100 tons to the acre.

He named his new concern The Chemical Culture Company, and was so successful, that by May of 1938 he had already secured contracts to supply the dining cars of eastbound transcontinental trains. Eventually Brundin secured steamship dining contracts, along with shipping them for sale, as far away as New York City.

In early tests, Dr. Gericke had warmed the nutrient solution of his tanks with soil-heating cables, believing at the time that warming the nutrient temperature would increase growth. An earlier attempt at beginning a commercial tomato farm failed due to the prohibitively expensive electricity cost these cables required.

Brundin turned to solving this issue through steam, developing and patenting a growing system that connected a hundred growing tanks to a centrally located reservoir. The temperature of the nutrient was raised to 80°F by a steam boiler, before being mechanically pumped back to the growing beds on a timed schedule, after which it would drain back by gravity to the reservoir. Brundin was almost as active as Gericke in promoting hydroponics, and in fact, held a weeklong exposition of his “now world-famous plants” in the downtown location of The May Company, a leading department store in Los Angeles.

Brundin can be credited with patenting the first hobby hydroponic system, called the “chemical agriculture system” in 1938.

He also developed and patented the first passive hydroculture pots for home use, described as a “double-decked” pot that contained the nutrient solution below a growing pot with a wick that would carry the nutrient solution up to the roots of the plant, and included a built-in solution level indicator.

Brundin wasn’t alone, however. Another one hundred tank commercial hydroponicum was established by a former student of Dr. Gericke’s near Sacramento, known as the California Packing Company. Rolland Langley of Mountain View, California, was a pioneer in establishing hydroponics as a teaching tool in schools. Used by thousands of teachers, in 1939 Langley developed a small leak proof hydroponics kit that could be used in

any school window, complete with a “... tank, tray, excelsior, rice hulls, and the plant nutrients.”

On the east coast in August of 1938, ads for salesmen to act as distributors for a “... quick selling line of hydroponic chemicals and equipment...” began appearing in many newspapers, placed by the Modern Gardening Sales Company of New York City.

In November of 1938, George Zarafonctis, the maître d’ of the Hilton Hotel in downtown Lubbock, Texas, opened a rooftop hydroponicum to supply fresh vegetables to the hotel restaurant. Many other examples of hydroponic entrepreneurship exist, too numerous to list here.

Expositions During 1939, a number of expositions featured exhibits highlighting the new soilless growing techniques, including the San Francisco Golden Gate International Exposition, where growing tanks were constructed of glass, so that visitors could see the plant roots growing, the 1939 State Fair of Texas, and other state fairs as well.

Perhaps the most popular show was in the Heinz Dome at the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair, an exhibit that contained displays representative of the company famous for their Heinz 57 ketchup. On display were several tomato plants being grown via “chemi-culture,” with the plants rooted in sand, and individual bottles of nutrient solution fed to the roots via gravity through clear tubes.

And while it was admitted that these weren’t the same tomatoes that Heinz currently used in their products, they predicted that crops grown in the future could be done so without soil. So popular was the Heinz exhibit during the first year of the fair, it was greatly expanded for the 1940 season (May-October). The company hired G.B. Van Veghten to grow an expanded selection of both flowers and vegetables for the attendees viewing and educational pleasure.

War! After leaving the University of California to pursue hydroponic research on his own, Dr. Gericke continued to promote his latest research under the auspices of his newly adopted terminology. Any opportunity he could avail himself of to spread the promise of hydroponics, he took advantage of. He also would use this time to complete his book published in 1940, The Complete Guide To Soilless Gardening, the title of which curiously lacked any reference to hydroponics.

In the introduction, Gericke hits back at the conclusions of Hoagland and Arnon laid out in Circular 347, saying that “Some scientists who failed to realize the import of natural and field conditions have compared yields from small hydroponic basins with those from basins of fertile soil, and also with those of sand treated with nutrient solutions, using the same number of plants each. In using the same number of plants in the hydroponic basin as in the soil, these experiments have made the mistake of limiting the productive capacity of hydroponics to that of soil.

Comparison can be only by growing as great a number of plants in each case as the fertility of the culture medium can support.”

He also emphasizes that hydroponics isn’t yet a precise science, and that much experimentation still needs to be accomplished, while warning against exaggerated claims of the press and shady businessmen. Yet, he goes on to say that the productive powers of hydroponics dwarf those of agriculture. He also foresees other benefits including preserving natural resources, or what he termed the “cycle of conservation.”

After America’s entry into the war in late 1941, Gericke continued refining his techniques and in 1943, announced in the January 10th issue of the Oakland Tribune that “Because he believes that he can best serve his country by disseminating information about his agricultural ‘revolution,’ Dr. Gericke has opened to the public his experimental gardens at 1555 Scenic Avenue.”

He went on to state that “... his principal concern at present is that every backyard, however small or rocky, is converted to wartime production.” And beginning the following week, every Sunday for the next 3 months, Gericke published detailed information in the Oakland Tribune for the public on just how to carry out this task. Thousands visited his personal gardens as a result, and countless soilless gardens were planted for the war effort. 3

Next we were to visit how hydroponics helped the war effort, and how the post-war years led to renewed interest by the public and commercial interests. Unfortunately, we may never get the chance to learn those details, or much about everything that took place between the end of this article and recent history. This is the last installment in this series. Jeff had planned to continue on from where he left off here, but passed away before he was able to share anymore of this fascinating saga. We hope the rest of the more obscure parts of the story didn’t leave with him.

In the place of Jeff’s standard biography, we thought a few words from some of the people he touched, would be more appropriate.

Jeffrey J. Edwards, beloved husband and father died on Monday, October 24, 2016 at Memorial Hospital at the age of 57. Well known, widely liked, and deeply admired throughout the industry, his presence among us will definitely be missed.

“I first met Jeff Edwards when he worked for the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) in Washington, D.C. in 1984. He arranged for me to speak at their national conference that year, and we became close friends and business associates.

After he left NORML, he started a grower supply retail store in Maryland, and later an online store selling a diverse product line of indoor and outdoor gardening supplies. He also became passionately involved with the Hydroponic Society of America (HSA). At the time, it was a group of older gentlemen, and us younger ones joined the organization. We all came up through the Cannabis ranks and Jeff, with his friendly and personable nature, helped soothe the ruffled feathers of these long time hydroponic vegetable enthusiasts, and showed them we were also interested in vegetables and herbs too. Just a different kind of herb than they were used to.

As the long time organizers of the HSA passed away, Jeff took up the mantle of being the lead director of the organization, helping morph it into the Hydroponic Merchants Association which later became the Progressive Gardening Association. In all these organizations, Jeff’s passion and traditional work ethic drove the organizations forward. Jeff always had a big smile on his face and an energy that was unmatched by anyone.

He had a vision for all the organizations he was associated with, and worked as hard as anyone to make them all succeed.

It was shocking to hear of his sudden and unexpected passing, and his positive energy will be missed by all who knew him.”

- Tom Alexander, Cannabis Speaker, Presenter & Visionary

“I loved that guy, and will miss him a lot. I don’t think anybody did more for the hydro related industry than Jeff.”

- Harmon Davidson - Hydroponic Industry Pioneer

“In 1995, I started a non-profit and called it Institute of Simplified Hydroponics. At that time I was not accepted in the hydroponics world, nor was my idea to find a way to use our technology to feed the world.

At a Conference, Jeff Edwards walked up to me and handed me a piece of paper. When I opened it I found a check for $1000.00. It was a large sum of money for me. Jeff then told me that he believed in what I was trying to do, and wanted me to go ahead with that dream at all costs.

I think it might have been a turning point for me.

Now, 22 years later, we have a pathway out of hunger using simplified hydroponics. Just two days before Jeff passed I announced our success with using sweet potato on Facebook. I do not know if he saw it.

I am sure that a lot of women in terrible poverty will be helped by this technology. It was Jeff’s hope and dream long ago, now realized. We all owe him a debt of thanks for being there, and being so supportive. Let’s remember this, and go forward with that wish.”

- Peggy Bradley, Institute for Simplified Hydroponics

I usually like to start an article with an applicable quote, but they were all terrible and meaningless so I’ve come up with my own, thought provoking, intellectually stimulating, deep and heart felt quote….

“Don’t throw rotten eggs if you can’t stand the hydrogen sulphide.”

- Stephen Brookes, 2016

So what is Sulphur?

Sulphur, elemental symbol (S), is a bright yellow element (non-metallic) with the atomic number 16. It is the 10th most abundant element within the universe and is a naturally occurring element, but can also be extracted from some common minerals. If you have ever heard of fire and brimstone, Sulphur is referred to as the brimstone in certain religious books. Common uses for Sulphur include gunpowder, battery acid and match heads.

In terms of smell, pure sulphur has no odour, the foul smell associated with Sulphur comes from many of its compounds such as mercaptans which gives skunks their foul smelling defence. Another sulphur compound that is particularly smelly is hydrogen sulphide, which we associate with rotten eggs, stink bombs and poorly converting car exhausts. I know many of you would love to know what this smells like, but Eric just wouldn’t allow me to put my scratch and sniff patch in all the magazines.

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Apart from its history and olfactory effect on humans, it is used to manufacture numerous products including fertilisers, medicines, sugar and paper amongst other things.

Sulphur is the primary source in the production of sulphuric acid, the world’s most widely used chemical. Sulphuric acid is an essential intermediate in many processes in the chemical and manufacturing industries. Sulphuric acid also is used by the fertiliser industry to manufacture phosphates, Nitrogen, Potassium, and sulphate fertilisers.

Why do plants need sulphur?

Following Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium, Sulphur is an essential plant nutrient. It contributes to an increase in crop yields by providing direct nutritive value, providing indirect nutritive value as a soil amendment, especially for calcareous/saline-alkali soils and it improves the efficiency of uptake with other essential plant nutrients, particularly Nitrogen and Phosphorus.

Within the plant, Sulphur is a molecular building block for a number of proteins, hormones and vitamins, such as B1. It is also found in a number of important plant tissues, including seeds and cellular fluid which allows it to play an important role in water management. Lastly, it plays an integral role in the production of oils and flavours.

Most sulphur-containing fertiliser materials can generally be divided into two groups, one of fertilisers containing sulphate, and one of fertilisers containing elemental sulphur. Sulphate-containing fertilisers provide most of the fertiliser sulphur applied to soils. The most significant and popular sources are ammonium sulphate, single superphosphate (SSP), potassium sulphate and potassium magnesium sulphate. These materials have the advantages of supplying sulphur primarily as a component of multi-nutrient fertilisers in a sulphate form that is immediately available for plant uptake, but the most important form of sulphur for fertiliser is the mineral calcium sulphate (CaSO 4). Elemental Sulphur is hydrophobic (not soluble in water) and cannot be used directly by plants, so over time, soil bacteria has to convert it to soluble derivatives, which can then be used by plants.

The main causes of deficiency include an unstable pH that continuously rises above 6.0 (Hydro) or an excess of Calcium which would outcompete Sulphur for the plants uptake pathways. Another way deficiency can occur is if the grower mixes their base nutrients (A+B) in their concentrated forms rather than mixing with water. The Sulphur reacts with the Calcium and precipitates out of solution forming calcium sulphate (gypsum).

The useful part…

As much as Sulphur plays a critical role in certain plant processes it doesn’t seem to get as much attention as other plant nutrients. I think that the more we delve into Sulphur, the more we will realise just how important it is and what other roles it plays in allowing a plant to reach its genetic potential.

Too much Sulphur and a plant will slow its growth, produce deep green foliage and show nutrient burn on the tips of leaves.

Not enough Sulphur manifests itself with slow and incomplete flower formation, young leaves will turn light green followed by stunted growth. As this progresses the veins begin to yellow and the stems can turn woody.

However, Sulphur deficiency is rare as most fertilisers contain highly soluble forms of it. Sulphur deficiency can resemble Nitrogen deficiency in many ways, however out of the two deficiencies, Nitrogen will be the more likely.

To correct a deficiency, make sure the hydroponic nutrient you are using has a plant soluble form of Sulphur in it and also that the pH is in the correct range when feeding.

If there is a Sulphur excess, as with any excess, run water through the growing medium up to 3 times the amount of the pot (15 litres through a 5 litre pot).

Thank you for reading the latest edition of “What is…” the next edition will be looking at the micronutrients we use and more specifically at Boron.

I’d like to finish with a saying we have in Liverpool.

“If you’re driving along and you suddenly smell rotten eggs, either your catalytic converter needs changing or you didn’t fully read this article and someone has taken to throwing rotten eggs at your car” - Stephen Brookes (2016) 3

Don’t have a garden for your veggies?

No problem – you can grow them up a wall!

Over 80% of North Americans and 75% of Europeans live in cities, many of them in apartments. Perhaps you’re one of them, and you’d like to grow some of your own food, but you don’t have a garden. Why not simply grow vegetables and herbs on your walls?

Green walls can be true works of art, like tableaux where the plants’ colours, shapes, and textures make them resemble the fabulous creations of a talented painter or sculptor. Green walls are not only highly ornamental and decidedly different, but also very useful – a great way to grow edible plants where you couldn’t otherwise. Vegetable gardens have been taking over the highest buildings and structures of late!

Cells and pockets It’s relatively easy to grow vegetables, herbs, and edible flowers in an outdoor green wall made of thick geotextile fabric pockets (Smart Pot makes this type of product), or made of plastic or metal panels composed of several cells.

The cells or pockets are then filled with a growing media for planting in. You can also use a system like this to grow veggies indoors in winter.

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Vegetables do require some essential conditions to grow, though. First of all, most veggies require at least six hours of sun a day in order to thrive. So, be sure to place the greens you’re growing on a wall that gets full sun, and is protected from the wind. At northern latitudes, once all risk of frost is past, May or June is the best time to plant many vegetables native to the tropics, like cucumbers, eggplants, peppers, and tomatoes. Some root vegetables and leafy ones, like beets, spinach, and radishes can be planted outdoors in a green wall even earlier, in some areas, as early as March or April.

If your green wall is indoors, sufficient sunlight probably doesn’t come through your windows for vegetable plants to grow and develop properly. That means that it’s often necessary to use LED grow lights for an indoor edible green wall.

Also, the cells or pockets in your green wall must contain lots of light and rich potting soil, made of a blend of compost, sphagnum moss, and perlite. I highly recommend Pro-Mix Premium Organic Vegetable and Herb Mix. An edible green wall also needs to be irrigated and fertilized frequently, especially if it’s located in full afternoon sun. You can water your wall by hand, with a watering can, just as you would for most other containers. It will usually take two or three waterings a week. A drip-irrigation system, hooked up to an outdoor faucet (with or without a timer) can also be installed on a green wall. In that case, it’s best to

use liquid fertilizer, but you could also add slow-release granular fertilizer high in nitrogen and potassium to the soil at planting time.

and Mini Bell series peppers, and ‘Little Fingers’ eggplants also bear small fruit, making them a good choice. Finally, surprising as it might seem, you can also grow carrots and potatoes vertically. Just be sure to choose a short, round carrot variety!

Climbing and edible Edible and attractive You can grow almost any vegetables and herbs on a green wall. The best food plants for vertical gardening are leafy vegetables like swiss chard, spinach, kale, and leaf lettuce.

Most herbs are easy to grow on a wall, too. Basil, chives, mint, oregano, parsley, trailing rosemary, savoury, and thyme all do especially well.

If you’re interested in growing tomatoes on a wall, you might like to choose a compact, trailing variety that produces small fruit, like ‘Lizzano’ or ‘Tumbling Tom’ for instance. Lunchbox

Lots of climbing vegetable and fruit plants, like cucumbers, winter squash, Malabar spinach, scarlet runner beans, yardlong beans, and hardy kiwis are ideally suited to vertical gardening. Some edible flowers, like canary creeper nasturtiums, also like to climb. All these climbers should be grown in containers and placed against a trellis-covered wall. Climbers are another good option for cell or pocket green walls, because they will also grow downward.

Some garden centres and hardware stores carry prefabricated wooden, metal, or plastic trellises you can use to support your climbing crops. For twining plants like runner beans, you

the wall with screws and wire. Thread the wire through the edges of the netting and then attach it to the screws, which must be solidly anchored in the wall. Leave at least 2.5 cm (1 inch) between the wall and the netting. This is a great way to cover a large area, and to grow a variety of edible

can even just screw metal wires into your YO U C A N G R OW walls for them to climb. However, you’ll find AL MOST ANY it even easier to grow annual climbers on V E G E TA B L E S A N D nylon string – fishing line usually does the HERBS trick – because you can just cut the string to remove their dead stems in late fall.

Instead of the ubiquitous fan-shaped wooden or plastic climbers together. 3 trellises, I’d suggest netting like that used to keep birds off fruit trees. It’s inexpensive and discreet, and will blend in with your vegetation and building materials. It must be firmly attached to

3 Mushrooms in Chocolate

What’s on the horizon for hot edibles? Yes, the focus is on safer, healthier foods, and better Earth stewardship. Here’s what is most likely to be the next big things.

Sweet chocolate requires lots less sugar by adding mushrooms.

They remove cacao’s bitterness. Look for mushrooms listed in the ingredients for anything chocolatey.

4 Plant Waters

Grass fed beef is about to get bumped to second choice as regenerative agriculture awareness spreads. Look for cuts from animals raised on this herd and soil management practice.

Low sugar flavored waters you might begin seeing in include cactus and maple. Everyone knows maple is a natural sweetener, but cactus fruits also offer vitamins and minerals, and claims of electrolytes and antioxidants. Aloe vera water is said to aid digestion and weight loss.

2 Fresh Moringa

5 Fruit Burgers

Leaves, flowers, fruits, and seeds of the tropical Moringa tree are edible. Look for its processed forms as food additives. But fresh is even better! Its high levels of benefits make it very attractive for salads and cooking. Tip: It can be container grown as an annual.

Avoiding soy meat substitutes? Jackfruit burgers are one option developed, made possible simply by adding a few standard kitchen seasonings. Then there’s heme protein from yellow peas that gives veggies a similar taste and texture to meat.

1 Regenerative Grazed

Source: www.bit.ly/new-food-trends

I wrote this book because, after researching CBD and realizing its many health benefits, it became increasingly obvious how frustrating it was to try to sieve through and correlate the immense amount of data that is being accumulated by scientists, researchers, and patients on this subject. Especially for those who are in desperate need of this data right now, and are short on time and/or resources to do it. I felt patients and carers needed a reliable, scientifically, and medically accurate resource that was conveniently accessible, that they could show to their medical professional.

The studies cited in the book are only a select few of what is available (out of literally thousands), but from what I have found they are the most currently relevant.

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What are the Health Benefits?

What is Cannabidiol?

Cannabidiol is a major ingredient of the Cannabis plant. It is non-psychoactive, nonaddictive, and non-toxic.

Current research is showing that this completely natural compound has potential in reducing and/or preventing seizures, inflammation, nausea, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, alcoholism, PTSD, rheumatoid arthritis, epilepsy, and cardiovascular disease. It has anti-psychotic and antianxiety properties. It works effectively as a painkiller against muscle spasms and neuropathic pain; both of which can be extremely hard to find relief for. It is a more powerful antioxidant than vitamins C or E. Further studies conducted by universities are showing reductions in cancer cell growth and cellular deformities. The list goes on, and with no proven side effects, CBD is shaping up to be a potential medical bombshell that has been overlooked for far too long.

Why are CBD extracts so good for our bodies?

Vitamin CBD! CBD is a really clever little compound! It is both an agonist and an antagonist, meaning it can open and close molecular pathways to enhance cellular health. It has no proven side effects, and works in a multi-faceted way, so it can exert its therapeutic impact in many areas of your body. This compound puts on its little red cape, and helps your body fight cancer, free-radicals, diabetes, relieve pain, reduce inflammation, and help strengthen your immune system.

There are more than 15,000 published scientific and medical works showing significant therapeutic properties for cannabinoids, CBD in particular, and trials are still ongoing. Researchers are still sorting out how CBD works on a molecular level.

I have read and personally heard a lot of incredible success stories regarding the use of CBD in a variety of healthrelated issues. But CBD is not a miracle cure for everyone.

It is a potent dietary supplement that helps the body heal itself, and when used in conjunction with a balanced diet and exercise, it can only benefit.

CBD is not found as easily as you may think. Different strains of cannabis have different strengths of THC and CBD.

Because THC gives you the ‘high’, most of the cannabis acquired non-pharmaceutically has high concentrations of THC, and extremely low concentrations of CBD (too low for noticeable medicinal benefits). These strains have been bred to serve a specific function- to produce THC, and get you ‘stoned’!

It is difficult to find genetic strains of cannabis with low THC and high CBD, in a form without the psychoactive effects or the health risks of smoking. Burning cannabis also incinerates significant amounts of the cannabinoids before your body can absorb them. This is where CBD extracts, such as CBD oil are of benefit.

What Does It Do? Some of the science behind CBD. While it’s becoming clearer that CBD alleviates many ailments , understanding the science behind CBD can be a little daunting.

In our body we have an important physiologic system called the Endocannabinoid System, which was accidentally discovered during studies funded by the National Institute of Drug Abuse! This system is made up of cannabinoid receptors found throughout our body in our brain, organs, connective tissue, glands, and immune cells.

Our body produces natural ‘messenger molecules’ that bind to these receptors called endocannabinoids.

The cannabis plant also produces natural components that bind to these receptors, called Cannabinoids. Out of more than 80 active cannabinoids in the cannabis plant, the most widely known are THC ((−)-trans-Δ9tetrahydrocannabinol) and CBD (cannabidiol). These

cannabinoids mimic our body’s natural endocannabinoids, and although in different parts of the body they cause different reactions, the main thing they do is ‘keep the peace’.

Cannabinoids are like our body’s mediators. Their goal is to make sure our body stays constant, stable, and in optimum health. This is called homeostasis, and we all need homeostasis to work successfully in our bodies for life to continue.

The discoveries about CBD are continuing to amaze, and these facts need to be available to everyone. 3

BIO Mary Minchin is a former pharmaceutical employee & advocate of CBD and its many benefits. She is in her third year of her science degree, majoring in biology & chemistry. She recently switched her focus from pharmacy to science to pursue other more meaningful passions. The book CBD Made Easy was written with the purpose of simplifying how CBD works in the human body, listing all the currently known ailments CBD can alleviate, then directly referencing the related medical studies in one short publication. www.cbdmadeeasy.xyz

In the series “Light Matters”, Theo Tekstra discusses the different aspects to lighting, such as quantity, quality, efficacy, special applications, new developments, and the science behind it.

I usually write about how to do things right. Unfortunately, it is sometimes much easier to explain what goes wrong. I chose 5 common errors people make when lighting their plants. It is also the five that often totally grinds my gears. See if you recognize it.

Mistake #1 “The 4x4 grid” One of the most common questions we get is about the spacing of our fixtures. “My buddy says that they need to be spaced in a 4x4 grid (120x120cm), right?” No, that is so wrong in so many ways! Your buddy don’t know shit!

First of all, HPS lamps always give you a rectangular throw, never a square. So, the correct way to position them is in rows, where the fixtures are aligned, and to have the distance between the rows much greater than the distance between the fixtures in a row. This way you get the best overlap, penetration, and uniformity. In a square grid the light levels in the overlapping area will become way too high!

This can even lead to bleaching of your crop.

Here is how a HPS lamp throws its light, seen from the top. Basically the three dimensional light spread is sort of a big donut. It is practically impossible to turn this into a square without some really serious reflector losses. The only way you can get a somewhat square field is to have the lamp vertical, and use a very specific reflector. But, as most of the light will go through your reflector in a vertical position, this leads to much greater reflector losses. The DE lamp is not even suited to run vertical.

Secondly, a 4’x4’ (120x120cm) is way too small a surface for the output of this fixture. In a room with several fixtures, even in the correct positioning, that would lead to average

light levels of over 1300 µmol m-2 s-1, and in most cases that will completely over-saturate your crop in between the lights. Light levels of 1000 µmol m-2 s-1 are already only for those who have absolute control of their climate and CO2 levels, and master growing as professionals. Though in many cases, this is the optimum to get the best return from your space, it is the high end on the lighting scale. Unless you really know what you are doing, don’t go that high. If you are not so sure, you should stick to 700-800 µmol m-2 s-1 average, and you will get much better results (you can always choose to boost 15%). More is not always better.

Here is an example of how, in a 10 light room, your lamps should be positioned for an optimal grow room with high light levels. In the previous edition of Garden Culture, I explained how you can optimize your grow space for light, and how to deal with positioning. Read it in UK 13/US 11 on www.bit.ly/GC-mags.

Mistake# 2 – “Open reflectors are deep reflectors”

light. We recommend that you use no paths but rolling benches, and keep a perimeter around your crop, for optimal utilization of your light and the best results.

So, air cooled (AC) reflectors are wider reflectors? Wrong!

Open reflectors, like our HR96, are actually much wider reflectors than air cooled reflectors, and bring most of the light outward instead of straight under the lamp.

Mistake #3 – “The 1-1 replacement”

First of all, let’s look at the light spread of air cooled reflectors. Air cooled reflectors are deeper by default, because they have a glass filter installed. This causes refraction and reflection of light through glass: at angles >41 degrees the light reflects back into the reflector, so air cooled reflectors are seldom any wider than 85 degrees.

You will need more distance for uniform light levels, as the intensity straight under the light is a lot higher.

So, you are a grower, and you are using 1000W single-ended lamps in a large air cooled reflector, and you are thinking about changing to DE fixtures. You have already grown in your current setup for several years, and your room is dialed in just right. However, you want to take it to the next level, and replace your air cooled hoods with open DE reflectors at the same position. Suddenly things go bad. Crops crumble, bleach, you are getting heat problems, and unless you dim your lights, things do not improve at all! WTF super awesome DE?

Open DE reflectors are much wider, and actually bring more light to the sides than straight under the lamp. They are designed to overlap, and through overlap create the best (horizontal and vertical) uniformity and penetration of your crop, as the light comes in at a much lower angle.

Remember, the sun is never straight above your plants all the time.

The difference in spread can best be illustrated in a polar diagram that shows you the light exit angle from the reflector, from left to right: The first two diagrams show the light angle of 2 popular “deep” reflectors, the third is an open reflector spread.

We are going deeper down the rabbit hole now… Let’s look again at the light that reaches your crop. Air cooled singleended fixtures result in lower light output, because of the reflection back into the reflector, and the extra reflector losses you get because of that - the losses by having to go through glass, and the losses because the glass filter is never completely clean. Add the higher output of the double-ended (DE) lamps, plus the fact that users never replace their AC reflector (which reflectivity deteriorates as well over time), and you understand why good DE fixtures output sometimes way more light on average, at the same power use!

Keep in mind what you learned about positioning: Replacing lamps that hang in a 4x4 grid can create serious overlap problems, resulting in extremely high light levels.

So, replacing old fixtures with DE’s can seriously increase your light levels, up to values that are no longer healthy for your plants. If you are already growing at high light levels, that is a real showstopper.

A waste of energy too.

Open reflectors create light uniformity, horizontally, as well as vertically: The best uniformity and intensity of light you get in the centre of the room, because only at the walls you will lose

Unfortunately, most growers buy 1000W fixtures to replace 1000W fixtures (bigger is better, right?) instead of 600 or 750W fixtures, and then dim them down to 750 to get desirable light levels. That’s actually another common mistake. Running a 1000W lamp at 750W is really not that efficient, and it will have a worse spectrum. Always right-size your lighting!

Mistake #4 – “I’ll just overlap lights over my plants” Many growers position fixtures straight above their plants so they overlap over the plants, and not in the paths. Let me illustrate that for you by showing the same light plan with the reflectors rotated just above the plant.

First, we have the positioning as we recommend, using the same positioning as in the earlier shown example to light our complete room:

First of all, look at the scales compared to the previous diagrams, because they represent different light levels. The highest light levels in this example are >1100 µmol m-2 s-1 (hot spots). That is a dramatic change in high light levels!

Though the average light level did not increase much at all, the peaks are a whopping 19% higher, peaking at over 1100 µmol m-2 s-1! And still you see a lot of light getting lost between the tables. In this sample, even with the rotated lamps, at least 10% of the light would still get lost.

“No problem”, you’ll say. “I will just use an air cooled reflector. As you explained to me, they have a glass filter, so they should not be as wide, and I can come a lot closer to the crop. That will prevent that high level overlapping light, and light loss.”

That may sound logical, but because of that deeper reflector you will need much more distance from that reflector to get good uniformity, or you will have extremely high light level differences. Remember, these calculations were made with the reflector 3.5’ (106 cm) away from the crop!

I am showing you the complete room, and just one side to zoom in on where a table is. You see the room is lit in a very uniform way, the highest light intensity hardly 7% more intense than the average light level, meaning there are no peaks in light, no “hot-spots.”

Now, let’s look at what happens if we rotate the reflectors 90 degrees, to overlap the light over our tables at the left and right of the room:

This is the same calculation with a single-ended air cooled reflector, also at 3.5 feet (106 cm) from the plants. For this calculation, we used the best single-ended lamp and AC reflector we could find! First, look at the scale. Every color now represents 200 µmol m-2 s-1 light difference to reflect the much lower uniformity. Average light levels are about 30% higher with DE configuration. You see you will have peaks (hot spots) of more than 50% higher than the average light levels! “Not fair!” I hear you say. “You have them turned the wrong way around. This is not how they should be used.” Ok then, let’s rotate them 90 degrees. However, this is not how most people use them in reality.

Indeed, fixtures in line gives a much better result: You see a better uniformity (although still a lot worse than the overlapping open DE’s). This also proves that all horizontal reflectors, even air cooled reflectors, give you a rectangular spread. But look at the average light level, uniformity, and peaks. Using the DE open reflector still results in average 30% more light, and the peaks of the air cooled are still 30% higher than the average light level, with the peaks straight under the lamps. So actually you would get more light on your crop, even using separate tables, by lighting your whole room with DE reflectors. Of course not all DE reflectors are made the same and light spread/uniformity can vary greatly between manufacturers.

Mistake 5 – “Air cooled lamps can hang closer to my plants” Let’s dismiss another fable: “Lights can not come close to the plants, because of all the heat (radiation), so using air cooled hoods lets you come closer to the plant.” Sounds pretty logical, right?

The reality, however, is a bit more complicated. AC reflectors output less light, specifically the single-ended fixtures - up to 40% less. They distribute light at a smaller angle (deeper reflector by design), so they concentrate a lot of light straight onto a smaller surface. They give a higher intensity straight under the lamp, and that intensity could even be a lot higher than a DE lamp when you come close to your crop. Indeed, they create less heat on your plants, but at the right light levels you should not have any problem with that anyway! So, they are actually masking the fact that they give less light overall, and at close distances, too high light levels directly under the lamp.

In fact, we have seen that an air cooled reflector should be hung a bit higher than an open reflector to get good uniformity, because the air cooled is a deeper reflector.

The average light levels, however, because of the air cooled reflector, are lower. The uniformity will never be as good as with the specially designed DE reflectors.

Nobody is perfect. We all have flaws, and we all make mistakes. Knowing one’s flaws is the first step in correcting them, or at least the first step in finding ways to deal with them. In the spirit of encouraging other less than perfect gardeners, here are a few of my own personal mistakes and gardening related “opportunities for improvement.”

I have a weakness for seeds. Flipping through seed catalogs and picking out delightful varieties of this and that to try is an entertaining, if not inexpensive pastime. The racks of seed packet displays tempt me to over ambition and inflated optimism. For any given garden planting I tend to accumulate enough seeds for an area several times the size of whatever is needed. If I stopped buying seeds, and just used seeds from my collection, I still wouldn’t have time to plant them all before some of them aged out.

I start way more seeds than I finish. While there is some justification in starting a few extra seeds and select the healthiest sprouts, I tend to abuse this principle. There are some valid reasons for this, such as killing extra seedlings being easier than not having enough, but to be honest sprouting seeds is entertaining to me, and usually happens during a time of year when my enthusiasm is high, and my aspirations inflated.

Along these same lines, I once found myself in possession of a few hundred pounds of various types of squash during the year I learned how large and prolific these plants can be. Squash pretty much took over my garden that summer.

While the first few are pretty common to gardeners, this one is a bit more quirky. While I have had success and fun sharing communal style gardens with others, my personal garden is off limits to other people. My personal garden is my sanctum sanctorum, my fortress of solitude, and my

little piece of peace. While I believe it has had a beneficial effect on my mental health as literally a “safe place,” it has caused a few problems over the years. One glaring drawback is not having other folks water for you while out of town.

Speaking of leaving town, sometimes I do a lot of that. Setting up a garden to go unattended for a week to ten days isn’t too difficult. However, things happen, and one time I found myself unexpectedly staying on the far coast for an extra week during a trip. I had an indoor garden back home and the reservoir ran out of water, and instead of a garden, what I came back to was a wilted and dying, but still impressive spider mite metropolis.

And finally, I’m not sure if this counts as a flaw, but I’d rather give any excess bounty from my garden to friends than sell it. Although this is a permissible flaw in a hobbyist gardener, it does mean I wouldn’t make a shrewd businessman as a professional farmer.

Some flaws can be mitigated just by knowing about them and making small changes, such as my knowing if I am going to buy seeds, that I should decide on the maximum amount I want to spend before I start looking through them.

Some changes take more effort to accommodate, such as configuring the garden to run for longer periods while unattended if need be. Ignoring your own flaws doesn’t help you cope with them, but once they are identified, taking steps to reduce the detrimental impact they have on your life often can. 3

FRESHWATER SHRIMPS

Most people who want to raise an edible fish stick to growing tilapia in their aquaponic systems, but you can also mix in the delicacy of freshwater shrimp or crayfish, which are sometimes referred to as crawdads. There are a variety of species of crayfish living in different areas around the world. Some types are better for just creating the nutrient rich water you need for your aquaponic lettuce and herbs, as they have very little meat, like Marbled Crayfish. For readers in the US, native species can make your venture less expensive by catching them in the wild, but you will have to watch out for disease, and learn how to identify males and females first.

The best choice for eating is without question the Giant Red Claw Crayfish, a native of Australia. Not only does this type of crawdad have excellent meatiness, it also grows faster, and larger, than all other varieties. You can actually harvest red claws that weigh well over a pound apiece, which brings them to be referred to as a freshwater lobster, rather than shrimp. Whether you’re wanting to grow them for your own enjoyment, or to sell, this can make your indoor meat and lettuce garden a lot more interesting.

How much would a freshwater lobster go for on the market? Looks exciting. A quick search on Google turns up 9 ounces of soft-shell Louisiana crawdads going for $57 before shipping. Apologies for not being able to match it

better, fresh crawdads were out of season at the time this article was written. Still, it could be very lucrative in the right market.

Crawdads are territorial creatures, and they do have a tendency to want to go for a walk. Red Claws in particular are a bit homicidal as youths, but you can calm them down, and stop the warring over space with sunken PVC pipe condos. Control their escape routes by not giving them an easy exit. Cover intake and outlet pipe openings with screen hoods, and don’t let cords and tubes offer them a ladder out of the tank. Some people add slippery sides taller than the tank walls, or an added inward protrusion around the top of the walls that makes it difficult to get over the edge.

95

Test the Water

The Red Claw is super productive at breeding, so they will keep you supplied with babies. The slow season for mating is May through June. How many Red Claws can you house in your tank? Space planning tips for healthy accommodations is 5-15 per square meters (10.5 square feet). The water doesn’t have to be super deep, as these crayfish thrive beautifully in both shallow, fast moving streams, and slow, deep water in the wild. Be prepared to provide keen herd management. They procreate exuberantly, but many a crawfish farmer has no problem selling his harvest. Some even wish there was a little less demand, so they had a few more to eat.

You can learn more about giant crawdads and order breeding stock at Stick-Fins Fish Farm in Florida (www.bit. ly.red-claws). Note that if you live in the state of Florida, you need an aquaculture permit to grow imported species. For some great care and feeding info read this aquaponic forum thread (www.bit.ly/red-claw-forum), particularly Allen Patillo’s lengthy post toward the bottom of page two, though you will find some other great tips before you get that far through the discussion.

Just like lobster and crabs, this delicacy is best prepared from live catch. If you’ve never eaten fresh crawfish, you have no idea if it’s a) delicious, or b) makes the stuff sold in stores taste really poor. So, why would you start growing it? Here’s your chance to check it out…

You can order 5 pounds of live Louisiana crawfish farm-direct for $60, including overnight delivery! It appears they ship to Canada too. Larger packages, and a range of graded sizes also available from January to June: www.bit.ly/live-crawfish.

An awesome price that might allow for fast resale, and a great way to test your market before you dive in with both feet. The easy way to discover the price you can command, and how well they sell in your area.

If you do decide to start breeding and growing crawfish, consider that escapees from your system could become an invasive species. Especially, when importing them from another part of the country, or internationally Info: www.bit.ly/invasive-usa and www. bit.ly/redclaw-risk 3

m has been lement called Krato pp su l ca ni ta bo n know A relatively lesser On August er recent months. ov ts en ev of er st rollercoa r the through quite the ) announced plans fo EA (D y nc ge A t en rug Enforcem rtu31, 2016 the U.S. D ic without any oppo ot rc na 1 le du he Sc Kratom as a emergency listing of ent. nity for public comm

Substances listed as Schedule 1 narcotics include heroin and LSD (strangely, even cannabis), and are believed to have “no medicinal purposes, and a high risk for abuse.” Moving Kratom to Schedule 1 status would put an immediate ban on research studies, and make possession of it a felony offense.

u s efu l for pain management, increas e d energy, d epres sion and an xiety

The DEA’s emergency scheduling authority allows them to take action as soon as 30 days after such an announcement is made, which put Kratom’s possible date with the chopping block on September 30, 2016. Kratom supporters joined together, and rallied the U.S. government.

The result was a bipartisan group of 51 representatives joining forces in writing a letter to acting DEA Administrator Chuck Rosenberg urging him to delay the impending ban, and to “engage consumers, researchers, and other stakeholders in keeping with well-established protocol for such matters.”

September 30th came and went without DEA action, and then on October 12th they announced that they will temporarily withdraw the notice of intent to schedule Kratom, giving time for public comment on the matter up until December 1, 2016.

The news was a relief to Kratom supporters, and left many of us wondering: What in the hell is Kratom, and why does the DEA feel compelled to so hastily classify it as Schedule 1?

Kratom is a natural herbal supplement derived from the leaves of the Mitragyna speciose tree. The tree is native to Southeast Asia, and for hundreds of years its leaves have been used by the people of the region for numerous reasons, including minor pain relief and increased energy. In the U.S., it is estimated that

millions of people use Kratom as a regular herbal supplement. Kratom advocates maintain that, when used appropriately, it can provide effective relief for several mental and physical ailments, including anxiety and pain management. Many supporters also say it can be useful in battling the withdrawals from fighting an opioid addiction.

Up until 2014, The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had loosely regulated the supplement. It was then identified as a “botanical substance that could pose a risk to public health,” and an import alert was issued, allowing U.S. officials the right to detain products with Kratom as an ingredient, without any physical inspection.

True Kratom is not synthetically altered in any way. The leaves are simply dried, and then typically steeped as a tea, or ground into a powder and taken via ingestible capsule. Kratom is currently legal in 44 states. The fact that Kratom is a nonaltered natural substance makes up a large part of supporters’ arguments against such a strict scheduling by the DEA, as they view it as a safe, natural alternative for minor chronic pain when compared to the current pharmaceuticals available.

The active components in Kratom are two alkaloids called mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine, which act upon the same receptors as opiates, making it useful for pain management, increased energy, and even mental ailments such as depression and anxiety. For this reason, the DEA is calling it an opioid.

Kratom, however, is not a member of the opium poppy family from which true opioids are derived. The plant is much more closely related to the coffee plant. An important distinction to point out, is that when taken in extreme amounts, it can act as a strong sedative that can lead to nausea and vomiting. Heavy users have also reported experiencing a low-level dependency, described as being similar to caffeine.

Advocates maintain that when taken in proper amounts, much like any herbal supplement, the effects are mild, but beneficial, with little why d oe s to no physical dependence. They also the DEA fe el are quick to point out that, though the comp el le d alkaloids activate the same receptors as to hastily opioids, they do so in a way that does not trigger the respiratory depression that clas sify it as This kind of sudden, unilateral decision is so often the most lethal side effect of making led to a massive outcry from Sche du le 1?” narcotic opioid painkillers like morphine both the scientific community and and fentanyl. Most Kratom groups are accepting of ideas Kratom supporters, leading to the bipartisan letter from 51 to regulate the herbal supplement, but all strongly oppose members of the House urging the DEA to delay, and hundreds criminalizing its use. of phone calls protesting the emergency scheduling of the plant. Ultimately leading to the DEA postponing the intent Without comment from the scientific community, or proto schedule, and allowing public comment until December 1, Kratom groups, and relying heavily on a single report from the 2016.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the DEA took the bold move to announce its intent to classify Kratom The significance of the DEA’s attempted action on Kratom, as a Schedule 1 narcotic. The report from the CDC found and the subsequent public outcry that followed, is that it could that from 2010 to 2015 U.S. poison centers received 660 calls set a worrisome precedent. By circumventing the traditional relating to Kratom, and the DEA claims there has been a sharp upward trend in users over the same period. However, they seem to ignore the fact that in 2014 around 57% of all poison center calls involved pharmaceutical drugs. The DEA also says that there has been “numerous deaths (15) associated with Kratom,” but are unable to provide an example where the plant was found to be the only contributor to the death. But, because Kratom works on the same receptors as opioids do, and there is a potential for misuse, the DEA contests that it is a dangerous drug with no medicinal value.

protocol of a public comment period for drug scheduling purposes, the DEA has shown a disinterest in the assessment of facts from various sources including scientific research, much like was done with the cannabis plant.

Sche du le 1 narcotic s includ e heroin and LSD . . .

By removing the scrutiny of a public comment period, and evoking its emergency scheduling authority on a plant that has been shown to have some medicinal benefits, and to be relatively harmless, the DEA runs the risk of being labeled illegitimate, and adverse to the facts of scientific research.

Placing Kratom as a Schedule 1 narcotic would put an end to any research conducted on the plant, and turn Kratom users into criminals with the stroke of a pen.

All of this comes at a time when the opioid epidemic in the country is reaching crisis levels with around 25,000 people dying in 2014 from prescription drug overdoses, the highest number on record. The DEA has recently asked the FDA for

input, but the agencies should be working alongside the scientific community and the public to find safer, more natural alternatives for pain management. All possibilities need to be on the table in an effort to curb the rampant prescribing of opioid medications, with the goal of protecting public health.

By curtailing public comment, and the plight of congressional representatives, the DEA put into question its true intent, and laid the very legitimacy of the agency on the line. Though the DEA decided to postpone scheduling Kratom, after much external pressure, they may still choose to act after allowing the public to weigh in. Will the DEA choose to wage war on yet another plant?

To that end, only time will tell. 3

In September 2015, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Program (NOP) created the Hydroponic and Aquaponic Task Force to compile a report on whether hydroponic and aquaponic production should be allowed under the current organic regulations; and if not, how the regulations could or should be changed.

The purpose was to clear up a few gray areas, and identify how they align with the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 (OFPA), and current organic standards and regulations. Applicants were selected based on experience, and appointees were in place sometime in November. But opposition erupted.

In February 2016, a select group of organic soil-based farmers and advocates discovered that no one from outside the soilless agricultural communities was given a presence on the task force. The year-long project was suddenly cut short, and newcomers appointed. Membership rose to 16 people representing both growing communities in various capacities. Instead of a unanimous body, divisions were drawn, resulting in three subcommittees, each with their own set of recommendations. The report was now due in June.

Hydroponics & Aquaponics Task Force Organized by the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service for the NOP (National Organic Program) to create a report for the NOSB, an ‘advisory’ entity with no regulatory power.

1. 2010 NOSB Recommendation Subcommittee Clarify and further support the 2010 NOSB recommendation position taken, and consider the alignment of soilless production systems with organic law and regulations.

2. Hydroponic and Aquaponic Subcommittee Describe “organic hydroponic” production, and discuss the ways in which it aligns with OFPA, and USDA organic regulations.

3. Alternative Labeling Subcommittee Discuss alternative labeling for consumers.

The task force’s report was delivered to the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) in July 2016, after gaining a 30 day extension. It was published on the USDA website in September, followed by a public formal comment period ending on October 26th.

Among the published comments, all sides are represented; those who don’t mind that soilless organic foods are available, and those that do. Some wish to have the growing methods clearly identified. Some are quick to point out that climate change, population growth, and freshwater resources must be taken into account in regulating organic food production. Other feedback was that soilless growing in a closed system allows more people to have access to pesticide-free food than the soil-based organic growers can provide. Whether that is true or not is debatable.

The growing number of alternative method farmers who have applied organic gardening techniques into emerging technology for controlled and closed system production has increased the supply and availability of organic foods and helped to decrease the price. People have to eat all year, and open system soil-based growing is decidedly seasonal in most climates.

This argument isn’t about ensuring that the population at large has access to safe, affordable, healthy, local or freshly

grown food. It is about defining what organic gardening is. Some feel that it’s just another labeling war. And it is, one to protect what thousands of farmers have worked a lifetime to create. Some believe it’s about protecting the current farmers from an onslaught of inexpensive hydroponic food, which will inevitably drop the prices and profits for current organic producers. Organic food has become a $40 billion dollar a year industry. “It’s about money,” soilbased organic farmer Dave Chapman tells Civic Eats.

Some organic soil farmers and advocate organizations aren’t happy with hydroponic and aquaponic farming operations becoming certified organic. They do not meet the basic standards laid out by the OFPA: including cover crops, the 3-year soil-building period, and the use of plant and animal materials for fertility. No action was taken to address this issue following the NOSB 2005 recommendations to the NOP, though they agreed to proceed. Additional regulations for mushroom and honey production, as well as greenhouse operations, were also noted as necessary.

It should be noted that Mexico, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Holland, England, Germany, Italy, France, Spain, and 17 other European countries all prohibit hydroponic produce to be sold as organic.

Eleven years later, they’re finally movs oil-grown or not, “The USDA/NOP regulations require ing forward on clearing up “gray arproper stewardship toward improveveryone d e s erve s eas” that stand between existing ing and maintaining the soil ecology organ ic, but the standards for soil-based growing, and within an organic farming system pu rist s d on’t s ee hydroponic and aquaponic organic for terrestrial plant production. it that way certification requirements. But the Therefore the NOSB supports the NOP and USDA have been under a lot decisions by previous boards by recof pressure from soil-based organic advocates and farmers ommending that hydroponics, aeroponics, bioponics or aquawho are vehemently against the organic market being ‘waponics are not consistent with organic production due to their tered down’ by anything not grown in the ground. exclusion of the soil-plant ecology intrinsic to organic farming systems. We believe that action from this board would be Sustainable greenhouse container production of fruits and needed to overturn the previous recommendation of the NOSB vegetables have also been called into question. After bein 2010, and therefore the motion as worded would require a ing a welcome part of organic certification for the past 25 2/3 majority. The NOSB plans to work further on defining the years, and responsible for a good portion of organic bersystems and practices that are allowed, and delineating what ries, tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers available to conis not allowed with regard to containers for solid substrate and sumers. growing media.”

Why? Because using natural potting materials that will become soil after composting is not soil. Liquid fertigation is force feeding plants, totally unnatural. Where are the cover crops? The crop rotation? The 3-year soil establishment period?

Despite the effort expended by the Hydroponic and Aquaponic Subcommittee, which the soil-based advocate members perceive to be attempting to rewrite the standards of organic food production, the NOSB Crop Subcommittee makes the following Recommendation to the Board on page 143 of their proposal notes:

Followed by a Committee Vote Motion to “allow bioponics (including hydroponics, aeroponics, or aquaponics) as consistent with organic production under the provisions and recommendations to be developed by the NOSB in 2017.” It was voted down by 5 of the 7 committee members.

And as for controlled container production?

The Coalition for Sustainable Organic was formed earlier this year to counteract what’s happening. As they say, “soil-grown or not, everyone deserves organic,” but the purists don’t see it that way. While the reality is that or-

ganic growing is defined by how the plants are nourished and protected from pests and disease - they argue that without soil, food is not organic.

Perhaps it’s time for a task force to test every acre of certified organic farmland for the residual existence of atrazine (28 years), glyphosate and it’s AMPA degraded state (22 years), DDT (100 years), and other known persistent toxic pesticides that may have been applied in the past.

Then consumers will have a true picture of organic purity.

Obviously, 3 years is not a magic eraser, and open growing systems are exposed to acid rain, groundwater leaching, wind drift, and more windows for contamination. Currently, soil testing is at the whim of the certifier, and each chemical must be tested for separately.

Motions were considered at the fall NOSB meeting in St. Louis in mid-November. The Board’s Soil Subcommittee had indicated being prepared to exclude hydroponic growers from the program - including the currently certified operations - weeks before the meeting. The fate of container growers was left in the discovery phase.

Surprisingly, the Board went the opposite direction at the fall meeting, voting 10-4 “to send back to committee the decision to allow hydroponic production to be organic certified.” One side will view this as a victory, while the other will not, but change is inevitable. The idea of proper labeling is a step in the right direction, and innovation in food production cannot be ignored, no matter which side of the fence you stand on. 3

Learn More: • • • • • • • •

www.bit.ly/recruiting-call www.bit.ly/keep-soil www.bit.ly/taskforce-report www.bit.ly/SoilCom-notes www.bit.ly/UAN-End-Line www.bit.ly/unorganic-organic www.bit.ly/CIVIL-eats www.bit.ly/the-outcome

In an effort to enhance soil health, improve pollinator habitat quality, and address issues associated with the excessive use of biocides in gardening and farming, Progressive Farms is proud to announce a unique partnership with the North American Butterfly Association (NABA).

The team at Progressive Farms has been fine-tuning a program called BioEnergetic Agriculture that engages the physical, mineral, biological, and energetic capacities of living systems. Properly implemented, this approach can deliver short and long term solutions for small and commercial growers, for a range of common pest and disease issues. Building the health of the soil not only mitigates the use of toxic biocides and synthetic fertilizers but saves money and energy over time.

Plans are underway to share cultivation tips with NABA Members, foster land stewardship for butterflies and other pollinators, and develop systemic pesticide-free nursery plant options. The key component of this plan is to provide technical assistance to those wanting to manage their property not only for productivity but with methods that are synergistic with biodiversity and environmental sustainability.

Progressive Farms’ core business is the development of organic products that leverage the power of soil microbes, with the mission to help gardeners and farmers grow more nutritious plants, healthier people, and a greener planet.

In this vein, Progressive Farms will donate a portion of sales directly to the organization. The partnership will go a long way toward bringing agriculture and the ecological importance of butterflies, into higher resonance.

Learn more about Progressive Farms at www.

MicrobeMakers.com, and become a member of NABA by visiting www.NABA.org.