Drip Irrigation to Produce Prize-winning Blooms

The Dutch have a reputation for growing flowers. They also perfected a hydroponic system known as the Drip Irrigation System. This is the one I choose to grow my carnations as of today.

As I said in my last posting, I got tired of watering so many pots. Also, growing in soil left my flowers susceptible to pests and diseases. Not to mention that it was messy. So I had the wall to wall carpeting ripped up in my basement recroom and went down to the bare concrete.

I noticed when I bought the house that the floor wasn’t entirely level, and now this sloping has actually worked to my advantage. I had a drain put in on the side toward which the floor slopes slightly, and now I can just turn the hose on to clean the floor whenever I need to do it.

I’m starting my plants in rockwool cubes, then when the seedlings get big enough, I put them in rockwool slabs. I was advised to use a slightly thicker slab, ten or twelve centimetres, rather than a thin one, since it absorbs more nutrients and gives more support to my flowers.

These rockwool slabs are placed in large plastic trays and each plant is fed individually by a dripper that is connected to a reservoir of hydroponic nutrient solution. As you know, I use Advanced Nutrients products to feed my flowers, since they have plant scientists on staff who test each of them and offer a money back guarantee of their performance.

The experts at Advanced Nutrients have convinced me to switch to Grow, Micro, and Bloom, a three-part hydroponic fertilizer that is second to none. This is only the basic part of the diet I feed my carnations. I also use B-52, a dynamite Vitamin-B formula that helps to reduce stress and SensiZym, a product that is chock full of growth enhancing enzymes that help produce magnificent flowers.

I use a low-pressure drip system that recycles the nutrients solution back into the reservoir. It involves a bit of work, since I have to make sure that the drippers don’t get clogged up and I have to flush my rockwool slabs with pH balanced water once every two weeks, in order to get rid of accumulated salts.

The system itself has a whole array of tubes, pipes and fittings. Adding to this are the water pipes under the rockwool slabs, which run hot water in the winter and cool water in the summer, to keep the temperature of the feeding solution exactly at the right level.

The optimum temperature for growing disbuds (carnations whose side buds have been removed to help the main bud grow bigger) is 15º to 18º C (59º to 65º F). Flowering is initiated by mild temperatures and the length of “daylight,” which in my case is provided by six 600W High Pressure Sodium lights, with conversion bulbs to provide light in the blue spectrum. Once flowering starts, I switch to regular HPS bulbs which provide light in the red end of the spectrum.

In addition to root enhancement additives, such as Piranha, Tarantula, and Voodoo Juice, which colonize the root systems with beneficial fungi, bacteria, and microbes—I also plan to use Vita Boost Pro, an extremely helpful multi-vitamin formula to ensure plant health, and Bloom Booster Pro, which guarantees award-winning, huge flowers and is a bloom enhancer with superior ingredients.

And if I really feel adventurous, I'll invest in a container of Hammerhead PK 9/18, which is a new Advanced Nutrients product based on the scientifically proven principle that at the last stage of flowering, plants need twice the strength of Potassium, as Phosphorus, and that their Nitrogen needs have already been met by the base nutrients being administered through my Drip Irrigation System.