Interview by Tristan Shaw and Everest Fernandez.

What does the future hold? Will oppression, war, poverty, hunger and greed ever be confined to history? Or are we stuck with them forever?

For many thousands of years we have been apt to regard ourselves as perennial surfers of the cutting-edge. After all, in our minds at least, “now” has always been after “then.” Throughout history we’ve believed that we know a whole lot … about a whole lot. But are we, as a species, a lot more primitive than we conceive ourselves to be? Maybe we are no more than evolutionary juveniles, just learning how to walk, and suffering from a particularly nasty bout of toddler tantrums? Are we ever going to learn to just play nicely with each other, share our toys, and get along?

Urban Garden Magazine meets Jacque Fresco, a 93 year old futurist, social engineer and brainchild of “The Venus Project.” Fresco says that the sustainability of life on this planet is beyond his opinion. It is axiomatic. And he’s developed a plan to achieve it. But can we get our heads around it in time?

Jacque Fresco

Born March 13, 1916.

• Invented systems for noiseless and pollution free aircraft
• Invented a new aircraft wing structural system, patented by the US Air Force
• Designed an electrostatic system for the elimination of sonic boom for Raymond De-Icer
• Created a boundary layer control and electrodynamic method for aircraft control that dispenses with ailerons, elevators, rudders, and flaps
• Created a three-wheel automobile consisting of only 32 parts
• Designed “The Aluminum Trend House,” a prefabricated house designed and developed for Mike Shore and Earl Muntz, 1945
• Designed and developed another prefabricated aluminum house for Major Realty Corporation in collaboration with Aluminum Company of America
• Developed numerous components and systems for architectural construction
• Developed equipment ranging from three-dimensional x-ray units to electronic surgical instruments for the medical field
• Developed a technique for viewing three-dimensional motion pictures without the use of glasses
• Designed and built a wide variety of reinforced concrete structures

The Venus Project: housing design

JF: Yes, I can do that. I feel that if you want a world of peace, a world without poverty, hunger, war, prisons and police, what you must do is declare all of the world’s resources as a common heritage of all the world’s people. Prior to the organization of the United States of America, the states were separate, and used to fight each other over territorial boundaries. Once the states merged together, the militia disappeared. This is the only way the Earth will avoid the same kind of problems we have today. You must declare the Earth as a common heritage of all the world’s people and all the resources of the Earth shared by all the world’s people; anything less than that will result in the same problems over and over again. We must remove all the artificial boundaries that separate people and maintain a population that’s in accordance with the carrying capacity of the Earth. If we fail to do that, and exceed the population the Earth can support, there is going to be poverty, riots, and territorial disputes. Do you understand that?

UGM: I understand what you are saying. But who is going to make this declaration – the President or the First Lady?

JF: No, the Venus Project is different than any political system. It has nothing in common with socialism, fascism, capitalism, or communism.

UGM: Sharing all the world’s resources equally among the people – sounds a lot like communism doesn’t it?

JF: Communism uses money. Communism has bankers. Communism has armies and navies, and a government with an elitist structure. The Venus Project doesn’t have any of that. So look into The Venus Project before you judge it or hand a name to it – it’s socialistic, it’s communistic. This is a device used to discourage you from thinking along new lines.

UGM: But isn’t it impossible, or very difficult, to free yourself from the known? For instance, it will be a tall order for most people to envision a world without money…

JF: I understand that. Only when it hits them, when they lose their houses, their jobs, then they will start looking for something else. Right now, they all don’t give a damn.

“What’s in it for me?” is the type of society you live in today – where everybody profits off each other. It’s a very crude and primitive system. We are not civilized yet. But you never become civilized, it’s a constant input in which people grow continuously. There are no final frontiers, no utopias, and no ideal city. If I designed a city that was the most efficient, it’s the most efficient for what I know up to now. But the city that I design will be a straitjacket to the children of the future. They will design their own cities. Rather than established, we need an emergent society that allows a constant state of growth and change. And the public has to embrace social change, intellectually and emotionally. If you fail to do that, you are making more problems for the future.

UGM: But how is the Venus Project going to emerge? What will it emerge from? The illustrations that will probably accompany this interview may look like a fantasy world to many people. The Venus Project feels like the letter ‘Z’, whereas we are at letter ‘A’ or ‘B’ or ‘C.’ This begs the question ‘How?’ How do we get from here to there? How do we change our monetary system, for example, or should we just wait for it to collapse?

The Venus Project: geothermal energy

JF: I think I can answer that. The monetary system is failing all over the world. But our government here in America has given the money to the banks and the people that have created the problem. They keep the money that is set aside for education, food, pensions and have given it to the “free-enterprise system” – the system that caused the problems in the first place. That tells you who runs the show. It is never the public. Here is how to get from here to there. The monetary system is going to collapse, people will lose confidence in their elected leaders, and then they will look for something else. Things were so bad in Russia, people were treated so poorly, that they threw out the existing government. And when the public gets angry, if enough people tend to fight for what they call the support of The Venus Project’s plans, I think we can pull out of the problem. I don’t know if they will do that or not. I’m not psychic; I have no power at all. It depends on what you do and what people do. If you don’t understand The Venus Project look us up on the website: www.thevenusproject.com. There are all kinds of questions and answers. But don’t project your own values into it. It’s not a scientific culture run by scientists, and there is no technical elitism or any other kind of elitism. That is a projection by people that know nothing about it.

UGM: So, let me get this straight: the world is currently run by bankers and corporations. Is the Venus Project putting the world in the control of computers or computer programmers?

JF: Not exactly that. See if you can consider what I say. In the early days a pilot would look down out of an airplane and he would say, “I’m about a mile high.” Today with Doppler radar you can get the exact amount of feet off the ground. No human can do that. But it’s not a machine takeover. We are assigning machines decision-making where humans cannot make decisions. For example, milk cartons are filled by machines automatically; no human can move that fast. No human can do the type of production that automation can. About nine months ago machines where able to handle 1,000 trillion bits of information a second. No group of humans can do that. So in order to set up a system that can work, it has to be connected to industry, transportation, agriculture, and integrated into a holistic system that works for the benefit of all people. The machines do not control people. They only maintain production and distribution of goods and services. People live whatever lifestyle they choose to live.

UGM: So you are proposing that we defer all decisions to machines? Isn’t that danger….

The Venus Project: automobiles

JF: You know there are some roboticists that are afraid that machines are going to “take over.” The machines have no feelings. If you work on a computer on Saturday and Sunday, it doesn’t ask for a day off. It doesn’t say, “You can’t work me all the time!” because they don’t have feelings. Machines don’t want to take over. They don’t want to run people. This is a human projection and a human attribute. It’s humans that make war and drop bombs on cities. It’s humans that hurt one another. The machines don’t hurt anybody. This is a bunch of stupidity that comes from Hollywood. They make movies about the future that show robots choking their designers. They show movies of the future in which machines explode, take over, kill people and use laser weapons to burn cities – this is all done by people, not machines.

UGM: Is the Venus Project a democratic system?

JF: Have you ever known a democracy? You ask the public whether they voted for the Vietnam War. Of course they didn’t. Did you vote for the space program? Of course not. Did you vote for the design of highways, or the capital city? No. People do not participate. That’s an illusion. In the future you will participate if you have the ability to do so.

UGM: In whose opinion?

JF: If I base all decisions on existing resources, if we live in accordance with the carrying capacity of the Earth, that is not Fresco’s opinion. Fresco makes no opinions. If you want a world without war, you cannot have separate nations controlling most of the Earth’s resources.

UGM: There seems to be widespread anxiety, or perhaps misunderstanding, concerning the emergence of a one-world government. Are you not proposing a “New World Order?”

JF: Yes. But the “New World Order” most people are afraid of is the one where business people are in control. The world I’m talking about is one which raises every human being to their highest potential. And to do away with the money system, which is the basis of all corruption. We just need to make things available to people. We have more than enough resources to do that. If you consider the cost of World War II: the money, the ships sunk, the lives lost, the cities bombed … we could have housed everyone on Earth, built hospitals all over the world, wiped out the slums and poverty all over the world. So how stupid can you be?

UGM: So globalization isn’t such a bad thing after all?

JF: Again, when you use that term in this society, it means that the business world is in charge: bankers in charge of all things on Earth. But when I talk of “globalization” I mean that all nations share all the Earth’s resources: a resource-based economy. There are more than enough resources to take care of all human needs. As long as we manage the population to be in accordance with the carrying capacity of the environment, we will have no problems. If your population exceeds what the land can support you are going to have territorial disputes, arguments, invasions, and a need for armies.

UGM: Let’s look at the root cause of the wars going on right now. Oil and energy. Lots of people are talking about the current energy crisis. How does the Venus Project address this? It seems that the Venus Project is in favor of a lot of industry, transportation, and agriculture. How is this feasible in a world depleted of most natural resources? In short, how will you satisfy the massive energy requirements of the Venus Project?

JF: Okay … the oceans of the world have tides traveling in and out. We can put turbines down under the water and get all the power we need. We can harness power from temperature differentials in the ocean. We can get power from the solar system and from wind. There is geothermal power: the natural heat under the earth. According to volcanologists, we have thousands of years of heat available under the Earth. Just that alone can take care of all the world’s needs. The real energy crisis is the shortage of brain power in government.

UGM: Can you describe how food will be produced in the Venus Project?

JF: Where we don’t have arable land we will need to use hydroponics. We need farms on land and in the sea to put back the necessary ingredients we use to fertilize plants. You cannot keep taking life out of the ocean without considering the entire marine cycle, and maintaining it. Once we learn to do that, we can overcome most shortages. You know the shortages have to do with ingenuity. When America formed the blockade in World War II and prevented Germany from getting rubber from Sumatra, they invented synthetic rubber. So our problems are technical, not political. 100 years ago politics was great, but today it’s obsolete. Politics is a system that does not work.

UGM: So you want to nourish plants with nutrients from the sea? Kind of like aquaponics?

The Venus Project: mariculture & sea farming design

JF: Mariculture, the planned cultivation of marine crops and fish farming communities, can be designed to support more than one type of marine life. A mutually supporting symbiotic relationship can be sustained while emulating natural conditions as closely as possible. A wide variety of aquatic plants may be cultivated in multiple layers and suspended by cables in underwater fields adjacent to the cities. In some instances, the tops of plants could be harvested automatically, leaving the roots and lower third of the plant to grow new crops without replanting. These floating ocean platforms would be equipped with solar-operated desalinization plants, which would extract fresh water for hydroponic farming and other uses. Upwelling can also be harnessed to extract deepsea nutrients to supply aquaculture farming. Of course, any attempt at aquaculture or mariculture would be subject to international monitoring of ocean farms. This provides fish farming complexes and introduces the most advanced principles of poly-culture, which maintains the reproduction and natural balance of species. Every precaution would be taken to avoid disrupting or spoiling the spawning grounds that have sustained the human race for centuries.

UGM: Isn’t it your vision to use technology to free man from servitude and repetitive tasks?

JF: Absolutely – we can automate all the boring and dangerous jobs! We want to free people so that they can go back to school and study whatever the hell they want to study! Art, music, playwriting, travel, whatever they want to do. They can study a profession they feel they want to do, whatever they want to realize. They are not put in pigeon holes where they’re carpenters, plasterers, construction workers: all that was good in the past but it’s irrelevant today.

UGM: And I guess the same goes for bankers. Can you explain the big problem with our current money system?

JF: First off, the Federal Reserve System is not federal. It’s a private institution. The word “federal” gives people the illusion that it’s an agency of the government. The Federal Reserve has nothing to do with money; it has to do with the exploitation of people. When nations seek the competitive edge, it means they don’t give a damn about people. The United States would not outsource if they liked their people. They would keep them employed. They would never send soldiers to war. They would try to bridge the difference between nations. War kills a lot of people, civilians and soldiers. Think of all the ruined cities and museums…

UGM: The question was our current money …

JF: Yes, and war has always been big business! War is the selling of warships, of selling destruction. If we had a real, healthy nation, assuming we did, there would be no war. Because we would conscript all the war industries so no one makes a buck out of war. When you conscript the lives of people and put up their lives to defend the country, you should have no profiteering during war.

UGM: So the money system seems to be the root of many of our problems.

JF: That is right.

UGM: And yet so many people are dependent on the money system. They don’t know how to produce their own food.

JF: You are right. I would say they depend on it. They are trapped.

UGM: So isn’t monetary reform, rather than abolition, a more realistic next step?

JF: None of those systems would work. You don’t need money, or coupons, or energy certificates. What you need is the production of abundance and making it available. Patchwork will not do. You know … guaranteed insurance, medical insurance, none of this solves the fundamental problem. You cannot patch up a society like ours. It has to be complete change. If you don’t want war and poverty, or any suffering, then you need to redesign the culture based upon scientific scales of performance.

UGM: Can you elaborate on your plans to build an experimental city?

The Venus Project: skyscraper design

JF: The first city will be a planning center – where we plan and test the validity of the Venus Project’s proposals. We’ll see how well it operates. And if the city begins to work well, we will invite people from all over the world as guests to stay in that city. And if they like it, after two or three weeks, they will build three in Russia, three in China, build them all over the world and then merge them together. You can’t do it at once. You have to have a transitional period where you gradually phase out the monetary system, meaning just a few years, it won’t take that long. So people have to like the Venus Project, understand what it’s about and not have fear that it’s a machine takeover, or a group of scientists running things.

UGM: Doesn’t somebody have to run things?

JF: Scientists are just as stupid as other people. The proof is that when war comes they align themselves with their governments. They don’t say “I would like to hear all sides of the story.” Scientists, too, are patriotic. They are victims of culture just like everybody else.

UGM: So you are saying that the Venus Project must be precipitated by a fundamental change in our cultural values. What role do you see the Internet playing in this change? Are you at all concerned by governmental attempts to control and regulate the Internet?

JF: They will always seek that power. If governments get control of the Internet, you can say goodbye to freedom. They would like to take over and privatize everything if they can. They are very stupid and ignorant people. They are not well read. Talk to politicians; ask them how to solve problems like bridge erosion. Ask them how to solve the problems of automobile accidents. There are more people killed in accidents than wars. They have no idea how to solve problems. We live in a very primitive system that was designed thousands of years ago, which will not work whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, it does not matter. They are all inefficient; they don’t know how to operate the Earth.

UGM: [sighs]

JF: Look, I don’t like what I’m saying. I’m sorry, I wish people were rational beings and could move in the appropriate direction. But they’re not brought up that way. When I talk of governments I’m saying that all the world’s governments are basically corrupt. The professions such as lawyers and judges will be considered criminal in the future. Even the Supreme Court judges will be considered criminals. We train people in business. We train them in parasitic professions that really don’t serve the well-being of people. Advertising, business, investment banking: all of those do nothing for people, so those professions will be outgrown – not eliminated, outgrown in the future. Once people admired King Solomon: he had a thousand wives, today he would be arrested as a bigamist. So all the things that you think are right and normal are only normal to your culture, which is very primitive.

UGM: So where do we go from here?

JF: You know very shortly we are going on a global tour. We have been invited to most countries to present the Venus Project. Magazines all over the world today are running the Venus Project without adding their two cents to the article. The United States is the only country that has not run magazine publications, radio television shows, on the Venus Project. Maybe they have a fear that the Venus Project might cause the population to turn around. According to Peter Joseph of the Zeitgeist Movement, which is the participatory directive of the Venus Project, 50 million people are now aware of the Venus Project.

The more people know about the Venus Project, the smoother the transition. I’m sorry to say that the transition will be painful. It will not be smooth. The more people that know about it, the more that sustainability will become normal to the future. If you don’t talk to your friends about it, if you don’t present the Venus Project, nothing will happen. It does not depend on Peter Joseph and I. We have no power at all. It depends on what you do about it. So try to find out more about the Venus Project before you judge it.

UGM: Thanks for giving us the opportunity to publish and distribute this interview throughout the U.S., Canada and the U.K. – and, of course, on the Internet.

JF: Thank you for the privilege.

What is The Venus Project?

• The end of monetary exchange.
• Creation of sustainable city systems.
• Replacement human labor with machines.
• Utilization of science as a methodology.
• Cessation of national boundaries.

“The Venus Project presents a vision not of what the future will be, but of what it can be if we apply what we already know in order to achieve a sustainable new world civilization. It calls for a straightforward redesign of our culture in which the age-old problems of war, poverty, hunger, debt, and unnecessary human suffering are viewed not only as avoidable, but as totally unacceptable. Anything less will result in a continuation of the same catalog of problems found in today’s world.”

Find out more at: www.thevenusproject.com

See also: www.thezeitgeistmovement.com

WTF?

Isn’t this communism?

Communism falls short of ending war, poverty, hunger, or crime. It also has no real relationship to the Earth and its resources. The Venus Project is a scientific approach to social concern.

What will people do?

People can work boring jobs if they like. Nobody is going to force you not to work boring jobs. But maybe, just maybe, people will want to finally enjoy life without being subservient to a job.

Isn’t this idealistic and contrary to human nature?

Isn’t human nature just human behavior? If human behavior can’t be altered … wouldn’t we still be living in caves? People’s behavior is not pre-determined.

Will machines rule the world?

We can graciously thank Hollywood for this intelligent idea. Machines don’t have desires or motives. It is humans that control the machine and determine its use.

“The day that hunger is eradicated from the earth, there will be the greatest spiritual explosion the world has ever known. Humanity cannot imagine the joy that will burst into the world on the day of that great revolution.” – poet Federico García Lorca

As we’ve learned in part 1 and part 2, in order to grow successfully in a hydroponic system, there are certain basics that always need to be kept in check: otherwise, plant performance inevitably suffers. After covering source water, nutrient and pH, world-renowned hydroponics expert Michael Christan breaks down the final ingredients of a healthy indoor growing environment: oxygen, light, temperature, humidity, air circulation and CO2.

Photos courtesy of AmHydro.

The 5 basics of recirculation and plant performance:

1. Pure source water
2. Balanced nutrient ions/anions (EC)
3. Optimum pH
4. Plentiful oxygen availability
5. Optimum light/temp/humidity/air circulation/CO2

The Importance of Oxygen

It’s obvious that loose, friable soil with organic matter and thriving microbes grows plants much better than tight, clay soil devoid of organic matter. The primary missing ingredient in the latter is air (oxygen) availability.

The air we breathe is composed of gasses: 78% nitrogen (N2), 21% oxygen (02), 0.9% argon (Ar) and 0.03% carbon dioxide (CO2). The one we’re focusing on in this article is oxygen. The action of microbes on organic matter in a loose soil produces air pockets as organic matter is mineralized. These oxygen pockets are crucial to the survival and rapid colonization of healthy microbial populations. When the organic matter in the soil is fully consumed by the microbes and plants have consumed all the minerals, oxygen becomes depleted and, if more organic matter is not reapplied, plant performance slows and pathogenic (anaerobic) microbes can colonize. This condition is best avoided.

In media-based recirculating systems, the O2 is in the media: e.g. rockwool, perlite, grow rocks. Plentiful air space is available even after water is drained from the media. Roots thrive in O2-rich pockets. They are able to produce prolific root systems and plentiful root hairs to increase surface area to better absorb available ions. This is the best reason for using media with porosity. Of course, flood and drain systems suck fresh air into the media when it drains, which is why it’s such a great irrigation system.

In water-based recirculating systems, NFT, DFT and Aeroponics, O2 availability is intrinsic to the design of the system. NFT is a flat-bottomed tube with a shallow nutrient stream moving slowly, keeping root hairs moist and absorbing O2 (see “NFT Gro-Tanks,” UGM009). Aeroponics is misting droplets of water, increasing the surface area many-fold for roots to grow prolific root hairs for ion absorption. It supersaturates the solution with O2. DFT uses air pumps and water temp to keep roots bubbled with 02 and oxygen rich.

The heart of a media-based or water-based recirculating system is the nutrient reservoir. This too requires oxygenation, especially when water temperatures rise. The use of air pumps and air stones on smaller reservoirs and pump-powered eductors (venturis) on larger reservoirs make a big difference in pathogen suppression (nasty fungi and bacteria don’t like O2). This agitation drives ethylene gas from the solution and increases the longevity of the nutrient. Be sure that, if there are reservoir lids, there’s room for air exchange with ambient air in the room or greenhouse. Many commercial growers use fresh outside air in their eductors to keep the nutrient solution optimum.

Dissolved Oxygen (DO) can be measured to determine solubility of oxygen in fresh water. Fresh water at 72°F (22°C) has a DO of 8.7 ppm; at 82°F (28°C) it drops to 8.1 ppm. Salt solutions are lower. As a rule of thumb, every increase of 1ppm in DO is equivalent to an 11°F (12°C) temp drop. The cooler the temp, the higher the DO. You don’t want cold water on plant roots, though. You want 72°F (22°C) water at your roots for most plants.

When we measured DO in our greenhouse reservoirs, we found that a 74°F (23°C) nutrient tank at an EC of 2 had a DO of 6.3 ppm (low because of salts and sitting still). When we turned on an eductor (venturi), which we do in ALL reservoirs, we received a reading of 7.6 ppm. BIG difference. That’s an increase of 1.3 ppm without changing temperature.

Then we add an in-line Mazzei injector in between the tank and the feeder pipe, which raises DO to 8.3 ppm. By the time the water had run down the NFT channel and 18 plants had their way with the O2, with some off-gassing occurring, there was an 8.1 ppm DO left in the nutrient solution going back to the reservoir. That’s what we’re after! Plants thrive at those DO levels. Makes ALL the difference.

Be careful: as water temperatures of salt solutions increase, you must mitigate by adding O2 in the reservoir as well as directly on the roots. If you can’t get the DO level up by mechanical means, then you will most likely require a water chiller, which is expensive but sometimes imperative. If you cannot bring water temps down or increase DO in the nutrient solution, your next action will be disease suppression or inoculating roots with beneficials to out-compete the pathogens that thrive in high temp, low DO water. If you do get a DO meter, get a good one. We use an Extech Model 407510.

Light

Photosynthetically Active Radiation (PAR) light is a fancy term for the wavelengths plants use to vibrate chloroplasts to power the engine of photosynthesis, a vaguely understood process in my opinion. It is said that PAR light is in the 400 to 700 nanometer wavelength range. No big deal if you’re outside or in a well-lit greenhouse. But if you are growing under HID light or using it as a supplement, it certainly is.

Color temperatures of lamps are measured in degrees Kelvin from a color rendering index (CRI). The blue/white side of the spectrum has higher Kelvin temp: 6000K-8000K (MH lamps). The yellow/red side of the spectrum has lower Kelvin temperature: 3000K (HPS lamps). As a rule, the higher the Kelvin temp, the more vegetative the growth. The lower Kelvin temps are used for supplemental and/or flowering light. Different bulbs have different combinations or blends of gasses for better PAR value. Plants can be finicky and prefer one blend of light more than another. Trial and error, sometimes, is the only way to find out what your plants really like.

High Intensity Discharge (HID) lamps produce light when the gases inside the fused alumina tube are heated to the point of evaporation by high voltage electricity. This process forces the metal gasses to throw off a barrage of photons partly in the PAR range. As the bulb burns over time, the metal gasses slowly change form and degrade out of the PAR range. It is not obvious, but plant performance can suffer from lack of the PAR light when there is no shortage of photons to the naked eye. To look at light as a possible limiting factor, keep track of the hours your bulbs have been burning. If you are over the recommended burn range as stated by the manufacturer, that could be what’s compromising your system. Rule of thumb with HPS bulbs is to replace them every 12 months, and MH bulbs every 9 months, with HPS burning 12 hour days, MH burning 18 hour days.

Outside it’s obvious what limits light, like trees. But in greenhouses, if the glazing is dirty, that’s a big deal and that situation just creeps up on you. Depending on what you’re growing and what time of year it is, a dirty film can cut out as much as 30% of available light. If you are using an 85% transmission film and have 30% attributed to dirt, that’s 55%, basically shade cloth. In situations where there is too much light and plants are unable to cope with the leaf temperatures or solar radiation, a white or metallic shade cloth is preferable to black, as black can radiate heat back down on the plant canopy. A simple mistake easily avoided by many growers in double poly greenhouses is that the inflation fan is pulling inside air in between the films, thereby creating moisture that blocks light. You can tell by the droplets in between the films, or a haze. It is always recommended to use outside air for inflation. Of course, all of this is dependent on location, latitude, geography, plant in cultivation and skill/experience of the grower. We cannot cover all those variables in a brief article.

Temperature

Plant response to temperature is pretty obvious. It’s visible. Plants stop growing when root temps hit 58°F (14°C). Air temp can actually be cooler than 58°F, but when roots are cool, growth slows and stops even when air temp increases. When temps are too high, say 95°F (35°C) plus, depending on RH, air flow, light, kind, size, and age of a plant, they may stop feeding and spend their energy evaporating water from their stomata to cool down. Temperature must be managed to keep plants transpiring and active in the sweet spot.

Most temp controllers are effective, turning on fans for increased air exchanges, but when temps are too hot outside, air conditioners must be used. As a variable, though, temperature control is straightforward. It’s common knowledge that insects like very consistent temperatures and no air movement. Find which temperatures are your best high and low, and vary them morning, daytime and night. Keep an inhospitable environment for the pests without sacrificing plant performance: another dance to master.

Humidity

The two ways of explaining humidity are relative humidity (RH) and vapor pressure deficit (VPD). Most people are familiar with RH and use hygrometers so, for the purposes of this article, I will use RH.

In my experience, this is the one variable that most growers need to be more aware of. The dance between temp/humidity directly affects transpiration rates as poor transpiration opens the plant organism to disease and mineral deficiencies.

RH is the amount of water vapor present in the air expressed as a % of the amount needed for saturation at the same temperature. Here’s what that means: if the humidity is too high, e.g. 95% at 75°F, plants cannot transpire or evaporate enough water to pull minerals up the vascular system even with stomata wide open. This usually results in calcium (Ca) deficiency (remember, Ca is a non-mobile element and must be constantly supplied to growing tips) and plant stress, which increases their vulnerability to fungal intrusion.

If humidity is too low, 50% at 75°F, stomata will open in an attempt to evaporate water because of the low pressure around the leaf, but then close up to conserve cell pressure in the leaf. Plants stress as they cannot take in CO2 with closed stomata and growth stops as the plant is just trying to survive without going into wilt (i.e. loss of leaf turgidity from which it’s difficult to recover). Again the plant is vulnerable to disease and insects. These two extremes points will create a high probability of crop loss.

As a rule, at 75°F (24°C), if RH is below 60% you must add moisture to get to 75% (which is ideal), but stay below 85% to avoid stress and disease. At 85°F (29°C), if RH is below 70% you must add moisture to get to 80% (which is ideal), but stay below 90% to avoid stress and disease. As temperature rises, air holds less moisture. Steer your plants within these parameters for optimum plant performance.

When RH is too low, use a fogger or humidifier coupled with outside air exchanges. When outside air is too warm and dry, you will have to use some form of air conditioner (if that is the only way) to drop the temperature to increase the moisture-holding capacity of the air.

When RH is too high, raise temperature to reduce moisture saturation of air coupled with outside air exchanges. If outside air has too high of an RH, you will need a dehumidifier to pull water out of the air.

Transpiration is king. Monitoring transpiration rates and keeping them optimum with temp/RH manipulation is crucial. If you are outside of the temp/RH safe zones and don’t use some mechanical method of bringing them under control, you will always be fighting the results of that variable being unchecked. This is where high quality environmental controllers come in handy

You can buy the most expensive nutrients, goodies and gadgets available to grow your crop, but if your plants are unable to transpire and you don’t know that, you had best learn quickly or get a day job

Air Circulation and CO2

No matter what kind of controlled environment you’re running, greenhouse or greenroom, air circulation is another key component that is often overlooked until mildew takes out your crop or your plants starve from lack of CO2. The great outdoors takes care of all this, but inside you have to provide the controls or fall prey to what you didn’t know you didn’t know.

Rule of thumb: 60 air exchanges per hour. Not only do you need to flutter your plants with gentle breezes from an oscillating fan or horizontal air flow (HAF) fans in a greenhouse, but you must freshen the air with air exchanges from outside, taking advantage of the 385 ppm ambient CO2. The raw materials that PAR light makes into carbohydrates are CO2 and H2O. CO2 furnishes the carbon and oxygen, while water furnishes the hydrogen for the carbohydrate (CH2O).

If air exchanges are frequent, 385 ppm CO2 is plenty unless you’re looking to accelerate growth by enriching your space with higher levels to, say, 1500 ppm CO2. Even if you are adding CO2, you still must exchange air. There are numerous ways to provide CO2: chemical reactions, gas bottles, gas generators and a variety of controllers and monitors depending on the size of the operation. For the purpose of this article, you just need to know that it is a basic component of the indoor growing environment, and be mindful that it’s always available. Without CO2, plants will not grow.

One of my teachers, Grenville Stocker in NZ, took me into one of his client’s lettuce/herb greenhouses and asked me, “Would you get a chair, sit down, read a book or hang out in here all day?” Actually, it was way too moist, not enough air movement, my shirt was sticky, and it was uncomfortably warm. I said, “No way.” He remarked, “How do you think those plants feel? The same way, I reckon, except they can’t leave.” Then he showed me powdery mildew in certain areas, a thrip infestation and tip burn in some of the lettuces. The plants did not look vital, they looked stressed. I noticed the HAF fans were down, because of a blown breaker that the grower had been meaning to fix for a week. He had an RH monitor but no controller to check humidity and spill air or add heat … AND he was doing only 1 air exchange per hour because it was cold outside. He wanted to keep temps up inside without turning on the heat, which would cost him money. I looked at the RH: it was 95%. Temp was 80°F but it felt like 90°F because of the humidity. His client was too busy to pay attention or take coaching, and he wasn’t even there. Grenville always tested me; he’d say, “What’s wrong with this picture?” Then he would point out a basic that was obvious once I saw it. Most problems were easy to correct once distinguished.

I found out later the grower lost 50% of his crop and the other 50% was barely marketable. Had he kept HAF fans working, increased his air exchanges and turned up the heat to drive off the humidity with the help of a controller, he would not have had crop and financial loss. Just that one error cost him a market: he couldn’t deliver, so a competitor moved in. The point I’m making is: don’t leave your plants in an environment you can’t handle being in yourself. Use meters and controllers, but always keep them honest by paying attention to what your skin says.

All the variables of light, temperature, humidity, air circulation and CO2 must dance together in a harmony that you must monitor and control to be successful and avoid crop loss. If you cannot distinguish which variable is out, you will be guessing what the problem is and perhaps taking actions that are detrimental. Next time a problem arises (which inevitably will happen) and you’re scratching your head as to what to do, go through this list and check off each one that you KNOW is in tolerance. These 5 basics could be what you didn’t know you didn’t know. Now that you do, dissect them and become competent with each one:

The 5 basics of recirculation and plant performance:

1. Pure source water
2. Balanced nutrient ions/anions (EC)
3. Optimum pH
4. Plentiful oxygen availability
5. Optimum light/temp/humidity/air circulation/CO2

For the content and experiences that allowed me to write these articles, I’d like to thank my teachers, Grenville Stocker (Stocker Hort), Jeff Broad (AutoGrow), Genaro Calabrese (ex partner), Grant Creevey (Accent Hydro) and all our clients and associates for sharing and being open to “figuring it out.” Controlled environment plant cultivation is infinitely beguiling; I am always learning a greater respect for being part of that process. Genaro’s motto: “Every plant, every day.”

Good luck and good growing.

Michael Christian, the president of American Hydroponics since 1984, is a hydroponic system designer and consultant to commercial growers worldwide.

Rockwool is a mainstay of commercial hydroponic growers – and for good reason. It takes up a minimal footprint and, when used correctly, yields like crazy. We asked Dr Lynette Morgan, a world authority on hydroponic vegetable production, to give us some expert advice on growing tomatoes in rockwool. There’s LOTS to be learned here as Dr Morgan takes us through how to develop irrigation strategies for your particular growing environment.

Rockwool, also known as stone wool or mineral wool, is the most widely used substrate for the commercial production of hydroponic tomatoes. It is also a great tool for smaller growers who can benefit just as much from its use in a range of different systems and situations. While rockwool is relatively easy to set up and use, it does require some monitoring and irrigation adjustment to make the best of its ability to hold high levels of moisture and aeration at the same time.

Rockwool originally started as a thermal insulation material in the construction industry: its lightweight but highly aerated nature helps keep heat in buildings, while being easy to handle, cut and install. However, towards the end of the 1960s, trials were carried out in Denmark to test the possibility of using stone wool as a substrate for plants. Things went well and since then rockwool as a growing media has seen some continuing development of the substrate and the tools used to manage it.

Rockwool comes in a range of sizes from propagation cubes to large slabs and even a granulated product.

Rockwool is manufactured by melting basaltic rock and spinning this molten mix into thin fibers which are then cooled by a stream of air. Although rockwool is a man-made substrate it is essentially made from rock and considered by many to be a natural product. Grodan dominates the rockwool market world-wide and is the most common brand used by large and small hydroponic growers alike. Grodan rockwool is highly advanced and is not a single product – growers can select from a number of different Grodan rockwool types such as `Grotop Master,’ `Grotop Master dry,’ and `Grotop Expert,’ all of which have slightly different properties and uses. `Grotop Master Dry,’ for example, maintains a slightly drier root zone and is used by tomato growers to steer crops away from overly vegetative growth. `Grodan Classic’ is used for multi-year use, while `Grotop Expert’ is designed for ultra quick root growth and development. Along with these product differences, rockwool of many brands comes in a huge range of sizes from tiny propagation plugs for seeds to larger cubes for cuttings, mega sized cubes for large plants, a wide range of slab sizes, and as a granulated product as well.

Setting up to grow with rockwool

1. Sit the rockwool down

Whether you are using the standard rockwool growing slabs, large cubes, or even pots of granulated rockwool, basic preparation is important. Slabs and cubes in particular need to be on a flat, even surface as any indentations will cause the material to sink and create pockets of unwanted moisture. Next, realizing that nutrient solution will be draining from holes cut in the slab’s plastic wrapper or from the base of cubes, some consideration for drainage of this solution away from the slab is important. There is no point in having well placed and made drainage holes if the solution can’t be channeled away from the slab and the material ends up sitting in a pool of stagnant waste nutrient. Many small hydroponic systems on the market these days designed for use with rockwool have trays and channels designed to do just this and these are a good choice for inexperienced growers.

2. Settle the rockwool in

Rockwool, whether it is slabs, small propagation blocks, or large growing cubes, needs to be prepared correctly by fully wetting the substrate before use. Some growers like to adjust the pH of their water to 5.5 before wetting up rockwool, but generally for small systems it’s not necessary with good quality brands (unless you have a very `hard’ water supply in which case acidification of the water before making up any nutrients would be a good idea). The rockwool should be fully saturated so that all of the material is wetted and then left to drain. Some growers pour water into the rockwool slab before the drainage holes have been cut to make sure everything has had a good drenching, while others just pour water on or run the irrigation long enough for saturation to take place.

3. Remember the holes

Rockwool slabs need drainage – holes or slits should be cut in the plastic sleeve the material comes in. Several cuts are required along the base of the slab. Granulated rockwool should be placed into containers or pots with plenty of drainage holes in the base.

4. Irrigation programs

The most common way of applying nutrient to rockwool slabs or large blocks is with the use of dippers. A simple drip irrigation system should use a dripper with a capacity of 2 litres/hour, with one dripper per plant. Because a standard rockwool slab may hold four tomato plants, four drippers per slab are required, which also means that if any one dripper becomes clogged, the entire slab will still be getting enough irrigation until the problem is fixed.

Developing an Irrigation Strategy for Rockwool – The Moisture Gradient

Rockwool is the most widely used substrate for hydroponic tomato production.

The irrigation program for any hydroponic plant is vital for successful growth, development and optimal yields. The most common problem experienced by smaller or new growers is over watering, and usually the grower is totally unaware that it is their irrigation program causing problems with plant growth. Flushing vast amounts of nutrient solution through the root zone in a substrate-based system often equates to plant murder – more is not necessarily better when it comes to nutrient application. This type of mistake is easy to make. After all, many new growers get enthused about hydroponics after seeing a well-run NFT or other solution culture system and assume that plants are more than happy to grow and thrive in a flooded root zone environment. However, solution culture and substrate systems are completely different and need to be managed in different ways for the plants to get the optimal root zone conditions they need. In NFT the roots should never be flooded: they sit in a very thin film of nutrient flow (2-3 mm or about 0.1″ deep), hence the roots have moisture at the base of the root system, but many of the other roots are sitting up in the moist air, accessing all the oxygen they need without being submerged. In a rockwool slab the plants are in a similar situation – at the base of the slab there is plentiful moisture, usually at media saturation levels, while in the upper layers of the rockwool slab the roots are in drier conditions and hence have access to plenty of aeration and oxygen for root uptake and respiration. It is this moisture gradient from the top to the bottom of the rockwool material that makes it such a good substrate. At the same time, growers who are not aware of this property can make the mistake of thinking the rockwool is too dry on the surface and over-irrigate their plants despite having plenty of nutrient solution being held deep down in the root system. Rockwool growing media, when being irrigated correctly, should not sit in a pool of nutrient and be completely saturated from top to bottom like a sponge. It is essential that the rockwool is allowed to completely drain so that excess nutrient leaves the slab or cube under the pull of gravity after being applied– in doing so, fresh air is drawn into the top layers of the material, providing fresh oxygenation for the root zone. By allowing the rockwool material to drain freely, over-watering becomes more difficult, although vast amounts of nutrient drainage from the base of rockwool slabs or cubes is not an ideal situation either.

Setting up an Irrigation Program

Obviously the amount of nutrient required is going to depend on factors such as the size of the plant, the growing conditions, light, temperature and, in particular, humidity, which drives plant transpiration and water uptake. So the irrigation program is going to change as the plants develop. Also an irrigation program needs to be developed and adjusted by each grower for their particular system, environment, and set up and this has to be monitored and adjusted as required. Just following guidelines for the amount of nutrient to apply at certain times will eventually lead to over or under-watering, as each plant and situation is different when it comes to nutrient and water requirements.

Commercial hydroponic rockwool growers have some good tools for fine-tuning their irrigation. The Grodan water content meter allows growers to measure the water content, EC and temperature in the rockwool slab root zone using hand-held meters or a continuous monitoring system hooked up to the computerized irrigation program. However, these sorts of high-tech tools are not often used by smaller growers and a successful irrigation strategy can be put together with just observation, some innovation, and a little time.

Remember the Moisture Gradient

Rockwool propagation cubes and slabs are designed to be used together to minimize root disturbance. Excellent moisture holding capacity and good aeration of the root zone are features of rockwool substrates.

Irrigation of rockwool is a little different to other solid substrates because of the way the material is manufactured to have just the right degree of moisture gradient, and because it does give quite a limited root zone for plants that eventually grow fairly large. For this reason, rockwool is best irrigated with short, frequent applications of nutrient, with just enough at each irrigation for the rockwool to reach ‘field capacity’. Field capacity is a term that means the substrate has drained fully but is still holding a good level of moisture for the plant roots to access until the next irrigation. At each irrigation, there should be some drainage from the rockwool material. However, this doesn’t need to be excessive. Even in closed systems where the drainage solution is being collected and reused, it pays not to over-water and not to run the irrigation continuously. Having around 10-15% of the nutrient solution fed to the plants, drain from the slab at each irrigation is considered to be optimal. This amount of drainage of solution flushes fresh nutrient solution right through the slab without too much wastage and usually keeps the EC in the slab fairly stable.

When rockwool is irrigated and allowed to drain naturally, it will then contain 80% nutrient solution, 15% air pore space and 5% rockwool fibers. A typical rockwool tomato growing slab actually holds around four gallons (about 15 liters) of nutrient solution immediately after irrigation, despite the drainage holes allowing free drainage of excess solution. Four gallons is a good reserve of moisture for four plants, so drying down to wilting point could take a long period of time for small plants.

How much solution should be given at each irrigation?

Having a drainage collection tray or channel under each slab allows growers to see how much drainage they are getting after each irrigation (even if this has to be poured off and measured in a jug) and the irrigation program can be increased or decreased to keep this at the 10-15% level. By doing this, the amount of solution to be given at each irrigation can be worked through and adjusted as the plants grow. Keep cutting back the irrigation amount until only 10-15% of the solution volume applied drains from the slab, and then the amount of irrigation has been fully adjusted for.

How often should nutrient be applied?

Rockwool needs small frequent irrigations, particularly under hot or low humidity conditions when the plants are taking up a lot of water. However, the frequency of irrigation can be as low as once per day (or every other day) for small plants under cool conditions, to over 10 times a day for large plants in a hot or dry environment. It can be hard to judge just how much moisture the rockwool material may be holding at any one time to determine when to irrigate. Smaller propagation blocks and even larger cubes can be gently picked up – the weight will soon tell you if the cube is saturated (it will be comparatively heavy and moisture will drip from the wet base), or whether it has dried out considerably, in which case it will feel very light (compare an unused dry cube to one in use). Rockwool is an unusual material in that, even when the slab has lost 50% of its moisture to plant uptake, the plants are still able to very easily keep extracting water until the slab is almost completely dry – so plants in rockwool can’t get water stressed until the rockwool is almost completely dry, by which time the cube or slab has become much lighter in weight. For granulated rockwool in pots or containers, a similar method can be used, either by gently lifting the pot to see what the weight might be (a light pot is a dry pot) or by a light tap or kick: if the pot moves, the rockwool has become quite light and potentially too dry.

Another method to try and gauge the moisture status of the rockwool and how often to irrigate is to carefully remove a small piece of the wrapper plastic and examine the moisture gradient of the slab from top to bottom. Like all growing media, moisture in rockwool can be gauged manually. Lightly touching or pressing the rockwool at the base of the slab will soon determine if there is still a good level of nutrient held in the base of the slab or whether it has become too dry. The top and middle layers of the slab should always appear drier than the base where the reservoir of moisture is naturally held, so only the base of the slab should be checked. Even if the top of the slab appears to be dry, this is not important as the moisture gradient has been designed to give these sorts of root zone conditions – only ensure the base of the slab has sufficient moisture.

This process of working out how much moisture is still in the rockwool material is not something that needs to be done for long. Growers will soon become quite skilled at working out their frequency and amount of irrigation for each stage of plant growth and may only need to do this for their first crop provided growing conditions remain stable. Other times when it might be important to have a quick check of the amount of solution drainage or amount of moisture in the slab is when conditions suddenly change – addition of more grow lamps, sudden changes in temperature or humidity, or rapid growth spurts can all change the irrigation requirements of the plants.

Generally, good brands of rockwool are quite forgiving compared to other substrates – the material is naturally well aerated and doesn’t suffer the compaction issues that some substrates do during the life of the crop. It does hold high levels of moisture, so the chance of drying out is not as severe as it might be with other substrates and being sterile gives young plants, seedlings and cuttings an advantage as well. The irrigation program and water holding capacity of the substrate depends on the fiber density and arrangement, which can differ from brand to brand.

More Advanced Irrigation Practices

With tomatoes and similar crops, growers have the option of using the EC and moisture content of the rockwool slab to help ’steer’ the plants into either more vegetative or ‘generative/reproductive’ growth, depending on what is required. Drying the slab back between irrigations and allowing the EC in the root zone to increase pushes tomato plants into a more generative or reproductive state with less leaf growth and more assimilate being directed into the fruit. A higher level of moisture maintained in the rockwool and a lower EC pushes the plants towards more lush vegetative growth. Skillful growers use these techniques to direct their crop and control leaf, flower and fruit growth at different times, and rockwool is a great substrate for this sort of control via the root zone.

Other Rockwool Tips

EC Levels and Management

Checking the EC in the root zone is important with rockwool just as it is with any media. The EC of the nutrient solution in the growing substrate changes as plants extract different ratios of water and nutrients from the root zone. The EC in the drainage solution coming from the base of the rockwool cubes or slabs is the best indication of the EC the plants are actually experiencing in the root zone. As a general rule, the EC in the drainage solution should be the same as or only slightly higher than that applied to the plants in the feed solution. If the EC is becoming much higher in the drainage than what was fed to the plants, then the EC in the feed solution should be dropped back – this is common under hot growing conditions when the plants might be taking up far more water than nutrients, hence concentrating the nutrient solution.

Rockwool Reuse

Rockwool for tomato crops can be reused – some commercial growers get many successive crops from rockwool slabs by steaming these after the plants have been removed and then replanting. Smaller growers can also do this – a few slabs can be heat treated by pouring hot water through them. Solarization is also possible, as is using chemical disinfectants, although care should be taken to rinse the rockwool well with plenty of water after using these. Commercial Grodan users have the option of the Grodan recycling service, which picks up the used slabs and recycles them into new product. However, smaller growers with just a few slabs of used rockwool can recycle the material by shredding it and reusing it as a growing media, as a component of potting mixes, or by incorporating it into outside soils and gardens.

Real World Rockwool Q&A

Q: What pH should I adjust the nutrient solution to and how do I monitor and adjust accordingly? For instance, keeping the tank pH at 5.8 and the run-off at 6.0 is perfect, but what happens if the pH starts to come back higher or lower than expected? What could / does this mean? And what should be done to correct it? How much should a grower raise or lower the pH of the tank with pH adjusters – when does a situation become ‘too extreme’ to use pH adjusters?

A: There are many factors that affect pH in the nutrient: some are normal like plant uptake and nutrient formulation salts (NH4 in particular), and some are not so good, like root disease. Water plays a big role and can range from very hard to very soft and hence needs to be handled differently depending on what a specific grower is dealing with. Chemicals for pH adjustment are also a huge topic! The nutrient solution pH is usually optimal at around 5.8 – 6.0 for commercial tomatoes; however, for small systems pH in the range of 5.5 – 6.8 is usually fine and having tight control at 5.8 is not necessary. The main problem with pH is with growers who might have a `hard’ water source, which is highly alkaline. In that case, acidifying the water with acid (nitric or phosphoric) before making up any nutrient will give better and longer term control of pH swings (in any growing media). pH should not need to be raised in most situations unless the water supply is very acid: in that case, potassium hydroxide should be used.

Q: I understand that rockwool can be prone to salt build-up if you don’t know what you’re doing like the commercial guys. Most hobby rockwool growers I have talked to flush either one day a week, throughout the whole grow and bloom cycle, or when they dump the res. (They will commonly give their plants 24 hours of either very low nutrient solution (if so, what EC?) or pure water, or even pure water with a product like GH Flora Kleen. What do you think of these flushing techniques? Do you have any better advice?

A: Rockwool is actually one of the better media for preventing salt build up as it tends to be drip irrigated from above and not bottom watered like with ebb and flow. Flushing is another subject that really needs a whole article to cover the theory, practice and problems with it. Flushing with straight water after a plant has been sitting at normal or high EC is not recommended: it causes the plant cells to suddenly take up huge volumes of water (because the osmotic pressure has been dropped in the root zone). This can cause cells to burst and create major physiological problems – splitting of tomato fruit is one common one; many other fruits and vegetables do the same. Even low strength nutrient can do this. Any changes in EC in the root zone should be done slowly (i.e over days), so a gradual dropping back of the EC over a few days should be done rather than flushing with water. Or better still, don’t let EC build up in the first place!

Q: What is the disadvantage of watering rockwool for a minute and getting 50% run-off in a closed system with adequate drainage, as opposed to watering for a minute and getting, say, 15% runoff? If you are only achieving 15% run off, is it not the case that the rockwool is already fully saturated and any additional runoff will just wash out the excess salts more thoroughly? In short, how difficult is it to over-water rockwool? I also can’t see what the problem would be for the plant if more run-off was created unless, of course, you were irrigating for several minutes to achieve this much run off, but even then surely the plant won’t feel any effect having its roots flooded for, say, 10 minutes, then allowed to drain freely?

A: Rockwool is a media which has been specifically designed for commercial growers who aim to have the recommended 10-15% run-off with the slabs spending as little time as possible at saturation levels – when doing this, the structure of the rockwool has been manufactured so that the root zone will remain at the correct moisture status which is why it is recommended. Also, with rockwool systems, the feed nutrient should be applied so that ‘excess salts’ don’t occur and therefore don’t need continual flushing. If the EC is getting high in the drainage solution, drop it back in the feed solution and/or increase the frequency of short irrigations. Rockwool, like any media, can be over-watered if flooded and is best kept below the saturation level for balanced growth.

Q. What’s the scientific explanation behind the influence that irrigation strategies have (or, to be more precise, the levels of moisture in the root zone) on generative / vegetative growth? Is this peculiar to tomatoes or is it applicable to other species?

A. Crop ’steering’ as it’s called is a technique used by commercial growers to manipulate the natural growth pattern of the plant. It’s widely used by skilled growers of tomato crops, but also on capsicum and many other plants as well. It’s quite a complex topic as there are a number of tools a grower can use in a controlled environment to direct the growth of the crop – commercial growers will use a combination of DIFs (day/night temperature differentials), EC, CO2, moisture control in the root zone and directional heating (i.e. directing heat towards the fruit or tops of the plants) to manipulate the growth of the plant. Different techniques force the plant to send the assimilate produced in the leaves into flowers/fruits when required or direct the plant back to some more vegetative growth if that was what was required. Various temperature techniques are sometimes used to keep seedlings or older plants as short and compact as possible (i.e. prevent stem elongation) and to get the plant to hold back on the production of overly large, succulent leaves. Commercial tomato growers use tools such as measurement of stem diameter to determine if their plants are getting overly vegetative or too generative at certain times of the year. The basic scientific explanation of why this works is that when a flowing plant encounters ’stressful’ conditions such a drying back of the root zone, high EC, high light and temperatures, it triggers a response – the plant wants to hurry up and flower, and to set seed to make sure it reproduces before the harsh conditions can kill it. We sometimes see this effect on lettuces which, under high light, temperature and moisture stress, can flower (or bolt) while the plant is still only a seedling and far from maturity. A plant with plenty of moisture under no particular stress is happy to go on producing a lot of large leaves with no hurry to set fruit and seed, which is great for vegetative crops such as lettuce but not so much with fruiting crops like tomatoes and capsicums. The ‘controlled stress’ commercial growers use to direct plants into more generative growth is often via the root zone because with Grodan rockwool very precise control of moisture content in the substrate can be controlled – particularly with the use of the Grodan moisture meter. And in hydroponics, control over EC is also fairly easy and precise. For this reason, Grodan Rockwool has different products for growers who might need to steer their crops towards more generative growth by having a drier root zone. It makes it much easier for the grower to then restrict irrigation and moisture levels in the root zone to steer the plants towards more generative growth and generally the technique is very effective. However, commercial growers use high tech tools likes moisture meters linked to their computerized irrigation program so that the crop is not at risk of being damaged by delaying irrigation to long. Smaller growers can certainly use similar techniques and allow the rockwool to run a little drier between irrigations and keep their nutrient run off to an absolute minimum if their plants are getting a bit too vegetative. Running a lot of nutrient through the rockwool on a frequent basis means the slabs or media are at saturation for much longer, and that favours vegetative growth (although we should also remember a lot of other factors, such as the growing environment, play in a role in the vegetative/generative balance as well).

Dr Lynette Morgan holds a B.Hort.Tech(Hons) degree and a PhD in hydroponic greenhouse production from Massey University in New Zealand. Her PhD thesis focused on hydroponic tomato production in both NFT and media systems and improvement of fruit quality aspects. Now a partner in SUNTEC International Hydroponic Consultants, Lynette is involved in many aspects of hydroponic production, including remote and on-site consultancy services for new and existing commercial greenhouse growers worldwide as well as research trials and product development for manufacturers of hydroponic products. Lynette is also the author of 5 hydroponic technical books: Hydroponic Lettuce Production, Hydroponic Capsicum Production, Fresh Culinary Herb Production, Hydroponic Strawberry Production and her latest release, Hydroponic Tomato Crop Production.

The basics – What is NFT?

NFT stands for Nutrient Film Technique. With this hydroponic system, plants grow in a purpose-built sloping channel with a fall of 1:40–1:50. Nutrient solution is pumped from a reservoir onto the channel where it passes over the plants’ roots and finally returns back to the reservoir. The roots on the channel develop to form a mat, which is partially in the shallow film of re-circulated nutrient solution, and partially above it. Utilizing this technique, the root mat growing in the nutrient film is supplied with essential water and nutrients, and the root mat above the film remain sufficiently moist with an abundance of oxygen.

The NFT system was developed between the 1960s and ’70s by Dr. Allen Cooper at the Glasshouse Crops Institute in the UK. In the early days, the growing channels were made in concrete floors. Today, growing channels are made from plastic and are often referred to as “trays” or “gullies.”

Why choose NFT?

Other than supplying your plants with the ideal root environment, NFT systems are incredibly efficient and environmentally friendly. The nutrient solution is recirculated for long periods: in some commercial applications, for many months. This continual recycling of the solution makes the most out of the water and nutrients you’re supplying. NFT systems also use very little growing media: just the small amount of substrate the plant is propagated in. This means that after each crop all you have to dispose of is a mat of roots, which easily biodegrades.

NFT Gro-Tanks

The system I will be demonstrating is called a Gro-Tank and is manufactured in the UK by Nutriculture.

The Gro-Tank is great for small-scale production as it has a wide top tray for the roots to grow on, with the reservoir directly beneath it spanning its whole length. A small submersible pump in the reservoir delivers nutrient solution to the tray above, which flows down the tray and back into the reservoir. This compact, self-contained design eliminates the need for lots of pipe work and is very low to the floor, making best use of the height available for tall/vining plants.

I have used the Gro-Tanks for many types of crops, including lettuce, basil, watercress, coriander, parsley, rocket, chard, chives, tomatoes, peppers, chillies, strawberries, cantaloupe melons, cape gooseberries, and many more. The diary below shows one of my NFT grows with cucumbers. I hope you enjoy…

Equipment

1 x heated greenhouse
1 x heated propagator
5 x starter plugs
5 x 4” rockwool blocks
1 x 604 Nutriculture Gro-Tank: 5ft x 1.5ft (153cm x 49cm) tray with 16 gallon (60L) reservior
1 x submersible adjustable pump
1 x submersible water heater
Spreader mat (capillary matting)
4 x roller hooks (plant supports)
Vine clips
Liquid nutrients and growth supplements

January 18th – Germination

I’m growing a cucumber variety called Carmen, which is an all-female F1 hybrid variety. The majority of cucumber varieties produce both male and female flowers; all we are interested in are the female flowers, as these develop cucumber fruit. This all-female (parthenocarpic) variety will develop a seedless fruit without the need for pollination. I found Carmen great last year for greenhouse growing as you don’t have to pick male flowers off and it produces large, full fruits.

I planted the seeds in starter plugs pre-soaked with a low-strength nutrient solution (EC 1.2) designed for seedlings and cuttings, and a liquid beneficial microbe additive. These were placed in a heated propagator and germination was fast!

Shown here is one cucumber seedling 8 days after planting. At this point they were transplanted into 4” rockwool blocks.

January 31st – Propagation

Considering it’s been 21 days since I planted the seeds, I’m happy with the way they’re progressing. They are now being watered with nutrient solution (EC 1.4, pH 5.8) every 2-3 days. The roots are doing really well and can be seen on the top of the block.

Without the block covers, algae would be taking over and the roots would not be growing so well on the surface. The natural light entering the greenhouse is being supplemented with 220W fluorescent strip lights. These plants should be ready for their NFT system in about 1 week.

February 4th – Growing on

The plants now need nutrient solution every day and the roots are clearly visible all over the bottom of the block. I also have increased the EC to 1.6. They will need to be planted in the next few days.

February 5th – Setting up

These cucumber plants are now 26 days old and are ready to go onto their final system, which will be an NFT Gro-Tank.

The most important thing about getting plants ready for NFT systems is to ensure they are well-established and have a mass of healthy white roots. Without this mass of roots inside the rockwool block, the plant will not be able to cope with the continuous irrigation of the NFT system. These plants have been propagated using an air pruning technique (see “Power Propagation” UGM0005) to ensure the rockwool block is packed full of roots.

This is the Gro-tank I will be using (below). It is called a 604. Nutriculture, which makes the system, also makes 5 other size variations to suit any grow area. The top tray is where the plants are placed and the reservoir underneath stores 16 gallons (60L) of nutrient solution.

The Gro-Tank has one delivery tube where the nutrient solution is pumped onto the tray using a small submersible pump with an adjustable output:

To ensure an even distribution of nutrient solution on the tray, I use capillary matting, aka “spreader mat.” The system manufacturers recommend using spreader mat and supply it with the system. One layer is enough. After laying it out, I fill the reservoir with water that has been standing in a storage tank for a few days: this allows some chlorine to be evaporated and, more importantly, allows the temperature to rise. Tap water in February in the North of England usually comes out ice cold and will seriously stress plants if used.

Once the tank is filled I turned the pump on and slow the output down so the solution lands in the middle of the first diamond. This provides a flow rate of approximately 1 quart (1L) per minute. Recommended flow rate for NFT systems can be anywhere between 13.5oz to 2 quarts (400ml to 2L) per minute. Determining flow rate in NFT systems usually depends on channel length; if you have very long channel lengths you will need larger flow rates. You could probably write a thesis on other variables that will determine the required flow rate for NFT, but I find that as long as nutrient solution flows as a shallow film and does not “puddle,” the plants grow well.

After a few minutes of the pump running, the spreader mat wets throughout the tray. I always run the pump and observe the way the water is flowing down the tray. I have found from experience that if the Gro-Tank is not placed on a level floor then some areas of the tray will develop puddles and other parts will remain dry. Leveling out the tank with thin pieces of plywood usually sorts out an uneven floor. Luckily, the floor is fine and I’m happy to “go with the flow.”

Now that I know the flow down the tray is perfect, I cut out the planting holes in the corriboard cover. Corriboard is twin-walled, semi-rigid plastic sheeting. It prevents any light from reaching the roots and can help provide a bit of support for the plants. I’m planting 4 plants in the Gro-Tank, so I cut the holes accordingly.

Providing support for large plants is very important. To support my cucumber plants I use roller hooks, which are a spool of string on a wheel attached to a support hook. The vines are trained up the string with the help of plastic vine clips. When they grow tall enough to reach the wheel, string is let out, which lowers the vine. This support hook is then moved along so the excess vine at the bottom rests on the corriboard. Using this technique, one of my cucumber plants last year was 49 feet (15m) long!

Another popular way to support plants on NFT systems is using netting, which is stretched out horizontally on a frame above the plants so that when they grow into it they are supported by the net.

Before planting onto the tray I remove the plastic wrapper from around the block. When I was learning how to grow using NFT systems I was told by a more experience grower at the time to “leave the wrapper on, otherwise the block will fall apart.” After a few crops I decided to experiment so I slid the wrapper up the block exposing the bottom third. This helped with initial establishment and root growth from the block, which I believed was a factor in achieving a more successful crop. The next crop I decided to risk it and remove the wrapper completely and, instead of the block falling apart, I got quicker establishment and a much better root mat. The block lasted the whole season, staying completely intact. Not surprisingly, I don’t follow this grower’s advice anymore.

Once the roller hooks are in place, I tie the string around the rockwool blocks and place them into position:

The positioning of the blocks on the tray is fairly important: I find staggering the plants works best. This allows the nutrient solution to flow uninterrupted through the mid-section of the tray, which helps once the root mat has built up. I also find that positioning the blocks so that the solution can flow through the grooves on the bottom of the block helps with establishment.

Then I place the corriboard and black and white sheeting back on the tray and lower the plants into their pre-cut holes. I cut the black and white with an X so the folds can be repositioned over the top of the block to cover it and prevent algae growth.

Now that the plants are in their system, I add a “grow” nutrient to the water in the reservoir at an EC of 1.6 and a pH of 5.8. I also add a strong dose of beneficial microbes to the mix to aid with root growth and disease prevention.

I put a submersible water heater in the tank and set the thermostat to 64°F (18°C). I also plugged in the pump, which I will now leave alone to run 24/7. Some growers plug their NFT pumps into a segmental or interval timer. This “pulse feeding” is not the strategy Dr. Allen Cooper conceived when he developed NFT, but some people growing plants with more sensitive root systems or who use large propagation blocks find it helps. It’s very important when implementing pulse feeding that the root mat never approaches a dry state. I have contacted Nutriculture about pulse feeding, and they only recommend that the pump is run 24/7.

These cucumber plants should settle in and start growing vigorously in the next few days. Hopefully I should be picking my first fruits in no time.

February 14th – Vegetative Progress

In 11 days these cucumbers on the NFT Gro-Tank have more than doubled in height and they are establishing well into their system. I have attached them to the string using plastic vine clips, which clip onto the string and hold the vine in place.

I have been routinely checking the nutrient solution pH and EC every 1-2 days. The pH was rising by 0.2 points every 2-3 days. As the pH reached 6.2-6.4, I added phosphoric acid to bring it back to 5.6-5.8. I like to let the pH drift a bit rather than keeping it within a tight range: as long as it doesn’t go higher than 6.5 or lower than 5.5, I’m not worried.

Usually I find the nutrient strength stays stable or increases slightly as the water level drops, but over the past 11 days the plants have used approximately 4 gallons (15L) of nutrient solution and the EC has dropped to 1.2. This is an indication that the plants are hungry, so I top up the reservoir with water and increase the nutrient strength to an EC of 1.8. Whenever I add anything to the tank I disconnect the delivery tube from the tray and submerse a larger 265 gallons/hour (1000L/hour) pump in the reservoir to mix the solution. Once the nutrient solution is corrected, I reconnect the delivery tube.

I always estimate how much water I add back to the tank and take a mental note. Once I know I’ve added back roughly the same volume as the tank holds (16 gallons / 60L) I will consider running the reservoir down to half full, emptying the tank, and refilling it with fresh water and nutrient solution.

Many growers change out the nutrient solution every week, regardless of how much the plants are using. I find this a bit unnecessary and like to base my solution change-outs on how the plants are using it.

The pictures below show how well the roots are extending from the rockwool blocks. Soon there will be a thick mat of roots all over the tray:

February 25th – Flowers and Fruits

It always amazes me how fast plants grow in a productive environment using hydroponic systems, but cucumbers are a whole other ball game. In 11 days they have more than tripled in size and burst into flower. One fruit is already quiet large and will be ready in a few days.

They have also started sending out tendrils and growing side shoots. I remove both but keep a few side shoots for cutting material and put them in my aeroponic propagator.

The greenhouse environment is pretty easy to maintain this time of year. The heating keeps the night-time temperature around 64°F (18°C) and the top vents ensure the day temp does not exceed 77°F (25°C). I have 2 centrifugal humidifiers running to keep the relative humidity between 60-70%.

The plants are now using 1.5-2 gallons (6-8L) of nutrient solution per day and I make sure I top up the reservoir frequently. It’s better to have a full tank as it provides a better buffer for changes in pH and EC. The plants seem happy with the nutrients at 1.8 EC so I’ll leave things be.

One thing I love about NFT is that you don’t have to think about irrigations. The pump is on a slow trickle, and that’s all that matters.

The cucumber fruit develops behind the un-pollinated female flower.

February 27th – Nutrient tweaking

We have had a few warmer, brighter days recently and the plants are loving it. The first large fruit is growing well but is showing signs that I need to tweak the nutrient slightly. You may notice in the picture below that the bottom of the cucumber is slightly more bulbous than the top. The leaves of the plants are also showing a faint yellowing (chlorosis) around the edges. This is a sign that the plant requires more potassium.

To increase the potassium in the solution I add a blooming additive high in potassium and phosphorus at the rate of 1 ml per L. Before adding this I top up the tank with water, add the PK booster, then add more base nutrient to bring it back to 1.8.

You may also notice some loose vermiculite on the tank and floor. I have introduced the predatory insects Phytoseiulus persimilis, which come in a vermiculite carrier. I noticed a small outbreak of spider mite on some peppers on the other side of the greenhouse, so as a precaution I sprayed all the plants in the greenhouse with a natural-contact insecticide that works by suffocation, not chemicals. A few days after spraying, I introduced the predators to clean up any lingering spider mites. I will now introduce a bottle of 2000 Phytoseiulus persimilis every 4 weeks throughout the greenhouse and keep spraying to a minimum.

February 29th – Roots going mad

The roots are really growing well now and starting to develop to form a mat in places. I like to regularly inspect the roots in the NFT system, mainly because you don’t get to do it with other systems!

March 3rd – Plant Training

The plants have now reached the full height of the greenhouse so I let out a small amount of string and lower the vines.

Once I have lowered these a few times I will move the roller hooks clockwise around the Gro-Tank. The stems rest on top of the corriboard. I started using this training technique with my tomatoes and tried it with cucumbers. I find it works pretty well but most commercial growers implement an umbrella training system. I have yet to try it but will get around to it one day.

March 11th – New plants!

The side shoots I took off 2 weeks ago are now rooted plants and are ready for transplanting.

I have to say, aeroponic propagators are great. I have one running continuously in the corner of my greenhouse and just put shoots in and forget about them. 1-2 weeks later you have cuttings. Can’t get any easier.

March 14th – The Bumper Crop

The plants have definitely responded well to the PK booster. The leaves are now dark green all over and the fruits have developed to be large, full and evenly shaped. Some are slightly curved but it adds to the character!

I’ve had 3 cucumbers off the plants so far, but today I picked 6 ripe fruits in one go. From here on out I guarantee I will have so many cucumbers that I will make myself and all my friends sick of the sight of them!

March 26th – Growing on

The cucumbers have been growing well and are now producing ripe fruit at a steady rate of two to three cucumbers every four days. They could try and produce more but I remove developing fruits once there are more than 4 developing on each vine. If there is a high fruit load on the plant, developing fruits will abort. The weather is starting to warm up and the greenhouse is now thriving from the increased day lengths and light intensity. Bring on summer!

Looking Ahead

Recognizing the environmental conditions and adjusting the nutrient solution is part of my ongoing management strategy for recirculating systems. As warmer weather comes along in May and June I will certainly see the EC rising every few days in the reservoir. As this starts to happen I will dilute the EC slightly to around 1.6.to compensate.

Water uptake will certainly go up too so I will have to make sure I regularly top up the reservoir once a day. I also make sure I service my pump every 2 months. This is fairly quick and easy to do and will give me peace of mind that it’s in good working order.

Interested in NFT and want to learn more? If you missed Everest’s introduction to NFT and grower’s tips in UGM0009, check it out here!

It’s the world’s tallest grass, the fastest growing woody plant in the world, and possibly the answer to our consumer prayers.

While bamboo has been used by human beings all around the world for thousands of years, the plant’s potential as a substitute for slower-growing wood species in a vast number of modern commercial uses has only recently been recognized. As a result, more attention is being paid to the development of applications and commercial markets.

Bamboo is the fastest growing canopy for the re-greening of degraded lands and releases 35% more oxygen than equivalent timber stands. Bamboo sequesters carbon at a rate of C=50% dry weight (approximately the same percentage of carbon as a conifer forest).

Bamboos include over 1,000 species of woody, perennial grasses. The grasses are relatively recent additions to the earth’s flora, having evolved only 30 to 40 million years ago: long after the demise of the dinosaurs. Bamboo is the most diverse group of plants in the grass family, and the most primitive sub-family. It is distinguished by a woody “culm” (stem), complex branching, a robust rhizome system, and infrequent flowering. Bamboo is capable of growing up to 24 inches (60 cm) or more per day, depending on soil and climate conditions. Unlike trees, all bamboo is able to grow to its full height and size in a single growing season of three to four months. It perpetuates itself through its rhizome system rather than seed, and therefore doesn’t need to be replanted if it’s sustainably harvested. Different bamboo varieties can grow in extremely diverse conditions, from South East Asia to Canada.

Silica powder, called “Tabashir,” can be found inside of the culms (stems).

Bamboo is widely used for housing construction and other traditional purposes, including scaffolding, furniture, bridging, fencing, musical instruments, paper, food for humans and livestock, and cooking fuel. Pound for pound, laminated bamboo has been found to be stiffer than soft steel; it is also harder surfaced than either fiberglass or red oak. From roots to tip, you can make soap, medicines, cosmetics, furniture, bricks, clothing, floor tiles, wall panels, beer and beverages, vegetables — even surf boards — from bamboo. Bamboo can be flattened into boards, molded into 3-D forms, spun into fabric, pressed into veneers, slivered and interlaced into mats, and much more. In terms of exports, bamboo’s potential is primarily in the areas of furniture and handicrafts, whose global market grows at an average of US$8 billion annually.

In November 2009, Dell announced it is shipping its Dell Inspiron Mini 10 and 10v netbooks in packaging made from bamboo. Image courtesy of Dell Inc.

Thomas Edison is said to have used a carbonized bamboo filament in his experiments in developing the light bulb. Alexander Graham Bell used bamboo for his first phonograph needle.

Safe for consumers and workers?

India is the world’s largest producer of bamboo, but most bamboo used for flooring comes from China and Vietnam. Indonesia, Japan and Costa Rica also export bamboo for flooring. Given the rampant lack of guidelines for fair labor practices on farms and in factories, Fair Trade certification standards are desperately needed for bamboo: as yet, none exist. Also, many bamboo floors exported from China contain high levels of urea formaldehyde that do not meet safety standards in other countries.

Environmentally sustainable?
Overseas production and processing means international shipping … not quite the carbon-footprint many eco-shoppers are looking for. Species of bamboo can be grown (and are being grown) in North America: time will tell if local production will be able to meet the demand.

Another environmental issue is the large areas of natural forests being cleared to grow the crop for export. Clear-cutting leads to erosion, while the heavy use of insecticides and chemical fertilizers to increase yields are also increasing soil loss and toxicity. Ironically, proper management of bamboo groves can actually help prevent soil erosion, given bamboo’s rhizome system.

With these concerns in mind, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Canada, an international certification and labeling system, now has basic certification standards for bamboo products. FSC certification verifies that the bamboo has been harvested in a sustainable and responsible manner. The “FSC Pure” label means these designated bamboo products are made from 100 percent FSC material from an FSC-certified forest and have been sold and processed by an FSC chain-of-custody-certified company.

Residents of a small Philippine community constructed these 90% bamboo taxis, which are powered by coconut biofuel.

As a result of bamboo’s popularity, many flooring distributors in North America have established more stringent guidelines for the bamboo products they sell. Some of these guidelines require bamboo flooring to have water-based finishes and to be manufactured with formaldehyde-free processing. The International Standard Organization (ISO) has developed three standards for bamboo as a construction material.

If you want to buy bamboo products, look for applicable certifications. You can also ask for the bamboo’s country of origin, and whether the bamboo was harvested from a plantation, which would suggest more stringent harvesting practices.

Bamboo Facts

• Yields an annual harvest for fifty years or more before replanting.
• Photosynthesizes sunlight into plant energy year-round.
• Profitably processed for cellulosic ethanol and bio-diesel.
• Full vertical stature in 60 days or less.
• High quality and optimum potential strength in five years
• Less mature culms can be used for biomass, paper pulp, weaving, or anywhere that compressive strength or stiffness is not needed.
• Ecoservices include ability to bioremediate.
• Selectively culmed on an annual basis.
• High yields and low input requirements equal a very favorable carbon footprint.

A Multi-Purpose Plant

• Symbiotic edible fungi can be cultured in a bamboo grove.
• New shoots of bamboo are edible and nutritious.
• Foliage is a very palatable high-protein feed (up to 22%) for livestock.
• The cut culms are a good source of pulp for high-quality papermaking. One species (Phyllostachys rubromarginata) can out-yield loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) 6 to 1.
• Bio-polymers (the basis of most plastic) can be processed from bamboo.
• The volatile organic compounds (VOCs) can be recovered for energy production before pulping for paper making.

So, is bamboo the greatest thing since duct tape? Tell us what you think –post your comments below.

Javan Kerby Bernakevitch, a permaculture designer and teacher-in-training, introduces us to the principles and practice of permanent (agri)culture.

“Permaculture is revolution disguised as organic gardening.”
- Graham Bell, from Permaculture – A Beginner’s Guide

Permaculture is not organic gardening, and I am not a gardener. What I am is a permaculture practitioner who uses organic gardening, and many other tools, to design systems that work to water, feed, warm, house, and provide community, not to mention: make a garden.

So if permaculture isn’t just gardening, then what is it?

Permaculture is not the rain that falls, nor the roof that collects it or the catchment systems that stores it. Permaculture design is the relationship between these things. Permaculture is the match maker, creating passionate love affairs between rain and plants, humans and animals, and ultimately achieving systems that produce enough natural resources to provide for their own maintenance and reproduction.

Rainwater collection.

Imagine a ball that drops, hitting a lever that turns a wheel pulling on a string attached to a light bulb. Each step creates the necessary conditions for consequent steps which eventually will turn on the light bulb. Similar to well set-up dominoes. We can learn the skills to design whole systems that are focused on goals and fixing problems at the source, instead of focusing on the symptoms.

A backyard graywater filtration system that takes the sink, shower and washing machine water from the house, passes the water through a strainer, and then filters it through this man-made wetland bedded in 4 bathtubs that irrigates the gardens directly. Those irrigated beds produce 10-20% more than the non-graywatered beds.

Graywater filter.

With the light bulb glowing over your head you might have realized that practicing permaculture is not all that difficult. In fact, you probably are practicing it already and don’t realize it. Why? Because the knowledge contained under the umbrella of permaculture is not new; it combines the ancient and traditional knowledge of growing food with the modern science of ecology and new technology. Work in permaculture is self-evaluating: either it works or it doesn’t. The beauty of this movement is that, if you can learn from your errors, you can learn to design systems that work. You don’t have to wait for a committee to stamp your certificate or a teacher to baptize your understanding through tests.

“If you’re a scientist, you could liken it to a miraculous wardrobe in which you can hang garments of any science or any art and find they’re always harmonious with, and in relation to, that which is already hanging there.”
- Bill Mollison, the godfather of permaculture

Permaculture is a way of looking at the systems that sustain us, and designing them to have built-in endurance and sustainability to gain the highest output from the lowest input. It is not just the organic garden: the garden is just a piece of the bigger picture. A picture that includes the local climate, site topography, water access and drainage, capacity of the land and its users, where income is produced to finance the whole process and a host of other items. It is looking at the pieces of life and designing systems that produce the basic necessities needed to sustain and provide joy while creating rich, wealthy lives.

“Wealth is a deep understanding of the natural world.”
– Inuit definition

“I think it’s pointless asking questions like ‘Will humanity survive?’ It’s purely up to people – if they want to, they can, if they don’t want to, they won’t.”
- Bill Mollison

Bill Mollison, a disgruntled and highly motivated biologist, culminated a true “aha” moment with student David Holmgren in 1978 when they set out the seminal work Permaculture One. Coined as a combination of the words permanent and agriculture, and then permanent and culture, permaculture from its textual origins is about creating a world were we can live indefinitely. In this work, Mollison and Holmgren articulated their thoughts on sustainable living through a positive action movement in which anyone could be involved. The publication helped to create the first texts for the personal educational keystone of the movement: the Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC). Any keeners out there will be able to find PDC courses being offered in online and hands-on formats.

“If people want some guidance, I say, just look at what people really do. Don’t listen to them that much. And choose your friends from people who you like what they do – even though you mightn’t like what they say.”
- Bill Mollison

Contrary to the parental adage “do what I say, not what I do,” Mollison urges those interested to watch and see what is really happening. In a way, that’s how permaculture started. Working in wildlife relocation, Mollison realized that a forest needs no watering, weeding, fertilizing or other “outside care.” The forest is self-perpetuating. Mimicking the ecological principles he observed in the forest, he conceptualized that he could “make a system” that could produce food for human consumption. In essence, a food forest. This self-described “revelation” was understanding that there are beneficial interactions between living and non-living components. As people, we can assemble those components together to create beneficial connections and yields.

When Mollison asked an elderly Greek woman in a vineyard why she planted roses among her grapes, she replied: “Because the rose is the doctor of the grapes. If you don’t plant roses, the grapes get ill.” Accustomed to science, this answer did not sit well with Mollison. He began to research and found that the rose produces a certain root chemical that the grape root uptakes, which in turn repels the white fly (a pest for grapes). The story is the same from both Mollison and the woman’s perspectives: the grapes grow in community with the roses. However, the understanding behind the story changed. This story is where permaculture can be understood: in nature, organisms work in relation with one another. And using our commonsense we can observe these interactions, work out the commonsense or scientific understanding of what is happening, and reassemble the principle behind the interaction to create systems that feed, clothe, house, warm, and provide us with community.

Now in its fourth decade, the permaculture movement has spread like wildfire, creating a global grassroots community. Global in scope and adoption, permaculture has been able to specialize to meet specific needs. As permaculture is not an ideology, but rather an idea, it can change and adapt to any situation. In Haiti, permaculture practitioners were on the ground shortly after the earthquake, providing safe drinking water and human sanitation with a fraction of the budget of other aid organizations with twice the results. These efforts have grown from solid ethical building blocks that help guide the intentions of practitioners. These ethics, in order of priority and importance, are: Earth Care, People Care and Fair Share.

Earth Care

“We are sufficient to do everything possible to heal this Earth. We don’t have to suppose we need oil, or governments, or anything. We can do it.”
- Bill Mollison

“The Earth is a living, breathing entity. Without ongoing care and nurturing there will be consequences too big to ignore.”
- David Holmgren

Humanity has withdrawn so much of the natural capital from the earth’s savings account that we are no longer living off the surplus interest; we are now eating into the capital itself. We’re living on the savings, and they’re running low: it’s a lot like college without the getting-more-educated bit. From the north to south pole, to the tip of Mt. Everest and the bottom of the ocean, our environment is degraded and degrading at an alarming rate (imagine 1,000,000 fire alarms going off in a closed phone booth and you’re close to how serious the situation is). Synthesized chemicals at toxic levels can be found in every environment, in newborn children, and even in pollen (121 herbicides, fungicides and insecticides at last count); these are the very building blocks that support life.

Think of it this way: if you were hospitalized and depending on a medical life-support system, would you jiggle the plug, poke holes in the feeding tubes or pour toxic waste in the IV bag? Not unless you’re Keith Richards or a cockroach, and even then I think they’d both think twice about it … at least the cockroach would.

Earth Care is the top priority. Earth Care is our top priority. As a curmudgeonly 63 year old farmer from Manitoba advised, after I asked what I should grow on a certain piece of land…

Me: “What should we grow here-”

Him (cutting me off): “Soil.”

Me (frustrated but respecting my elder): “Right, I understand that, but in this micro-climate, what would be good to propagate-”

Him (cutting me off again): “Soil.”

Me (realizing there might be something he’s trying to tell me): “Okay, so you’re saying I should grow…”

Him (finitely stating): “Soil.”

At present, our greatest threat to humanity is not climate change (though that affects soil loss), nor pollution (this does affect soil loss), nor deforestation (now, that really affects soil loss). Our greatest threat is … soil loss. Without healthy ecosystems, soil is destroyed. Without soil, there is no food and, without food, the chairs around our global table become vacant. And it gets rather lonely sitting by oneself.

People Care

“I cannot save the world alone. It will take at least three of us.”
- Bill Mollison

Me, myself and I. Okay, and you too. And you can join, and … well heck, let’s invite everyone to the party. After ensuring that our life-support system is tended to, we turn to each other realizing that if the entire human species is on a planet with finite resources then we in turn all affect and effect each other. Like it or not, we are all in this together. In a closed system, the actions of one are felt by many, detrimental or beneficial alike. In permaculture, and life, everyone has something of value to bring to the party.

In a scarce economy, resilient employees embody the same strategy that ecology demonstrates: an organism that places itself in the most service to the whole, survives. We can see how helping friends and family survive supports our personal survival, and we may evolve a matured ethic that sees all humankind as friends and family and thus life itself as our ally. People care then turns into species care and we too have the “aha” moment that Sister Sledge had: “We are family.”

Fair Share

Remember kindergarten? No, not the dirt eating (which thankfully we don’t have to resort to … yet), but the idea of sharing. Well, sharing is back in style, sharing is the new khaki. With a new twist, fair share is also about abundance. Surplus is created either through an extraordinary amount of effort, which turns into a deficit of time and energy, or by limiting consumption. By conserving resources and setting limits to consumption, we can set our best course for survival to include others while creating the conditions to further the two ethics above.

The Prime Directive of Permaculture

“The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children.”
- from The Permaculture Handbook, by Bill Mollison

Under the prime directive of permaculture, the three ethics (Earth Care, People Care and Fair Share) guide us to devise methods of applying them to our gardens, land, economies and nature. We can see permaculture as “the mechanism of mature ethical behavior, or how to act to sustain the earth” and our existence on it.

Well, if this hasn’t blown your mind yet then strap in for round two … how to go about applying and practicing intentional permaculture. From the prime directive and the ethics we spiral outwards to principles, strategies and, finally, techniques. These three are the holy trinity of permaculture in action.

Principles

Principles are beneficial as there are no penalties for error, only learning from errors, thereby leading to new ideas and methods. Now, here’s where the idea of permaculture being open-source really gets going: at a recent permaculture teachers’ training session, the facilitator (a long-time permaculture practitioner and teacher) stated that she knew of over 372 principles related to the movement. 372? Yup, 372. And by the time you start practicing permaculture, I’m sure you’ll have come up with a few more, or remember one that your grandma used to use. My Ukrainian Baba used to bellow from the top of the stairs when my brother and I were rough-housing: “Smarten up or I’ll throw you out, one by each!” The humor (or maybe it’s the genius) of this maxim lies in the translation to English: those parts that do not work with the overriding ecological principles at play (like my Baba’s patience, or the ability of the earth to absorb the pollution we are producing) are “thrown out, one by each.”

As you move further down this rabbit hole you’ll find many principles. However, I found permaculture best sampled like a good buffet, in sizable portions. David Holmgren, the other author to the first book of permaculture, continued down his own path and has produced some excellent work, including 12 concise principles that are easy to remember and to implement. Some of my personal favorites of his are:

Integrate Rather Than Segregate

The three sisters. Photo credit: Abri Beluga.

This principle has always wowed me by providing concrete examples of how to integrate plants together in communities or guilds that provide for the needs of other plants. The traditional example in North America is the “three sisters,” or maize (corn), beans and squash. Benefiting from each other, the maize provides the structure for the beans to climb (no poles needed). The beans fix nitrogen for the soil and the other plants, while the squash vines spread along the ground, blocking the sunlight that weeds need. The squash leaves are also a “living mulch,” creating a microclimate that retains moisture while the prickly hairs on the vines help deter pests. This guild integrates while utilizing the “waste” of the other plants, thereby touching on another great Holmgren principle: Produce No Waste (meaning that everything can have a use, even if we call it “waste”).

The Mollisonian Permaculture Principles that stand out for me are:

Work With Nature, Rather Than Against It

The revolutionary Masanobu Fukuoka (you’ll thank yourself if you read his The One Straw Revolution) once remarked, “If we throw nature out the window, she comes back in the door with a pitchfork.” When insecticides are used, the predatory insects (insectivores or cannibals, as I like to call them) are wiped out with the pests, ensuring that if an explosion of pests proliferate next year there will be no predators to keep their populations in check. Consequently, more insecticides are sprayed, tipping the scale even more. All pests are never killed and the survivors’ resistance is bred into a new generation, riding nature’s pitchfork aimed right at our food crops.

Visible through this window in the south side of a cob building is a frost peach growing on Vancouver Island. Peaches are not typically grown on Vancouver Island, but this tree is thriving because of the heat absorbed by the structure and the resulting microclimate.

The Problem is the Solution

Everything works both ways. It is only our perspective that judges a thing to be beneficial or not. If the south side of the greenhouse is constantly facing the sun, construct that side out of glass or plastic (salvaged, if possible) and, as the north side never receives sun, let’s construct that side out of a substance that has thermal mass (think of it like a thermal battery: it can up-take heat and return the heat to the surrounding area) like rock, cob (a traditional building material made up of clay, sand and straw), or something else that absorbs solar heat.

A greenhouse with south-facing glass and a north cob wall to retain heat.

Moving swiftly along strategies, like the ones below, are just like a handy number two Robertson screw driver or your Felco pruners: a tool to aid you on your permaculture journey.

When designing any site, be it a garden, a house, or even a driveway, here are the first three things to consider, in order:
1. Water
2. Access
3. Structure

1) Water – No matter where you travel or what you do, water is where the chemistry of life occurs. It’s also where some of your biggest headaches or joys can come from. First, consider where your water source is. Is it close to land that has a lot of sun in all seasons? What’s the land like around the water source? Where does it recharge from (underground, a stream that comes in from your neighbors’ property, precipitation)? Next, where does the water go? Does it drain on the land? Is that drainage seasonal or consistent year-round? If water is life, understanding the nature of your water on-site can save thousands of hours and just as many aspirin or cups of willow tea.

2) Access – As people, we design systems to water, feed, warm, house and provide us with community. If we design those systems first and then go to design access, we may find that the 6′-wide bed is too big for us to garden from the side. Considering how much a system will have to be “bumped” up against informs our decisions on how and where to construct that system. For example, chickens (the official permaculture mascot) need daily feeding (input) and collection of eggs (output). As keepers of this system, additional time and strain is endured if the chicken coop is placed far away from the house. Thus, if a system is “bumped” up against constantly, then placing that system closer to where we are increases the yields (outputs) while decreasing the work (inputs). This also applies to pathways, driveways, and other forms of getting to and away from systems.

3) Structures – Now that you know the water is draining on the north side of the hill and the best vehicle access is from the south, siting your structure can be made by an informed decision. In North America 40% of all energy consumed is by building and maintaining structures. With such huge amounts of resources inputted into your structure (house, greenhouse, tool shed), it’s important to site your structure where water is accessible and not threatening, and access is easy and not labor intensive.

“Permaculture is the end of the lawn virus, symptomatic of consumer culture.”
“You could say it’s a rational man’s approach to not sh*tting in his bed.”
- Bill Mollison

Or perhaps the definition is: “it’s sustainability, distilled, served straight up.” Or maybe it is just understanding that silver bullet solutions are best left to werewolves, proving that silver bullets are as fictitious as their intended fantasy targets. Catch-all solutions like pesticides and magic pills always have unintended side effects: it’s best to address the problem at its source.

As Geoff Lawton (the architect behind the Youtube video “Greening the Desert” — worth the time to watch) says, “All life’s problems can be solved in the garden.” Maybe permaculture is all about organic gardening … however, you’d do well to discard the definitions and just go out there and continue to garden, add in a sprinkle of permaculture, and be fruitful and mulch apply.

Javan Kerby Bernakevitch is an environmental educator, professional communicator, facilitator and editor. An O.U.R. Ecovillage resident on the West Coast of British Columbia, Canada, Javan continues to expand his knowledge and passion for sustainability through permaculture as a designer and teacher-in-training.

Join the discussion on how to incorporate permaculture principles into the indoor garden: post your comments and questions below!

Aspartame is consumed by over 200 million people around the world. Also known as NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful, Canderel, Benevia, and E951, the chemical sweetener is found in more than 6,000 products, including carbonated soft drinks, dessert mixes, puddings, frozen desserts, yogurt, low calorie beer, vitamins and sugar-free cough drops. James S. Turner, Esq., a consumer rights lawyer and aspartame educator for over 30 years, tells us the story behind this popular ingredient, and why so many consumers are choosing to avoid it.

The Man Who Changed Our Food

Arthur Hayes Jr., who led the Food and Drug Administration when it approved aspartame in 1981 (NutraSweet) and 1983 (Equal), died February 11, 2010 in Danbury, Connecticut.

According to the February 15 issue of the New York Times, Dr. Hayes granted approval for the use of the sugar substitute aspartame in dry foods and as a tabletop sweetener in 1981. “Research had found,” the Times said, “that aspartame was associated with high rates of cancers in rats that had been given large doses, starting at what would be the equivalent of four to five 20-ounce bottles of diet soda a day for a 150-pound person.”

The Times also said that “research done after Dr. Hayes’s time as commissioner indicated that aspartame can sometimes cause incapacitating headaches and even seizures.” Today, aspartame, which is marketed as NutraSweet (when used as a food additive) and Equal (the tabletop version), is now also used in over 5,000 products like soft drinks, breakfast cereals, pudding mixes and chewing gum.

Here we see a thumbnail sketch of aspartame’s story: a sweet-tasting chemical, in spite of having caused high rates of cancers in rats before approval, and subsequently causing incapacitating headaches and even seizures, receives an FDA go-ahead to be consumed by hundreds of millions of human beings. Clever marketing, creating the soothing names “NutraSweet” and “Equal,” spur sales of the chemical into the billions of dollars.

An even darker story lies behind these few troubling facts.

The First Approval: 1974

In 1965, G.D. Searle & Company chemist James M. Schlatter, working on an anti-ulcer drug, accidentally discovered that aspartame tasted sweet. As did the discoverers of saccharin and cyclamate before him, he licked his finger and for the first time a human tasted what would revolutionize the sweetener market. Searle launched an effort to market their wonder additive, finally succeeding in 1981.

The story leading up to that 1981 approval and the story following it make clear why prudent consumers avoid products containing aspartame. This sweetener consists of the natural amino acids L-aspartic acid and L-phenylalanine, as well as methyl alcohol. It creates byproducts such as free amino acids, methanol and formaldehyde. In certain markets, aspartame is manufactured using a genetically modified variation of E. coli.

Two hundred times sweeter than sugar with almost no calories, aspartame is popular in certain diets. However, in addition to many safety problems, it tastes different than sugar, breaks down in heat, fails in baking, degrades shortening shelf life and loses flavor in some products, leaving an odd aftertaste for some and non-flavor or watery aftertaste for others. Still, smooth marketing turned it into a giant money maker.

In October 1980 an FDA Public Board of Inquiry (PBOI) found that aspartame caused an unacceptable level of brain tumors in animal testing and ruled that it should not be added to food. This ruling capped 15 years of regulatory deception by the FDA and Searle (acquired by Monsanto in 1985). Two decades of maneuvering, manipulating and dissembling by FDA, Searle and Monsanto followed the PBOI ruling.

Early tests of aspartame showed it produced microscopic holes and tumors in the brains of experimental mice, epileptic seizures in monkeys, and was converted by animals into dangerous substances, including formaldehyde. In 1974, however, in spite of the information in its files, the FDA approved aspartame as a dry-foods additive. The approval to market was short lived.

Blocking Aspartame/NutraSweet Approval for Seven Years

I, along with Dr. John Olney MD, a prominent brain researcher from Washington University in St. Louis, filed petitions with the FDA seeking a public hearing on the evidence. For the first and only time in its history, the FDA made public the data supporting its food-additive decision. Here was the evidence of monkey seizures, mouse brain cancers, eye damage, and very sloppy laboratory procedures at Searle.

Dr. Olney had already shown that one aspartic acid feeding caused microscopic holes in rat brains. Phenylalanine, aspartame’s second amino acid component, was known to lead to mental retardation, brain damage, and seizures in some susceptible children suffering from Phenylketonuria (PKU). Methanol, aspartame’s third ingredient, is highly toxic to humans and, in large amounts, is know to cause blindness.

Faced with this array of possible health dangers, the FDA granted the hearing requests in lieu of withdrawing its aspartame approval. The agency convinced Searle to refrain from marketing the sweetener until after completion of the hearing process. It then proposed that a Public Board of Inquiry (PBOI) review the matter. Backing and filling by the agency kept the PBOI from convening until January of 1980.

In July of 1975, while the FDA set up the PBOI, an FDA inspector conducting a routine review of Searle’s testing facilities found many deviations from proper procedures. Animals died and came back to life, aspartame feed got mixed with unsweetened feed, and results seemed fudged. This report spurred Congress to pass laboratory regulations and the FDA commissioner to empanel a Special Task Force to review Searle’s labs.

In December of 1975 the Task force reported serious problems with Searle’s research on a wide range of products, including aspartame. It found 11 pivotal aspartame studies conducted in a manner so flawed as to raise doubts about aspartame safety and create the possibility of serious criminal liability for Searle. Based on this report, the FDA stayed (suspended) aspartame’s approval, keeping the sweetener off the market.

Reviewing the Data

To review the questionable data, the FDA contracted, over serious internal objection, with a group of university pathologists (paid by Searle) to review reporting of the results of most of the studies, set up a task force to review the validity of three studies, and asked the U.S. Attorney for Chicago to seek a grand jury review of the monkey seizure study. Searle managed to thwart each of these efforts.

The pathologists paid by Searle only reviewed the failure to properly report data, while not reviewing the design or conduct of the pivotal studies. They found no serious reporting problems. The FDA task force found Searle’s key tumor safety study unreliable, but this was ignored. The U.S. attorney let the statute of limitations run out, then (along with two aides) proceeded to join Searle’s law firm.

While these committees met, the FDA organized the PBOI. Searle, petitioners Olney and myself, and the FDA Bureau of Foods each nominated three members for the board and the FDA commissioner selected one member from each list. Three world-class scientists made up the board, took evidence, and drafted and signed an unanimous report blocking the further marketing of aspartame.

The board, which convened in January of 1980, rejected the Olney/Turner request that the commissioner’s task force information contained in the Bureau of Drugs be included in its deliberations. Still, in October 1980, looking at only the evidence in Bureau of Foods files, the board blocked aspartame marketing until the tumor studies could be explained. The board said: “approval of aspartame for use in foods should be withheld at least until the question concerning its possible oncogenic (cancer) potential has been resolved by further experiments. The Board has not been presented with proof of reasonable certainty that aspartame is safe for use as a food additive under its intended conditions of use.” Unless the commissioner overruled the board, the matter was closed.

The New Commissioner Intervenes: Politics Overrules the Board

In November 1980, one month after the aspartame PBOI report, the country elected Ronald Reagan President. Donald Rumsfeld (a former congressman from Skokie, Searle’s home town, White House chief of staff, secretary of defense and, since January 1977, Searle’s president) joined Reagan’s transition team. Rumsfeld began a full court press against the board decision, orchestrating aspartame’s approval from inside the administration.

In January 1981 Rumsfeld told a sales meeting (as one attendee reported) that he would call in his chips and get aspartame approved by the end of the year. On January 25th, the day the new president took office, the previous FDA commissioner’s authority was suspended. Three months later the commissioner’s job went to Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes, who had done drug research on army recruits while Rumsfeld was defense secretary.

Transition records give no reason for the choice of Hayes, a professor with a defense department connection and no particular background in food and drug regulation. His Pentagon proximity to Rumsfeld seemed the primary explanation. In July, Hayes, defying FDA advisors, approved aspartame for dry foods: his first major decision. In November 1983 the FDA approved aspartame for soft drinks: the last decision on Hayes’s watch.

Also in November 1983, under fire for accepting corporate gifts, with the threat of an abuse of recruits charge from the Army inspector general looming, Hayes left the agency and went to Searle’s public relations firm as senior medical advisor. Later, Searle lawyer Robert Shapiro named aspartame “NutraSweet.” Monsanto purchased Searle. Rumsfeld received a $12 million bonus. Shapiro became Monsanto president.

Shortly after the FDA’s July 1983 soft-drink approval, Searle began test-marketing aspartame drinks, and complaints of dizziness, blurred vision, headaches, and seizures began arriving at the FDA. The complaints were more serious than the agency had ever received on any food additive. At the same time, scientists began looking more closely at this manufactured chemical sweetener.

The Record of Damage Piles Up

In 1985, the FDA asked the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to review the first 650 complaints (there are now over 10,000). The CDC found that the symptoms in approximately 25% of the complainants had stopped and then restarted, corresponding with their having stopped and then restarted aspartame consumption, either purposely or by accident. This finding suggests serious problems for some members of the population.

The FDA discounted the CDC’s report. The day that the FDA released the CDC report, Pepsi (with an advanced copy of the confidential CDC report) announced its switch to aspartame with a worldwide media blitz, drowning out the CDC reports of aspartame harm. The Pepsi announcement and aggressive marketing (millions of gumballs, a red and white swirl, tough contracts) made NutraSweet known in every home. Still the damage reports rolled in.

Data released in 1995 showed that human brain tumors in the general population, like those in the animal studies, had risen 10% and previously benign tumors turned virulent. Searle and the FDA’s deputy commissioner said the data posed no problem. Two years later this same FDA official became vice president of clinical research for Searle.

Current Cancer Science

In the early 21st century the European Foundation of Oncology and Environmental Sciences “B. Ramazzini” in Bologna, Italy presented new animal data suggesting that aspartame was a generalized carcinogen, at the very least involving haemopoietic and lymphoid organs and tissues. At the highest dose level tested in the Ramazzini study, 25% of female rats bore lymphomas-leukemias compared with 8.7% in the controls.

The foundation said: “Because of the globalization of the industrialized diet and the ever-increasing use of artificial sweeteners among billions of people in both industrialized and developing countries, the European Ramazzini Foundation considers its work on sweeteners to be of the highest priority for the protection of public health, in particular the health of children and pregnant women who are among the most vulnerable populations.”

“In light of this goal,” it continued, “and given the inadequacy of most of the previous carcinogenicity studies on artificial sweeteners, we have planned and are conducting additional research, not only on aspartame, but also on other widely diffused artificial sweeteners and blends used in thousands of foods, beverages and pharmaceutical products.”

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), the FDA in the U.S., the European Food Safety Authority’s Panel on Food Additives, Flavorings, Processing Aids and Materials (EFSA), and of course the NutraSweet Company all dismiss the new findings. Their most important claim is that human epidemiological studies do not show any difference in cancer rates between consumers and non-consumers of aspartame.

Increasing Demand

The Freedonia Group, a Cleveland-based research firm, reports that U.S. demand for alternative sweeteners in the past decade increased about 4 percent per year to $1.1 billion in 2009. Demand is projected to grow 3.4 percent annually through 2013.

Avoiding Aspartame/NutraSweet Makes Sense

Given the NIH conclusion, the danger warning of the experimental data was underlined by examination of studies done from 1985 to 1995. During that time researchers did about 400 aspartame studies, divided almost evenly between those that gave assurances and those that raised safety questions. Most instructively, Searle paid for 100% of those studies that found no problem. All studies paid for by non-industry sources raised questions.

NIH epidemiological studies are not laboratory studies. Populations are not individual people. The jury is still out on aspartame safety for various susceptible individuals. There is a pattern of potential harm in animal studies and human complaints that raise a red flag. Symptoms come and go as individuals use and stop using aspartame. If NutraSweet is harming people, it is doing so whether scientists know it or not.

Given this record, it is little wonder that many health-conscious people believe that avoiding NutraSweet improves their quality of life. If and when a scientific consensus concludes that aspartame puts some, if not all, of its consumers at risk, it will be much too late. The damage will have been done. The point is to eat safely now. There is no reason to risk the aspartame dangers complained about by so many individuals.

Read the Label

In the U.S. and Canada, foods and beverages that contain aspartame must include “contains phenylalanine” on the label. Be aware that products that contain MSG (monosodium glutamate) also bear a relationship to aspartic acid in aspartame. In the case of medications, look at both the active and inactive ingredients.

The Many Faces of Aspartame

Aspartame is also known as NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful, Canderel, Benevia, and E951.

Leading aspartame manufacturer Ajinomoto announced in November 2009 that it would be rebranding its artificial sweetener as “AminoSweet” in Europe, the CIS, the Middle East and Africa. Ajinomoto has also developed a vanilla-flavored version of aspartame, called “advantame.” Ajinomoto USA states that: “It is our expectation to obtain the U.S. approval [for the use of advantame in food from the FDA] within two years.” Ajinomoto USA also “intend[s] to apply for [approval in] Australia/New Zealand and Europe.”

Aspartame Alternatives

Alternatives to chemical or artificial sweeteners such as aspartame include: honey, maple syrup, turbinado sugar, fruit, fruit juice concentrates, and various forms of stevia (an herb).

Aspartame and Monsanto

NutraSweet made up an important part of the Monsanto Empire between 1985 and 2000. Here is a road map of how its ownership evolved:

The NutraSweet Company makes and sells NutraSweet, their trademarked brand name for the artificial sweetener aspartame, and Neotame.

Robert B. Shapiro, who worked as an attorney for the Illinois-based G.D. Searle & Company from 1979, became CEO and Chairman of its NutraSweet subsidiary in 1982 where he remained until 1990. Monsanto bought Searle in 1985. When Searle was acquired by Monsanto, Shapiro moved up the management chain in the latter, becoming Vice President in 1990, President in 1993 and CEO in 1995. He remained CEO of Monsanto until 2000. Shapiro oversaw a period of industrial expansion and consumer regulatory approval for the genetically-engineered foodstuff corporation. In 2000 Monsanto merged with the Swedish pharmaceutical company Pharmacia, and Shapiro became chair of this entity until he stepped down in February 2001. In March 2000, Monsanto sold NutraSweet to the private equity firm J.W. Childs.

WORDS: Brett McCormick, William McKenzie, and Alec Mayall

This hydroponic greenhouse is designed to feed four families with fresh produce throughout the year. With the collective financial investment and sweat equity of four different families, a shared greenhouse an easy way to connect with friends, family and/or neighbors and help the environment by cultivating your own food. Initial costs might seem high, but with a properly built structure and some TLC you will be able to cut your trips to the store down exponentially. Not only will you be saving money in the long run, you will know what you are consuming. In this issue we’ve chosen a 12’x24’ structure to demonstrate what type of facility would be needed to produce enough lettuce, bell peppers, tomatoes, and cucumbers for four families throughout the year.

(Click to see a larger image.)

Budget

There are many different types of greenhouse structure kits on the market today. You can find kits for greenhouses this size for around US$500. This would be a simple kit, only providing building materials for the actual structure. Other kits for this size of greenhouse range in the $2,000 to $4,000 range. These structures will provide you with a more aesthetically-pleasing greenhouse with better ventilation. Much of this budget is dependent on how technically inclined and handy you are. For practicality purposes, we will figure that the four families in this collective will complete all of the work, therefore minimizing the labor costs.

A conservative budget to get your hydroponic greenhouse fully up and running will be around $5,000 to $8,000. Many of these kits don’t supply a foundation, hydroponics systems, electricity, water, and many other factors that go into this budget. The further distance your greenhouse is from utilities (e.g. electricity, water), the more expensive it will be to run them to the greenhouse. When considering your budget and which features you’d like to include in your hydroponic greenhouse, remember that it is always easier to add internal features than it is to add size to your greenhouse.

Site Location & Preparation

When selecting a site it is important to ensure there is ample sun for the majority of the day. It is essential to have an open spot where the skies are clear to the east, west, and south. If you are unable to have completely clear skies facing these directions, you will reduce the maximum plant growth in your greenhouse. A little shade is acceptable, as this is a family-run project and you are not building a greenhouse for commercial production.

When considering the site for foundation preparation you should ensure that the site is level. As mentioned earlier, greenhouse kits don’t come with foundation kits, although most of them will tell you how to prepare a foundation. One simple solution is to use treated 4”x6” wood for your foundation. It is important that, while fastening these together, the foundation remains square and level. You can fasten these with decking screws or, even better, galvanized lags that will penetrate connecting wood to at least two inches. Anchoring your foundation is very important. To do this you can drill half-inch holes every 3 feet in the 4×6 and pound 24” rebar into the ground. You want to make sure that the rebar is flush to the wood so that they won’t get into the way of the actual greenhouse structure. Also, ensure that your foundation is slightly above grade.

Preparing the Floor

For your flooring, you want to use something that will drain easily but that is also easy to walk on. A simple option is gravel. Before you lay in the crushed rock, you want to ensure that you lay down black ground-cover fabric to ensure that all weeds are kept out of your ideal environment. It will actually benefit you if you lay this down before the foundation is set up, because otherwise the weeds will enter in through the corners of the foundation. The next steps are to secure the greenhouse to the foundation. From here you can follow the instructions of your greenhouse kit.

What’s for Dinner?

For this greenhouse, tomatoes, bell (sweet) peppers, cucumbers and lettuce are being grown.

Tomatoes

Tomatoes are started in 4” rockwool and are placed on rockwool slabs so the roots have more room to grow. The slabs are wrapped in plastic, so it is important to cut slits in the plastic to allow excess water to leak out. The slabs are placed directly onto the gravel so they can drain well. They are top fed from drippers. If you want more insulation under the rockwool slabs, you can put foam underneath so they aren’t touching the ground. This is not completely necessary, but it can help control the temperature of the root system. The rockwool slabs are 3’ long and can house 5-6 tomato plants. Each tomato plant will produce around 20lbs of fruit each season. You will need to train the young tomatoes to grow up onto a trellis system so that the plants can support the fruit. Rockwool is a good choice because tomatoes’ root systems can thrive in the small space and don’t need as much volume to be effective. As well, tomatoes are annual plants so you can spend the extra money for the rockwool as the rockwool will suffice for the entire season. Rockwool is a proven media for tomatoes and will promote vigorous growth. The tomatoes are planted in September and are pulled in July. This gives you time to clean out the greenhouse and start fresh for another year of crops.

Cucumbers

Cucumbers are started in 4” rockwool cubes and are grown in 5-gallon pots, two cucumbers per pot. Coir is the chosen medium for this because it is cheap, effective, and it is a byproduct, so we are preventing waste. Also, with coir you have the option to treat and re-use it for the next growing season. The cucumbers will need a trellis system to support them when they start to produce cucumbers. They are top fed through drippers from the main nutrient reservoir. In this greenhouse there are 20 cucumber plants: you can expect to produce 20-30 cucumbers per plant each season.

Peppers

Just like the cucumbers, the peppers are planted in 5-gallon pots, with coir as the grow media and a top-fed dripper system. You can expect to produce about 20 peppers per plant each season.

Lettuce

The lettuce is grown in a NFT system: it is the most effective technique for growing leafy greens, because lettuce has such a fast turnaround. The only media needed for this system is the media that you propagate your seeds in. You can either buy or make a NFT system. There are five 4”x4” troughs with 10 growing sites in each trough. The troughs should be placed about 4-10” apart, depending on the stage of growth that the lettuce is in. With this system, you should be able to crank out at least 10-15 heads per week or about 250 per season, depending on how you set it up and if you are constantly propagating and have a cycle going. In hotter months you can expect to cultivate your heads of lettuce in about 8 weeks, from seed to final product. It will take about 13 weeks in winter months. This will need a separate nutrient reservoir, which is constantly circulating. The troughs are set up on a slight slope so that they drain back into the reservoir. Make sure that you have the reservoir covered so that you don’t have a build up of algae.

Grow Environment

Ensure that you have vents on either side of the greenhouse for proper ventilation. Put screens around the vents to guarantee that no pests enter your greenhouse through these vents. Keep in mind that a very fine screen will inhibit proper airflow. One solution is to build a box wrapped in a fine screen so that there is more surface area for the air to pass through. Also, install multiple oscillating fans to ensure proper air movement.

The desired temperature is 65°F (18°C) at night and 75-80°F (24-27°C) during the day. The better quality polycarbonate product used will make heating and cooling easier.

If you have good air movement in your site, simple vents will suffice at moving air around your greenhouse and cooling it. The most consistent way to cool your greenhouse is with an electrical fan, pulling in cold air and pushing out the hot air. Another economical way to cool your greenhouse is to have an evaporative cooling system. This works very well in areas of low humidity and high temperatures. For areas with higher humidity and lower temperatures, it isn’t as effective. An evaporative cooler will be able to lower temperatures by 5-7°F (14-15°C). A last resort to cooling is using shades. They are are sold in different colors and densities, but the white fabric is the most effective cooling shade for the light that it cuts out. Usually they are applied in the spring and are taken off in the fall when the temperatures start to drop.

Good Green Builders was founded in December of 2009. It’s a first-of-its-kind general contracting company that specializes in the construction of indoor hydroponic grow rooms. Based in the San Francisco Bay area, GGB offers a complete line of services and equipment to accommodate the needs of anyone who desires to have an indoor garden.

How many people can you feed with your indoor garden? Share your tips, tricks and lessons-learned below!

(Image credit: University of Guelph.)

If you’re one of those crazy soil-gardeners who believe that manure is heavenly and should be revered, well … clearly you don’t manage an intensive hog operation. These factory farms are dealing with an environmental (not to mention ethical) crisis: phosphorus pollution of surface and groundwater, as a result of the massive manure lagoons and run-off.

Developed in 1999, and now on its way to commercial production and a place on grocery store shelves, the Enviropig^TM is apparently the solution. Perhaps we should instead question the problem. Intensive hog “farms,” cattle feedlots, and intensive egg production and poultry facilities are creating toxic wastelands, treating the animal inmates as nothing more than animated foodstuffs.

Hog confinement operations typically consist of a sow barn containing an average of 5,000 sows, a nursery barn with about 19,000 piglets, and a finishing barn with 12,000 to 14,000 pigs. (Photo credit: Friends of Family Farmers.)

In contrast, small-scale agriculture sees manure as a necessary part of building healthy soil and producing nutritious, healthy food. “Everything in moderation” is the key to a sustainable model of agriculture, and clearly the intensive, industrial models we’ve adopted are not working.

So, What’s For Dinner?

The Enviropig is now on its way to landing on Canadian plates, with Environment Canada recently determining that the Enviropigs are in compliance with the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, and therefore can be produced outside of the research context in controlled facilities. Submissions have been made to Health Canada and other federal agencies – including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2007 – to have the pigs approved for human consumption and commercialization. At this time, no country has approved products derived from genetically engineered animals for human or animal consumption.

But given our North American governments’ laissez faire attitude toward genetically modified food, Enviropigs will no doubt soon appear as bacon, sausages and ham on grocery store shelves. The best part? We won’t even be able to tell, because both Canada and the U.S. refuse to require mandatory labeling of genetically modified food.

WORDS: Hydroguy

To all the consumers who find the sheer magnitude of the plethora of plant products bewildering: I feel your pain. To know nothing is sheer abysmal confusion, yet to know more does not seem to make product choice easier. When I see new growers walk into a store with a blank gaze I can actually observe their mental processes block as the overwhelming, yet exciting, stimuli flashes at them from numerous brightly colored bottles. This blank gaze often turns into a mix of confusion and skepticism. Too often novice growers think in terms of ‘Is it real or BS?’ whereas they should really be asking: ‘Do I need this?’ All products are of use in some or another application, it’s just a matter of finding what’s useful to you.

Base Hydroponic Nutrients

All organisms are elemental and require elements to live. We can look at our “vitamin/mineral” requirements as humans and it’s a short list. Plants have a similar “short list” and science has determined that, in order to technically survive, plants must get hold of them. Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium (NPK), micro nutrients, etc. So these are the base survival needs. But to think of this as the limit of an organism’s needs is obtuse, just as a human would not have a great life eating cardboard for calories and taking vitamins. That said, whether your concern is simply production or quality of produce, you will need a base nutrient to supply the required minerals for growth. In the near-imperceptible chain of causality that affects plants outdoors, you have covered the most basic rudimentary needs. To qualify as a “base nutrient” all that is required are the N, P, and K in whatever ratio and micro-nutrients in sufficient quantity for your plant. Base nutrients are similar, but not the same. To arrive at a base nutrient (20-20-20 for example) a company can use various elemental compounds in combination; different combinations can have more or less purity at achieving the target mineral balance, and impurities are associated elements unintended for the outcome, such as arsenic. Aside from the ‘backpacked’ impurities in lesser quality products, different companies also use various arrangements of elemental compounds: for example, Calcium Nitrate or Ammonium Nitrate (among others) to provide the nitrogen. Different-sourced ingredients, as well as the final ratio of minerals, will all have slight variance in end use – those exact differences can be discussed another time.

Hydroponic base nutrients come in liquid 3-part, 2-part, and powder forms (”Why pay for water?”, some growers ask.) What you want is determined by preference, budget, availability, and trend. Read, ask your fellow growers, and inquire at your store to see what is buzzing – most base hydroponic nutrients are usable in any medium regardless of name. “Three part” can mean “use all three parts in conjunction” at different dilutions for each stage, or it can have one Grow and one Bloom for those respective stages and a third bottle added during both. “Two part” is often two parts for Grow and two for Bloom: four bottles mischievously pretending to be two. “Single part” is the actual two-part system with a Grow and a Bloom, or something representing those stages such as 20-20-20 and 15-30-15, and single part is also where you will find the “slurry” concoctions of mineral-based nutes with organics included. The ‘mineral/organic slurry’ is of some benefit to peat users since they add some cation exchange capacity (to be discussed later) to the inert peat without going all hippy.

“Well, I am using coco, so I need some coco food.” No, you don’t. Get better quality coco or add some cal/mag. Old coir was crappier because people didn’t realize the importance of desalinating it thoroughly, or some unscrupulous companies took the cheap route. Most coco-specific nutrients and only slightly increased in cal/mag and sometimes lessened in nitrogen – big whoop. If you are 100%-coco always then maybe it suits you, but I don’t see the importance.

There’s also the new “premium” base nutrients out there with labels donning expensive jewelry etc – these are still new to date for confidence, but if you’re willing to pay the piper for a trial there is some good buzz about some of them. As plant food becomes more of an organic chemistry art, we swerve less out of simple minerals and more into proprietary compounds we cannot know of even if we think we might understand them. That said, there still remains a need for disclosure and I can’t hold it against anyone for leaning to products with some transparency – in their attempt to avoid competitive replication, nutrient companies tend to alienate the consumer from understanding what their product is. Similarly, replication is a concern for consumers: nobody wants to add the same thing twice, and “just use it” is simply not convincing.

Organic Base Nutrients and Enhancers

The French Paradox. If you’ve never heard of it, pause to Google, but this is one example of a pretty basic point: there are more beneficial compounds in our food than simply vitamins. After the basic mineralogical requirements to sustain life, there are all the other bazillion compounds to improve the quality of life or, in our case, quality of produce of whatever form. An apple can technically minimally exist, or an apple can be packed with flavor, vitamins, and The Other Stuff (technical term – TOS). TOS represents turpines, flavonoids, organic acids, and a long list of stuff we don’t care to know of but still want to derive the benefits of. I don’t think it’s scientifically accepted that adding compost, kelp, guano, or another manure will increase the bio-active chemistry in produce, but “foliar feeding” isn’t accepted (in Canada) either – so my crutch is simple time-tested anecdotal observation: including organics will improve the quality of the end produce, thus increasing its flavor, aroma, and TOS.

Organic base nutes have come a long way in the last few years – mostly in convincing people they are worthwhile. We thought plants ate dirt, then realized they ate minerals from dirt (or water) – now it seems the geeks have decided that even larger organic compounds can make their way into the plants, such as vitamins. As always, it will always take science much longer to prove what people have been doing successfully for thousands of years, and continue to do today in “less advanced” areas of the world. The challenge for growers in the petrol world has been to match the yield of mineral nutes, and this has been displayed by various growers in enough circles to be generally accepted. It is a matter of substrate reuse and nurture, knowing what to add when – I will save details, but suffice to say if it is something you’re interested in it’s much easier today than ever, but still comes with a new learning curve.

Organics in hydroponics systems is something people would have balked at years ago; now there are products designed for such use. Growers have tested all forms of thick, organic sludge in their systems and, as much as commonsense still rules regarding buildup, slime clogs, and sugar coating, with a bit of elbow grease and absence of emitters or spaghetti hose many systems can run with nutrients not at all designed to be used in water gardens. The rigidity in this case is for generalization: you can’t tell everyone to do something that half will screw up. But, given the motivation and some knowledge, all these “can and can not” principles of growing can be realized as arbitrary guidelines. Beyond the liability of warranty and labeling, do what thou wilt.

ENHANCERS are there to enhance mineral nutes. You see, I think organics makes quality, whether it’s true or not. What is less debated is the notion that organic enhancers help make mineral nutes more available. Cation Exchange Capacity (CEC) are big words meaning “the ability for dirt to grab nutrients for later use.” Peat has nearly none, coco has some – either way, more is good. Humates, composts, organic sludge – these are midway rest stops for minerals between your bucket and your plant because they have a high CEC. Without a CEC component in peat, your nutes are pretty much only around as long as they are soluble – or, with reactive minerals, much less time. Without organic stuff, peat is only a fiber: it hasn’t any real ability to stretch the lifespan of a mineral nute until an organic component is added. Often a combination of things are used, such as guano or worm castings added to the peat – and/or some compost tea or other organic blend (or even a dash of base nute sludge, gotta love the sludge) with food irrigated in.

Next Up: Grow Store 102 – Bloom Boosters and Stimulants