Basic Ebb & Flow, looking for advice on vertical farming.

[Tesseract]

Hey everyone I'm just getting into hydroponics and here is my basic Ebb & Flow system I have running outside; because the sun is free.

I'm looking at setting up a vertical tower system with multiple towers in the fall to take the operation indoors. I'm wondering which brands or off-brand designs have people had success with in the past?

[GpsFrontier]

Hello Tesseract,
Why are you looking to buy a commercially manufactured hydro system instead of building your own custom hydro systems? Are you not comfortable building your own?

[Tesseract]

I'm looking at the options, basically I have an idea but no baseline to compare it with, so I'm looking at commercial options so I can see if my tower design and orientation works better or not.

[GpsFrontier]

It's fine to look at commercially built systems to get ideas, but frankly not only are they overly expensive, but their not designed for your space as well as the specific plants your growing. Most new growers tend to want to design and build their hydroponic systems first, then decide what their going to grow in it. That's doing thongs backward. You always want to decide what you want to grow first, and how much of it you want to grow. Only then can you design and build a hydroponic system to do it to accomplish your goals efficiently. I mean it's like building a house, you need to decide what's going to be built on it, how big it will be, how many rooms it will have. etc. etc.. before you pour the foundation. If pour the foundation without fully thinking out what's going to be put on it, you just wind up having to start over.

I would suggest doing first things first, decide what you want to grow, as well as how much of it you want to grow. That's when you should start looking at the best way to design a system to maximize the space you have to work with. I personally have never bought a hydroponic system, every system I grow in is custom made by me for the crops that will be growing in it.

[Tesseract]

I've got some test plant growing in a basic system outside too see what grows well that I'll be selecting from for the indoor system.

[GpsFrontier]

Everything grows well in hydroponics if you build the hydroponic system to accommodate their needs, as well as supply the right growing environment. Again, that's why you need to know what will be growing in it first, so you can design the system for it. It doesn't mater what plants are growing in it, if you don't give the plants the right environmental growing conditions and design the system to accommodate their needs, they wont do well. You can grow anything hydroponically from root crops, to trees, to corn, berry's, herbs, micro greens, horseradish and wasabi, beans, been sprouts, Spanish, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, etc. etc. etc.. The only thing you can't grow hydroponically are mushrooms, and that's only because of a technicality in the definition of hydroponics. You can design a system to grow them, you just cant technically call it hydroponics.

Just because something grows well in one system and under certain conditions doesn't mean it will grow the same under other conditions and in another system. Not unless you mimic the same exact system and same exact conditions.