Hydroponic Solutions
Hydroponic, NFT, Bench, and Other Solutions
Hydroponic Growing Systems
Hydroponic is a generic term given to plants grown in a non-soil or non-substrate operation. Hydroponic systems can be in pipes, trays, or raised beds. The plants are fed via circulating water, containing plant food or selected nutrients.
They can be from simple home systems to complex wall vertical farms and can grow to both indoor and outdoor massive pipe systems. Regardless of the hydroponic setup, they all have similar issues.
- Plant stress due to drying out root systems.
- Food and water distribution systems
- Plant stress due to high fluctuations in water temperature
- Environmental conditions such as direct sunlight, frost, hail, shade cover, or greenhouse setup
Although we do have environmental control solutions, on this page we are going to address plant stress from high fluctuations in water temperature fluctuations.
Types of Hydronic Systems
There are many different hydroponic systems from NFT solutions to circulating water through grow pipes, to floating pontoons on a water body. All with one main goal, controlling the plants’ root temperatures.
Examples include:
- Soil Warming – Underground pipes that heat soil beds
- Underbench Heating – Heating loops that provide localised hydronic heating.
- Nutrient Film Technique – NFT systems use circulating thin film of water running constantly past plant roots inside a trough pipe setup.
- Deep Water Culture – DWC systems can be small water-filled trays or large pond-like setups. Usually have floating pontoons with plant roots sitting in the water.
- Wick Systems – Has suspended plants and encourages plant roots to seek out the water body. Or use the capillary action of wicks to draw water into a medium that the plants draw water from.
- Ebb and Flow – This can be set up like other systems, but use timers to provide plants periodic water supply, and dry-out periods. More suitable for plants that would rot if in a constant water supply.
- Drip System – is just like a drip watering system except instead of dripping onto the soil, the drips are targeted at the root zone area.
- Aeroponics – A method where the plant roots are almost free to air and a light misting system is used to keep the roots wet, but not drowned in water.
- And More
Why Root Warming is Important
Plants are made out of many different parts but can be broken down into 3 main areas.
- Shoots – Stem, leaves, flower & fruit etc.
- Roots – Stabilising, water & food collectors
- Crown – The node joining the shoots to the roots
Although composed of similar material the roles of the roots and shoots are basically opposite. Roots pump water up and the stems push energy down. The crown serves as the switching centre that facilitates these important functions.
Shoot Zone
Incorporates all the parts of a plant that you can see. They can capture the energy from the sun, rotate their leaves towards or away from the sun and moderate their own internal temperature through respiration.
The shoot zone primary duty is energy absorption and propagation. Although they are the main source of plants energy the root structure is the main user.
Root Zone
Roots are a critical barrier for plants and are designed to find and absorb nutrients and keep water inside the plant. However they do not generate their own energy, instead, they make up the majority of the energy consumed by the plants. Collected nicely by the leaves and passed down.
Roots take in water and they do their best not to give it up and as such do not transpire to cool the tissue but instead transfer the excess heat generated in these reactions (latent heat) to the surrounding medium.
Dense mediums such as soil, sand, even water, have a large temperature buffer that makes the 24-hour swing in temperatures a root will see very minimal under natural conditions.
However, in many horticultural operations, these stable root temperatures are either not achieved or not even thought about, as they are the great unseen part of the plant. Lots of money is spent on controlling environmental spaces through the use of greenhouses without much thought to the root structures below.
Crown Zone
The crown zone has a very important role. It works hard to control the water from the roots. Water in the roots is usually under pressure and in the stem, the zone is in a low-pressure condition. As the leaves perspire the crown has to control this flow.
The crown also has to handle all the chemical reactions required to pass energy from the leaves down to the roots.
Why is Root Warming Needed
The crown is the important junction between the roots and the stem of the plant, however, the roots and crown require ideal temperatures to perform their roles well.
Low root temperatures and high root temperatures retard the plant’s growth, but fluctuating root temperatures are known to cause higher mortality rates in plants.
Evolution over time has enabled plants to adapt to localised conditions and the roots, crown and stems have developed tricks to cope with this fluctuation. However, humans have developed their own range of plant variants as well as taken plants from their natural environments. We then grow these plants utilising many different methods from in soil to in water to hydroponics and greenhouse systems.
Fluctuating root zone temperatures increase plant stresses and as mentioned retard or kill a plants ability to pass water up or energy down to where it is needed. These additional stresses on the plant and the crown zones often cause stunted growth, no growth or a collection of dead or dying plants.
Maintaining root temperatures is so important as it removes these stresses and allows the roots and the crown to do their jobs in growing the plant.
The temperature will vary from plant to plant, but maintaining a stabilised temperature is more critical than the actual temperature requirement for success. However, root temperatures around 18 to 27 Celsius is considered ideal for most vegetable crops.
Ground temperatures also affect seed germination and is normally a little warmer than normal growing conditions.
Bench & Soil Warming Solutions
Toyesi has several bench & soil warming concepts we can discuss with you.
- Hydroponic water temperature control
- under bench heat mats
- Soil bed warming
- hydronic heating
- NFT water temp control
- space temp control
We also do custom designed concepts, so if you have an idea, feel free to discuss it with us and we may be able to build the temperature control system for your project.
For more ideas for horticulture feel free to read some of Toyesi’s blogs – Blogs Click Here
For Hortidaily Industry News Click Here
Temperature Control
Since most of these hydroponic solutions are in raised beds, for ease of plant picking, they are subject to the effects of localised environmental temperatures and solar influences. This means that the water temperature can fluctuate from 5 degrees to 40 degrees depending on the season and time of day. These fluctuations can retard plant growth significantly and can also kill less hardy plants. Soil-based grow systems have a better temp change buffer, but root zone temp is still important.
However, before you just run out and get a heat pump or gas-based heating system to prevent the water from getting too cold. Overheating is often even worse than being too cold. Also, different plants also have different ideal temperature ranges. Some plants like lettuce prefer 18 to 22 Celsius water temperatures, and plants like Tomatoes prefer slightly warmer conditions. So, when considering your heating or cooling project please take this into account.
Hydroponic temperature management systems should be designed for your particular hydroponic setups
Using reverse-cycle heat pump technology, our heat pumps manage a dead zone temperature range. Cooling if the water gets too hot, or heating if the water gets too cold. This way once you know what your plants need, all you need to do is set the temperature setpoint and let the system do what it needs to do.
Sizing your Heat Pumps
Toyesi’s Trident Farm Fresh Heat Pumps were designed with Aquaculture, Horticulture and associated farm-based applications. The range of systems cover from 4kW to 58kW, and so can even be customised for modular design covering 300kW or more. Meaning we can cater for small, medium and larger hydroponic setups.
To size up a heat load is not as simple as just looking at how much water you have. Flowrates, ambient conditions, open-air or greenhouse setup, desired temperature range and other critical information needs to be gathered first. Once we have this information we will have an understanding of the kW cooling & Heating you require and we can select the correct sized system.
If you may expand your system in the future, let us know, as we may have to select a system to allow for these changes.
Hydroponic & Aquaponic Systems
Need Additional Help
To understand different methods there are many different sites like NoSoilSolutions.com (no association with) that can give you ideas of how to set them up. Or you can contact DPI, PCA or Hortidaily for additional information. We also know some industry experts that can advise, design or build a hydroponic system for you. Including companies such as Total Water Services, Hydromasta or Pure Hort and others. Drop us a line and we can try our best to point you to the best person to help. Or contact us and we can help design your hydroponic temperature management system.
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