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There are two things I don't like about my hydroponic system, the fact that bought nutrient mixtures are totally inorganic and the cost of keep buying the stuff.
The two are about equally annoying, the cost because I'm mean and the fact that it's inorganic when the rest of my garden has been totally organic for the 20 years I've lived here. The cost in fact probably represents 90% of the running costs as the only other expenditure is electricity for the pump to run for a total of 15 minutes per day (abt 20c per week).
So I've been playing about with trying to concoct an organic nutrient and so far it's looking pretty good. Of course I started this venture just as the growing season started to wind down, so I probably won't be able to do much more this year. But, now that I have a simple basic recipe means that next year I can tinker away with the ratios, adding bits until I'm satisfied with the results.

The basic recipe is activated compost tea made from equal quantities of comfrey leaves and seaweed plus a small quantity of compost.
The comfrey (or could be nettles) give the basic NPK, the seaweed gives loads of trace elements as well as some more NPK and the home made compost gives the necessary humic acid.

I grew a courgette plant in my small hydro unit and allowed it to deteriorate by running it with just plain water. The leaves yellowed over the course of a week and it looked very sick. I then replaced the water with the activated tea and it almost immediately recovered, although the old yellowed leaves stayed yellow all the new leaves were a nice dark green and it started to fruit again.

Fun and games next year then, tinkering with the recipe to satisfy the needs of all the plants I grow, from tomatoes to cauliflowers.

Have you looked into replacing at least some of the nutrients with urine? (And before you say yuck - urine is practically sterile when it leaves the body... And if it's your own, you know 100% what's in it.)

No I must admit I hadn't thought of urine. That may well be on the list of ingredients for next year's trials, although I'm not sure about mine as I take quite a few pills and a mid morning pee smells extremely "medical".

I've just scored myself a very robust pipe for making comfrey/nettle tea. So that's good. Can you make seaweed tea the same way - i.e. pack it in the tube with the other stuff and let it drip into a bucket. Seaweed doesn't strike me as something that would rot that quickly, although the comfrey might spur it on.

Otherwise how do you utilise the seaweed - as there's tons being washed up at the moment it would be a real shame to miss it.

Can you boil the compost soup/urine/virgin blood to steralise it Tony?

is that even nessesary?

Kelp especially turns to jelly in a very short time if kept warm and moist. That's not how I'm doing it though, I put comfrey and seaweed in water and aerate it like aerobic activated compost tea. The seaweed didn't disintegrate much in the short time I took to make the nutrient so I'm not sure how much came out in the way of trace elements, so that's another aspect to experiment with.

Seaweed is a wonderful material, spread in thick all over your garden as a mulch especially if you have light sandy soil. In the tunnel it's not so easy though because it dries out and goes brittle over winter. Probably if you double dug it in it would be fine, otherwise compost as much as you can get. The islanders around the British Isles made their soil purely from sand and seaweed.

doofaloofa wrote:Can you boil the compost soup/urine/virgin blood to steralise it Tony?

is that even nessesary?

I don't think it's necessary Doofa, or desirable as you would probably drive off some of the nitrogen content.

Green Aura wrote:I've just scored myself ...

If ever there was a word usage which puts anyone within a period of time, that's it

Odsox wrote:No I must admit I hadn't thought of urine. That may well be on the list of ingredients for next year's trials, although I'm not sure about mine as I take quite a few pills and a mid morning pee smells extremely "medical".

Yes, pharmaceutical remnants in urine/sewage sludge are a major problem. Actually, if it's just you who eats the stuff grown with it, you might be able to reduce your medical intake - kind of recycling of medication...

I use diluted urine for seedlings that need nutrients and that I don't have room to plant out at the moment - watered from below, of course, you'd try to avoid splashing it on the leaves - and it works very well. One advantage is that it is liquid already! If you are looking for more natural fertiliser to add to your range, try to get struvite. We ran an experiment with it once (with grass and barley - when I still had a proper job!) - it was a good addition, and I am sure will become more popular in future what with the lack of phosphate fertiliser.

what kind of quantities are you getting through Tony?

urine is a great fetilizer

i use it on the brassica

i also get several gallons of black liquid from the compost toilet sump

MKG wrote:

Green Aura wrote:I've just scored myself ...

If ever there was a word usage which puts anyone within a period of time, that's it

As I wrote it I was thinking "Someone's going to pick me up on this one". And there it is, not in the way I'd imagined, but I got the right bod.

doofaloofa wrote:what kind of quantities are you getting through Tony?

Next year I will have a third pipe in use, then I shall get through 120 litres every 3 weeks.
Hence the desire to make my own for nothing.

I did wonder if you could use seaweed and comfrey as the liquid nutrient. I have just returned from a seaweed foray with three huge bags. I put the seaweed through my shredder. I made some compost for my tomatoes by layering well made compost and seaweed in an old water tank, it has a pipe at the bottom and I chucked any waste water into it from the pigs bowl. I was drawing off some very brown and seaweed smelling liquid, the seaweed broke down really well, I think shredding it up is the key to it breaking down better

I'll give that a try, dnd. Not sure where I'll get pig water from, though.

Green Aura wrote:I'll give that a try, dnd. Not sure where I'll get pig water from, though.

It's not easy to score pig water, if you can't find any locally, I'll post you some