After an irrigation cycle starts, the solution will first mix with the remnants of the last irrigation cycle within the media, which will make the pH and EC of the return different from those of the main tank. If you do this the water and nutrient absorption effects will happen slowly and will give you time to manage your solution without any harm coming to the plants.Ī recirculating hydroponic tomato system using dutch bucketsĬirculate your solution until your pH and EC are constant. A simple rule of thumb is to make the volume of your initial reservoir at least 10x the volume that it would take to carry out a single irrigation of your entire crop. This means that you want most of the solution to be inside your tanks and not inside the media when every irrigation is done. The total volume of a reservoir is key in a recirculating setup because you want the bulk of the solution to be unaffected by whatever nutritional changes are caused by the plants during each feeding. In this post I’m going to talk about five tips that will help you successfully manage your nutrient solution when using this type of system.Įnsure the volume of the reservoir is at least 10x the volume necessary for a single irrigation. A recirculating setup has many advantages and can provide better yields than run-to-waste setups, provided the solution is properly managed and changed through the growing cycle.
Although a significant portion of hydroponic growers use run-to-waste setups – where the nutrient solution is ran through plants and then lost – the industry is now moving towards the implementation of recirculating hydroponic systems in order to reduce both water usage and the unnecessary dumping of fertilizers into sewage systems.
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