Hydroponic Strawberry Growing Ideas

Summary

In this video by HomeGrown Passion, the creator shares insights and updates about growing strawberries and tomatoes hydroponically in a high tunnel. The video explores innovative methods for improving strawberry growth, such as avoiding planting in the center of beta buckets to prevent mold. It also introduces the idea of using custom nutrient formulas and different colored buckets' effects on strawberry size. Plus, solutions for plant management, like managing plant runners and creating grow bag systems with drip irrigation, are discussed. Throughout, the emphasis is on trying new techniques, evaluating their success, and sharing insights for better plant health.

Highlights

• The creator enjoyed a holiday break but is back with new strawberry growing techniques 🎉.
• Strawberries planted in the middle of buckets can become moldy; strings help guide growth away from wet medium 🍓.
• Observations suggest black buckets might lead to larger fruit compared to white buckets ⚫.
• Custom nutrient solutions significantly improve strawberry size and sweetness 🍓.
• Grow bags and drip irrigation provide an interesting new method for utilizing extra strawberry plants 🌱.
• Doug's innovative woodwork helps support and manage grow bags in the high tunnel 🔨.
• Experimentation and adaptation are key to successful high tunnel agriculture 🔄.
• The quiet environment in the high tunnel offers a pleasant working atmosphere 🌅.

Key Takeaways

• High tunnel farming offers a quieter, more natural environment compared to greenhouses 🌿.
• Avoid planting in the center of beta buckets as it can cause moldy strawberries 🍓.
• Using a drip tape system ensures efficient watering and nutrient distribution 💧.
• Experimenting with different colored buckets can affect fruit size; black buckets are showing larger strawberries 🖤.
• Custom nutrient formulas can enhance both size and sweetness of strawberries 🍓.
• Attention to plant care like removing runners helps allocate energy efficiently 🌱.

Overview

Back after a fun holiday weekend with family, the creator of HomeGrown Passion dives back into the high tunnel, unveiling some enlightening updates about hydroponic strawberry farming. One issue that arose was planting strawberries too centrally in beta buckets, leading to moldy produce. To counteract this, they ingeniously use strings to redirect the plant growth away from damp mediums, ensuring larger, healthier strawberries. This experimental approach hints at promising solutions for future planting cycles!

Another intriguing observation involved experimenting with the color of beta buckets. It appears that the black buckets edge out the white ones in fruit size, albeit through a very hands-on, albeit unscientific study. Meanwhile, a custom-developed nutrient formula tailored to their source water seems to be sweetening the berries too. The commitment to innovation extends with the trial of grow bags, armed with drip irrigation systems, to make optimal use of surplus strawberries that don’t fit in the usual buckets.

Finally, the high tunnel revealed more than just flora; it provided a serene environment away from the hustle and bustle of traditional greenhouse operations. Within this peaceful agricultural haven, Doug’s craftsmanship shines with his sawhorse creations, which perfectly support the burgeoning strawberry plants. It's clear that with every challenge and experiment, HomeGrown Passion blossoms further, always ready to adapt with creativity and passion.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Personal Update The hosts apologize for the delay in posting videos, citing the holiday weekend as a reason. They spent quality time with family, particularly enjoying a cookout at their daughters' house.
• 00:30 - 01:30: Strawberry Planting Mistake and Solution The chapter "Strawberry Planting Mistake and Solution" begins with the narrator coming back to work after spending some quality time with their grandkids. They express excitement to be back and share updates from their high tunnel gardening, specifically focusing on strawberries. The chapter discusses a planting mistake made by placing three strawberry plants in the middle of beta buckets, which is not ideal as it prevents the plants from hanging properly. The narrator goes on to discuss the solution implemented to fix this issue and hints at something new being tried by Doug.
• 01:30 - 02:30: Black vs. White Beetle Buckets Observation The chapter discusses a problem with strawberries getting moldy and mildewy due to growing in a damp and wet medium. To solve this issue, the narrator uses a string to elevate the strawberry plants out of the medium. This allows the berries to grow larger and healthier by avoiding the damp conditions. The narrator plans to implement this solution for future plantings.
• 02:30 - 03:30: Nutrient Formula Discussion In this chapter, the focus is on managing strawberry plant runners and beetle buckets. The speaker discusses pulling off runners to direct energy back to the fruit, and the use of different colored beetle buckets acquired at different times. They experiment with harvesting and acknowledge the staggered planting of strawberries.
• 03:30 - 04:30: High Tunnel Environment This chapter discusses the differences in fruit production between plants with black coverings and those with white coverings in a high tunnel environment. The observations are informal and non-scientific, yet they note that the plants with black coverings seem to produce slightly larger fruit and appear to be ahead of those with white coverings in terms of growth. Additionally, the chapter touches on the nutrient formula being used in this experiment.
• 04:30 - 05:30: Doug's Woodwork for Strawberry Grow Bags Doug discusses the benefits of using a custom nutrient formula developed by Crop King for his strawberry grow bags. He highlights the importance of analyzing source water to create a specialized nutrient mix. This tailored approach has resulted in larger and sweeter strawberries this year. Doug emphasizes the practice of leaving strawberries on the vine until they are fully ripe and red, sharing his satisfaction with the enhanced quality of his harvest.
• 05:30 - 07:00: Filling and Preparing Grow Bags In this chapter titled 'Filling and Preparing Grow Bags', the author discusses the differences between working in a high tunnel and a greenhouse. In the high tunnel, it's quieter and there are birds in the background because there are no environmental controls running, unlike in the greenhouse. This change of pace is described as a positive experience. There is also a mention of transitioning from using black buckets to white ones.
• 07:00 - 08:00: Sealing Grow Bags with Wires The chapter discusses using high tunnels for growing plants and presents Doug's creation. Doug has crafted wooden planks to support grow bags, showcasing his skills with ash wood from the farm. He designed saw horses with a unique 15-degree angled base to enhance stability. The chapter emphasizes the practicality and craftsmanship of these wooden supports for gardening.
• 08:00 - 09:00: Update on Doug's Paste Tomatoes In this chapter, Doug provides an update on his paste tomatoes. With the help of a nailer, Doug has been working on assembling something, possibly a structure or garden setup. He mentions having an abundance of strawberries because he did not use as many in his beta buckets as initially planned. Despite this, his production level is still satisfactory. Doug shows some grow bags that are already filled and positioned perfectly, demonstrating a sense of accomplishment and readiness for his planting activities.
• 09:00 - 10:00: Conclusion and Viewer Interaction In this concluding chapter, the narrator discusses the process of filling grow bags with a mixture of vermiculite and perlite. The narrator has an abundance of these materials and decides to use them for planting. Doug is mentioned as helping with the task; he plans to create a tool to poke holes in the bags so strawberries can be planted, with a plan to place five on each side. The chapter reflects a hands-on, collaborative approach to gardening and highlights viewer interaction by sharing practical tips.

Hydroponic Strawberry Growing Ideas Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 [Music] hey everyone welcome back to homegrown passion sorry we haven't put up a video for a while you know with the holiday weekend and all we decided to spend some quality time with the family and you know it's really nice that the girls are older we get invited over to their house for a cookout can't beat that and got to
• 00:30 - 01:00 spend some time with the grandkids and had a blast playing with them so back to work now so i thought i'd show you what's going on here in the high tunnel and the strawberries and mistake i made and how i tried to fix it hopefully i think it should work and something new that doug's doing in here so stay tuned now if you okay let's start out with the problem i have what i did is i planted the three strawberry plants in the beta buckets here in the middle of the betel bucket which isn't good because it the plants too far away from the sides to hang over the side and so all my strawberries were
• 01:00 - 01:30 getting into the growing medium and you know that's damp and wet that's not a good thing for them they were getting moldy and mildewy on the ends there so what i did is i went through and i put this string up i gotta get this guy over it and now i have all my strawberries resting over the side of the string and so now they're growing out of the medium and they can get nice and large and see how nice and big that guy's getting so i think this is going to be a solution for the problem i have so next year when i go to use these i am definitely going to make sure the plants
• 01:30 - 02:00 are close enough to the edges so they can drop over the sides oh when i see i have a runner here i got to get off i've been trying to pull the runners off so the plants give all their energy back to the strawberries now if you watch some of our past videos you know i have black beetle buckets and i have white beetle buckets just just the way it happened when i bought them because i got them at two different times i got the white ones first and the black ones later on and i wanted to see if there was a difference in the harvesting so i went and harvested some today i know i didn't get all my strawberry plants in at the same time so
• 02:00 - 02:30 it's hard to tell exactly but it seems like the black ones are producing a little bit larger fruit but time will tell when the summer gets warmer and we'll see what happens with the white ones over there i mean they're still producing really well but it seems like the black ones are just a little bit ahead of them like i said it's non-scientific and boy look at those runners i got there non-scientific here but just my observation so i wanted to talk a little bit about the nutrient formula that we're using as
• 02:30 - 03:00 you know it's a custom formula that crop king developed for us based on our source water and it's a service that they provide to people so if you need your source water analyzed and want a special recipe that you can buy all your nutrients in bulk you should contact them but it's really made a big difference in my strawberries this year i noticed that they're a lot bigger and a lot sweeter and you know how i like to leave them on the vine until they're nice and red so here look at this guy any pretty and red all the way through nothing better than a nice sweet
• 03:00 - 03:30 strawberry i think i'm going to have to pick some more and eat some more of these yum it's always different working out here in the high tunnel than the greenhouse the main thing that i notice is how quiet it is because i don't have all the environmentals going and i'm not sure if you guys can hear the birds in the background so it's a total different environment out here so it's a good change of pace for me and there goes my black buckets down to my white buckets here
• 03:30 - 04:00 so if you guys have a chance to do a high tunnel i think it's pretty cool so in the last video doug showed you all the wood that he was cutting well here is what his final product looks like looks kind of cool doesn't it nice ash that he's using from the farm here so he's got the planks here ready to hold up the grow bags he made the saw horses and he made them a little bit different he put a 15 degree angle on the bottom of them so they stand a little bit
• 04:00 - 04:30 better and he's got him all joined up there at the top he had his nailer out here the other day and was putting this all together for me so this is what i'm going to do with all the extra strawberries i have since i didn't put as many in the beta buckets as i had originally planned on and i think my production is still doing pretty good and here i have some of the grow bags already filled up they lay on here perfect pretty cool
• 04:30 - 05:00 so i got some more to fill up here they're not too bad to fill up i just use a coffee can and put the vermiculite and perlite mixture in there yeah that's what we're using because i do have a lot of vermiculite and perlite so we decided to use that up and put these in the grow bags and the next thing doug's going to make for me he's going to get a pipe and he's going to put an edge on it so i can poke holes in his bag and plant the strawberries my plan is to probably put five on each side
• 05:00 - 05:30 and then doug's going to pull a drip tape down the middle of it so they'll get watered and of course the same nutrient water and on the same system and we'll probably poke a couple holes in the bottom of the bags here so they don't get waterlogged because strawberries don't like wet feet so this should be an interesting another little trial thing we're doing here we'll see how it goes don't like to have anything go to waste and we didn't want to waste those strawberries so we thought we'd throw them in here
• 05:30 - 06:00 [Music] do [Music] okay so you probably noticed i didn't
• 06:00 - 06:30 fill the bag all the way up to the top i left some empty space because you can see down here where it's all full it's pretty round so i'm going to leave some empty space so once i tie it off some of this growing medium will fill up into here and it'll lay flat on doug's board now to get these sealed at the end doug came up with the idea he has these wires that he uses on his maple syrup to connect the maple syrup return lines to the high tinsel wire so i'm going to go ahead and use this and twist it around the top there to seal it so i don't lose any of my growing medium just put it on there i mean there's all
• 06:30 - 07:00 kinds of different ways you can do this but this is what we found out would work and then i take fencing pliers i always need fencing pliers and twist the two ends together oops of course when you want to do it for the camera it doesn't come out perfect but you guys get the idea of what i'm trying to do here so there all sealed up and ready to go put on the board
• 07:00 - 07:30 [Applause] okay there we go all leveled out and ready to start the next bag well you guys know i can't do a video without doing an update so i thought i'd do an update on doug's paste tomatoes he has here he has them all strung up with the betel bobbins they're all facing upwards now you can see they got the all the way up to the wire there
• 07:30 - 08:00 there seem to be happy in here like i said have them on the strawberry formula because we just have the one dosatron system out here and these guys are just for us and then i top dressed them with some fertilizer and they seem to be doing good i know i'd like to have a perfect recipe for everything that we have but with limited resources and different systems we do the best that we can and we see what works and go with it and so far this seems to be working just like anything else you need to pay attention to your plants that they'll tell you something's not happy if
• 08:00 - 08:30 there's something's wrong with them if they don't have enough fertilizer they'll turn yellow or yucky or if they're not not getting enough water they'll be wimpy just have to pay attention to them and see how they're doing so we're going to pay attention to these guys and make sure they do okay because i do want to put up some sauce or i should say doug's going to put up the sauce because he's the best cook in the house so we'll see what happens but so far so good well i hope you guys like this video it's always fun working out here in the high tunnel and taste testing the strawberries
• 08:30 - 09:00 so like always please leave me any questions comments or suggestions down below and we'll see you guys next video [Music] [Music] [Music] you