The Forest and the Trees: When a Change of Focus is Good

The Forest and the Trees: When a Change of Focus is Good

While networking with hundreds and hundreds of hydroponics growers, we’ve seen, time and time again, how individual growers without a good support network can get stuck on tangential issues that distract them from the best ways to care for plants. Hydroponics is a complex type of project with a lot of involved plant science, and a lot of questions about how to nurture plants. Often, success involves asking the right questions and allocating the right amounts of time to each issue, whether it’s lighting, environmental handling, irrigation or nutrient feeding.

Distracting Details

Spending too much time on details can sap the grower’s energy and take away from their ability to provide overall maintenance. For example, we hear a lot of discussion about water sources. Is it important to stay away from hard water or other sub-par conditions, and to make sure that there is no potential for bacterial invasion? The short answer is yes. However, the vast majority of municipal water systems stand up to this challenge quite well, since they also happen to be the ones that we use for our own drinking water. That’s why, in some cases, worrying too much about a water source can distract the grower from thinking about pH values, total dissolved solids, grow room sanitation, or other important issues.

Staying Effective

In order to be an effective leader in a hydroponics gardening scenario, growers should have a well-rounded knowledge of plant science and environmental science, so that they have a pretty good guideline to go from for most of the questions that have to do with setting up good atmospheres for plant growth. The lack of some of this basic knowledge is often the cause of issues that make growers lose their focus, and get them off into the weeds, rather than making excellent progress toward maturity and harvest.

For more, ask your hydroponic retailer about the most modern tools and equipment for helping to grow better hydroponics plants in any space and on any scale.