Matt Geschke thinks we could be in for an industry renaissance—but only if the engineers start listening to the gardeners…

What’s next? It’s a basic query that leaves me stymied almost daily. In a hydroponic industry that has experienced exponential growth over the last five years, a paradoxical scene is unfolding with regard to product innovation. It is obvious to any veteran gardener that many of the designs we see today are only marginally different from those offered a decade ago. Some have gotten a packaging facelift, others a label redesign—but for all intents and purposes very little has changed with regard to performance or overall functionality. Some would say we are only growing plants and that introducing too much technology into the garden is counterintuitive and unnecessary. “The old technology is just fine,” they chant, almost as if it’s a mantra. Many others would argue that this is a classic case of ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ or even ‘why reinvent the wheel?’ On the surface this seems like a reasonable and valid argument: however, to resist change and innovation is to embrace extinction.

To put it in perspective, try to remember back a decade ago. Did you have a cell phone? Did it have voicemail? Now reach into your pocket. I would assume most of us can produce an impossibly small, unbelievably intuitive technological marvel, capable of performing all of the tasks only a high-end PC could manage just 10 years ago. Would you be happy if you still had to use a cell phone the size of a brick with a foot-long antenna? So why do we settle for stagnation in hydroponics? If our goal is to supplant the environmentally irresponsible traditional agriculture paradigm with a sustainable, high-efficiency hydroponic model, we must demand and initiate change!

All industries mature as the market sector they serve develops and expands, but the speed at which this process takes place directly correlates to how intuitive or plugged-in the industry’s influencers are to the needs and desires of the end-user. An intimate understanding of the requirements of the consumer combined with a progressive, motivated customer base can lead to a symbiotic evolutionary model that ultimately benefits both parties. This process works best when both groups contribute equally to the design process; however, this is rarely the case as manufacturers traditionally rely on either in-house or subcontracted engineering firms for new product designs—and gardeners, well, gardeners would rather be gardening. Within this longstanding paradigm lies the rub: it is bad business for a company to manufacture a product that no one wants, yet hundreds of products every year are deemed ineffective or non-viable by the gardening community. This represents millions of dollars in wasted research and development funds that could have been earmarked for projects that might have gone on to be embraced by the gardening community while simultaneously exhibiting innovation in design.

A famous rebel leader once proclaimed that “…the revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.” This implies that change does not take place on its own—it requires a catalyst. Gardeners who desire change must be active and involved in the design process and eventually, the cacophonous sound of the communal gardening voice will become so deafening it can’t help but be heard. Manufacturers and gardeners can work together: from chaos comes order and from the seasoned experience of gardeners worldwide will come the revolutionary ideas necessary to take us into the next age.

“So what’s with all the soapbox rhetoric?” you might be asking yourself about now. “Is this some type of hydroponic pep rally?” Well, sort of—remember, we need a catalyst to initiate change and change requires energy in the form of motivation.

The next question is: what is our goal? How do we get there? Clearly, I can’t speak for the entire indoor gardening community, but I believe the inherent goal is supreme efficiency. We should strive for a completely closed bioenergy cycle in which every process feeds the next. The second law of thermodynamics states that matter cannot be created nor destroyed; it is of great importance that gardeners understand the physics behind this axiom.

Although true zero net loss sustainability as it applies to indoor gardening is implausible at present, many of the systems, mechanisms and methods necessary for us to reach for this laudable goal do exist today. This begs the question: why is the entire globe not farming hydroponically? The answer might surprise you.

I strongly believe that gardeners have a moral imperative to reach out to the industry and provide grassroots feedback. It’s partly the ‘if you don’t vote you can’t complain who is in office’ type of thing, although I don’t perceive gardener apathy as being the only stumbling block in the way of meaningful industry progress—a second obstacle is intellectual isolationism. There is a notion that if one develops an idea or concept that is valuable than one must hoard it until the appropriate buyer is found. Once the idea is secured it can then be brought to market and it will be subsequently copied by many other parties competing in that market. This happens in nearly all industries and has led to global stagnation with regard to innovation in many cases because the model rewards the scavengers and punishes the innovators. The hydroponics industry is no exception.

For us to take the next step as a gardening community we must begin to broaden our outlook. For example, we must start actively identifying technologies in other market sectors that might serve our needs. Many of these technologies could be implemented either ‘as is’ or with very little modification and some of them might even be used to solve problems we once thought impossible. I refer to this type of communal development as ‘Frankenstein engineering.’ This approach to difficult problems is not new and was recently in the spotlight in the international media as gamers engaging in Foldit®, an online puzzle app, unraveled the key to unlocking a retroviral protease enzyme structure linked to AIDS. The complexity of the enzyme’s structure had baffled academics and doctors for over a decade, but within three weeks of being posted the online gaming community cracked it. By accepting the fact that many minds from different disciplines will always be superior to a few with a limited focus we will give ourselves a much better chance to finally enter into a true hydroponic renaissance.

So start thinking outside the box and don’t be afraid to tell people in the industry about your problems and what you think needs to be done to fix them. Go to your local retailer and tell them what you want—if it happens more than a few times, you can bet the retailers will pass the word to the wholesalers and then up the line to the manufacturers. We’re all in this industry together and your experience as a gardener gives you more clout than you realize—after all, if it wasn’t for you and hundreds of thousands like you, there’d be no industry at all…

Does stressing plants out to make them stronger make sense in the long run? Matt Geschke argues that the proof is in the harvest…

When you discuss gardening, the content of nearly all conversations inevitably boils down to a comparison of overall yield and quality. It seems the gardening community generally accepts these two barometers of botanical success as fairly broad yet valid indicators of a gardener’s overall prowess.

In reality, these two variables are often difficult to quantify and are the result of hundreds if not thousands of discrete events, the products themselves of countless independent yet often cascading chemical reactions. As entertaining and informative as a brief dissertation on the hormone/enzyme interplay responsible for guiding, inducing and regulating plant senescence might be to some, the content of such a discourse would likely plunge you into a boredom-induced stupor that I can’t be certain you would ever recover from. Gardening is supposed to be fun, after all, so I will refrain from addressing this topic from a biochemical position. I will attempt something that is quite the opposite—I will attempt to address plant aging in a simple and uncomplicated fashion. My hope is that if I approach this complex topic casually, many readers who might have felt overwhelmed by a dry article about ethylene, abscissic and jasmonic acid, day length, root zone temperatures and incident angles of solar irradiation will continue to read along and perhaps even come untraumatized to a better understanding of the whole complicated subject.

First off, know your cultivar. I know it sounds a bit remedial, but most people base their selection of plants on what they want to grow—not on what their current garden is capable of growing most efficiently. If you want to grow great plants you need an environment tailored to where your plants evolved to grow indigenously. If your plant’s ancestors evolved in Hawaii, for example, they will probably find the harsh environment of North Dakota in winter to be uncomfortable and frigid. Now take into account the fact that plants are generally sedentary and unable to flee in the event of radical changes in their environment. Simply put, since the dawn of cultivation plants have been slaves to our lack of understanding. Most terrestrial plants are hypersensitive to minute alterations in their environment and often display dramatic physiological responses to change—this means small changes often yield big results, for better or worse. Don’t be lured into radically stressing your plants—chemically, physically or environmentally. Although some of these methods might result in a dramatic and nearly immediate positive response, the underlying stress caused to the plant will likely lead to a delayed harvest or a diminished yield.

Transitions from the vegetative stage to the bloom stage in nature are generally incremental and gradual, not dramatic and shocking. Countless books, articles and even peer-reviewed journals reference 12 hours of daylight as the generally accepted day-length duration associated with the triggering of flowering in most fruit-setting plants. However, the vast majority of gardeners I know change their lighting schedule from veg to bloom over a maximum of just four days, with the first two being days of complete darkness. A strong flowering response is displayed by many plants exposed to this method of transitioning and this might be a result of the awakening of an ancient genetic trigger responsible for accelerating senescence when exposed to a ‘nuclear winter’-like event that’s typically associated with the impact of something like a meteor with the Earth. Hundreds of these impacts have been seen in the fossil record, with the most notable event occurring at the K/T boundary. Those of you who took an Earth history class in college might recall that the K/T boundary reflects the impact event responsible for the great dinosaur extinction. It should then be reasonable from a position of evolutionary benefit that a plant would attempt to ‘seed out’ as soon as possible when exposed to an impact event like the one described above, as this would provide the best probability for successful post-fallout re-colonization. Although this scenario is plausible and the effect documented, though, stressing a plant into senescence does not allow for the gradual depletion and utilization of stored resources within the plant. Worse yet, trace amounts of unused nutrients trapped within the plant might lead to deleterious changes to the overall taste, quantity or appearance of the end product at harvest time.

Changes in substrate chemistry in nature take place over months and years, not hours and days as is commonly found in most hydroponic systems. Some experts even claim that by stressing your plants by altering their nutrition you will achieve better results than by pampering your plant with a balanced diet. This statement is true to a certain extent—but somewhat misleading. Although many growers believe that by decreasing the nitrogen constituent of their nutrient solution while simultaneously increasing the ratios of the P and K components they will encourage a strong flowering response, it is important to realize that plants that are shocked continuously throughout their growth cycle will most certainly be more likely to exhibit stunting, delayed harvests, poor harvest volumes and increased incidences of failed fruit setting. Nitrogen is a critical component, necessary during flowering and senescence—and its wholesale removal will lead to poor, weak results. I find that gradually changing the chemistry of my feed solution over a two-week period from veg to bloom and maintaining a small but consistent amount of nitrogen throughout the flowering cycle produces the best overall results. Remember, fruit that is forced to finish through increasing environmental stressors will always be inferior in taste and overall quality when compared to the exact same cultivar left to mature naturally, assuming no other variables differ.

Finally, it is important to understand that the ‘if a little bit is good, a whole lot must be better’ approach is not really applicable to gardening. This approach to indoor cultivation is becoming increasingly prevalent in North America and runs diametrically counter to what nature took nearly four billion years to perfect. It is reckless and arrogant to believe that simple reductionist science will unlock the nearly limitless potential of plants—just remember when pushing your plants to their limits with ultra-high ppms, excessive wattage and cool rooms with low VPDs you run the risk of catastrophic crop failure. My suggestion is to run the lowest nutrient ppms possible without sacrificing yield, to utilize the smallest amount of wattage necessary for optimum growth and never run your CO2 ppms above 1,250. By following these fairly simple guidelines, your chances of crop failure or disappointing harvests are slim. Bottom line—sometimes the field just can’t take the stress!

Now I am sure I will catch flack from fellow academic types criticizing my shockingly over-simplified summation of senescence and plant maturation, but in the end I don’t write articles of this nature to further confuse an already enigmatic issue—I write them in the hope of fostering understanding. After all, the more you know the more you can grow…