Can you imagine a day when machines can garden? In many ways, that time is already here. When growing indoors, you are already relying on technology to help create and maintain a healthy growing environment—artificial lighting, carbon dioxide, ventilation, cooling, humidity, and optimal pH and TDS are all regulated by various devices, sensors, and solutions. As some growers are painfully aware, these wonders of technology can may malfunction, causing disaster for your crop. For this reason, you still need a human at the helm to control and monitor activity. That is, until now.

The Grobot (from PurGro) is a grow room and reservoir controller with robotic actuation that enables you to control and monitor every aspect of the growing environment from anywhere around the world via a computer-linked interface. Installing a Grobot also means that if anything goes wrong in your garden, the  system can instantly notify you that something is amiss. It even allows you to check on your growing environment through a series of cameras, allowing you to keep an eye on your crop when you can’t be there.

 This robotic growing controller allows you perform a wide variety of necessary functions for maintaining a healthy growing environment.

This robotic growing controller allows you perform a wide variety of necessary functions for maintaining a healthy growing environment. Functions like emptying and refilling the reservoir, adding nutrients in controlled ratios, pH control, CO2 augmentation, temperature control, humidity control, security alerts, remote viewing, lighting controls, water levels, and dozens of other tasks that would ordinarily require a human touch can now happen while you are miles away.

All in all, the Grobot is very easy to install and has been accurately monitoring and maintaining the environmental parameters of this high tech indoor garden for five weeks. Since not all growers are IT guys, you will be very glad to know that the team at PurGro can help walk you through any questions you might have about setting up the system and the remote networking, and have you automated in no time.

Words can’t describe how James Bond it feels to slide out your smartphone, hit a couple of keys, and know that you just mixed the perfect reservoir for your garden. If you are serious about growing, but want to step away from the garden occasionally, it could be time to give robotics a try.

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Hydroponics indoor growers try hard to get the largest and most valuable harvests, and you know how it feels to wonder if there are things you could be doing, or should not be doing, so that you can get maximum yield. Here are some of the easiest and most important ways to improve your hydroponics plants’ health so you get more of what you want…

By Chris Jefferson and SK

My buddy SK wrote me from his hydroponics garden in the North American hinterlands to tell of his adventures with hydroponics retailers. When SK gets to tap-tapping on his computer keyboard, he gives you a pretty good picture of what it feels like sometimes to be a hydroponics grower. Here’s his raw, uncensored report from the hydroponics equipment and supplies front lines…

How you choose hydroponics retail stores is absolutely crucial to your maximum yield success in your urban garden. Whether the hydroponics retail stores are  online or in a physical location, who you get your hydroponics gear from can make all the difference for you. Indeed, the quality, price and selection of hydroponics nutrients, hydroponics equipment and hydroponics supplies at hydroponics retail stores can provide you all the tools you need to ensure success in your urban garden, or they can limit your success and make life a lot harder for you.

Growers often ask about basic general hydroponics equipment and indoor gardening tactics that are guaranteed to create healthier, faster-growing plants that give you more flower per watt and put smiles on your face every harvest.

Several years ago I was talking with hydroponics pioneer Michael “Big Mike” Straumietis, the co-founder of Advanced Nutrients. More precisely, he was talking to me, and I was listening. That’s the smartest thing you can do when you’re with Big Mike. He’s a guy whose brain paces like a champion racehorse. He articulates more useful ideas per minute than anybody else I’ve ever met.

You use a hydroponics total dissolved solids (tds) or parts per million (ppm) meter to measure the amount of dissolved materials in your nutrients water, and it’s crucial for your crops that you get the amounts right. When you see meters discussed, you notice that the terms “ppm,” “EC” or  “cF” are used. These are different standards for representing the concentration of solids in a solution:

Your hydroponics plants love light, but in most grow rooms, light is provided via a top-down method that sends a lot of light to the top of your plants with not much hitting underneath and inside the canopy where most of your flowers and leaves are.

The more things change, the more they stay the same, except in the world of hydroponics.That’s how I felt when I heard that major hydroponics manufacturer-distributors like Hydrofarm abandoned their loyalty to growers and hydroponics retailers by selling hydroponics equipment at Kmart and Sears instead of only selling via hydroponics stores.

If you’re a hydroponics grower with an indoor urban garden using rockwool, aeroponics, NFT, hydroton, sphagnum, Sunshine Mix, Pro-Mix, coco coir and other types of materials or systems, you’re almost certainly using hydroponics nutrients.

In 99% of all indoor hydroponics urban garden situations, you just flat out won’t get good growth or maximum yield unless you add nutrients to your plants’ water.

There’s lots of discussion among hydroponics growers just like you and me about what are the best hydroponics nutrients. As you know, hydroponics growers have a lot of money and time invested in every plant and we insist on maximum yield from our hydroponics nutrients.

Your hydroponics urban garden is probably the most important part of your life other than your lover, friends and family. But when you talk to a lot of hydroponics growers you see common mistakes they can fix so they get the maximum yield they seek, with less cost and fuss. Let’s take a look at a few of these mistakes, and how to fix them.

One common mistake is to not provide enough air movement inside your hydroponics urban garden.

If you’ve ever been frustrated by a lack of networking and information when you’re considering hydroponics nutrients, equipment, and hydroponics gardening techniques, I have good news for you.

Sometimes those 1000-watt lightbulb in the head moments come to you in a flash, and it could be the time you walk into a hydroponics retail store and say to yourself- I want to do this, I want my own hydroponics store.

And hey, that’s not just a great idea, that’s a smart idea…because owning your own hydroponics business is a way to get yourself so much more of what you love about hydroponics gardening, and make serious money at it too.

Hydroponics gardening is increasing in popularity and you might be wondering if it’s for you. Or you might already be a hydroponics gardener considering whether to expand your hydroponics endeavors to get that sweet maximum yield we all know and love.

Well, here are some seriously good reasons for you to start up or rev up your hydroponics urban garden...