u/vXvBAKEvXv

Hello strawbheads!

I have been having meh results with indoor berries for years now. I get a good wave, they die back or salt damage, root die, or pests invade. I feel like I wanted to blame heat, oxygen, nutrients, everything.

I grew these seascape berries in 80/20 coco and perlite. Theyve only ever recieved unmeasured amounts of masterblend solutions. No special care, a week vacation with nothing but some rain showers, 90+ degree days, etc.

I am coming to a very firm belief that the failures ive been experiencing from indoors are stemming from TWO issues.

1. light - direct sun all day has produced insane berries. The heat makes them spoil too quick to enjoy but with cooler nights ahead they should get fantastic again soon.

2. overwatering - anyone running pure medialess hydroponics outside of commercial grows seems to have issues in the medium/long term. One small event can ruin months of progress. The level of micromanagement it requires to keep it properly watered isnt worth the slight yield increase for me.

So with all this success outdoors using the exact methods that are failing me inside I have decided on a whole new approach. I tossed all my summer plants(cuke, watermelon, peppers, tomatoes) before vacation. Im back and taking all my grow lights to strawberries to see if I can do better with a higher quality light, deeper root zones and much better access to monitor my cococoir.

My grow room is a sad state of affairs right now. If it wasnt for the few plants I had going outside I think I'd be depressed hah.

I have grown indoors and hydriponically for a few years but never put anything outside. This year I decided to start growing a san marzano in a 10 gallon bag of cococoir and perlite.

It was fed a very heavy nitrogen formula and got SUPER BUSHY. The bottom half of it has been heavily pruned and there are still massive leafs.

I realized it wasnt flowering and kicked it to a low N, high P+K ratio of hydroponics and now I have a dozen blushing tomatoes and so so many more to come. This was an awesome first year and I learned so very much.

And yes i pruned because i splash water EVERYWHERE with sometimes 2x daily fertigations. At this point the only pruning it gets is to keep the HOA from going "Ughhh...."

I havent had fresh berries out of my hydroponics in over a year. After coming back from a week away I came back to the most INTOXICATING sweetness smell in my garage.

There are a few dozen fruits hanging and they smell absolutely wonderful. I grow outdoor berries but Ive never had ANY that smell or taste like these. Their size is laughable still but the flavor is explosive.

Like minutes later your brain is still hanging onto the sweetness and taste it experienced. I am blown away by the quality of these even though the crowns are still struggling a bit.

3 years of learning hydro/plants from scratch to get to this point. The pain, struggle, frustration, and countless times I almost scrapped the entire hobby finally feel justified.

This is probably my 7th or 8th cucumber plant ever, all of them hydroponically. Literally only ever tasted 2 very mishapen and laughable cucumbers before but they were enough to tell me to keep trying.

3 years into this hobby and I went to go pollinate some females and found this to my surprise. I am beyond happy and finally feel like this is working almost entirely all around.

Cucumbers have been extremely finicky from seed to harvest. If i had to give a few tips:

1. don't try transplanting these id you can prevent it.

2. start light as heck on EC when young. Early root stress will kill them outright.

3. when you see flowers, if you arent pushing high p+k you will never set fruit

Finally got my set of runners from my albions and able to fill my last empty site lol. Flowers and berries are happening buy dang these plants are NOT liking this weather.

Lows of 80 highs 95 in my grow room with temps thankfully breaking next week. Super excited to take these runners and try again with DWC/6 Site nft to see if my much deeper strawberry knowledge can suffice at growing traditional hydroponic ones also.

These are cococoir berries in full transparency. Theyre purely fed hydroponically so I always considered them indoors.

Here comes a heatwave in my area of the southeast! With El Niño and July/August around the corner I wanted to show some roots off that hang out in what chatgpt/google would consider plant abuse - and thriving none the less.

I tool these temps at 5:15 am, 15 minutes after lights on. Its theoritically ths coolest these solutions have been in days and probably the coolest theyll be for at least the next week with 95f highs forecasted and 70f lows.

Don't lose your mind fighting root rot, buying $300+ water chillers to double your electric cost, juggle frozen waterbottles out of your freezer, or let your plants die a slow painful sad death.

Just get a good air pump and beneficial bacteria. I have used hydroguard and southern AG. Both work, southern AG is more cost efficient if you dont mind smelling dirty socks every time you open it. Don't overdose or you will have brown buildup and a lot of people panic and think its root rot starting.

I literally don't worry about temps anymore. If you think it's the water temp causing the issue, it's likely just exacerbating another issue.

This plant is getting huge and I love finding places to give it decent light and let it keep running. Longest vine is about 12' and there are 2 growing melons with 2 more females I just pollinated.

Strawberry plants are looking amazing too considering highs are easily in the 90s.

Rest of things are alright with the cucumber starting to flower too!

Now that I set a reminder to flush my lines I have been trending to a wonderful place. I have been holding steady at a 1.0 to 1.3 EC (pending the weeks weather) and pH of 5.8.

Recently i had installed the extra lights and I had turned down the timer on watering. Watching runoff levels and monitoring the time it takes to produce runoff has been key. I just stick a container down to collect the next watering, once a week.

Its shown me when my EC/pH is drifting from what I put in vs what comes out. Once the runoff is too far out of parameter, I flush with 300 uS/cm solution and 6.0 pH to help raise it.

I have a few other things I want to change about my recipe but I think I'm just going to let my light/flush take effect for a few weeks and see how were looking. The same solution is poured on my ourdoor berries and theyre exploding and showing no signs of issues so I dont think my recipe is too far off. The pH/EC swings were hurting the most but im being vigilant 😀

🍉Sugarbaby watermelon🍉

Whelp I accidentally slammed my sugarbaby with 3.0 EC solution and you could literally watch the burn start working it's way down the vine, the roots were stressing, and the first melon got stunted.

Adjusted back to sane levels and it immediately recovered. It took a bit longer for this reason but it made it to the second level. Older growth isn't being damaged anymore and new growth looks great.

Male flowers have been hanging for weeks but finally found a few females getting ready to show up to the party to pollinate a few more melons!

I am also letting a lateral vine run out towards my main grow area so my spacemaster cucumber and sugarbaby vines should make it look wild.🍉

🌶Early jalepeno and bell pepper🫑

So these poor guys have been through a lot. Theyre finally recovering and the newest growth isnt as wrinkled. I had a huge calcium precipitation issue during a cold snap in march and they pretty much lost all their leafs over a week and we're finally seeing flowers again.

🍅 tiny tim tomato🍅

Smallest one Ive ever got to flower. Have been just running low EC and heavy pruning until now. Just ramped up to 1.3 EC and instantly popping flowers into tomatoes! These guys are so foolproof.

🥒Spacemaster Cucumber🥒

Looking great and getting ready to climb! There are tiny male flowers already and this plant never ceases to amaze me how small it will start producing female flowers. Although its been one of the harder plants to grow, it's also been teaching me the most about hydroponics and how to properly care for a plant.

I say that and I just had to adjust it from a 4.5 PH 😬 back to 5.8. Think that might be causing the newest leafs issues lol.

🍓Strawberries recovering well once again and Ive been taking extra care of them and its paying off. Next update will be a wave of fruiting plangs hopefully!🍓

Summer is here and my vanilla orchid is now outside. I was able to move two 4' 40 watt lights in and turn up the light! 💡

I was ranging from 250-300 ppfd but im up to easy 400-500 in all areas now. Really thinking I was still underestimating the light situation even with 220 watts on them before. Im totalling 300 watts across a 5 ft section now and I gotta say the light actually seems like full sun now.

I just clipped my flowers and fruit, pruned down a bit to open up the canopy for new growth, and treated with insecticidal soap to fight off my pet spidermites and thrips - pets bc they just live here now 🤣 Predatory mites i think are my next whimsicle buy.

Summer temps are also here and it gets a bit warm in here even w the garage door open. Probably have a solid setup for fall/winter/spring though.

I see a lot of posts of people taking plants smaller than this one and filling a pot to the net cup with maximum EC.

Just wanted to make a post showing how far you can take even a tomato on 325 uS/cm ( 0.3 EC). This "solution" has a lower EC that some peoples tap water and the tiny tim tomato is still making flowers.

Don't overfeed your plants. It doesn't equate to more yield or faster growth unless the plant is ready for it.

Grow on 🌿💧

And yet so few berries lmao

Recovered veg and looking good again. New stunted, small berries are ripening with a lot behind them. I've been slowly rolling the EC back up since I had them brining im the dead sea until I just about lost them.

What actually happened is I neglected salt buildup until my coco runoff was like 3.5 EC and every leaf was charred.

A few months running at .8 EC and here we are today back to flowering. I have them on a new nutrient solution and it seems to be working. I am only pushing a 1.0-1.3 EC through here at any point and the 1.3 has been more of late as humidity returns.

I ran a .8 EC when I was getting 20-30% humidity for month+. Now that its back to my temperate rainforest usual self, I'm back up to 1.3 EC since we hang out at 60-80% humidity most days again.

Well this is getting damn rewarding and a few more weeks until we taste sweet sweet victory 🍉

I did forget to be out there hand pollinating and missed the last 3 female flowers 🤣 another few feet and she should climb up into the second shelf to make it a C-shape. I suspect it should be able to support at least 3/4 melons at a time when its 8-10' in length.

Just bumped the EC up to its final EC for flowering of 2.6. I use Masterblend and have a custom recipe but its heavy leaning on the P+K. My tap water is 60 uS/cm so I'm fortunate enough to have plenty of room to add nutrients and not need RO water.

Would this sugarbaby watermelon benefit from a towel or some padding under it instead of the hard plastic? First time growing a watermelon inside😅

I finally don't suck at strawberries and theyre doing well enough to let them fruit! Holy heck I think I finally have it dialed in to a point I only change solutions once every two weeks.

And this random sugarbaby watermelon experiment is going rather well. Two female flowers have set fruit so t-minus 30 days or so until we get some melons too!

I have some peppers and tomatoes doing very unimpressive things too but really my outdoor growing is getting the attention as spring is here!

Obtained July 2025 as a 2 ft cutting. Damaged and beaten as I learn to take care for it but alive and well. I moved it far too many times finding the best place and way I wanted to mount it without having to recreate the tropics with my finger and a spray botttle.

I present my automated drip fed vanilla orchid 💧🌿 a drip fed fertigation every few hours with newly mounted 4 ft light 💡

This 6 ft vanilla orchid has seen some crazy not-tropic weather but as it grows its way off the pole the first time, I'm really excited to see how this "lap" of its vine will grow. It's only been awake from its winter dormancy for a month or so but its already taken off again by another almost 2 feet. I have yet to care for it during a whole entire grow cycle since last summer it was just establishing from a cutting.

I cannot wait to see what it can do. I hope a few years from now it can flower with the phal orchid recovering with it 🌸

Im not advertising but just simply in awe about how well this stupid Zeevo trap has been working. Its hung near my grow area and is on 24/7. Every night when the grow lights go off every bug in the garage is attracted to the blue/UV light.

Its literally been game over for thrips. I havent even been spraying neem oil lately and the thrip pressure is noticeable less. I just started reapplying neem so I want to see how clean my plants can get.

If youre struggling with flying pests, i might suggest looking into one of these. Irs glorified sticky traps with uv light bait. No poison or damage to plants!

As I stand here in my Crocs checking my plants I realized I'm literally a character from 'Idiocracy' with a few more brain cells to not let salts build up and kill my plants.

Fun fact: Crocs were chosen as footwear for the movie because they looked so stupid, cheap, and ugly that theyd never be a fashion item.

So with warmer temps coming I shut down and cleaned up my lettuce growing shelf. This year i decided to try and grow a sugarbaby watermelon.

I have 2 shelfs, about 4 ft long with 80 watts of lights on each shelf hitting about 200-350 ppfd depending on height. Hoping to contain it under 8 ft long but ive never tried.

Someone call me an idiot and tell me why this wont work, tell me that it might, or both. 🤣

PH 5.7-5 9 EC - .7 Temps/humidity - lows 70/highs 80 - 50% humidity with tons of fans.