Growing and Cloning Great Looking Plants Through Aeroponics

Take heart my fellow hobbyist gardeners. Just the colder winter months are soon upon us doesn't mean we can't continue to grow vibrant, healthy plants indoors. One method I plan on trying out this winter season is aeroponics. Surprisingly, an aeroponics system doesn't need a large amount of space nor potting soil to see luscious results.

Aeroponics is a way of growing plants indoors using air or mist instead of a soil environment. The basic principle is to grow plants in a closed or semi-closed environment. Aeroponics works by spraying the roots of the plants with a nutrient rich solution. The growing environment is kept free from pests and disease so your plants can grow healthier and quicker than normal plants grown outside.

Growing with aeroponics is not as difficult as it may sound and its benefits far outweigh the potential drawbacks. Most plant can be grown using aeroponics. Vegetables using an aeroponic cloner are a great example of this being true. The plants grow faster, with more flowers and fruit produced.

Plant cloning has been known and practiced for centuries. The cloning of plants, through aeroponic prorogation for example, allows gardeners to replicate a genetically identical plant from the parent plant. The cloned plant will hold the exact same characteristics as the original. Everything from growth habit, disease resistance, fruit shape, flower color and yield potential will be exactly the same.

Plant cloning is not a new concept. The process of aeroponic cloning is basically the exact same thing. Only in aeroponic propagation, the cultivation of sibling or cloned plants is done using an aeroponic system instead of the more traditional soil-potting.

If aeronponic propgation sounds like something you may be interested for your home garden. Here are some basic, step-by-step guides to starting your own aeroponic cloning operation:
Select a healthy branch from the parent plant with several clusters of leaves.
Cut off a piece of the branch leaving at least 2 leaf nodes intact.
Remove the largest few leaves as they can be hard for a rootless plant to maintain in the early stages.
Then remove all branches and leaves apart from the top 2 sets. Make sure they are within close proximity to the aeroponic fogger and aeroponic mister.
You are now well on your way to procuring your first crop of cloned plants.

The only drawback to growing and cloning plants with aeroponics is that everything needs to be kept extremely clean. These systems are a continually moist environment, making them very susceptible to bacteria growth. You also need the money up front to pay for an aeroponic cloner, aeroponic fogger, and aeroponic mister.

So if you are looking for another alternative for growing plants this winter, think about growing your plants with an aeroponic cloner. This method works great for growing plants indoors. Aeroponics cloning yields healthier, more abundant growth.

Susan Slobac has a great deal of experience with aeroponic propagation. Hydroponic gardening is the way of the future. Known to some as "soil less gardening", hydroponics are proven to grow plants 20-30% faster than their soil grown counterparts.

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Designing a Year-Round Garden

All great gardens have one thing in common. That is, they offer something during each of the four seasons. Through spring and summer the colorful flowers of perennials, annuals and flowering trees and shrubs are the focal point in the garden. Once the summer flowers begin to fade, the brilliant, colorful foliage of autumn brightens the garden. In the winter, it's the evergreens, berries and bark which provide the garden with color as the form and shape of the plants become more prominent.

Green is the dominant color in the garden in the spring as everything seems to be rapidly putting out new growth. The bulbs and perennials which do flower in the early spring do so against a backdrop of green foliage and brown earth. Bulbs are earliest blooming plants in the garden and are essential to the spring landscape. Some bulbs will even provide color until more perennials begin to bloom in May and June.

Early flowering perennials such as iris range in color from white to yellow to purple and in size from a few inches to 4 feet. For spring foliage, plant some hosta, they grow in a wide variety of greens, from blue-green to yellow-green and they're the perfect backdrop plant for the spring flowers.

Perennial borders peak in mid summer as a wide range of sun-loving flowers begin to bloom. Part of the mix include some leftovers from spring and, towards the end of summer, there are signs of the later blooming flowers as well. Annuals are also in full bloom mid-summer. Though most have finished flowering, fully leafed out shrubs can add a lushness to the garden.

A third wave of blooms begin brighten up the garden once again as the summer flowers begin to fade. The colors in the garden begin to change a bit in the fall with many perennials blooming in shades of yellow, orange and purple. Among these flowers are the annuals, which continue to flower until the first frost. Later in the season, the flowers, especially those of the sedum and black-eyed Susan, turn into brown and rust colored seed heads. They fit in perfectly with the colorful fall foliage of the surrounding trees. The foliage of the late season perennial is attractive on its own.

Once the blooms of the these flowers fade deciding whether to cut them back is up to the individual gardener. Some perennials will collapse to the ground anyways while others will remain standing though the winter with their showy seed heads creating off season interest in the garden.

Winter, the season in which many gardeners forget about the landscape, can offer color and visual interest through evergreen shrubs, bark, plant form and seed heads. For example, a clump of ornamental grass could be left standing through the winter. Redtwig dogwoods are great against the snow and birch trees have colorful, flaking bark. The winter landscape truly would be empty with the hardy evergreen trees and shrubs. Garden walls and fences become more prominent as the foliage which screens them in the summer disappears. Hedges, as well as walls, make a stronger statement in winter. protecting houses from icy blasts and sky-high heating bills.

With some careful planning, it is possible to have a beautiful garden year round. Even in winter, when everything seems to be stark and barren. A few choice shrubs or trees can provide winter interest and a well thought out garden can flower from early spring until the first frost.

R Birch is the publisher of GardenScope.com a garden resource site.

Simple Light Switch Replacement

Where to Start With Organic Gardening?

For many organic growers, farming or gardening is a passion. We feel a connection to the Earth and believe it has become a moral duty to protect her and provide for her. Aside from the apparently spiritual affiliation, it's just plain fun to be out in the sun playing in the dirt and watching things grow - something I never dreamed I would be doing until my wife Pamela introduced me to organic gardening as a way to help feed our menagerie of exotic pets and help distract me from my hectic business life.

Those who take up organic gardening often have no idea to where to buy supplies, for example. They don't know what products they need for soil nourishment or pest control. They may not know how much water to supply, or how to go about composting kitchen scraps for their gardens. They need more than a few organic garden tips and ideas. Many will need hand-helding through their first steps in organic gardening.

Imagine growing a beautiful garden or orchids,, or other plants and be the envy of all your neighbours out there :)

Here are a few tips just to get you started in the right direction with organic gardening:

- Firstly, you need to choose what you will grow and decide how much you will need to plant based on your needs or goals in sales. Without knowing what you want to put in your soil, you can't start organic gardening.

- Second, you need to keep the soil healthy. Healthy soil produces healthy plants. Healthy plants, like healthy humans, are better able to withstand disease.

- Use ladybugs. Yes, ladybugs (or ladybirds as they are also called). These beautiful little red insects with shiny black spots control aphids naturally and totally. You can order them from several organic garden places on the Internet. Until they arrive, spray every part of aphid-infested plants with well diluted soapy water and then rinse with clear water.

- You will also need to know how to make compost. Make compost the lazy way, by layering leaves, lawn clippings, and kitchen waste. Then simply leave it until it's ready. Nature's recyclers will take organic matter no matter how it is presented and turn it into rich, nice dark compost.

These were just a few tips that took from Organic Gardening, my "bible" for organic gardening.

An avid organic gardener
http://organic-gardening-ideas.blogspot.com/

Plaster And Drywall Cracks

Bamboo - Amazing Building Qualities

If you're wondering what will be the hot commodity in the next few years, think bamboo!

Growth

Bamboo offers many advantages, not the least of which is its amazing rate of growth. In fact, no other plant in the world grows faster than bamboo. Once established, bamboo plants will send up a number of shoots that will reach their full height in just one year, which makes bamboo the champion grower of all the woody plants. In fact, the record growth in a single twenty-four period is an astounding 47.6 inches! That's nearly four FEET in one day.

As for overall growth, although it's common to see bamboo plants 100 feet tall, the largest bamboo plant ever recorded grew to a height of 180 feet. It measured more than a foot in diameter and its walls were at least an inch thick. Such growth easily qualifies bamboo as the largest member of the grass family.

Strength

Another legendary trait is bamboo's strength. It has a tensile strength superior to mild steel, able to withstand pressure of 52,000 pounds per square inch, which is superior to graphite. That means that on top of being the fastest growing woody plant and the tallest grassy plant, bamboo is also the strongest woody plant, as well...twice as stable as oak or walnut when used in ladders or scaffolding.

Versatile

Bamboo is truly an amazing plant, but its uses as a resource have yet to be fully tapped. It can be selectively harvested every year with no impact on the environment and no need to replant, thereby saving thousands of man hours and fuel costs. It's an incredibly versatile building material, as well, providing income, food, and housing to 2.2 billion people around the globe...but we've only scratched the surface of bamboo's true potential.

Don't the qualities of bamboo remind you of a woman you know? Join our Bamboo Women(TM) community and have fun learning how to soar. Free conference calls, reports, and ebooks: Bamboo Women

Author Jeanette Fisher, teaches women five easy ways to get more joy out of life and to reach their dream in 60 days.

Copyright 2007 Jeanette J. Fisher

Oh God The Contractor From Hell

Hopseed Bush, Brush Cherry and Italian Cypress - Dependable Drought Tolerant Privacy Screen Plants

Many people are rediscovering the joys of staying home. Gardens are perfect places to unwind from the day. Screen plants can provide privacy in your garden, hide an unsightly area and provide shade. Hopseed Bush, Brush Cherry and Italian Cypress are three shrubs or small trees that are useful for screens, grow fast or are drought tolerant. Some plants have all three qualities!

When creating your backyard paradise these screening shrubs can also help create 'walls' to establish separate sections in a garden, so you can create different 'garden rooms' in your yard. Two of these are also good for planting in narrow spaces between houses to help block out the world. Try these versatile plants in your Patch of Heaven:

Hopseed Bush (Dodonaea viscosa)
USDA Zone: 9-11
Sunset Zone: 7-24
Sun: Full sun to part shade
Water: Moderate to low, drought tolerant

Hop Seed bushes come with leaves in either bright, lime green or dark purple. Both versions have leaves about 4 inches long and 1/2 inch wide and are very shiny on multiple shrubby branches. These drought tolerant shrubs are fast growers to about 10 feet tall and almost as wide. They take full sun to part shade. Once established in the garden (1-2 years) they can survive on rainfall alone.

Hopseed bushes have a growth habit that is a bit airy, with lots of small branches and the long leaves add to the lacy feel. They can be trimmed as hedges or espaliers for a slightly denser effect. These are good for layering to create a full, lush feel in the border. They are perfect for the back of the bed (where the sprinkler won't reach), along fences or as border screens. In late spring they develop large, papery seed pods, usually light brown, which hang on for weeks and provide a dramatic effect. Although the seed pods break down quickly in the soil, I do not recommend planting these bushes near pools.

Brush Cherry, Carolina Laurel Cherry (Prunus caroliniana)
USDA Zone: 7 - 9
Sunset Zone: 5 - 24
Sun: Full sun to part shade
Water: Moderate to low

Brush Cherry is another dependable, versatile garden shrub for quick screens and hedges. These shrubs can grow up to 30 feet tall and 10 - 12 feet wide. Although I have seen mature stands of Carolina Laurel grow even taller. They can grow in full sun to part shade. Once established they can survive drought conditions. However, in desert areas they prefer less sun and will appreciate more water during the hottest summer weather.

Brush Cherries have a dense growth habit with lots of branches so they take well to heaving shearing as a hedge and can even be used for topiaries. Left untrimmed, they will still maintain their neat, shrubby shape, but the interior growth will not have leaves. They can also be trained as small multi-trunk trees. New growth is a pretty reddish rusty color in the spring. They get sprays of white flowers followed by clusters of small, bright red cherries. The cherries can stain concrete and make a mess. If you don't have enough birds in your area to take care of the cherries for you, just trim off the flowers before they set. This will also relieve the plant of the stress of producing seeds.

Italian Cypress (Cupressus sempervirens)
USDA Zone: 7 - 9
Sunset Zone: 4 - 24
Sun: Full sun to part shade
Water: Moderate to low, drought tolerant

Italian Cypress trees are a familiar staple in the city, growing along border lines as tall screens. They grow up to 60 feet high on single trunks and are generally 1-2 feet wide but mature plants can be much wider. All cypresses prefer full sun, but will tolerate part shade and can survive on little water once they are established in a year or two.

Italian cypress are perfect shrubs for problem areas. They grow tall but they're thin, so you can tuck them into narrow spaces. Their trunks will eventually reach about 12 inches around, so your narrow bed should at least be that wide. Their growth habit is sleek and cylindrical, with most of their leaves pointing up. They lose a small amount of needles during they year, but litter is not a big problem with these trees. They do not grow very fast the first year, but they will make up for their lack of growth in the second year. Continually trimming the tops will result in a slightly fatter shrub, but they are fairly care free, needing no trimming.

When you are planning on having your shrubs survive on rainfall, it is best to encourage deep root development early on by soaking your plants every few days instead of sprinkling the topsoil every night. Even established plants appreciate a deep soak during a heat wave, when the weather has been over 100 degrees, or when it has been especially dry and windy.

All three of these plants are growing happily in my heavy clay, alkaline soil in hot and sunny Southern California. Good luck and happy gardening!

Laura Zinkan is a freelance writer who cultivates a gardening website at http://www.theGardenPages.com with plant profiles, growing tips and lore about succulents and California native plants. You can share her unique vision of Los Angeles and California at her regional web site http://www.AngelCityArt.com Copyright 2007 by Laura Zinkan (LauraZinkan.com). This article may be reprinted as long as author credit is given with website. All rights reserved.

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The Best Time to Plant Vegetable Gardens

The best time to plant a vegetable garden really varies from location to location. So if our living down in southern Florida then you are pretty much fine planting your garden at any time of the year. Basically some things you need to consider is when your last freeze is per year.

There's no real clear cut answer here and you can actually grow some vegetables nearly year round. But in general the best planting times for locations would fall during these times. Here are some of the best times to plant a vegetable garden!

So lets go ahead and break down the time frames per location:

-Northeast USA: Best time to plant would be around May
-Southeast USA: The best time to plant would be around April
-Northwest USA: The best time to plant would be around April
-Central USA: Best time to plant would be around May
-Southwest USA: Best time to plant would be around April

Ok so there are a lot of factors to consider. Its not only your location but also your elevation and more. If your on the coast line odds are you experience warmer temperatures also. Another thing you might want to consider is growing your vegetables indoors.

If you need more help on getting started growing your vegetable garden then simply check out my bio box below for a free guide. I hope this short little chart of times has helped you. Now that you know what the best time to plant a vegetable garden you can start planning!

Get A Free Vegetable Gardening Guide At http://www.vegetablegardeninghelp.com/which-vegetables-grow-best-in-the-winter-months/

Plus Ask Me Any Questions You Want And Get More Tips On The best time to plant a vegetable garden

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Wooden Gazebos - Perfect For Relaxation

Gazebos are beautiful, octagon shaped, pavilion structures that can usually be seen in parks, royal gardens and other public places, whilst more and more people are buying gazebos not only to enhance the look and comfort of their own gardens but to also fully enjoy nature and the beauty of the open. Gazebos are typically self-supporting but some can be attached to walls or even out buildings as most are open on all sides with no windows or doors, so offer a tremendous little place to sit and relax in the summer months. Gazebos are a wonderful alternative to bandstands as well and for virtually any other outdoor entertainment purpose as they are very versatile and are a fantastic way of keeping in the shade.

The history of the Gazebo goes back thousands of years and they have often been mentioned in ancient Chinese and Persian literature as well as many other classical civilisations, the finest examples of early gazebos are the garden houses at Mont acute house. All through history these garden pavilions have been built using almost any type of building materials, whilst these days the most frequent materials used are timber, not only since its cheaper and more convenient but also because it looks very effective. In hotter climates wooden gazebos are frequently built with screen sides as mosquitoes can be a massive problem in these parts of the world and so the sides make available a wonderful place to sit and relax at the same time as being sheltered from any unnecessary irritation from insects and the like.

The most common dimensions of a wooden garden gazebo is of 6 to 22 feet in diameter with either fully open or fully enclosed sides, depending of course on the tastes of the buyer or even the purpose by which the gazebo is to be used. Gazebos can also make splendid guest houses! You can choose between either a very uncomplicated style wooden gazebo or a robust style with trellis walls, Victorian mouldings or suchlike other architectural type you wish to include creating your very own style.

The area you want to build your gazebo is another extremely important decision to make, things such as regulations, permits, construction and additional configuration details need to be taken into consideration and it may well be a good idea to call out your municipal authority just to run through the regulations and rules associated to its construction with them.

To get the most out of your gazebo, why not situate your wooden gazebo near the garden perimeter overlooking a pleasing view? Or by a garden pond; you can even add a few of your favourite plants, trees and benches alongside or you may perhaps think about building your very own garden pond nearby if you don't already have one. Getting a little sound guidance from a builder would be highly recommended as well just to avert any possible disappointments later on.

People find that gazebos offer a very restful location for them to relax and appreciate their surroundings, whether you like to meditate, or use it for family gatherings. A wooden garden gazebo is great for relaxation, where noise and air pollution can be at a minimum.

If you choose a quiet, peaceful corner for your gazebo, you can genuinely rest and take pleasure in the beauty of your garden and all the various colours of the seasons.

Tom Gee runs a website about garden buildings. For more information please visit his wooden gazebos and log cabins UK website.

Architects And Home Design

Not All Green In The Compost Pile

There is a cost to everything we do whether it's good for you or not. The cost of doing things when its good for you is better health and hopefully a longer, happier life. When it's not good for you, you can suffer from poor health, added costs and a lower quality of life.

There are a lot of people who claim environmental benefits to creating urban compost, myself included. But what is the cost to doing this? Is it worth it?

I want to run through the process quickly so that we're all familiar with how industrial urban compost works. There are 5 major steps to collecting and processing urban compost into a usable product.

1) Curbside collection involves designated trucks to pick up your waste at curbside. They drive around the city for hundreds of miles collectively and pick up tonnes of waste for processing. Each of the hundreds of trucks deposit hundreds of bags onto the floor of the sorting facility on any given day of the week.

2) The waste is visually inspected and unwanted items removed. As you're no doubt aware, all the plastic bags we collect our household waste in must be opened up and divested of its contents. The plastics have to separated and put elsewhere. The contents from the bags are put into an industrial blender called a hydro-pulper and made into a thick soup ready for processing. The pulp is run through a large industrial strainer to sort out any missed foreign debris which is sent off to landfill. As a side note: it helps increase the efficiency of the process when we put only what is allowed in our green bins. All remaining unwanted items such as plastics and glass are removed.

3) The pulp is piped into a special facility known as an Anaerobic Digester. This stage partially breaks everything down in the absence of oxygen. The Anaerobic Digester is a sealed tank which creates the necessary environment for the natural anaerobic process's to occur. The bacteria convert the pulp into an organic solid in about 20 days. One of the byproducts to this process is a methane/carbon-dioxide mixture which is captured and used in a co-generation facility for heat and energy. The City of Toronto website states that "about 110 cubic metres of this biogas is produced from one tonne of organic waste which is equivalent to 670 kwh of energy."

This stage does produce an odour that has to be dealt with through the construction of a bio-filter. Toronto uses woodchips and compost to their advantage. Bacteria living in the filter feed off the compounds which cause the smell, thus eliminating the smell. Here again we've got nature working for us.

4) This step in the process is to allow Aerobic decomposition for the complete conversion over to a useable organic humus. The solid material is trucked over to the secondary processing facility located outside the City where it's piled in windrows and turned from time to time to ensure a unified product. This again is a naturally occurring process whereby oxygen using bacteria break down the material further. Heat is produced from the process which helps kill off pathogens and seeds. This process occurs all year long and takes about six months to complete.

5) At this point, the compost has to be tested to ensure its safe for use and once it's given approval it's off to get used in the city again. So in just under 7 months, the waste from your dinner could be back in the park, at your local school or dumped in your own neighbourhood for use on your own lawn.

Each of these steps has significant costs associated with it.

Toronto claims it is spending $69,000,000 in capital costs and another $10,000,000.00 annually in operating costs. (You can go to Toronto's website under GreenBin/organics for further clarification if interested.) This does NOT include what savings there are from the stoppage of the existing contracts to rid our garbage problem to Michigan.

Costs included are emissions associated with vehicle haul, CO2(tonnes/yr), land displacement, land use conflicts, redundancy costs, expansion capacity, development time and annual system costs. The capital costs were estimated at $69,000,000.00 or $54 per tonne and the operating costs estimated at $10,000,000.00 per year or $91 per tonne. Simple math tells me the cost is around the $145.00 per tonne mark for composting in Toronto. Actual costs to Toronto in 2006 under their existing contracts were $135.00 per tonne so the estimates are close to reality.

So lets look at the big picture.

Toronto was sending several thousands of trucks to Michigan each year to dispose of its waste. Disposal costs increased over 300% after Toronto shut down the Keele Valley landfill site at the beginning of 2003. About 30% of waste going to landfill had organic waste in it so by diverting this to a facility which turned waste into useable compost made sense. Not to mention the many carbon footprints left behind from the trucks going to Michigan and back. The green bin process is estimated to divert 2,300 trucks from Michigan.

While the darker side to an industrial urban compost site includes a carbon footprint, CO2 emissions, some liquid effluent, and some odour, these are off-set or negated by improved systems, lower emissions than would have otherwise existed, cogeneration recovery and application of filters to reduce odours. While the capital costs aren't to be sneezed at either, I believe the alternative just didn't work. As a tax-payer I want my hard-earned tax dollars working for me as efficiently as possible. Composting is good for the environment. Landfills could well be full of hidden costs down the road which we have yet to learn about in terms of just what's been put down in them over the last 75 years (think about that for a few minutes and you'll get a sense of what I mean.) If we have too much humus laying about...well, my guess is it's much easier to deal with it than it is to deal with the issues of landfill. I believe it's worth it.

Mark Overbury is passionate about urban compost. His blog is http://www.urbancompost.info/blog

I Have A Squeaky Floor

How to Design Pink Tulip Flower Gardens

If you love to wear pink, think pink and decorate in pink, you can grow a pink tulip flower garden in your yard next spring. There are a number of varieties of pink tulips that include single tulips, double (peony) tulips, fringed tulips, and parrot tulip. You can also find a variety of specialty pink tulips as well, which are much fairer than the legendary black tulip.

Usually pink tulips look best with various shades of white, light blue (usually a different type of flower rather than a tulip), magenta, or a variety of bright-colored tulips. Pink tulips look good in one and two colored tulip beds as well as in multi-colored tulip beds. You can plan ahead to design the tulip garden that you want. For example, you can purchase and plant tulip bulbs that bloom at the same time and reach the same height.

For example, the Apricot Beauty tulip is offers one of the palest shades of pink tulips. This tulip blooms in mid to late spring, that is from mid-April to mid-May resulting in a light pink - orange color. A parrot petal type of pink tulips is the Pink Fountain tulip which has fringed petals and blossoms in mid-Spring. Pink Impression tulips yield single jumbo blossoms that bloom in mid-season and reach a height up to 26 inches. The Strawberries and Cream Peony tulip is a double-blossom tulip that reaches a height of 18-22 inches in mid-to-late spring.

Another pink tulip is named the Angelique tulip. This one is a mid to late spring bloomer and it grows up to 18 inches tall. If you want a variety of colors other than pink in your flower garden it is recommended to mix this tulip with the Blue Hyacinths, a flower that is similar in type to the light purple Lilac. You could also plant this with a white tulip such as the Purissima Jumbo Deluxe White Tulip, which is a jumbo sized single blossom tulip.

Some online nurseries offer a collection of pink tulip bulbs. One colorful mix of pink tulips is the Appleblossom Pink Tulip collection which contains a mixture of both light and medium pink tulip bulbs and echoes the pink delight of apple tree blossoms. If you want to plant a pink tulip border around a flower bed, consider the Toronto Tulip, a single pink-edged vermillion tulip that reaches a height of only 10 inches.

All of the above are just a few examples of tulips that you can plant in a flower garden. This of course can be mixed with any color combinations of tulips that you want in your flower garden. Most of the time these are planted a few inches apart either in clusters of varied types of tulips or in one-color tulip garden patches.

A large part of choosing which colors would go together in a pink tulip garden is simple. Think of these basic combinations -- white and pink, red and pink, purple and pink. Think about what you choose from your pink wardrobe to dress attractively. The same thing goes for your yard. Look at the variety of pink tulip bulbs that are available. Then choose the ones you want, buy and plant them. Get ready to see your beautiful pink tulip flower garden get dressed up for a spring morning next year.

Dave Pipitone is hopelessly in love with tulips and nourishes them in his Hope Patch. For more information on pink tulip flowers, visit http://www.tulipreview.com.

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Ballast For Hydroponics Growing

Why Digital Ballasts

Earlier ballasts consisted of resistors, which is an inefficient way to control current, as it leads to loss of electricity. Modern digital ballasts limit current flow without wasting electricity. They also help to extend the lifespan of grow lights. Moreover, they help to reduce flickering, a common feature in older ballasts. Also, the performance of most conventional magnetic ballasts worsens after few years of operation, while digital ballasts provide a consistent lumen output and efficiency over its lifetime. As a bonus, digital ballasts offer noise-free operation and less startup time, or the time required to achieve full brightness.

Factors to Consider While Buying a Digital Ballast

The most important factor to consider is efficacy, which is measured in Watts / Light output. Another important factor in hydroponics is heating. A ballast that emits a lot of heat will affect the temperature of your growing environment. Some ballasts may include a fan for cooling, but these are known to have a high failure rate. A good ballast should also switch off automatically in case of a short circuit. For best performance, always opt for known and tested products for your indoor growing environment.

Ballasts for Indoor Gardening

If you are growing plants the hydroponic way, you will often use either metal halide (MH) or high pressure sodium (HPS) lamps or both. Consider buying a ballast that is versatile enough to power both types, such as the Dual ballast by Lumatek. Lumatek digital ballasts are well-known in the hydroponics industry for their efficient performance. Other well-known brands include Maverick and Xtrasum.

Modern digital ballasts limit current flow without wasting electricity. They also help to extend the lifespan of grow lights.