Sulforaphane in Broccoli Microgreens: When to Harvest Them Right
People buy and grow broccoli microgreens for sulforaphane. The plant does not actually contain ready-made sulforaphane. It holds glucoraphanin and an enzyme called myrosinase, and the two meet when the greens are chewed or chopped. How much sulforaphane you end up with depends on three things: the day the greens were cut, how much light […]
Hydroponic Strawberries at Home: How Many Berries One Windowsill Plant Really Gives
Windowsill strawberries are most tempting in winter, when store berries are pricey and taste like nothing. Winter is also when the plants get the least light. Before you buy a system, two numbers are worth knowing: how many berries one hydroponic plant yields in good conditions, and how much light it needs to get there. […]
Pea Microgreens: What to Soak the Seeds In for 53% More Yield
Almost everyone who grows pea shoots soaks the seed first. The real question is what to soak it in: plain water, or one of the biostimulant solutions sold to give stronger germination and bigger harvests. A team at the University of Palermo tested exactly that on pea and arugula microgreens, and the results came out […]
Shiitake: 2-4 Months to First Harvest, 4 Times the Price of Button Mushrooms
In the 2024-2025 season, US growers received an average of $6.23 a pound for shiitake and $1.53 a pound for button mushrooms. That is a fourfold gap, and it has widened: two seasons earlier shiitake sold for $3.82. The numbers come from the annual USDA NASS mushroom report. Part of that price pays for time. […]
Edible Flower Bloom Calendar: What to Pick From March to October
Outdoors in Ukraine, edible flowers are in season from March to October, and the season is lopsided. We checked 37 flowers from our catalog against the Vyznachnyk roslyn Ukrainy (Key to the Plants of Ukraine, Kyiv, 1965), which lists the flowering months for every species. In March, only one of the 37 is in bloom: […]
Pink, Yellow and King Oyster Mushrooms Compared: Which to Grow
The clearest way to see how pink, yellow, and king oyster mushrooms differ is a 2017 Turkish trial that grew all three species in identical bags in the same room. The average king oyster weighed 1.9-2.6 oz (55-75 g), the average pink oyster up to 0.6 oz (18 g), and the average yellow oyster 0.1-0.2 […]
Why Kratky Setups Fail: Six Failure Modes
Why Kratky setups fail often gets decided before planting, when you fill the tank with tap water. Bernard Kratky of the University of Hawaii gives this example (Acta Horticulturae 843, 2009): water with an EC of 0.5 mS/cm from its own impurities reaches 2.0 once only a quarter of the solution is left. The volume […]
Manual vs Automated pH Dosing: When to Switch to an Automatic Doser
Manual vs automated pH dosing: for an 11-gallon (40 L) reservoir of lettuce, adjusting once a day is enough. In a study by Lithuanian researchers (Kudirka and co-authors, Horticulturae, 2023), lettuce grew in DWC tanks holding 40 L each, with 12 plants per tank. pH was corrected with acid or base once a day. Every […]
Arduino pH and EC Controller for Hydroponics: Why EC Throws Off pH
You can build an Arduino pH and EC controller for hydroponics in an evening: a board, two analog modules, a couple of peristaltic pumps, and relays. The trouble starts when both sensors go into the same reservoir. DFRobot, which sells these modules for Arduino, says so plainly in the guide for its signal isolator: the […]