Flowers with Water Culture (Floating Method)

15 years ago

Hi, I have done water culture (floating method) with lettuce and had reasonable success. I am wondering if I can do that with flowers?

The problem I see is some flowers are taller/bigger than lettuce so some staking or holding of the flowers is needed. Is there any known method for that? I have been checking web sites and books, but most of them deal only with vegetable.

My application is in hybridizing. In hybridizing, we want to grow many plants and then examine the characterisitcs of interest, like the height, color/pattern of flowers, leaves, etc. Once you can tell that is not the one you want, you discard it and use the space to grow another one. I thought hydroponics would make things easy in this regards.

And since the plants are for study only, they don't have to look the best, so somehow holding/staking the flower as I mentioned above can be anything simpler as long as it holds the plants until they flower (since I am mostly interested in flower color/patterns).

Any suggestion/idea?

Many thanks in advance!

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Comments (3)

freemangreens
15 years ago
Seems I've seen this post before; a few months ago.

Before you get into growing these flowers hydroponically, are they going to be propagated this way or are you trying to accelerate their growth to speed up your investigation?

Long-term plants that are being grown for a particular flower quality might be better grown using soil. If you try this using hydroponics, the pH and EC variations will drive you nuts. As the plants move toward flowering, their chemical uptake needs will change drastically and you'll spend all your time just trying to keep them alive.

In general, hydroponics is more applicable to leafy vegetable and some specific fruit crops than for flowers. I'd think twice on this one!
davemichigan
Original Author
15 years ago
freemangreens, the post that you saw a few months ago might have been mine. I was asking if I could grow flowers on lava rock alone.

The flowers that will be grown is more for temporary study. Like I might cross an orange flower with a patterned red flower trying to get an orange patterned flower. After crossing, I would try to grow the as many seeds from the cross as space permits. As soon as these offsprings show flower, many of them will be discarded (like I might get red again with pattern, so this will be discarded immediately). If I do get an orange pattern, then this will be self cross for seed collection.

In other words, the flowers don't even need to grow very well. If I do get my desired result (say the orange pattern one), then their seeds might be grown for more permanent result.

The reason I am considering hydroponics is because my garden soil is not ideal (it is clay). From your description, it sounds like it might be easier if I just go with regular container gardening than trying hydroponics with flowers.
hooked_on_ponics
15 years ago
The key thing to remember with raft techniques is that lettuce is one of the few plants that not only will tolerate it, but actually thrive in it. Most plants will do poorly or straight-out die in a raft system.

The secondary concern is plant weight versus raft buoyancy. You obviously can't have too much plant up top or the raft will sink.

You've got to have the right growing system for the right plant. Most plants at least want an air gap between their crown and their water source. Some plants hate having their "feet wet" (roots in water, even aerated).

For plants you're not sure about, the best course of action is Ebb & Flow. By changing your flood cycle timing you can provide nearly any plant with acceptable conditions. If you go with a flood tray - basically just a large flat tray that floods and drains as a whole - you can move pots in and out of the tray as you see fit without really making any changes to the system itself.

That'd probably be the easiest way to handle the job you're looking to do. That'll also allow you to stake the plants if you like.