Sneak Peek
Learn how to care for your hydroponic plants by understanding how to provide nutrients to your plants.
This 20-hour short course on Nutrients for Hydroponics is a comprehensive overview of the key components required to set your hydroponics systems up for success. This course offers a foundational approach to the nutrient requirements of hydroponics from making and mixing your own, to managing contamination and nutritional deficiencies.
What's Inside the Course?
LESSON 1 INTRODUCTION
Artificial Growing
Tissue Culture
Hydroponics
How Plants Uptake Nutrients
How Plants Absorb and Use Nutrients in Hydroponics
Hydroponics Techniques
Review what you have been learning
LESSON 2 PRE-PACKAGED NUTRIENTS
Using Solid Nutrients
Solutions and Precipitates
Why Twin-Pack Chemicals?
Why Single-Pack Liquid Solutions?
Organic Solutions
Review what you have been learning
LESSON 3 CHEMICAL COMPONENTS
Types of Chemicals
Electrical Conductivity
The Role of pH in Hydroponics
What are Solutions?
What Does a Hydroponic Nutrient Look Like?
Writing Chemical Names
Calculating the Amount of Nutrient in a Chemical
Mixing Nutrients
Hydroponic Fertiliser details
Lesson 3 additional reading
Review what you have been learning
LESSON 4 OTHER ADDITIVES
Introduction
Allowable Additives for Hydroponic Nutrient Solutions
Beneficial Trace Elements as Hydroponic Additives
Bio-stimulants as Hydroponic Additives
Foliar Nutrition and Foliar sprays
Review what you have been learning
LESSON 5 CREATING HYDROPONIC NUTRIENTS
Introduction to Basic Mixes
Process of Making and Mixing Nutrients from Fertiliser Salts
Example Solutions
Nutrient Solution Formulation
Hydroponic Nutrient Levels
Nutrient Ratios
Assessing a Nutrient Formulation
Suggestions for Beginners
Review what you have been learning
LESSON 6 ORGANIC HYDROPONIC NUTRIENTS
Brief History
Issues with Organics
Types of Organic Systems
Allowable Nutrient Sources and Products for Organic Production
Making Organic Nutrient Solutions Onsite
EC and pH Control in Organic Hydroponics
Problems with Organic Nutrients
Lesson 6 additional reading
Review what you have been learning
LESSON 7 TISSUE CULTURE NUTRIENTS
Hydroponics vs. Tissue Culture
Nutrient Supply in Tissue Culture
A Tissue Culture Medium
Other Additives in Tissue Culture and Hydroponics
Organic Compounds
Review what you have been learning
LESSON 8 MANAGING CONTAMINANTS
Water Quality
Disinfection Systems
Preventing Chemical Contaminants from Leaking into the Broader Environment
Review what you have been learning
LESSON 9 TESTING SOLUTIONS
Important Tests in Hydroponics
Water Quality Tests
Water quality test results and interpretation
Nutrient Balance Testing: Solution Analysis
Plant Testing: Foliar Mineral Levels
pH Tests for Hydroponics
EC Testing
Automatic EC and pH testing and control
Review what you have been learning
LESSON 10 NUTRITIONAL DISORDERS
Nutrition Management
Diagnosing Nutritional Stress
Nutritional Deficiencies
Macronutrients: NPK Deficiencies and Toxicities
Other Common Deficiencies and Toxicities
Micronutrients
What are the Most Common Symptoms?
Key to Detecting Deficiencies and Toxicities
LESSON 11 NUTRIENT SOLUTION AND PRODUCE NUTRITION
Examples of Nutrient Solution Manipulation and Produce Nutrition
Review what you have been learning
Final Assessment
HOW CAN PLANTS GROW WITHOUT SOIL?
Plants naturally grow in soil, but modern science has found other ways for them to grow. Once you understand what things soil does for plants, you can then with the help of modern science begin to conceive other ways of doing those things, replacing the need for soil. The main thing soil does for a plant is to provide nutrients. It also provides a place for the roots to anchor the plant, and an environment to insulate the roots from extreme weather and provide moisture and oxygen for the roots to absorb.
Hydroponics and tissue culture are modern ways of growing plants without soil. They offer the grower many advantages, not the least an ability to have greater control over how the plant grows. Pivotal to that control, is to understand and manage the nutrients provided to the plant. This management of nutrients is what this book is about.
Grown in soil, plants source the nutrients they need from decomposed organic matter, from added fertiliser, or both. Decomposed organic matter is broken down by microorganisms into its elemental form and is comprised of a range of minerals needed in order for plants to grow. The elements made available through the activity of microorganisms and other soil life are absorbed by the plant’s roots (as described earlier), but this absorption cannot occur without the presence of water since available nutrients need to be dissolved in water in order for a plant to take them up. The same applies to added fertiliser. It is added to improve the activity of soil microorganisms which break it down so that it can be used by plants. However, fertiliser needs to be added to soils in controlled amounts because too much fertiliser adversely affects the activity of (or may cause the death of) microorganisms.
In hydroponics, you circumvent the activity of soil microorganisms because firstly you are growing the plants in a sterile, soilless medium, and secondly because the hydroponic nutrients you supply are already dissolved in water and are much more directly absorbed by plant roots. In hydroponics nutrients can be added in far higher concentrations than soil fertiliser because there are no microorganisms that need to be protected.
You cannot simply use any fertiliser in a hydroponic system and you should not use a hydroponic solution on garden soil. Both circumstances are different, but through this course you will develop an understanding of those differences. Ultimately, you can learn to manage plant nutrition just as well if not better, in hydroponics as what you do in soil.
How does this course work?
You can enrol at any time.
Once you have paid for the course, you will be able to start straight away.
Study when and where you like. Work through at your own pace.
You can download your study-guide to your smart phone, tablet or laptop to read offline.
There are automated self-assessment tests you can complete at the end of each lesson. You can attempt these as many times as you wish and each time, upon completion, you can see your results. You will need internet access to complete the self assessment tests.
At the end of the course, you are presented with a large assessment which can be attempted online, anywhere, anytime. If you achieve a 60% pass in the exam; you immediately receive a downloadable certificate of completion with your name on it. If you do not achieve a 60% pass rate, you can contact us to re-sit your exam.
Contact us at anytime if you have any issues with the course.