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on Gopher (inofficial)
URI Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
URI Rack-mount hydroponics
roshin wrote 28 min ago:
I played around with hydroponics. in the end, they never ended up
better than dirt. with dirt you have to water it, and fertilize every
few months, but that's it.
with hydroponics, every week I was refilling the water, and adjusting
the EC and pH. The end result was very similar to what dirt got me
koshinae wrote 28 min ago:
This is the best thing so far on the internet I have read this year.
Thanks.
gzread wrote 2 hours 55 min ago:
cron and ssh is the worst way to control the pump motor. If the network
is interrupted the pump will be stuck on until the next cycle.
chermi wrote 3 hours 50 min ago:
I just love the simplicity of a cron job control system. This is so
fun.
amelius wrote 4 hours 19 min ago:
So:
1. Convert acres of agricultural land into a datacenter.
2. Put plants inside.
3. ???
4. Profit?
colechristensen wrote 3 hours 50 min ago:
If you have cheap energy, this can be much more
water-and-space-efficient than farming outside by eliminating pests
and weeds and providing an ideal growing environment for the
particular plant year-round.
astoor wrote 3 hours 55 min ago:
Could be a good use for all the AI datacentres when the bubble
bursts.
amelius wrote 3 hours 32 min ago:
Sounds good: RAM chips out, plants in.
jszymborski wrote 6 hours 30 min ago:
FWIW I've found ebb and flow systems work fine without the aerator in
the water, as the roots get plenty of water during the ebb cycle.
DANmode wrote 2 hours 54 min ago:
You mean oxygen?
givinguflac wrote 7 hours 29 min ago:
Any of the billion guides to growing hydroponic cannabis can teach you
how to do this in a vertical rack without issues. Neat write up though.
Xmd5a wrote 9 hours 24 min ago:
Yo. I successfully did outdoor aeroponics with insane temperatures in
the root chamber (near 40°C/100°F). My secret? I grew 'Virginia Gold'
tobacco.
> Farmers discovered that bright leaf tobacco needs thin, starved soil,
and those who could not grow other crops found that they could grow
tobacco. Formerly unproductive farms reached 20â35 times their
previous worth. By 1855, six Piedmont counties adjoining Virginia led
Virginia's tobacco market [1] This is one beast of a plant. My plants
stayed alive when I stopped spraying water in September and only died
because of frost in late December. They were about 40 cm high due to
the small volume of the root chamber.
Anyway it's a great choice for an outdoor aeroponics setup.
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Types_of_tobacco
detritus wrote 2 hours 39 min ago:
For some reason I had it in mind that growing tobacco was illegal in
the UK, so your post prompted me to check and lo! Apparently it's
entirely legal, for personal use.
So now I have a new project - I've always wanted to smoke 'pure'
tobacco, like the ancients.
I'm twenty years too old to have an illegal harvest at home :)
Next stop, need to check how to cure the leaves.
Thanks!
DANmode wrote 2 hours 58 min ago:
Do you smoke it?
Sell it?
travisr wrote 4 hours 47 min ago:
What did you do with the crop?
pm90 wrote 5 hours 15 min ago:
Except the tobacco part. Is this consumer grade or is it meant for
industrial uses (organic pesticides etc).
Gud wrote 9 hours 57 min ago:
From someone who grew a lot of weed in closets, nice work!
seu wrote 11 hours 11 min ago:
Looks great! It could be nice to have an integrated temperature control
solution that keeps your servers cool and your plants warm.
jeffrallen wrote 11 hours 13 min ago:
I am here for exactly this kind of surprise. Nice work, HN!
gdorsi wrote 12 hours 36 min ago:
I wonder if flood and drain would work with orchids.
I do that manually with my plants twice a week, they have flowers
almost all year, but it's a chore to bring them out, flood them, make
them drain and bring them back home.
Also my wife always yells at me because I always wet the floor in the
process.
jszymborski wrote 6 hours 27 min ago:
There's a couple of YouTube channels (mainly from India) that claim
great success with orchids and safron though I'm skeptical of the
claims.
kalaksi wrote 13 hours 12 min ago:
I've also tried a few different ways to grow plants indoors and I'd
like to share my experiences for anyone interested. I like to grow
indoors since I can do it year round and the environment is clean,
stable and there are no animals or bugs (knock wood). Over time, I've
gravitated towards low-maintenance hydroponics. Growing in soil needs
soil, which is also dirty and so a bit more PITA, and it can harbor
bugs.
One setup I had was a vertical (hydroponic) window farm, which looked
pretty great, but the roots start to get into the tubing, which I
suspect could happen in the rack-mount system too. It also wasn't
simple to just take out one plant for maintenance.
A small NFT (nutrient film technique) box has worked very well,
requires very little material as substrate and is easy to maintain.
Might get problematic if growing the same plants for over a year since
the roots can grow a lot and basically partially outgrow the system so
the flow of water starts being insufficient and therefore might need at
least some trimming and replanting if some of the roots start to
suffer.
I'm in the process of trying out deep water culture, which requires
even less materials since there's no growing medium, just water, and
roots are submerged so doesn't have the same issues as NFT. Probably
has it's own problems, though, and air pumps can be loud!
Anyhow, most of my plants are in a passive hydroponics system. "Kratky
method" is something a bit similar. I basically replaced soil in pots
with clay pellets and manage watering so that I have to water every 2-3
days. Requires clay pellets as the substrate so needs a bit more effort
up front, but doesn't require electricity and is more portable when
using small/medium sized pots. Pellets can be reused (at least most of
them). I also added a short tube for monitoring water level and
possible maintenance if I need to wash / flush the pot with the plant
in it.
Regarding fertilizing, I rarely do any accurate measurements anymore. I
got a few pump bottles and measured how much fertilizer one push gets
me and wrote on the bottles how many pushes per litre. I also eye-ball
the water color a bit since I know how it should look like.
Oh, and the plants that have done well for me, and can grow for a long
time with multiple harvests (so no lettuce): peppers, cherry tomatoes,
cucumbers, trying some small strawberries
curl-up wrote 3 hours 14 min ago:
I've spent some time looking into all these methods before, but all
of them required substantial amounts of plastic in contact with
plants/water and in full sun/heat. Are you worried about leachables?
To be clear, I'm not asking this in some new age way, and I'm sure
it's better than the amount of pesti/herbicides used traditionally
(and the whole movement behind hydro/aquaponics is fascinating to
me), just wondering if this is something you ever tried minimising
with such setups?
kalaksi wrote 8 min ago:
I've thought about it, but I'm not too worried. I wash containers
before use and there's not a lot of sun or heat indoors. My regular
pots are actually ceramic or stone. They look and feel better than
plastic, but I also want to avoid unnecessary plastic when I can.
Scoundreller wrote 1 hour 13 min ago:
Indoors will help with that because glass blocks a lot of the UV.
More panes/thickness and coatings also helps
Xmd5a wrote 9 hours 20 min ago:
try zucchinis next (protip: the flowers needs the fresh of the
morning to bloom).
colordrops wrote 14 hours 17 min ago:
Always lettuce. If someone can figure out how to grow something with a
dense and full nutrient profile then there might be something to
vertical farms.
DANmode wrote 2 hours 50 min ago:
Turns out youâre meant to eat multiple plants.
Bioflavonoids are important.
chermi wrote 3 hours 49 min ago:
Mushrooms!
driverdan wrote 6 hours 12 min ago:
Fruiting plants require more space. You're not going to grow tomatoes
or peppers in a server rack. Density works well for leafy greens and
microgreens.
zokier wrote 7 hours 39 min ago:
afaik soybeans can grow perfectly well in hydroponic setups, and I'm
sure you can do many other beans too. [1]
URI [1]: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jf203275m
URI [2]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S194439862...
boomskats wrote 9 hours 31 min ago:
Isn't the idea that you get to do that with all the fertile land you
liberate from the lettuce?
regularfry wrote 11 hours 30 min ago:
I remember seeing people suggest vertical algae farms that could (in
the marketing theory) be a very high nutrient source. The problem
then is that you're eating algae. Spirulina is an acquired taste.
I'm more intrigued by duckweed, which grows very fast and is a common
food in some countries.
roughly wrote 11 hours 40 min ago:
there's no free lunch - the plants are just rearranging what you give
them.
zokier wrote 7 hours 37 min ago:
co2 is mostly free and plentiful, and also the main ingredient for
plant biomass.
roughly wrote 3 hours 27 min ago:
which is why lettuce grows just fine.
gus_massa wrote 8 hours 23 min ago:
I agree. Potatoes transform light into starch. With traditional
farming you get a huge "free" solar collector. In vertical farming
you have to pay for the light.
So the alternative is to grow lettuce that has a greater price to
energy ratio.
roughly wrote 3 hours 28 min ago:
More than just light - the chemical profile of the soil is the
feedstock for all of the interesting chemistry the plant does.
The air can provide oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and carbon, which
are the backbone of a lot of the chemistry, but anything more
exotic than that is coming from the soil. They're factories, not
alchemists.
gus_massa wrote 1 hour 0 min ago:
Hydrogen comes from water. They have surplus of Oxygen from CO2
and water, so much that they give it away. Carbon comes from
the CO2 in the air.
Other nutrients like phosphorus or potassium come disolved in
water, but in intensive farming they must be added to the soil,
so it's the same that dissolving in the hydroponic solution.
Perhaps it's more efficient in hydroponic than in soil.
Nitrogen is more tricky. There is plenty of Nitrogen in the air
but not in a useful form, so in most cases it must be added as
fertilizer. In some cases like soy the plants have helper
bacteria that transform the nitrogen from the air into useful
forms. This conversion takes a lot of energy, so I don't expect
the lack of wind to be a problem, you still need some air
movement to keep the CO2 high and the O2 low. (Anyway, farming
soy under artificial light is probably not profitable for the
same reason farming potatoes under artificial light is not
profitable.)
The most important thing you lack inside a vertical farm that
you get almost for free in a big faring field is sunlight (i.e.
energy).
jillesvangurp wrote 13 hours 2 min ago:
The challenge is finding something that is energy dense, that grows
quickly, and has a high value to justify the length of trouble you
have to go through. Things like potatoes, grains, rice, etc. Are
relatively low value and they don't grow that quick.
Potatoes especially don't like to be submerged. But otherwise they
are not that hard to grow. A simple grow bag will do. That's true for
a lot of root vegetables and tubers. For vegetables like that,
greenhouses are more common.
With rice and grains, they grow well enough in hydroponics but you
just need an enormous amount of area to get to interesting amounts.
Also the growing season for that is quite long. Hydroponics favor
things that you can harvest in weeks rather than say 2-3 times per
year.
odie5533 wrote 13 hours 41 min ago:
I grow kale, mustard greens, herbs, and sprouts. I'm not looking to
erase my need for produce. I just want to always have some fresh
staples. Easier to pull off a few sprigs of parsley or some basil
than it is to buy those little packs all the time.
defrost wrote 14 hours 8 min ago:
Dyson is doing strawberries
* [1] * [2] The rationale there is a combo of profit (from off season
strawberries) and mark-up possible from unique branding (Dyson) and
social fuzzies (eco-friendly, etc (regardless of cold economics)).
URI [1]: https://dysonfarming.com/strawberries/
URI [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA6BCIWPJ30
jpalomaki wrote 6 hours 2 min ago:
Home scale example with strawberries:
URI [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LIhx0yoM7s
tzury wrote 14 hours 30 min ago:
Setting aside the DIY and hacking spirit of the project, let's remember
that, with the commonly accepted figure of 2,500 kcal/day for an adult
male, a whole iceberg lettuce (~600g) provides about ~87 kcal which is
roughly 3.5% of what one's need.
TurdF3rguson wrote 11 hours 18 min ago:
So what though? I can get all the calories I need from $0.50 of rice
but I still need crunchy things and protein.
rmast wrote 4 hours 48 min ago:
Getting all the calories you need from (plain white) rice just
about meet minimum protein needs for a sedentary lifestyle (around
50g protein). For every 100 calories of rice there are about 2.1g
of protein, so for a 2000 calorie diet of just rice that would be
42g protein. But eating 10 cups of rice is a lot.
Protein-wise, an all cabbage diet would give you more if youâre
meeting calorie needs - 5.1g protein per 100 calories, or 102g
protein for 2000 calories worth of cabbage.. but that is a heck of
a lot of cabbage (17ish lbs)!
Letâs be real though, people should be eating a varied diet and
not just a single food. And perhaps not a junk food only diet.
schoen wrote 4 hours 44 min ago:
Any issues about amino acid deficiencies from that? (as opposed
to protein more generally?)
When I was growing up, there was a vogue among my fellow
vegetarians for the book Diet for a Small Planet which suggested
that we needed to eat a diversity of amino acids in each meal,
hence "complementary" proteins at the same time. This concept
then seemed to fade away completely because it appears that the
body can actually successfully make use of amino acids even when
consumed at different times. But they have to be consumed
eventually!
johnyzee wrote 14 hours 35 min ago:
I know this was about the journey, but for anyone interested in home
hydroponics (without the journey of building it), I have had a
Gardyn[1] for 6-7 years. It works well. It has a 6 gallon (20 liter)
tank and a couple of strong vertical growth lights, in a sleek package
that looks good in the home. Plants are fitted into pods, in
standard-size rockwool blocks that you can get from any grower shop.
The fact that it works at all after a number of years, is surprising to
me, given everything that goes on with it: You've got a moist
environment with water pumped through it multiple times a day,
fertilizer in the water crusting up in places, living plants with their
roots growing into the pipes, algae growth, and a lot of parts that are
shuffled around often.
There might well be other systems around these days that are the same
or better, I wouldn't know, the Gardyn is just what I ended up with
when I researched it years ago and I'm happy with it. For downsides,
seeds are expensive from Gardyn, but you can plant your own. I do buy
some from Gardyn because they have a big selection, and they usually
come out good, which regular seeds often don't for whatever reason.
They try to push their subscription service but I don't need it, so
don't use it.
Hope this doesn't come off as advertisement, as I said there may well
be better options (would like to hear about them), but this one works
for me for a pretty hassle-free experience.
URI [1]: https://mygardyn.com/product/gardyn-home-kit/
fer wrote 5 hours 48 min ago:
What's the power consumption like?
Edit: just checked the specs, 47 kWh/mo, roughly 65W on average
wiether wrote 11 hours 57 min ago:
I don't know how much fresh food costs in the US, but I don't see how
its possible to recoup the investment on this $900 setup in a
lifetime!
Then you add the electricity cost and the seeds, and the maintenance
time...
But it looks nice in a kitchen!
michaelteter wrote 18 min ago:
If you fully measure the output (benefit) vs cost, the numbers
donât look so bad.
For example, it is known that nutrient value in produce drops at an
astonishing rate over time; so having locally grown food that you
can pick and eat immediately means youâll get vastly more
benefit, beyond just calories and fiber.
Also, when supply chains get disrupted and your grocery has empty
shelves, you still have good, healthy food.
Youâre also reducing transportation effects, which is to say you
are having a less negative impact on the environment.
Most of what we put prices on are ignoring real costs.
harrall wrote 3 hours 33 min ago:
I wouldnât grow food hydroponically to save money, but growing
food can get you really nice sweet varieties with stronger flavor
than you can get in stores (since you can pick them at your
convenience).
That said, I prefer growing outdoors if you have the space. Itâs
a total different maintenance (with way more bugs) but it also
doubles as decor better than my hydroponic setup ever could.
buescher wrote 8 hours 30 min ago:
Fresh produce is pretty inexpensive here for the most part. But
fresh herbs (like thyme, not a euphemism) are sold in small
quantities (15g-20g) in plastic clamshell packaging in groceries
for $2-$4 each.
You donât need a $900 gadget to grow fresh herbs, either, of
course. But thatâs one way you could think of it ârecoupingâ
the capital.
Scoundreller wrote 1 hour 10 min ago:
yeah, calories are cheap: grow for flavour/value.
In a backyard 5gal/19l bucket, I could get 3lbs/1.5kg of potatoes
or 3lbs/1.5kg of cherry tomatoes. The latter is a better deal.
astahlx wrote 14 hours 38 min ago:
I also built something similar. In the end I appreciated the services
our nature provides to us even more. Replicating all this artificially
is really hard and energy intensive. Planting and growing plans
outsides is fun and rewarding; adding all the tech in the end felt like
a big waste of resources.
My motivation to work on such a project was my disbelief in human
mankind to keep our planet earth habitable.
Brajeshwar wrote 14 hours 41 min ago:
You did mention the reason for a server rack as a matter of
circumstance. But if I were to do and really want the Hydropnics part,
Iâd sell the Server Rack (good price) and buy the cheaper Pallet
Racks. The first thing that comes to mind is that it will be easier to
plan, pluck, change lights, etc.
Server Racks - you donât interact with them often, but you will need
to with the Hydroponics one.
Also, your setup is too clean. Water will drip, spill, the pebbles will
fall. Looks really nice, though.
About 5 years ago, I worked with a Climate Research Scientist friend,
growing exotic plants in dutch-buckets, tower aeroponics, and rack
mounted red-lit setups to induce Vitamin B-12 (only found in meat, so
deficiencies develops in vegetarian) to Spinach trying to produce Super
Spinash.
mcdonje wrote 4 hours 4 min ago:
Tell me more about super spinach. B12 doesn't come from plants or
animals, but from bacteria. So, I don't know how you could get B12
into spinach by using red lights. You'd also need to introduce the
bacteria and somehow make it live inside of the spinach.
Do you have some sort of inoculation step and then use red light to
penetrate the spinach leaves to feed light energy to the bacteria?
astahlx wrote 12 hours 6 min ago:
Having it closed (like this server rack) allows for controlled air
circulation if fans are installed and flow paths are designed
properly. Also, in case heating is needed, for example, if operated
in the basement the heat loss can be reduced.
yigalirani wrote 13 hours 32 min ago:
Op did mention that that it's impossible to get the rack out because
they installed the doors after the rolled the rack cabinet in
vasco wrote 13 hours 30 min ago:
It's obviously not impossible, just need to take it apart.
thunfischbrot wrote 10 hours 40 min ago:
For the one I have that would be irreversible. Youâd have to
cut it up.
defrost wrote 13 hours 18 min ago:
Or pry the door frame apart and tap it back in place after
rolling the rack out.
Worth a mention as many door frames are easier to remove than a
number of people might suspect .. fewer pieces to disassemble
than many {object}'s and not an uncommon hack when moving
furniture.
onlypassingthru wrote 3 hours 19 min ago:
Removing door frames is easy. Putting it back together without
looking like crap is the hard part.
malfist wrote 1 hour 41 min ago:
Repeat after me: caulk and paint make it what it ain't
RagnarD wrote 14 hours 48 min ago:
All lower case, instant won't read.
jaffa2 wrote 8 hours 10 min ago:
I didnt even notice.
diego_moita wrote 8 hours 21 min ago:
Agree. It is just stupid, doesn't serve any functional purpose.
roughly wrote 3 hours 3 min ago:
In this case, it seems to be serving as a useful filter function.
diego_moita wrote 2 hours 49 min ago:
Yeah, I got the sarcasm, but that's ok.
I'll water my indoor tomatoes, basil and thyme. It is way more
productive than blabbering about gardening in the internet.
jodacola wrote 15 hours 3 min ago:
Is that a subtle 5th Element reference in the crontab?
This is fun!
The following isnât a knock on anyone doing cool stuff like this:
Iâve avoided any sort of tinkering and automation of my gardening
because I find gardening to be a slower-moving, meditative escape from
technology. My brain shifts into a different mode (almost a flow
state?) when Iâm out working in the soil and tending to my plants.
chronogram wrote 15 hours 26 min ago:
What's the idea behind not using capital letters?
Scoundreller wrote 1 hour 6 min ago:
I also wondered if Jack Dorsey's shift button was broken in his
firing tweet:
URI [1]: https://xcancel.com/jack/status/2027129697092731343
agadius wrote 9 hours 38 min ago:
I found it pretty hard to read without the caps. I guess the
punctuation mark is too small for my elderly eyes, and my brain sees
it like one gigantic sentence. Perhaps the author of the blog is a
fan of Kafka?
DANmode wrote 2 hours 52 min ago:
Ctrl + â+â in your browser :]
I also didnât notice the lack of caps until coming to the
comments.
â¦and Iâm a pedantic SOB!
benjojo12 wrote 11 hours 26 min ago:
I can't speak for the OPs case, but it's worth keeping in mind that
not all languages that people are coming from have capital letters as
a concept.
I actually didn't notice the lack of caps until I read this comment
fixxation92 wrote 13 hours 15 min ago:
I'd take all lowercase over all uppercase anyday
zdc1 wrote 14 hours 53 min ago:
Gen Z will often write like that, feeling that using capitalisation
feels too "formal" for non-professional communication.
It's feel just the next evolution in our written messaging dialect.
Gen X had c u l8r?. Millennials didn't have to pay per character, and
got full qwerty keyboards so opted for normal sentences. And now Gen
Z have decided that auto-capitalisation is unnecessary.
Gigachad wrote 15 hours 14 min ago:
Gen Z illiteracy crisis.
KPGv2 wrote 13 hours 12 min ago:
Any particular reason you didn't write a complete sentence but
still used a period, kid?
titanomachy wrote 13 hours 35 min ago:
Let's not turn HN into a bunch of crotchety old men complaining
about the youths.
cowthulhu wrote 15 hours 17 min ago:
The author is trying very hard to look like they are not trying at
all.
DANmode wrote 2 hours 53 min ago:
or learned English chatting on the Internet?
At least make it sound like youâre speculating if youâre going
to.
mvkel wrote 15 hours 17 min ago:
Presumably a shibboleth for human-generated content
defrost wrote 15 hours 30 min ago:
Singapore is currently claiming title of "world's largest (and tallest)
indoor vertical farm" with a five story, two hectare automated racked
site (Jan 2026): [1] (2.5 minutes)
URI [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJuo6Te1fM4
shellfishgene wrote 15 hours 12 min ago:
I wonder if they are profitable, or if some sort of government
support is involved. I don't think power for all those lights is
particularly cheap in Singapore, and the competition in the
surrounding countries has cheap labor and lots of free sun and rain.
michaelteter wrote 24 min ago:
Bringing necessities (water, food, energy) local is worth
subsidizing. For those who doubt, just look at current events.
Two morons with the right levers can upend countless critical
processes.
Swenrekcah wrote 12 hours 8 min ago:
If you look closely enough, everything is government supported.
However farming is explicitly government subsidised everywhere.
monocasa wrote 12 hours 28 min ago:
That's a hard thing to have introspection in as just about every
productive source of food probably has some government support.
Just about everywhere has understood "bread and circuses" and "let
them eat cake" to the point of monetarily promoting food
production.
One of the big distinctions between feudalism and extreme
capitalism in my mind is forgetting this.
SilverElfin wrote 15 hours 21 min ago:
There have been vertical farms in Singapore that went bankrupt
previously. I donât think this model has worked very well in
general globally, compared to traditional farms. This particular one
is producing insanely expensive produce. For example the lettuce that
is mentioned is over $14 a pound. Itâs also a hydroponic farm which
means only some crops can be grown.
esafak wrote 15 hours 41 min ago:
I found growing my own produce to be a great way to appreciate farmers
and my local supermarket.
Animats wrote 15 hours 47 min ago:
Years ago, when California had a really severe drought, I saw a large
version of this to grow grass for horses. It had a stack of trays with
lights, and each day, you harvested one tray, fed your horse, and
replanted the tray. It was only cost-effective when grass hay was
really expensive.
Aboutplants wrote 4 hours 5 min ago:
Iâve seen this popping up in a few areas. In harsher winter
conditions there are some small time farmers using this method to
supplement their feed during bad winters.
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