Hydroponic Palm Trees!

[www.dadluvsu.com]

When I was first getting interested in horticulture I was naturally drawn to hydroponics...  It made sense to me since I live in a townhouse with no yard.  Plus I liked the appeal of being able to maximize fruit size and having a very controlled environment to culture my plants...  I know it would be impractical for something like a royal palm...  but what about dangerously rare small palms like some of the dainty, lacey Dypsis species?  Is anyone growing palms in a hydroponic environment?  Have you ever?  Tell me about your success or failures...  I'm thinking about trying it again!

:cool:

[nomolos]

I've considered it.

[JD in the OC]

I have a set-up with Dypsis ambositrae true form

[Palmy]

I have thought about it, but never have actually tried it. Tell us what you think about it.

Thats a nice looking telescope too. What is that a 6"?

[SubTropicRay]

Yes, very nice telescope.

[palmazon]

When at first I began to dabble in palm husbandry, I checked out all the local hydroponics dealers I could find - apparently, they're selling a lot more than water pumps and gro-lights.

[Kamipalms]

Heres a cut'n'paste from a previous thread;

November 2006:

Hadn't checked in the greenhouse for a while and it's amazing to see how much things grow when you don't check every day.....

Whilst in the greenhouse today I found my hydroponic C.metallicas are flowering . Had to rub my eyes to make sure I wasn't seeing thngs but sure enough 2 of 4 plants are flowering.

for a bit of history, I grew a heap of metallicas from seed , these seeds went down in September-ish of 2003. A year later I transplanted 4 seedlings into expanded clay then into a hydroponics set while keeping a couple of "test" subjects in regular medium.

2 years on and these hydroponicaly grown metallicas are flowering. Growth rates are almost triple the test subjects and spewing new fronds within a matter of weeks , even through winter.

The last 6 months or so I've gone away from using expensive off the shelf hydroponic nutrients and changed over to a chemical based liquid fertiliser . There has been absolutely no change in using the liquid fert over the proper hydro nutrient.

Whilst being more than busy of late, It's been a few months since I have checked Ph and EC levels and again, there is no evidence of the plants being starved in any way or Ph levels having any affect without knowing what their like.

For the few that have followed since the beginning, the C.tepejilote's in the hydro stet are now too big to continue. These are now 3-4ft tall and one would have flowered earlier this year if I hadn't accidentally broken off the flower bract....bugger it!

Heres a couple of pics;

photo taken mid 2005

Left is the hydro grown metallicas verses the "control" on the right

Heres an updated pic

and the 4 hydro grown metallicas with the control in the middle

There was a lot of hoo-ha about changing back to a regular medium from hydroponics . It was the general thought that they would go into shock from the lack of nutrient availability. This is defiantly not the truth. I've changed a few plants back to regular medium  with out any set backs. I had a C.frondosa ( a rather rare and expensive Chammie) and a few C.tenella's ( mini C.geonomiformis as their called now)in hydros for a year or so to see what would happen. I decided to remove these for particular reasons and you wouldn't know any difference.The plants did not show any signs of stress or any other changes.

Heres an older pic of the set up;

It a flood and drain system cycling 3 times a day throughout the year.

Nothing much has changed except everything is even bigger!!

[Toliltol8]

I’m sure someone is already doing this, but what about breed native endangered fish in large open air tanks, maybe one or two to breed native shrimp to help feed the fish.. Maybe some old pipes for tactical evasion.. Solar power pumps.. Could the water flow contribute to powering the pumps? Could the plants contribute to the feeding of the fish without taking from the reasons ya growing the plants? Could the system be setup in multi story buildings with a swimming pool full of fish on the roof and another full of shrimp and yabbies in the basement? Maybe use fish good for eating.. Someone has probs tried all this and come up with much better ideas that actually work.