Water quality implications for indoor growing

Added on 17 March 2023

Tags

Water quality implications for indoor growing

Water is a precious, finite resource essential for sustaining plant life. Yet not all water is good water. Indoor growers cannot afford to overlook water quality, especially as water resources grow scarcer. Water down the drain, in the form of runoff, is money down the drain.

With the rising costs of fertilizer and water, growers benefit economically from recycling and reclaiming water, along with minimizing runoff. On a wider scale, the public has agriculture in its sights as one of the leading sources of water pollution. It is in every grower’s best interest to manage their water efficiently and sustainably with the water treatment methods and tools available to them today, and the promising technologies of the future.

Balancing nutrient loads in recycled water and preventing pathogen development isn’t always a straightforward process, and growers have the challenge of offsetting optimal treatment strategies with economics and practicality. While many operations conduct inline testing for electrical conductivity (EC), pH, and more, testing for individual nutrients is more complex. It takes time to get results back from offsite labs and much can change during that lag time. Onsite testing options would be a grower’s best bet for accurate, up-to-the-minute results.

Continue reading.

Photo: Sarah White, Clemson University