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If you don't have soil, or not enough soil, or space, you could consider growing with hydroponics in addition to or instead of using soil. Hydroponics has many advantages over using soil for many crops, and is being used on a large farming today. With hydroponics, you can grow the same number of produce on about 20% of the space, the hydroponic crops grow considerably faster than soil crops, the volume of water required is drastically reduced, and there's zero weeding with hydroponics. There are many different hydroponic methods. One method is Kratky non-circulating hydroponics, named after professor Kratky from the University of Hawaii on the Big Island. Dr Kratky's YouTube videos and be seen on the "dakineapproaches" channel. Dr Kratky's YouTube videos show how to grow with hydroponics very inexpensively.
Hydroponics is very easy to learn. Hydroponics and also be automated. After your hydroponics gardening is established, it takes very little effort, compared with soil based gardening. Hydroponic gardening can be done indoors, which allows you to do gardening all year in cold climates in limited spaces. In Hawaii, hyproponic gardening could be done in dry areas with no soil or poor soil. There are thousands of YouTube videos about hydroponics, so you can learn all about hydroponics for free.
Hydroponics can be optimized by controlling the nutrient, pH, reverse osmosis water, controlling water temperature, controlling CO levels, lighting, injecting air in the nutrients, and other factors. Even without much optimization, hydroponic gardening will outperform soil based gardening, growing produce faster and larger than using soil with much less effort.
I saw a video about hydroponic tomator growing. Took huge hothouse and ropes that the vines grew up that were regularly lowered "coiling" the excess vine up at the base. The actual plants were probably 30' long or more, much of it in a coil at the base.
Scissors lifts were used at harvest.
I suspect it might depend on your "crop", but can small-scale vegetable gardening generate enough revenue stream to pay its own costs, much less a profit to live off of? I suspect not.
We chatted with Dr. Kratsky about a decade or two ago about growing hydroponic lettuce. It was a very low key approach since we were just a group of gardeners and not students.
Take a basic plastic gallon milk jug, cut the top off so it will fit a little plastic net pot. Fill the jug with water, add in a teaspoon of Miracle Grow granules. Put in the net pot so the bottom of it reaches down into the water. Put in one of those compacted seed starting soil circles, put three lettuce seeds on the starter soil circle. Set it in a sunny spot that is protected from wind and wait about a month. When the lettuce is full grown, the water will all be used up in the milk jug. Harvest the lettuce and set the jug back up for the next round.
Ours had Miracle Grow instead of the three different fertilizers, we used the starter soil plugs, although regular soil or potting soil can be used as well. We also put our milk jugs out in the sun instead of under grow lights.
It was an interesting project, but still much easier to grow lettuce in the raised bed garden since it's just putting the seed into the soil instead of setting up the jugs. Setting up the raised bed garden was a lot more work, but lasts a lot longer.
With Hawaii's growing conditions, if a family just wanted to garden for the family, it doesn't take much more than a town sized residential lot in order to have a productive garden. Since the growing season is year round, all you need is a garden that produces vegetables for the table and no need to get enough at any one time to store for winter.
Perhaps you could share your direct experience with this in Hawaii.
I was responding to a post that implied that having soil is very important. As you should already know, there are many places in Hawaii that do not have good soil or doesn't have any soil at all. Hydroponics is a solution for the problem were the soil is insufficient for gardening.
The OP wants to move their family to the Big Island, which will present a lot of issues, especially since they have 3 children of school age. Private schools will cost about $15K per year per child, so that's about $50K per year to attempt to compensate for Hawaii being at the bottom of the barrel for education. Hawaii's health care is also the bottom of the barrel, which is OK, as long as you never have an accident or develop health problems.
You don't have to live on Hawaii to know something about Hawaii. On the other side of the equation is people that have lived on Hawaii for years, never leaving Hawaii may have lost touch about the outside world, and lost the ability to compare Hawaii to other places. Another factor is long term planning and saving. Most Americans have saved very little for retirement and do not think about their long term futures, only living for today, sometimes paycheck to paycheck, instead of for the long run.
We chatted with Dr. Kratsky about a decade or two ago about growing hydroponic lettuce. It was a very low key approach since we were just a group of gardeners and not students.
Take a basic plastic gallon milk jug, cut the top off so it will fit a little plastic net pot. Fill the jug with water, add in a teaspoon of Miracle Grow granules. Put in the net pot so the bottom of it reaches down into the water. Put in one of those compacted seed starting soil circles, put three lettuce seeds on the starter soil circle. Set it in a sunny spot that is protected from wind and wait about a month. When the lettuce is full grown, the water will all be used up in the milk jug. Harvest the lettuce and set the jug back up for the next round.
Ours had Miracle Grow instead of the three different fertilizers, we used the starter soil plugs, although regular soil or potting soil can be used as well. We also put our milk jugs out in the sun instead of under grow lights.
It was an interesting project, but still much easier to grow lettuce in the raised bed garden since it's just putting the seed into the soil instead of setting up the jugs. Setting up the raised bed garden was a lot more work, but lasts a lot longer.
With Hawaii's growing conditions, if a family just wanted to garden for the family, it doesn't take much more than a town sized residential lot in order to have a productive garden. Since the growing season is year round, all you need is a garden that produces vegetables for the table and no need to get enough at any one time to store for winter.
Thanks for posting your experience meeting with Dr Kratsky. I germinate the seeds inside a folded paper towels, inside one quart plastic bags. After the seeds germinate, I transplant the seedlings into "Root Riots", and the "Root Riots" into netpots surrounded by clay pebbles. I put the netpots into 5 gallon plastic trays.
I also use basically the same chemicals with the same proportions. However, for fruiting plants, like tomatoes or peppers, the mix is a little stronger. Masterblend, 12 grams, Calcium Nitrate 12 grams, and Epsom Salt 6 grams, all per 5 gallons of reverse osmosis water. The use reverse osmosis water so that PPM is less than 20. My RO water is typically about 6 to 8 PPM. If the PPM is too high, over 20, your nutrients can lock out, which will drastically lower your results and yield. The pH is set to just below 6.0 with General Hydroponics pH down. Some people might need to use pH up, but I've only needed to use pH down.
There's an easier way to create a hole for the netpot with a hole saw. You could drill a one gallon milk bottle by leaving the cap on for the center hole. Drill forward for the center hole. Then drill in reverse for the larger hole. If you drill forward for the larger hole, the larger hole will radically rip up the plastic, making a very bad looking hole for the netpot. If you drill the larger hole in reverse, you will have a nice clean hole, every time, for the netpot.
There was quite a bit of algae in the one gallon jug. The roots and nutrients need to be in the dark. The light entering the translucent plastic jug causes the algae growth. You can prevent the algae growth if you stop the light from entering the plastic jug.
You can create a lot more lettuce if you use nutrient trays instead of one gallon jugs. There are commercial hydroponic lettuce growing operations in California, on YouTube videos, where the nutrient pools and greenhouses are so large, that you can see the other side of the greenhouse, when you're inside the greenhouse!
Hydroponics is a good option if you don't want to setup raised beds using soil. You might try doing a side by side comparison, using the 3 part chemical mix, not Miracle Grow. You'll be shocked how much hydroponically grown produce grows faster, bigger, and better looking.
Our friends went from the hydroponic milk jugs to a much bigger aquaponics system that has tilapia in a tank and the nutrient rich water from the fish circulating through the lettuce and vegetable beds. They were selling veggies and fish for awhile, not sure if they still are or not, I've not asked lately. They still have a lot of fish and vegetables for themselves, though.
Thanks for posting your experience meeting with Dr Kratsky. I germinate the seeds inside a folded paper towels, inside one quart plastic bags. After the seeds germinate, I transplant the seedlings into "Root Riots", and the "Root Riots" into netpots surrounded by clay pebbles. I put the netpots into 5 gallon plastic trays.
I also use basically the same chemicals with the same proportions. However, for fruiting plants, like tomatoes or peppers, the mix is a little stronger. Masterblend, 12 grams, Calcium Nitrate 12 grams, and Epsom Salt 6 grams, all per 5 gallons of reverse osmosis water. The use reverse osmosis water so that PPM is less than 20. My RO water is typically about 6 to 8 PPM. If the PPM is too high, over 20, your nutrients can lock out, which will drastically lower your results and yield. The pH is set to just below 6.0 with General Hydroponics pH down. Some people might need to use pH up, but I've only needed to use pH down.
There's an easier way to create a hole for the netpot with a hole saw. You could drill a one gallon milk bottle by leaving the cap on for the center hole. Drill forward for the center hole. Then drill in reverse for the larger hole. If you drill forward for the larger hole, the larger hole will radically rip up the plastic, making a very bad looking hole for the netpot. If you drill the larger hole in reverse, you will have a nice clean hole, every time, for the netpot.
There was quite a bit of algae in the one gallon jug. The roots and nutrients need to be in the dark. The light entering the translucent plastic jug causes the algae growth. You can prevent the algae growth if you stop the light from entering the plastic jug.
You can create a lot more lettuce if you use nutrient trays instead of one gallon jugs. There are commercial hydroponic lettuce growing operations in California, on YouTube videos, where the nutrient pools and greenhouses are so large, that you can see the other side of the greenhouse, when you're inside the greenhouse!
Hydroponics is a good option if you don't want to setup raised beds using soil. You might try doing a side by side comparison, using the 3 part chemical mix, not Miracle Grow. You'll be shocked how much hydroponically grown produce grows faster, bigger, and better looking.
There are several foods, many perhaps, that require more energy to process them in your digestive tract than the calories they deliver.. Most are almost all water and a few vitamins thrown in.
At market prices in Hawaii, assuming your costs of production and marketing are 25% of the retail sale value, how many heads of lettuce a day does it take to make your "nut" given educational, shelter and medical costs, taxes etc..?
...With Hawaii's growing conditions, if a family just wanted to garden for the family, it doesn't take much more than a town sized residential lot in order to have a productive garden. Since the growing season is year round, all you need is a garden that produces vegetables for the table and no need to get enough at any one time to store for winter.
We have a small raised bed here (in California) and it grows enough lettuce, beans, few others, for the 2 of us. In some cases (cilantro) it grows so much we couldn't give it away fast enough, so we're letting it go to become coriander.
When I think about gardening on the BI, I always think/worry about the semi slug and RLWD and what we could do to limit exposure if/when we move. The mind comes up with all sorts of wacky ideas when idle! Anyway, the discussion on hydroponics makes me wonder if growing in a water environment isolates the vegetable enough to lessen the chance a slug can get on it?
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