what do you think?
pantyhose or cheesecloth for a screen
ph’d sand
chemical salt ferts
possibly beneficial oils and microorganisms
all in a ebb and flow or dwc setup
does it work?
what do you think?
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Love seeing experiments!!!
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I’d suggest fabric pots instead of pantyhose, and some kind of aeration like perlite.
With a decent line of nutrient it should work no problem.
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Going to have to water a bunch I would assume. And what kind of sand? Does it have shells and sea life or just home depot sand??
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Yes it works. I’ve grown in straight sand, just treated it like a hand watered hydro set up with bubble water.
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I would say think about what you’re trying to accomplish. To see if you can grow in a particular environment, or to grow in a simply new one? You probably want to clean and sieve any sand you get. You wouldn’t believe what’s in the bags at Home Depot. I don’t know enough about plants to tell you more, but I do know that much (and more) about dirt. I used a lot of sand for a few hobbies.
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You’re “intentionally” removing the access to air that they need?
Trying weird stuff is fun & enlightening, so not criticizing, just curious & confused.
'pretty sure it’ll just suck tho. 
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I’m in, hard, for the show! I love experiments, of all types.
I would recommend varying the sand size a bit, but focusing mostly on coarse. Sand composition is also important. Different sands have different moisture retention properties. I feel like you want some water retention, maybe some sort of coarse porous pea gravel sized rock mixed in? I think it has a lot of potential, but I have a couple concerns:
Density, especially when wet. Perlite works so well because of its porosity, which leads to its lightness and lack of density. I also worry about moisture retention. Regular coarse sand can get dry very quickly, so the flood/drain cycle would have to be frequent. On a similar vein, nutrient retention would be near zero, so the feed cycle would have to be a bit more aggressive than a medium that can retain nutrients.
I like the idea, but I think the true, true key to success is going to be making your sand. Sandy soils have the potential to make some of the most stand-out agriculture, when the mineral composition of the sand is beneficial for the plants. I would focus on the strains you want to grow, where they come from, and then I would look at the mineral composition of that area and then tailor your sand composition to that.
You can also use silica sand, which is much more chemically inert, and would act more like a true soilless, inert medium, but I think that would take a lot of the magic out of the experiment and would yield sub-par results.
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You can use it – but understand that it’s not in a sweet spot for aeration, and it is low CEC. So I don’t think it really contributes anything especially compelling as a grow medium. You will likely need to compensate for the low CEC by having a relatively high feed frequency, and compensate for the mediocre aeration by amending with perlite.
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I’d mix sand and lava rock as a medium, before I’d use just sand…or sand with a loop of soaker hose under it, that you can pump your nutrient solution through it. You cam also pump some air through it like a bubbler set up.
Best wishes to your idea!
EDIT:
As I think about this, when doing my reading long ago on hydroponics, the early Ein Gede designs I believe worked sand, but drifted to areo-ponics to the rootzone. If I remember that correctly.
There maybe some information in the old archives, hell if it’s still around anymore. Now that Google is a sales catalogue,you may find it. I always had 6-7 search engines for 98 2 edition to hunt, long ago now.
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Roots grow just fine in sand. I’d use fabric pots to keep sand out of the pumps, though. You’ll water less than clay rocks, more than soilless.
Many many different grades/compositions of sand. Don’t use calcitic sand, or you’ll be chasing pH issues. Coarse building sand might be best, silica based sand.
Beneficials/oils/organics are not needed whatsoever in active hydroponics.
It can be done, there’s just other better options.
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what are some benefits to sand growing? I guess the sand allows more physics for roots and its hairs, but it MAY harm roots when watered I think
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Benefits would be sand is cheap/free and heavy (pots won’t fall over) and that’s about it.
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with sand, that shit is so compact, needs to be something course, like the size of styrofoam peanuts! just too keep the air circulating, I imagine.
regards,
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I wont try sand farming because I’m low on funds atm, working on selling Siberian autos to the club, but I suggest if you try you try stuff like vermiculates, bacteria (might die unless theres heat I think), perlites, moss, and anything that’ll create a good ecosystem for the roots
the reason I want to research sand farming is because the hairs on the roots would love a tough, rugged surface to expand
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the plants wont die will they? I figure without a ph system they’d just die
Like any inert media they will require frequent irrigation with a complete hydroponic nutrient at proper 5.8-6.2 pH range. Coarse sand pots would work well in an ebb and flow system.
The roots don’t much care about the surface they grow in. Just that they get enough water and nutrients. The most efficient growth is in media-less methods, like aeroponic or deep water culture. We pick the media for other properties, like water retention, inertness, air holding capacity, etc.
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I slightly disagree. They’ll be chasing pH issues, yes, with non-chemically inert sand, but that’s the cost of admission to this party, I think? I can see zero benefits to growing in silica sand. It’s just a sub-optimal inert media. It doesn’t have to be just calcitic sand, either; it could be something more exotic or a blend of sands/minerals to achieve a certain pH/Alkalinity.
If they want to get anything of value out of this experiment, I think they’re going to have to ‘pay to play,’ with labor, frustration, and extreme attention to detail in sand composition.
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Has anyone ever tried something like airsoft pellets? Wouldn’t be as dense as sand and are recyclable. I’d imagine they wouldn’t mess with the pH a whole lot either.
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