What is Hydroponic Equipment and What Does it Do? Hydroponic equipment includes various tools and systems that are used for growing plants without soil, instead of soil they will use a nutrient-rich water solution. The main aim of hydroponic equipment is to provide plants with all of the essential elements that they need in order to grow, this includes water, nutrients, light and air, all in a controlled environment. There are many types of hydroponic equipment, this includes nutrient solution tanks, they are needed to hold the water and nutrient mixture for the plants. Water pumps are used fo ..read more

Here we take a look at how to grow from cuttings, we consider the different ways of producing rooted clones that can be moved onto the next vegetative stage. Why Cuttings? When it comes to taking cuttings, they involve taking an adult plant, also referred to as the ‘mother plant’, that will have particular characteristics including growth pattern, taste, hardiness, vigour, yield and disease resistance. With this in mind we can make copies by taking cuttings and with each cutting that we take, we will try and produce plants that have exactly the same genes as the mother plant. How to take Cutti ..read more

This year we thought we’d put up some information about the plants we’re growing in and outside the Dartford Straight Up Hydroponics shop. We usually have something or other going on and we’re always asked about it, so it only made sense to make a blog about it! I’ll start off with the biggest and oldest plant we have here, the Abyssinian Banana plant that has been with us for about 5 years. We’ve had some strong winds and heavy rain these last few days so the leaves are a torn, but they are designed to do that. This is because the large leaves can act like sails and may cause the plant to b ..read more

Essential elements These are nutrients which plants cannot complete their life-cycle if they do not have. Some of those include nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. There are also non-essential elements that provide certain benefits to some plants. Silicon, which we’ll look at in this article, is an important but often overlooked component to plant health and growth. Silicon Is the second most abundant element in the earth’s crust and is found in significant quantities in the soil; however, silicon can only be taken up by the plant in the form of mono-silicic acid. Although vital to plant heal ..read more

Clones Professional Rooting Compound Elite 91 Clones liquid rooting compound is a winning combination of two very powerful root inducing hormones making it the number one choice for professional plant propagators. Extremely effective and potent, a simple 5 second dip in the rooting compound is all it takes to initiate the formation of strong healthy roots. Elite 91 Clones is formulated in liquid form for more equal distribution and absorption of the root inducing hormones, which is systemically absorbed directly in to the cutting’s plant tissue, immediately triggering the fast response for r ..read more

You may have seen the new BioGreen product range in our stores and are wondering what the range is all about. This blog will bring some information about the products and what they do to help give you a better idea of what they are about and what they can do for you and your plants. BioGreen nutrients consist of a choice of 2 base nutrient systems, 6 additives and 3 optional supplements. This makes it an easy system to use while still offering top grade nutrition for your plants. Some brands want to give you a whole lorry full of bottles to use, claiming that each one is necessary for maximum ..read more

You may have read a bit about Emerald Harvest products and are wondering what the range is all about. This blog will bring some information about the products and they do to help give you a better idea of what they’re about and what they can do for you and your plants. Emerald Harvest set out to create a nutrient line that is both high quality and easy to use, all at a reasonable price. Their nutrients consist of a choice of 2 base nutrient systems, 4 core additives and a couple of other optional supplements. This makes it an easy system to use while still offering top grade nutrition for you ..read more

Potassium is an essential element for plants and plays a variety of roles in its life cycle. It is known as a ‘macro’ element and is the ‘K’ part of the NPK ratio. Potassium deficiency (also known as Potash deficiency) is a plant disorder caused because potassium ions are highly soluble and will easily leech from soils that are light and sandy or chalky/peaty soils that have low clay levels. Potassium supplies an environment for metabolic processes and as such functions as a regulator of various processes including growth regulation. Plants need potassium for protein synthesis, photosynthesis ..read more

A message to our valued online customers: We have now slightly changed our free shipping offer. We now offer free shipping on orders over £20. Orders below £20 will be charged a nominal shipping fee of £5. This is because we were receiving a number of orders for low value items that incurred a loss to us when posting free of charge.  The £5 shipping fee will enable us to continue to send out low value items without actually losing money on such sales. We hope our customers appreciate the need to implement this charge. Best regards to all our customers from Straight Up Online!! The post A Messa ..read more

Phosphorus is another element that is very important for plants as it plays a role in many processes. It is known as a “macro” element and is the “P” part of the NPK ratio. Phosphorus makes up a key component of nucleic acid in plants and assists in the regulation of cell division. It’s also very important in protein synthesis, root development and the proper maturing of the plant. As well as that, phosphorus makes up a key part of DNA, which contains the genetic code of all living things. It is also part of RNA, which “reads” the DNA, driving the building of proteins and other compounds. Fina ..read more