Water and Nutrient Management for Greenhouses (NRAES 56)

This 110 page publication (NRAES-56) was originally published by the Northeast Regional Agricultural Engineering Service (NRAES, later known as the Natural Resource, Agriculture, and Engineering Service), a multi-university program in the Northeast US disbanded in 2011. Plant and Life Sciences Publishing (PALS) was subsequently formed to manage the NRAES catalog. Ceasing operations in 2018, PALS was a program of the Department of Horticulture in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) at Cornell University. PALS assisted university faculty in publishing, marketing and distributing books for small farmers, gardeners, land owners, workshops, college courses, and consumers.Water and Nutrient Management for Greenhouses discusses the principles and decisions necessary to provide optimum root zone conditions for crop growth while preventing the loss of contaminants from the greenhouse system. The chapters and appendices include information necessary to make day-to-day decisions concerning water and nutrient delivery. The publication will be especially useful as a reference when troubleshooting problems and evaluating possible changes. This publication is written for growers, grower advisors, and educators. It begins with a discussion of general crop needs and then focuses on system management, which includes water, fertilizer, and substrate analyses; nutrient requirements; substrate selection; and proportioner operation. The last chapter describes several water and nutrient delivery systems