Cultivating any plant in hydroponics involves its own degree of difficulty, and for someone that picks something a little more exotic, such as saffron, there will be a fair amount of learning curve to navigate.
Do you know what pH value it likes, what nutrient balance it needs, and the temperatures it prefers?
Saffron is somewhat of a challenge to grow, but we’re going to cover some of the things that you should need to know to be successful.
To grow saffron hydroponically, you should have an eye on getting the plant to flower because it is the flowers of the plant that is of value as the crop.
The other parts of the plant do not have a viable purpose for production, so each step will be oriented towards stimulating flowers and providing environment for maximum flower production.
How to Set Up Hydroponics for Saffron
When you are creating a space for saffron in your hydroponics system, you must think about the best environment for this plant and how you will create those conditions in the hydroponics system.
Lots Of Light
Saffron prefers bright light, especially when you need it to flower.
Ideally, you should look for fourteen to sixteen hours of direct sunlight exposure every day until the plant flowers.
After this stage, the plant may be able to survive with twelve to fourteen hours of light.
From Experience: You just cannot grow saffron in low light situations. If you have a chance to use natural light – go for it, but you will likely need artificial lights to deliver abundance, comfort and reliability to your plants.
Reasonable Temperatures
When it comes to hydroponics, temperature is crucial, particularly for growing saffron hydroponically. For saffron to grow hydroponically, you will want your temperature between 60 and 65°F for the most part.
During the night, it can be as low as 55°F.
You’ll also want to avoid your temperature being too high; otherwise, the plants will lose their flowers before you can pick saffron.
In short, you will want to start your plants off in summer and then drop the temperature a little to imitate the fall period. This will help to promote flowering in the plants from saffron.
Nutrient Solution
Once your plants have rooted, you need a nutrient solution that is going to focus on flowering.
You can buy bloom solutions, and they should provide plants with everything to develop many beautiful blooms.
During the earlier stages, you can use nutrients to support their germination state and ensure they’re strong as they develop, but ultimately the only thing you really care about is blooms.
Use nutrients that ensure these develop.
If you prefer and you are becoming more advanced with hydroponics you can of course make your own nutrient solutions and not buy pre-mixed.
However, be aware you may lose many plants while you are figuring out the right to quantity to use.
Growing Media
Along with the plants themselves, you also need to consider what your plants will be growing in.
Crocuses require a loose growing media so that water is able to pass through to the roots but remain moored in the water and nutrients.
Good Idea: To do this, you will have to use something like coco coir, a perlite blend, or vermiculite. All of those provide the support you need without impeding the flow of water.
pH Values
The water’s acidity is also important because you can have the wrong pH value, and your crocuses won’t grow right.
They usually like a pH value between about 6.0 and 6.25, so it’s pretty narrow, hovering slightly on the acid side.
You should always check this and correct if it gets above or below this value so that your crocuses have the best opportunity to keep flowering and stay happy.
Does Saffron Grow Well Hydroponically?
On the whole, saffron isn’t a really valuable crop when grown hydroponically, even if you don’t need a lot of space for the bulbs.
Saffron is so valuable, but hydroponically, you won’t usually have great results. Most people find that it just isn’t worth the space in their setup.
Here is why:
- Get ready to get away with less than a quarter of the fresh weight of bulbs in saffron yields.
- If you grow two pounds of fresh flowers, you will probably only see about half an ounce of saffron that is commercially viable, if you’re lucky to get that much.
- If you want to get just a pound of saffron threads (dried, not fresh), plan on harvesting about 70,000 flowers. Thus, if you hope to be in the saffron game for commercial purposes, you will need quite a few flowers to have enough to sell…
It’s a valuable crop, but that’s a lot of flowers and will require a lot of space.
Many growers do not find saffron to be worthwhile in hydroponic growing because you will not likely yield much unless you have a specific set-up and may not produce enough for a business.
However, saffron could make a growing and distribution solution in areas that it cannot be easily grown in soil or are not suitable for growing saffron, even if yields are low.
Decision to Make: If you just want to try it for fun and for your own use, then do it!
Can I Keep Saffron Bulbs?
Crocuses return each year so one might ask if you can simply keep the bulbs going and not have to replace your crop every year.
The corm does become less productive as it ages, In the start, it should produce up to three flowers (though some will produce just one), and as it ages it will produce less.
At some point in its life cycle, you are going to need to harvest the bulb, separate its new extremities, and replant those.
While not necessarily a cost, it is certainly manual labor you need to do each year or each other year. You may want to consider this if you weigh the pros and cons of growing saffron hydroponically.
Conclusion
It is not especially difficult to grow saffron hydroponically, but it is something that requires a little bit of space and a little bit of time.
Just be sure to check regularly that the plant’s major needs are taken care of, including temperature, nutrients, pH, and light.
If you do this, you should have some beautiful saffron to harvest when the time comes!