Best hydroponic gardening books according to redditors

I would highly recommend buying one of these Audubon Society guides. They have a variety of them - for wildflowers, birds, trees, and even mushrooms.

Audubon Society book for Wildflowers - Eastern Region

Also, the purple flowers you see might be larkspur.

I love reading this stuff too. I’m a very outdoorsy person. So, if you want a nice non portable book about trees, there’s the david allen Sisley guide to trees. For portable, there are a lot more. The Audubon book is good, it just hasn’t been updated in a longtime. The Peterson guide is more recent and is good also. I’ll try to think of the books we have. My mom has a lot and has ones from her parents too. One that’s good is the national wildlife federation book on wildflowers. A new book that cool is one called wildflowers of the Appalachian trail. On trees, I really like an old edition of the golden guide to trees that we have. The Audubon guide to eastern us trees is good. I think Peterson is better than Audubon though. There is also a forestry department book on trees of around here that I have from middle school. Don’t worry, I’ll provide links to these books.

https://www.amazon.com/Sibley-Guide-Trees-David-Allen/dp/037541519X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524481660&sr=1-1&keywords=Sibley+trees

https://www.amazon.com/GOLDEN-GUIDE-Herbert-Alexander-Martin/dp/B000KIITZK/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524481704&sr=1-3&keywords=Golden+guide+trees

https://www.amazon.com/Field-Guide-Eastern-Trees-Including/dp/0395904552/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524481730&sr=1-1&keywords=Peterson+trees

https://www.amazon.com/Audubon-Society-Field-Guide-American/dp/0394507606/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524481747&sr=1-1&keywords=Audubon+trees

https://www.amazon.com/Wildflowers-Shenandoah-Valley-Ridge-Mountains/dp/0813908140/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524481845&sr=1-3&keywords=Blue+ridge+wildflowers

https://www.amazon.com/National-Audubon-Society-American-Wildflowers/dp/0375402322/ref=sr_1_10?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524481845&sr=1-10&keywords=Blue+ridge+wildflowers

https://www.amazon.com/National-Wildlife-Federation-Wildflowers-America/dp/1402741545/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524481922&sr=1-2&keywords=national+wildlife+federation+field+guide

https://www.amazon.com/Peterson-Field-Guide-Wildflowers-North-central/dp/0395911729/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524481968&sr=1-1&keywords=Peterson+wildflowers

https://www.amazon.com/Wildflowers-Appalachian-Trail-Leonard-Adkins/dp/1634040902/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524481991&sr=1-1&keywords=Wildflowers+of+the+Appalachian+trail

http://www.shopdgif.com/product.cfm?uid=2051408&context=&showInactive=N

I’m going to post again once I go look at our bookshelf. This was just off the top of my head. Oh and it’s not a field guide, but you should read a walk in the woods by bill bryson.

Start with bubble buckets. There are a lot of guides online. I can't post any here at work since the majority of them are posted to MJ growing forums. Speaking of, they're going to be a your go-to reference if you're getting into hydroponics. I like ICMag's forum.

You're going to need nutrient solution (many options here), a 5 gallon plastic bucket, an aquarium pump, an air stone, tubing for the pump and air stone, some kind of growing media (hydroton for example), some way to check pH and a net pot that can snap onto the top where the lid used to be. Your net pot can be improvised; IIRC the bucket top is 10" in diameter. Check your dimensions!

I'm assuming indoor growing here... Do not cheap out on your lights. It will frustrate you and you won't get near the results you would if you use good old soil and sun. If you're planning on doing lettuce or spinach you can get away with a lower wattage light source (say, 75W CFL). Tomatoes are going to need good light penetration power that you'd get from HID lighting. LEDs are cool but are a few years off from being a reasonable solution.

Make sure you have good airflow and a way to vent the hot air produced from your lights. You should be able to cool CFLs with box /oscillating fans but that won't work with HID. You will absolutely have to vent them. People neglect airflow more than anything in hydroponics. It's a big mistake.

Pythium root rot is going to be one of your main concerns. You can add hydrogen peroxide to your nutrient solution to combat this. If you ever see your roots turn brown then you can pretty much throw that plant out or cut the roots off and try to re-root it using whichever applicable propagation technique. Try to keep your setup as clean as possible. Wipe down everything with 10% bleach solution and rinse often. Treat your growing area like a lab.

If you get serious about it and/or have a notion to scale up your production please read Hydroponic Food Production. It is not a cheap hobby and anyone that claims otherwise is blowing smoke up your ass. Good luck.

Hydroponic Food Production 7^th Edition by Howard Resh

This is my go-to reccomendation, if you want to go beyond what's taught here, simply study chemistry and or biology