Frequently Asked Questions about Indoor Hydroponic Gardening

Hydroponics is a way to grow plants without soil, by using water-based mineral nutrient solutions. Les Verts’ indoor gardens operate using a hydroponic system.

Hydroponics refers to the way to grow plants using a water-based nutrient solution while vertical farming refers to the arrangement of growing areas within a growing system. Vertical farming uses a tiered approach to optimize space and is a common arrangement for indoor growing systems.

Not all vertical farming systems are hydroponic and not all hydroponic systems are vertical. Les Verts’ indoor garden systems are both hydroponic and take advantage of the tiered principles of vertical farming to allow you to grow more in a small area of space.

In Canada, the definition of organic requires the produce to be grown in soil. Hydroponically grown produce (meaning the plants are grown in a water-based nutrient solution and not in soil) is technically not allowed to be labeled as organic.

The fertilizers used in hydroponics are much purer than those utilized in organic growing, and they also leave no residue in cultivated produce. The result is that more people can be fed, less precious natural resources are used, and the produce is much healthier and flavourful.

Compared to field production (growing in soil), most hydroponic systems are spray-free (meaning they don’t use any pesticides), use about 75% less fertilizer to provide the nutrients to the plants, and are much more water efficient (up to 90% less water).

Plus, growing indoors means you don’t have wildlife or livestock (a potential source of bacteria) impacting the crop.

Because plants grown hydroponically have access to their full range of plant nutrients throughout the growing cycle, produce is generally higher in essential nutrients compared to field-grown produce subjected to growing stress.

Plus, plants grown in or close to your home do not lose valuable nutrients during excessive transport and storage.

In-house studies conducted by Les Verts showed that for nearly each of the key minerals, our hydroponically grown lettuce consistently had 1.5 – 2X higher concentrations of key minerals like zinc and magnesium. Zinc enhancement has recently gained importance in world food efforts to improve vision in children.

Vertical farming allows year-round food production without loss of yields due to climate change or weather-related events.

The vertical integration of plants allows farmers to optimize the total space usage of their growth area, making it possible for farmers to reduce their land use by up to 90-99% while also increasing productivity.

Hydroponic farming has the potential to provide fresh, local food for areas with extreme droughts and low soil quality, where access to fresh vegetables is often limited. Les Verts’ indoor gardens use 90% less water and 75% less fertilizer than conventional soil-based farming, and no use of pesticides or sprays.

EC stands for electrical conductivity and is seen as a measure of the total amount of food available to your plants. Measuring the EC of your nutrient solution will give you an idea of the overall amount of ionic content – or nutrients – currently available to your plants and let you know if you need to add more nutrients to the solution or add more water.

The pH of your root zone or nutrient solution will affect your plants’ ability to absorb that food.

pH, which stands for potential Hydrogen, is a scale used to determine the acidity or basicity of a solution or substance – in this case, your hydroponic solution. While your nutrients are the food that plants need to grow, pH acts like a key, unlocking those nutrients so that they actually become available to your plants.

Yes and yes! At Les Verts Living, we stand by the quality of our systems and we guarantee your 100% satisfaction. If, for whatever reason, you are not satisfied with your experience, we offer a full moneyback guarantee within 90 days. See our Refund Policy for full details.

We also offer a 5-year manufacturer’s warranty. See our Terms of Sale for full details.

We recommend 2 hours for initial set-up, planting and getting familiar with your garden and how it works. After that, you’ll need just 10 minutes a week to maintain, which includes topping up the reservoir with water and nutrients, checking on any young plants to see if they need watering, plus any planting or harvesting.

We recommend a deep clean every 3-4 months, which takes about an hour.

With its design-friendly aesthetic, your Les Verts indoor garden will fit nicely with home and office décor.

Your Les Verts indoor garden can be placed in any space where the ground or floor is level and plants will be protected from excessive temperature fluctuations (ideal temperature range is 18-24 C).

You do not need to place your indoor garden near a window as the grow lights provide sufficient light for your plants to thrive. If you wish to place near a window, that’s fine too.

Ideally you will have a source of clean, potable water nearby to fill the reservoir. You can use a watering can, bucket or hose to fill the reservoir.

Yes! Most of the lettuce you’ll find in your local grocery store was grown thousands of miles away.  Excessive transportation and storage timelines mean your produce has lost some of its valuable nutrients between the field and your table.

Common varieties (such as iceberg and romaine) are selected for their ability to be stored for long periods of time, not for taste, texture or other delicious features. By the time you bring it home, the lettuce is often bland and wilting.

Our curated seeds and seed mixes are selected to delight the palette, bringing freshness, flavour and nutrition that you can’t find elsewhere. Thanks to our proprietary nutrients and lighting, our plants boast vibrant colours, flavorful profiles, compact size and exceptional nutrition.

Your Les Verts indoor garden does not require daily maintenance.  You can leave your Les Verts indoor garden running on its own for up to 2 weeks, so long as you don’t have any new plants that are still germinating and requiring hand watering. We recommend you fill up your reservoir with water and nutrients before you leave.

With LED lights and a simple pump operation, Les Verts indoor gardens are designed with energy efficiency in mind. Below are estimated usage rates per month.

The lights in our Les Verts Terrace™ Indoor Garden provide high quality plant growth while maintaining a more standard, white light colour that matches any room décor. Our customers love having a little extra light to brighten up their space and to highlight the beautiful produce growing in their gardens.

Our Les Verts Terrace™ Pro indoor gardens include our custom LED lights that were developed over many years to optimize the growth, taste, appearance and quality of leafy greens, while ensuring that the visible light that you see works well in any living space. The blues and reds in the light provide spectra the plants need to thrive, and this produces a pleasant, slightly purple tinge in the visible light that you see.

If you have a particular preference for the type of lights in your system, contact us for customization options.

EC stands for electrical conductivity and is seen as a measure of the total amount of food available to your plants. Measuring the EC of your nutrient solution will give you an idea of the overall amount of ionic content – or nutrients – currently available to your plants and let you know if you need to add more nutrients to the solution or add more water. For our professional grade Les Verts Terrace Pro systems, we recommend monitoring EC to optimize your plant growth, nutrition and flavour. Contact us at growhow@lesverts.com for more information about professional EC meters. You can also follow our basic guidelines to adjust your nutrient solution without monitoring EC specifically.

Note that plants have a preferred EC range in which they can achieve optimal health. Many plants suffer from having too much nutrient available and may exhibit stress through colour changes or browning of leaf tips and margins. In fact, when your EC is extremely high, plants stop being able to take up enough water. Regardless of whether you are actively monitoring your EC or not, it is important to follow our guidelines to ensure your EC is neither too high nor too low.

If you have an EC Meter, place the probe into the nutrient solution reservoir and check the EC level reading. In your Les Verts indoor garden, optimal EC range is between 1.6-2.2 mS/cm (ideal number is 1.78 mS/cm). If your EC is outside of range, wait 10 minutes, mix thoroughly and take another reading.

EC should be monitored each time you are adjusting the water volume in your nutrient solution – and will vary depending on your growing conditions (temperature, humidity, etc.). To optimize performance, we recommend monitoring EC weekly. Contact us at growhow@lesverts.com if you are interested in purchasing an EC Meter.

The pH of your root zone or nutrient solution will affect your plants’ ability to absorb that food.

pH, which stands for potential Hydrogen, is a scale used to determine the acidity or basicity of a solution or substance – in this case, your hydroponic solution. While your nutrients are the food that plants need to grow, pH acts like a key, unlocking those nutrients so that they actually become available to your plants.

Ultimately, the pH of your nutrient solution and root zone affects your plants’ ability to get the nutrients they need. We recommend you monitor the pH in your Les Verts indoor garden using the pH strips provided. Your nutrient solution should be within the 5.5-6.5 pH range. If it is too high, use the Citric Down provided to adjust the pH to within range.

One of the many benefits of gardening indoors compared to outdoors is the reduction in pests! While any growing system is can be prone to insect pests (they love delicious greens too!), growing indoors greatly reduces the number of insect pests you may need to manage. Pests can largely be avoided by growing your plants from seed and not introducing foreign plants to your system. It also helps to keep your indoor space closed from the outside as much as possible to avoid insects from coming in through the windows and doors.

Simple insect traps can be used to effectively monitor your indoor garden for unwanted insect pressure.

While pathogens can occur in any growing system, indoor or outdoor, Les Verts’ indoor gardens do not use soil or animal manures to grow crops. Therefore, exposure to Listeria, E. Coli and other pathogens that can be found in field-grown lettuce is very minimal. To reduce the development of other fungal pathogens like grey mould and Fusarium, we recommend adhering to our plant spacing instructions and routine cleaning procedures.

As you would with conventional, store-bought produce, we recommend you rinse your veggies under cold water before consumption.

Les Verts’ expertise is in leafy greens and other vegetables and fruiting crops. This expertise can be found in our custom light spectrums, specially formulated nutrient blends and growing techniques. However, we’ve designed our systems to be flexible, with adjustable heights and open layout grow shelves to accommodate whatever you want to grow. While our light spectrum is custom, the light structure itself is relatively standard so you may be able to replace them with your own. Contact us if you have any questions on how to do this.

In your Les Verts indoor garden, you can grow countless varieties of lettuce, leafy greens, herbs, tomatoes, peppers, flowers and more! We’ve hand-picked a list of seed varieties that we’ve grown to love (and that our families keep asking us to grow!). Each seed product we offer has been tested for taste, texture, production ease, overall quality and yield. This means that when we offer a seed variety for your system, it’s a proven winner.

Looking to grow more? Our indoor gardens are designed for flexibility. Experiment with your own seeds and contact us for tips and recommendations!

We source our seeds from North America’s leading vegetable seed companies. We ensure that seeds are high quality and that each seed type is tested in our indoor farming environment to ensure it will perform well in yours.

All of the seeds provided by Les Verts Living are GMO-free.

You bet! Our indoor gardens offer customers the flexibility to grow their own varieties and crops. Compact varieties will work best (plants shouldn’t exceed 18 inches in height at maturity – see your seed package for height information).

To optimize your planting cycles, refer to the variety days to maturity as well.

Contact us at growhow@lesverts.com if you have any questions before planting and to confirm that the crop you want to grow fits with the growing system.

Living lettuce plants retain both the leaves and roots throughout the harvest process. As a result, living lettuce tends to offer a much longer shelf-life and fresher, more nutritious leaves compared to conventionally harvested lettuce.

Microgreens are vegetable greens that are harvested at an early stage of growth, usually just after the first true leaves have developed. They are known for their vibrant colours, intense flavors, and high nutrient content. Common microgreens include radish, basil, cilantro, arugula, and mustard greens. They are a smart way to deliver a nutritious and flavourful punch to any meal – use them in salads and sandwiches, or as a garnish on soup, pizza and other dishes.

Microgreens have a short growing cycle, which means you can typically harvest within 10-20 days of planting. We always recommend planting a large flat of our Gourmet Microgreens blend when beginning your growing journey in a Les Verts indoor garden so you can start enjoying your harvests as soon as possible.

Baby leaf typically refers to specific varieties of lettuce that are selected to taste great when harvested at an immature stage. They make the perfect base for a beautiful and nutrient-packed salad. We recommend our Premium Baby Leaf seed mix.

Baby greens are usually a mixture of non-lettuce vegetable greens that make a great addition to salads, sandwiches, bowls and pizzas. They are typically a bit spicier than baby leaf mixes and can have a broad range of flavors and textures. We recommend our Zesty Baby Greens seed mix.

Balanced plant nutrition is important for any crop to thrive. We provide a 2-part Greens Growth Formula Nutrient Kit and instructions on use. This balanced nutrition approach ensures your plants have sufficient levels of important nutrients like nitrogen, magnesium and iron to grow and thrive, ensuring that you get a nutritious and delicious harvest.

Each part of your Greens Growth Formula is sourced from leading plant nutrient (also called “fertilizer”) manufacturers and are made to the high-quality standards demanded by greenhouse and indoor growers. These water-soluble fertilizers ensure that plants get the nutrients they need while growing in our Les Verts indoor garden systems while minimizing environmental issues associated with fertilizer run-off common in field grown produce.

Greens Growth Formula ingredients are not chemicals, they are plant nutrients (commonly referred to as fertilizers) that are used in hydroponic systems and are required by plants to effectively and efficiently reach their yield potential. Vegetable crops are heavy feeders and consistent, even delivery of nutrients offered by synthetic water-soluble fertilizers optimizes nutrient uptake, use and efficiency.

Greens Growth Formula, like all plant nutrients, are not to be taken internally and should be kept out of reach of children or pets. At Les Verts, we source our plant nutrients from leading nutrient manufacturers and each meet the high quality standards needed for greenhouse production – meaning that they meet or exceed standards for heavy metals, contaminants, etc.

Greens Growth Formula has been specially formulated to provide the optimal balance of nutrients for lettuce, leafy greens, herbs, tomatoes and other fruiting crops to promote quality, taste, appearance and healthy growth.

All plants require a combination of 16 essential nutrients to grow and thrive and reach their full growth potential. Supplemental plant nutrients are often recommended to optimize production in hydroponic systems as water alone may not suffice.

Our indoor gardens are compatible with other hydroponic suitable fertilizers (water soluble). Please follow manufacturer label instructions.

Grow media is the material used to support the growth of plants. It provides something for plant roots to anchor and access nutrients, water and air. Soil is an example of grow media. In a hydroponic system, plants are provided with nutrients directly through a water-based solution, rather than through soil.

At Les Verts, we’ve curated industry-leading grow media made from stone wool. Stone wool substrates are made from basalt rock that is processed at a very high temperature. It is widely used in the professional horticultural industry due to its superior performance, allowing growers to achieve professional results with every planting.

We have selected stone wool grow media for the following benefits:

• Uniform growing – Stone wool provides consistent growing conditions with excellent root zone properties.
• Water use efficiency – Stone wool is specifically designed to optimize moisture levels in the root zone.
• Clean and versatile – easy to use in hydroponic systems, stone wool tends to not shed and affect pumps, piping, etc.
• A bountiful natural resource – you may not think it, but stone is created each year through volcanic activity.
• Stone wool can be recycled in certain locations. Check with your local municipality for options. Where stone wool cannot be recycled, we recommend you put your used grow media in the garbage for landfill.

Yes, although we only recommend stone wool at this time to ensure proper function of your Les Verts indoor garden. Other types of grow media can shed and cause clogging and other issues in your system. Note that the use of other grow media may impact your warranty.

If you choose to use an alternative grown media (other than stone wool) we recommend using a non-porous tray and hand watering to prevent unwanted particles from entering your reservoir and affecting your hydroponic function.