An unfortunate thing happened to my little office basil growing experiment, I got some fungal gnats and not wanting to be the guy known for his office infested with flies I decided to throw together a little hydroponic system primarily consisting of items I had around the office. I started with an old reusable water bottle I had previously used to store water for my prior soil based basil…
If I didn’t have a big house blocking my southern exposed window, otherwise I would have completely tried this myself. The basic idea is to take come recycled plastic bottles, use an air pump and some tubing to create an air water pump to push the nutrients to the top and gravity takes care of the rest. The great part of this is that it is an open design…
I actually thought I already posted about this bad boy which unfortunately is only a design concept from Philips. For those that are not familiar: Aquaponics is the symbiotic cultivation of plants and aquatic animals in a recirculating environment. Aquatic animal effluent (for example fish waste) accumulates in water as a by-product of keeping them in a closed system or tank (for example a recirculating aquaculture system). The effluent-rich…
The first time you walk into a hydroponic store there can be a little sticker shock. At first it doesn’t look too bad, $14 for this bottle…oh wait I have to buy these three as well and you leave the store paying $80 to grow some basil and lettuce. Being cheap I like to know how much I will be spending on a hobby before I start out so…
With the exception of some of my acid loving plants and flowers I normally do not have to worry much about the pH of my soil. This is because I have amended my gardens with nutrient rich soils in raised beds over my alkaline clay I get naturally in my area. This and the fact that due to natural and manmade causes the rainfall is slightly acidic and given…
Maybe not the most hygienic solution but definitely cheap, innovative, and low maintenance. I’ll stick to my ebb and flow design, but thought I would share for those feeling adventurous.
Though not my first hydroponic system this is is definitely a little more complicated than my last attempt of an fogger system created last year. This time I decided to go with an Ebb and Flow system, where the concept it pretty simple, flood the planting area with water nutrients and let it drain, wait a defined amount of time and then repeat. For this build I had a…
It shouldn’t be a surprise that kids these days are not as patient as previous generations. Personally I feel this is less on a change of parenting but a result of children’s expectations created because of the advance of technology. For example, When my daughter asks to watch a particular show “On Demand” and then 5 minutes later asks me to “pause it” so she can go potty. This…
Here in the Seattle area we are, as you say, latitudelly challenged. We are fortunately to have the Pacific Ocean to give us mild winters and summers though our distance from the equator provides our plants with less intense light and a relatively short growing season for summer crops. One in particular difficult summer crop are peppers. This is important because one of the major exports of my garden…
In case you missed them here is the original post on the creation of this fogger hydroponic system, and the latest update (before this one). The plants still are still looking pretty healthy with the exception of a little phosphorus deficiency, but the blame goes on me for that one. Been a little busy at work and have been neglecting the plants. I decided to end this experiment since…
There has been some major changes since I started the plants above in my cheap DIY hydroponic setup about a month ago. Since then I have added a couple of pepper plants I saved from thinning. I must say the plants are doing better than I expected. I am still using the same homemade nutrient solution, 2 pumps of liquid plant fertilizer and half a teaspoon of Epsom Salts. …
In my post about basic the basics of hydroponics I mentioned the potential high cost of entry but with a little creativity this can be avoided. I went through this exercise and here is a pretty inexpensive way to try out hydroponics without having to spend hundreds on a prebuilt system. The solution I came up with cost me $1.00 to setup though I did have many of the…