Hydroponics Gardening Made Easy

Hydroponics gardening is easy, once you learn the basics and have spent a little time fine tuning a system that works for you. Fact is, much of the work is in learning all the basic info, setting up, and adjusting your first system. These pages will help you do just that.

Hydroponic gardening boils down to simply this: The food is in the water. All considerations when designing a system will focus on this, and on the types of plants you are growing. These considerations include...

• How to get the food/water to the plants
• How you keep the plants from drowning
• How to make sure there are no problems

How to get hydroponic nutrients and water (also called nutrient solution) to your plants requires a look at the different hydroponic gardening systems. As you look over each type of system, you will see how each one addresses these three concerns.

Hydroponics Gardening Systems

There are as many ways to deliver the nutrient solution to your plants as you can possibly think of. For our purpose here, lets take a look at the main ones. Visit the pages below for a crash course on each hydroponics gardening system type.

1. Hand watering
2. The reservoir method
3. The flood and drain method
4. The drip system
5. The nutrient film technique
6. The wick system
7. Aeroponics

The Media

No, I'm not talking about the paparattzi here. Except for aeroponics and deep water culture systems, you have to grow your roots into something besides air and water. The best hydroponic gardening medias have the following qualities. They are...

• nutrient free (or close)
  
• neutral in pH (or close)
  
• retain water
• retain air
• drain quickly

Just as there are many hydroponic growing systems, there are many, many different types of grow media. Some types of media are better suited for certain grow systems, so make sure to do a little research in the links above! The best hydroponic gardening medias that meet all of the above requirements, and that people most commonly use are...

• rockwool
• expanded clay pellets
• perlite
• perlite/ vermiculite mix
• perlite/ coconut coir mix
• volcanic rock/ pumice
  

One thing to consider if you are building your own homemade hydroponics gardening system is the cost of "disposable" grow medias. Even a modest 4ft x 8ft garden could cost you a couple of hundred dollars every grow cycle to replace the old rockwool with new rockwool (for example). Coconut coir has the same drawback.

Soilless mixes using perlite and vermiculite, either together or by themselves, can be washed and re-used once or twice. After that you begin having problems with algae, fungus gnats, and disease from decaying bits of organic matter from the previous crops (and so should be replaced with new grow media).

Clay pellets and lava rock (pumice) can both be washed, rinsed, and reused indefinitely. Designing a hydroponics gardening system around one of these grow medias is the most affordable way to go....with just one exception. Aeroponic systems and deep water culture (DWC) systems both grow plants directly in water and air, leaving no grow media to be maintained or replaced.

When I build a homemade hydroponic system, I use netted pots as small as I can get away with. My goal is to grow as much of the root system as possible in Oxygen rich water beneath the plant (my system of choice being a DWC system). The netted pots are just there for a small amount of physical support.

The exact size of the netted pots differs from system to system....and I use expanded clay pellets to secure young plants in their netted pots before going into the hydroponic system for the first time. Expanded clay is cheaper than volcanic rock and lasts nearly as long.

The end result is that my systems have no disposable media to maintain or replace. The small amount of reusable media in any particular system is reduced to a bare minimum. Therefore the total expenses to operate my systems have been reduced to a bare minimum, and the amount of time and energy it takes to maintain my hydroponics systems have been reduced to a bare minimum as well.

Homemade Hydro

Some homemade systems are more difficult to put together than others. Most aeroponic systems, for example, I would recommend that you just buy. They can often be expensive to build, and it is difficult to match the technical specifications and capabilities built into a store bought system.

A small flood and drain (aka ebb and flow) system, on the other hand, can be put together for less than $100 and will work just fine for a small home hobby garden. The biggest expense is a good water pump. A 300-400 GPH pump is ideal for a small garden between 4 x 4 and 4 x 8 feet. If you want to go this route, brush up on all the basics, then visit my homemade hydro page.

The Basics of Feeding

Besides the environment you put your hydroponics gardening system into, success with hydroponics depends largely on one single factor...the quality of your nutrient solution. Your plants' nutritional needs change as they grow, and the nutrient solution needs to change with them. All of my best tips for maintaining the quality of your nutrient solution can be found on my hydroponic feeding tips page. This page covers...

• N-P-K ratios
• secondary nutrients
• trace nutrients
• nutrient strength
• pH success
• nutrient imbalances
• dissolved oxygen levels
• using hydrogen peroxide
• nutrient temp
• flushing

Organic Hydroponics

The best of both worlds. Organic hydroponics is simply hydroponics in which the nutrient solution is made with organic fertilizers. You get all the benefits of hydroponic gardening, AND all the benefits of organic gardening. There are some special considerations with this approach, however. Most organic fertilizers will clog your spray heads and drip emitters. General Hydroponics makes a great organic hydroponic fertilizer that will not. Follow this link if you are interested in organic hydroponics.

A Fair Warning

When plants do not have to grow roots down into the soil to "mine" for food, they use that extra energy to grow extra fast above ground. These faster growth rates are the biggest attraction to hydroponics gardening in general, and to aeroponics in particular.

However, if conditions are not kept just right these fast growth rates can also be your biggest problem. The only way a plant gets to thrive is for you to keep giving it EXACTLY what it needs EVERY DAY (get a TDS meter and a pH meter and use them every day). If you don't, the plant has no other protection...no backup plan...there will be damage. Since growth rates are fast, the damage will happen quickly. For my best advice on how to keep your plants happy, see my hydroponic feeding tips page.

Leave the hydroponics gardening page and
Go to the homemade hydro page


Check out different Hydroponic Systems


Check out the Hydroponic Nutrients Page