Hydroponics Process

We live in town on less than a quarter of an acre of land with the south side of our house ten feet away from our neighbor. (That ten feet is no exaggeration.) With three busy children, our backyard is dominated by play sets, sand boxes, bikes, balls, and boy created mud holes. When I taught I got my Horticulture fix at school with the greenhouse that was bigger than our yard dominated by two hydroponic systems. Now with our current situation I've had to get pretty creative for that Horticulture fix. I never thought my hydroponics experience would come in handy.

Hyroponics are plants that are grown without soil usually in nutrient rich water. At the high school, we grew lettuce, tomatoes, and strawberries. The lettuce and tomatoes started as seeds, but the strawberries were shipped from Amazon as bare root. The students would monitor the pH level, nutrient level, and all other aspects of growing a crop. Once it was harvested, we enjoyed BLT sandwiches and the rest was donated to the food pantry. The last lettuce harvest produced more than 25 pounds.

To replicate the hydroponics system at school, my idea was to mount it on the inside of the south facing windows in our house. I didn't want to put grow lights in the basement with a hydroponics system. That might seem a little suspicious, and I don't want to draw a lot of electricity when I don't have to.

I ordered lettuce seeds and rock wool cubes from Amazon. It was at my door two days later, so the boys and I started planting. We soaked the rock wool cubes in water and put a seed in each. Two days later they were germinated. In less than a week we had lettuce sprouts, which really put the pressure on building the Hyroponics system.

I came up with a design, and my husband interpreted it to get the supplies for building. The design is pretty basic. PVC pipes act as a trough running across the window then connect to another pipe and another until it empties into a tub with a pump. The pump will push water to the top most pipe to start the cycle over again. The plants will sit in the troughs with their rock wool bases.

The building process is still ongoing and will probably require another blog mainly because my husband and I have different approaches to projects. I like to just jump in and learn or problem solve as I go while he likes to think about the project and come up with multiple drafts and spreadsheets and designs. We even each other out this way, but sometimes it's quite a process. However, we are all very excited to grow our own food in Iowa during March.