The moment of truth!

Hung the contraption from the ceiling in my room with 550 cord, duct taped the fittings (for piece of mind), connected the water pump, filled the reservoir and flipped the switch. Woo-hoo! It worked almost exactly as designed in the middle of the night! Let it run for the afternoon and all night long...no runs, no drips, no errors:)  Can't wait to get the lights, chemicals and for the plants to grow big enough to transfer to the pipe garden. Feeling good about seeing green in my future!

Putting it all together

Gathered enough parts to piece together my PVC pipe contraption. Cut the pipe, glued the fittings, and found an old tough box to use as a reservoir. A little concerned that the pipes aren't snug and glue is old...hope it's not too leaky.

Sprouts!

After receiving several shipments of hydroponic supplies, I've finally been able to get some seeds started in the rock wool cubes. First attempt to plant tomatoes and spearmint didn't result in success. Think it was because I put the cubes out into the sun (105+ degrees) for over a week. Once William sent a couple videos...I realized they needed to be in moderate, controlled temps and out of direct sunlight. Brought them inside...corrected the ph (tap water had ph of 6.5 while bottled water had ph of 7.11) and finally had success after less than a week. Excited to see the sprouts sneaking through:)

Eureka!

I recently learned that my deployment to Afghanistan was extended for a few additional months. I decided that I needed to start a hobby to help make the time move along and take my mind off work. After a "eureka" moment in the middle of the night...I jumped out of bed and scribbled my plan into a notebook and was anxious to get started on my hydroponic garden. With the help of William's expertise, an Australian plumber "Gaz," a sergeant-handyman, Amazon and snail mail...I'm dangerously close to putting it all into action. I'm not 100% confident in the quality of the water, so I think I'm mostly planting for the "joy of gardening" and to get the color green back into my life, rather than to put food on the table. Will attempt to grow a variety of herbs and a cherry tomato plant.

Bucket Hydroponics

I recently made an new hydroponic system in a 5 gallon bucket. It has a special net pot that fits on top of the bucket like a lid. I bought it at my local hydroponic store for about $4.50. They also sell them online but I was surprised as to how expensive they were. It also has an aquarium air pump and for lighting I am trying a LED grow light that seems like it is working pretty good so far. I am growing a cherry tomato plant in it.


This is how it looks with the grow light on. It looks kind of unhealthy.

But with the grow light off it looks perfectly healthy. 

This is the type of air pump I am using. I bought it at Walmart and I bought the one with two outlets because I am using the other outlet for another system I am working on.

This is what the net pot I am using looks like.

 This is the grow light I am using I bought it on eBay for $27.50

I am just using a clamp to hang up the grow light.

This type of hydroponics system is really easy to make and I recommend it to anybody. Here is what you need.



 1. A 5 gallon Bucket

2. A five gallon bucket net pot

3. An aquarium air pump along with airline tubing and an air stone.

4. A grow light. This link goes to the same one I bought, but you can get anyone you want. There are cheaper ones.

5. Hydroton or LECA clay pellets

6. Seeds for whatever plant you are going to grow.

7. Nutrient Solution. I use Maxigrow from General Hydroponics.

Then all you have to do it run the air line tubing through a hole in the net pot and put the air stone on the other side. Next you fill the bucket with water and nutrients. Then you fill the pot with hydroton and plant your seed. Finally you set the pot on the bucket and set up your light. My nutrients are at about 1200 ppm. For a great list of plant ppm and ph levels click this link.

I am starting to keep track of how much vegetables I harvest. The other day I harvested 46 lettuce leaves.

Update

Here is an update that will cover all my plants since I last posted.
I decided to take out the peas because they were strangling my peppers. I was only going to take out three of them but the roots were so tangled up with everything else that I just had to take all of them out. Also, since all of the roots where tangled up I just decided to cut it at the stem and let the roots decompose. It has been working pretty good.

                

 

 The red peppers are starting to bloom! I noticed it four days ago. Its pretty cool.

My spinach plant was starting to flower so I cut it down. I was really happy with the quality of the spinach and how much it produced, and when I cut it down I left he stem base to see if it would regrow.

 

I planted some more spinach plants in place of the peas.

 

                
 

 

This is a picture of a lettuce plant in a spot where not very much light hits. This shows the flaw in my system, which is a not very even lighting system.

 



My pea plants have not produced any peas at all. On the package it said it would take 65 days at max(it should be quicker because its hydroponics.) to be ready to harvest but there is not any sign at all of pea pods growing. If I don't see anything in the next couple days I am going to take them out of my system because they are growing everywhere and blocking out the light from some of my other plants. I am not sure if the reason they are not growing peas is because of light, temperature, nutrients or something else. If you have an idea please comment.

Salad!

Today I harvested some lettuce and spinach! They were both really delicious and fresh, we ate them about 15 minutes after they were harvested.

This is a picture of me harvesting the lettuce. I just pulled of most of the leaves instead of cutting it off at the stalk so it will grow more leaves.

The spinach was really huge, and really delicious.It was the juiciest spinach I have ever had.

This is the finished salad. The tomatoes and cucumbers are from the store but the rest I grew. It was really awesome and everybody liked it.

This is what the lettuce plants looked like after I harvested.

This is what the spinach plant looks like.

Small Hydroponic System

A couple of days ago I made a small hydroponic system out of some random things out of the recycling bin. It can grow one plant at a time and I am testing it out with a romaine lettuce plant. I am keeping it on a windowsill so I will be getting natural light. Its nutrient solution is set at about 550 so I am seeing if it will do better then the ones in my other system.To make this system I used: One juice bottle, the top part of an old olive oil container, some hot glue, duct tape and a small aquarium air pump. It also costs about $0.06 a month in electricity to run so it is pretty cheap.In the future I am planning on building a similar one but better. I already have a big load of improvements. I am also planning on making a video showing how to build it.

UPDATE: It wasn't really working very good because it wasn't getting enough sunlight and the roots were having a hard time reaching the nutrients. It is overall pretty inefficient but I might in the future try to design a better one.

I think some pods are starting to grow on the pea plants! Also some of the leaves on the pea plants have some white spots like in the picture. I have no idea what they are so if you have an idea please comment.

Update: Sorry false alarm. These where just new leaves coming in.

Update

On this update I am going to write how my plants are doing as well as list some of the issues I am encountering and how I could prevent them.

This is a picture of one of my lettuce plants new leaves coming in. Some of the leaves edges and or have a scorched look to them. I was doing some research and I believe I have found what is wrong. Lettuce plants have a sensitivity to nitrogen. The reason they are getting too much nitrogen is because I am giving them too much nutrients. I have been giving them about 850-900 ppm because the peas and peppers need that much.According to this webpage http://www.tomorrowsgarden.net/node/11 lettuce should be getting in-between 560-840 ppm. When I was selecting what vegetables to grow I didn't realize that they have so different of nutrient needs. The other big lettuce plant is doing pretty good though.

These spots on the edge of the leaves I think are also an effect of too many nutrients.

I also read in a book that for the plants with smaller seeds you can just plant them in some wet hydroton that you keep moist. I tried it and it worked really good. I initially had been starting them in plant starter grow blocks but it was really hard to transplant and then the stem kind of drooped over for a while like in the picture below.

One of the problems I had with my actual system was how I placed the water line tubing. I placed attached it to the end of the PVC pipe by a hole in the cap like in the picture above. The problem with this is that sometimes when the water is shooting out really fas it can start to leak though the net cup that the first plant is planted in.I fixed it by cutting out a piece of a plastic cup and hot glueing it to the inside top of the pipe, that way it will hit the piece of plastic and go straight to the bottom of the pipe.It is working really good.If I made my system again I would drill the hole in the top of the pipe cap so that it would just hit the bottom in the first place.The picture below shows the piece of plastic I glued on the inside.

Other then those issues everything else seems to be doing really well. Here are some pictures I took today.

These are a few pictures I took of my plants today. Everything is looking really healthy.

This is a picture I took of my biggest lettuce plant. I thought it was kind of cool because it shows the new leaves coming out of the middle.

This is another picture of my biggest lettuce plant.

Spinach

Red Pepper

This is a picture of some net cups filled with hydroton. They have lettuce seeds in them but they have not sprouted yet. I read in a book the other day that with some of the smaller kinds of seeds(like lettuce seeds) you can just plant them in a cup of hydroton that you keep wet. This does not really work with plants that have larger seeds though.

Today I changed the water and the after I finished changing it the water PH was sitting at about 6.70 and the water purity was at about 900 ppm. I have been changing the water every Wednesday.

Sorry I haven't done a update in a while. I am just going to go over how my whole garden is doing because it is doing really good. I am trying to keep my nutrient levels at about 850 PPM and my PH levels at about 6.5.
My pea plants are doing super good. So far I have three in my garden but plan on having nine total.

The lettuce is doing pretty good. One of my plants is growing really fast and pretty big already. Another one that has been planted in the garden for the same exact amount of time is not as big and growing slower. It also has a kind of yellowish color to it. I think it might have gotten slightly damaged during when I transplanted it into the hydroponic system but I am not sure.The lettuce seem harder then the other plants to transplant.I also planted five more lettuce seedlings in the garden but one of them died after when I transplanted it.

The one spinach plant I have planted is starting to grow faster. It is growing more rounder leaves that actually look like spinach.

The peppers are really starting to take off too. I have two red peppers, two banana peppers and two jalapeno peppers.

Lettuce Plant Revived!

The same lettuce plant that was wilting and falling over revived about three hours after I did the last post. They are both looking really healthy. Sorry I haven't put a post on in a couple of days.

Wilted lettuce

Today I woke up and saw that one of my lettuce plants had wilted and fallen over. Last night it looked really healthy. That is the second lettuce plant that has done that but I have no idea why. The other lettuce plant looks really healthy so I hope it stays alive.

Plant Update

Today the Lettuce Plants are looking really healthy and the pea plant is still growing fast.

New Light

Yesterday I added a third light to my system because it looked like the middle area wasn't getting enough light