Hi guys, welcome back to my blog! Today I am going to share with you my Hydroponics Gardening project! It’s been a long time since I shared any gardening business, so I thought, why not do some Hydroponics gardening! There will be many parts to this Hydroponics project and this is part 1! I had done this first part with my grandfather (AMAZING gardener) and with no further due let’s get started!

Intro:

Hydroponics is basically indoor gardening! An indoor garden doesn’t mean that it has to be big and take over your house! It’s really not a replica of an outdoor garden inside (LOL!). This hydroponic indoor garden is very eco friendly, most of its materials can be reused for a long time, uses minimal plastic, and can merely sit on a wide step stool while in use! I like to call it a baby garden! Now you may be wondering, if the garden is indoors, how do the plants get light? Well, there is a big panel with LEDs that emits sunlight! The electronics don’t come assembled but it’s only four steps to assemble it yourself. Now that we know more about this Hydroponics project, let’s go make some plants!!

Here is the picture to help assemble the electronics:

Step 1: Prepare the water

First take your plant foods and fill the bottles up with water. Then shake them till the solids dissolve completely. Set them aside and fill the tank up to the 1 liter mark. This water tank has a capacity of 4 liters but we’ll fill the last 3 later. Next, take plant foods A & B, measure 20mL in the given cup, and pour it in the water tank. No need to mix the solution in, the water pump in the tank will move it around once plugged in for operation. Now after the solutions, fill up the rest of the 3 liters, close the water cap, and you’re done! Now you just have to make sure the water level always stays at the 4 liter mark! This is one thing about the Hydroponics project, you don’t have to manually water your plants everyday!

Step 2: Plant your seeds

Now you can plant your seeds! First take one of the brown sponges (made of coconut:) and put at least 3 seeds of your choice inside the hole. Then take the sponge, drop it into a basket, and place one of the stickers on top to make sure the plants grow straight. Now just pop them into one of the holes in the hydroponics machine platform! There are 12 holes in the machine platform, you can put any different varieties but it has to be vegetables or flowers and fruits, you can’t mix them up. Make sure you put a cup on each plant for germination! If you have holes in the machine that don’t have plants, cover them with a black lid.

Step 3: Operation & Control Panels

The final step is making sure that your plant is in the right environment! First make sure your house temperature is near 70 degrees or above. Then plug in the machine and press the power button. Once you turn this on, it will go into a 10 hrs on, 10 hrs off cycle. Turn on the fan & water pump as well. This control will go into a 30 min on, 30 min off cycle. Now depending on what you planted, choose either the vegetables or flower and fruits mode. I picked vegetables because I planted spinach. 

Now all you have to do is wait for them to germinate! Mine germinated in less than a week! It’s a really fun way to do gardening and if you try it, let me know how it goes! I’ll see you next time!

Until then, peace out,

Monkey Me