Anyone into hydroponics?

[gsganzer]

My wife and I were at some friends over the weekend, and they had a DIY tower hydroponic garden. It looked pretty cool, and pretty simple. They said the yield from the hydroponics was a lot more than a conventional garden. With a grow light, you could grow stuff year round if you had an appropriate indoor space.

Any TBN'ers that dabble in hydroponics?

 

[MossRoad]

I have looked into it for a while. Wife and I put up a small greenhouse this spring.

My only concerns were many mentions of something going wonky with the water chemistry or pump, and you can lose the whole garden in a day. We like to travel for several days at a time, so we went with good old dirt and drip irrigation. The dirt can hold enough water for a week if the irrigation stops. Our drip irrigation has been running fine for about 15 years.

So maybe we'll try a small one next year as an experiment. Looks really interesting.

 

[CalG]

I might as well be, for all the rain we have had this summer.
14 inches in July, and rain all day today and supposed to be heavy rain in the morning.

It's hard to get anything DONE!

 

[Torvy]

I might as well be, for all the rain we have had this summer.
14 inches in July, and rain all day today and supposed to be heavy rain in the morning.

It's hard to get anything DONE!

We got rain early, but it has been pretty dry for 6+ weeks.

 

[HawkinsHollow]

I have dabbled, nothing super complex. Mostly deep water culture, which is basically a pot of nutrient solution with an air bubbler in it. It is pretty amazing how well it works.

 

[nyone]

With a chest freezer and a properly sized and cared for garden you can eat quite well on just homegrown vegetables and we do.

 

[MossRoad]

I haven't been in our greenhouse for about 3 weeks. My wife went out there last night and said you can't walk anywhere without stepping on a cucumber!

She got 8 real nice ones. I'm gonna make some pickle slices.

 

[MossRoad]

I was looking into IBC tote systems for a while. Seemed interesting, but again, seemed to take too much monito ring.

Then I saw the tower systems last spring. May do that next summer.

However, I'm still going to do the 55 gallon barrel planter with soil first.

 

[gsganzer]

I can see a hydroponic tower garden supplementing a traditional garden. It seems like things like lettuce, spinach and herbs would be ideally suited for hydroponics and a crop that you could plant, mature, repeat throughout the year with an indoor grow light location.

 

[gsganzer]

I haven't been in our greenhouse for about 3 weeks. My wife went out there last night and said you can't walk anywhere without stepping on a cucumber!

She got 8 real nice ones. I'm gonna make some pickle slices.

Go pull up the cucumber salad recipes in the country cooking forum. I posted German and Asian cucumber salad recipes. Both are simple and delicious.