Incipience

The first seedlings of the spring. We have here: cactus, onion, oregano, volcano peppers, sweet mini bell peppers, jetsonic tomatoes, sunflowers (in the cups), delicious tomatoes and buttercrunch lettuce for the hydroponic garden(in the green rockwool).

Hydroponic Jalapeno

Our first hydroponic vegetables! These peppers are grown in a water culture system made of a 5 gallon pickle bucket, a net pot from progressive gardens and a basic air pump with an airstone for oxygenation. The net pot is filled with hydroton which are round clay pellets. The seeds are grown and were originally started in grodan rockwool cubes. We have been growing these babies for at least 3 months but at first we were using a basic fluorescent growlight which wasnt working out so we upgraded to the sunsystem 150 high pressure sodium light. Under the old light the peppers were surviving but never growing any larger than about 1". After changing lights they immediately sprouted up much higher and havent stopped yet.

Aerogarden

Here is our small version of the Aerogarden (www.aerogrow.com) in which we are currently growing cherry tomatoes. We started these on January 3 so its been almost 2 months now and the plants are beginning to flower. It is supposed to produce for up to 5 months so we will see.

Mushroom Kit

Here are some button mushrooms which we are currently growing in our bedroom closet. We acquired this kit from the Jung Seeds (www.jungseed.com) catalog by mail order and have had it about a month or so. We previously tried a mushroom log for growing shitake mushrooms from www.gmushrooms.com and find this kit to be much more productive as well as easier to maintain. Although, the shitake log did produce very delicious mushrooms with a rather strong flavor, very different from grocery store mushrooms. We tasted the button mushrooms for the first time last week and they are also very delicious.

Tower of Strawberries

ok, i had this crazy idea. i saw a photo of a vertical garden in a hydroponic book. i did some research and decided to make my own.

I picked up 5 5x5 plastic buckets. I used 3/4 inch PVC pipe to hold the tower in place. At the bottom is a 5 gallon pickle bucket with an ecoplus 185 pump. Attached to the pump is 1/2 inch black tubing and it is threaded up the pipe and out the top. An on/off valve is attached at the top. I attached 2 spaghetti lines to the 1/2 tube and put one in top and one in the bottom. The nutrient pumps up the top and trickles down to the bottom and gets recycled. I am using a perlite/coco mix. 8 strawberry plants will go in the tower.

this is the waterfarm maggie bought last year. we have not had great success with this all in one unit. we decided to ditch the hydroton pellets and replace them with a coco/perlite mix. here is a broccoli plant we transplanted over the weekend.

We are using foxfarm nutrient. This guy runs 24-7. The solution is evaporating quickly.

Welcome

Hi All,

maggie suggested we start a blog to share some of our gardening and hydroponic adventures. we are learning something new everyday. please feel free to chime in with suggestions on improving any of our concepts or if you think they need a major adjustment. nothing is taken personally here. we will update reguarly with photos. we are beginning to grow seed for our spring gardens now. just planted some containter pots with veggies this past weekend. more soon.
chris