Homemade Hydroponics trial to begin

Two months ago I did some research on hydroponics and determined it’s expensive and too complicated to experiment with in my apartment. Two weeks ago, I decided I will settle for tomato plant to be grown in dirt soil within my apartment. Two days ago, I decided that using dirt was too effortless! Besides, I couldn’t resist the faster growth, better yield and other advantages of hydroponics. Growing a plant in soil is relatively easy, but hydroponics will challenge my mind and utilize that part of my brain that requires constant scientific stimulation.

For those of you unfamiliar with this area of plant cultivation, Hydroponics is a method of growing plants without soil. Contrary to what I was taught 15 years ago, plants need much more than sunlight, water and carbon dioxide. And contrary to what I taught in 11 years ago in college biology, plants need much more than nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Soil provides plants with various trace elements such as iron, manganese, copper zinc, boron, chlorine, nickel and calcium. All of these needs and more need to be accommodated when growing plants in a medium other than soil, and especially so if I hope to get some fruit. Instead of soil, the plants are held in some sort of inert medium that will support the plant and/or root structure.

It’s too expensive to buy a pre-built hydroponics system so I decided to build my own. There’s all sorts of hydroponics systems: the plant sits in water, water is raised and lowed, the roots of the plant are misted, drip watering, etc… I think my unit will be a mixture of a few of these. What I know so far is that I plan to grow a tomato plant, and need to keep the system compact as to not take up much room in my small apartment. Last night, I visited Home Depot to begin looking for parts, in which I was not successful!

This is my first post on the start of my hydroponics journey and hope to follow with many more. I am keeping this on my food blog because I will only be growing food bearing plants.