Homemade Hydroponics

By gardening with hydroponics you're giving your plants everything they need to thrive and eliminating most of the hard work of survival. As a reward you get stronger, healthier more productive plants.

Most plants gather the nutrients they need from water in the soil they are planted in. To do that they have to build an extensive root network to get what they need. Even if you fertilize the plants have may have trouble finding food because in soil nutrients are always washing away with the rain, perhaps out of reach of the root network. It's hard work growing all those roots through the dirt but it has to be done so the plant expends more energy on roots and less on fruit and foliage.

In a hydroponics garden your plants roots are literally awash in nutrients. They can hang there and sip up nutrients with no fuss and bother and put their energy into growing leaves and fruit.

The result is faster, healthier crop growth and larger yields. If you want healthy plants and abundant crops then try a homemade hydroponics system.

Getting into hydroponics gardening is not complicated, it's easy. Hydroponic systems can be built from scratch by just about anyone. You don't need any special skills, all of the knowledge you need is readily available and the equipment is minimal.

Another way in which they are easy is hydroponic systems don't need much maintenance. In fact, if you invest in a little bit of automation like a cheap timer and a pump, a hydroponics system can pretty much run all by itself while you reap the rewards in the form of beautiful fresh vegetables and other more exotic plants.

So how can you get growing with your own cheap and easy hydroponic system? Well here's a free plan for a simple hydroponics system you can make from a pvc tote box.

The best option for a cheap hydroponic system is to build one yourself. You can easily build a homemade hydroponics system for under $50 - a good-sized system suitable for a wide variety of plants.

The main reason they are cheap is hydroponic systems do not involve complicated or hard-to-find parts. You can, if you choose, buy specialist components but it's not at all necessary. All you need for a homemade hydroponics system will be readily available in your local hardware store or Home Depot, at low cost.

Once up and running your hydroponics system is cheap and easy to maintain. You'll need:

• Water, very efficiently used in a hydroponic system. You'll use far less than you would in a soil garden.


• Plant nutrients, very affordable and a little goes a long way.


• Lighting, if you are growing indoors. Lights can be expensive, but they don't have to be. For many types of plants ordinary fluorescent "GroLight" tubes will do the job nicely.

There is very little that can go wrong with a hydroponics system so you won't be saddled with expensive repairs. Time-wise they are cheap too - hydroponic systems virtually take care of themselves.

Ready to get growing? Try out this cheap and easy homemade hydroponics system for indoors.

Many people are into homemade hydroponics these days. It's a clean, efficient and highly-productive way to grow a wide variety of plants, from vegetables to "exotics."

If you'd like to get started with a homemade hydroponics garden, it's super easy and cheap too. Almost anyone can build a homemade hydroponics system for well under $50 using easy-to-find components.

When building a homemade system the first thing to think about is what type of plants you'd like to grow. This will determine the best type of homemade hydroponics system to build.

Most plants will thrive in a flood-and drain (or ebb and flow) system but for water-loving plants like lettuce you would be better to build a homemade "raft" hydroponics system.

Secondly, get a plan. Whatever type of system you choose there many free hydroponics plans available which you can modify to suit your available space. For instance, you might like to have your homemade hydroponics system in the kitchen, so you'll have your super-fresh produce close to hand.

Alternatively, get a complete guide that will give you more detailed instructions plus plenty of essential information for a successful homemade hydroponics system.

If you are new to hydroponic gardening you may be wondering why it is so popular. What advantages are there to gardening without soil? There are many advantages to hydroponic gardening compared to traditional soil gardening. For instance:

Plants get all they need

With a hydroponic gardening system you are in control. You can ensure plants get all the essential elements they need to grow and thrive - light, nutrients and oxygen - in the right proportions.

Faster growth

In general, plants grown in hydroponic gardening systems grow faster than plants grown in soil. Not only do plants get a guaranteed delivery of all they need, it's a direct delivery. This means there's no need for energy to be spent on developing huge root systems. It can be used to grow foliage instead.

Bigger yields

Plants grown in hydroponics systems not only grow more quickly but produce a much larger crop yield than plants grown in soil. Whatever you choose to grow - lettuce, tomatoes or something more exotic - you'll get more of it when you grow without soil.

Hydroponics gardening uses less water

A great benefit in these eco-conscious days is that hydroponic gardening requires less water than soil gardening. The reason is that water is used more efficiently. In traditional gardening, some water is retained by the soil and some absorbed by the plants, but most of it drains away. In a hydroponics garden the water is used over and over again.

Uses less space

In a soil garden plants need to grow a large root mass to find a sufficient supply of nutrients. In hydroponics gardening, where plants easily get all the food they need, the root mass is much smaller. Plants can be grown much closer together making far more efficient use of the space you have available.

As you can see, hydroponics gardening has many advantages. Getting started can be expensive but it doesn't have to be. Setting up a homemade hydroponics system is cheap and easy.

When thinking about what you can grow with a homemade hydroponics system, one kind of "crop" often springs to mind! And most of us have seen it on TV in hot, brightly-lit rooms, packed with plants - and the newly-arrived police!

However, the kind of plants that most people grow with a homemade hydroponics system are less exotic and a whole lot more legal. So what can you grow?

You can grow almost anything with a homemade hydroponics system: tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, lettuce, herbs, ornamental plants and even root vegetables. However, the fact that they are not closely packed in soil gives root vegetables free rein to grow into some very odd shapes!

You can also grow ornamental plants and flowers in a homemade hydroponics system. They can be grown in individual pots which sit in the planting tray and taken out for display whenever you like.

The key to being able to grow anything successfully in a homemade hydroponics system is to choose the right type of hydroponics system for your plants. Water-loving lettuce, for example, thrives in a "raft" hydroponics system while most other plants will grow well in an ebb and flow (aka flood and drain) system.

Secondly, choose the grow media best suited to the type of plants you want to grow to avoid problems like root rot. And finally, fine tune nutrients added to the water to optimise growth for particular plants - some need certain nutrients more than others.

It is important to choose the right type of hydroponic system for your plants. For homemade hydroponics there are basically three types of hydroponics systems to choose from.

The first is an ebb and flow (aka flood and drain) system. This is probably the most popular types of hydroponics system as it suits a wide variety of plants.

In this system, a planting tray is regularly flooded with nutrient-enriched water. The planting tray contains your choice of grow media, such as clay pebbles or coconut coir which retains the nutrient. Excess water drains away into a reservoir to be used again.

Secondly there is the raft hydroponics system. Plants are suspended in a floating material such as polystyrene, with their roots dangling in the nutrient-rich solution below. Not all plants suit the constant root saturation this system provide but it's an ideal choice for those that do, such as water-loving lettuce.

Thirdly there are wick-based hydroponics systems. These are very simple systems where one end of the wick is in the nutrient solution and the other is embedded near the plant roots. The wick sucks up the solution delivering it to the roots. This system puts plants in control as they draw the solution up as needed.

As you can see, all these systems are essentially very simple. With a basic grasp of the principles behind them, it is easy to build your own hydroponics system. Just be sure to choose the type of system best suited to the type of plants you want to grow.

When building a homemade system find out more about the plants you would like to grow and choose the system most suited to their needs.

If you would like to build a homemade hydroponics system and know what type of system you want to build, the next step is to get a plan.

Hydroponics systems are essentially very simple, largely because the principles behind them are simple. However, a good plan will make the process of building your own homemade hydroponics system easier. It will list the components you need and explain how to put them all together.

There are many free plans available that will suit exactly the type of hydroponic garden you want to make, the type of plants you want to grow and the space you have available. For instance, a plan for a vegetable garden made from a fish tank or tote or an easy-to-build hydroponics system for the kitchen.

Browse around until you find a plan that's a good match for the type of homemade hydroponics system you want to build, and makes sense to you!

A disadvantage of free hydroponics plans is that component lists are not always complete and don't cover important aspects of hydroponics gardening such as lighting and nutrients. You will have to search around for information.

If you would like complete component lists, detailed step-by-step instructions and all the information you need for a successful hydroponics garden, you may prefer to get a complete guide to building a homemade hydroponics system. You can download and print off pages as you need them. Whenever you need information on a specific aspect of your hydroponics garden, you will have it to hand.