We’re excited to blog to you about our experiences with hydroponics! (Hold on to your horses.) We’ve spent many hours reading and researching hydroponics and have learned a great deal. We settled on a water culture system after looking at a variety of ways to grow basil. Among those systems were: the wick system, water culture, ebb & flow, nutrient film technique, and aeroponic. We chose to use the water culture system because it was simple and very reliable. The ebb & flow, nutrient film technique, and aeroponic systems all rely on pump and timer mechanisms to deliver water and/or nutirients to the plants. A power failure could be catastrophic to any of these systems and we thought they were ill-advised choices. We also decided to use vermiculite as our growing medium as it holds moisture well, is inexpensive, and has little to no impact on pH levels. We also chose to build our water culture hydroponic system in an environmentally friendly way with recycled products. We created a plastic tub by cutting an existing food container (pretzel barrel), sanding the container, and painting it to block light rays. This was done to prevent algae from growing in the container while in use. We then cut a round disk from rigid styrofoam used for home insulation to serve as a float. Lastly we cut three holes in the float spaced accordingly for the basil plants, and placed three small cups (recycled yogurt containers) in said holes. Each cup was filled with vermiculite and two basil seeds were set at varying depths in each container. We did this to test which plants grew best and adjust the others accordingly. Lastly, we filled our tub with a nutrient solution we prepared (with a 6.5-7 level of pH) and inserted the plastic line for our bubbler. The finished hydroponic system was placed under the grow light with other student systems. We spent $0 on this build and used all in-house items. We feel confident this system will provide similar results to others in our class.
