Thread: Hydroponic Vegetables and Herbs

Funny the things you end up doing or learning in a COVID lockdown year. In some ways it has been a really great year for personal development and growth, and in others it has just been dreadful.

Anyway, after a bit of a renovation in 2019 we had a bit of wood left laying around, and I thought I'd make my wife a herb planter using it. In typical fashion I did a reasonable but not awesome job. It came out OK, but the base felt a little weak and I wasn't sure if I could fill it with soil.

So I had a thought - what about filling it with vermiculite and some clay pebbles and running a hydroponic system on it? So I did. This is my first hydroponic setup - it is a very small and simple setup.

• I have a 20 liter storage container under the planter for the water/nutrient reservior.
• Inside that is a small garden fountain pump that runs off a solar panel and pumps out to a 6 spray dripper system on the surface of the planter.
• The pump is controlled with a timer system so that it runs for around 10 minutes every hour, day and night.
• I drilled a hole in the bottom of the planter and into the water/nutrient reservior and used a piece of pipe to reclaim the water that gets pumped around.

It is an outside system so I do not use artificial light.

I'm just growing leafy greens - lettuce, spring onions, celery, garlic chives, mustard greens, etc. Apparently these need a different nutrient balance than say flowering veges, and I use the appropriate nutrient additive in the water for that. Depending on the amount of sun etc, I might have to top up the reservior once a week to once a fortnight with maybe 5 - 8 liters of nutrient/water mix. Easily done using a watering can on the veges themselves - the water makes it way into the reservior after a while.

Anyone else do hydroponic veges or herbs?

James.