Home Grown Hydroponics Experiment

Mine Stuffs, Experiments June 1st, 2007

I decided to jump into the wonderful world of hydroponics and see if I could get some things to grow. I started by doing some research online and gathering up some junk I had laying around the house. I decided that I would grow 2 types of plants to begin with. I am growing cherry tomatoes and jalapeño peppers.

My materials consist of:

One large rubbermade tub with the top 2/3 cut off. This will be filled with water.
Two smaller rubbermaid tubs that fit inside the larger tub with some room to spare. These tubs have 12 holes drilled in the bottoms of them to allow the water inside.
One small fish tank air pump, tubing, and air stone
One bag of Perlite for use as a growth medium.
One jug of fish emulsion fertilizer
One package cherry tomato seeds
One package jalapeño pepper seeds

The assembled hydroponic setup looks like this:

Not pictured is the aquarium air pump which is off to the side but I assure you it’s there.

Total cost to setup: right around $30. I say right around $30 because I didn’t keep very good track and I already had some of the parts. It should be about $30 to setup from scratch though.

Progress

The seeds were planted in the perlite on 4/4/2007. I leave the air pump on 24/7 and change the water every other week or so. I should do it more I am told but I’m rather lazy. I pour a couple tablespoons of fertilizer in every time I change the water but otherwise I leave it alone.

4/16/2007

By now the Cherry Tomatoes have sprouted but there is no sign of the peppers. I was getting worried but the peppers came up in force just a few days later.

Here is a picture of the tomatoes so far. I didn’t include one of the peppers because it looks exactly like it did on planting day.

5/16/2007

I have some kind of a severe algae problem going on here it seems. I am going to try adding some algae killer that I have for my fish tank and see what happens. Stupid Algae.

As you can see the plants have grown quite a lot in the past month and appear to be doing well (aside from the algae). The pictures below are tomatoes above and peppers below that. Click the images for giant sized ones.