How to Build a Bigger & Better Hydroponic Garden

Hydroponic gardens can be made in any size.

Hydroponic gardening can be challenging for beginners, but once you have gotten some successful plants going, you may want to expand your garden for bigger and better plants and results. Ironically, an expanded PVC pipe hydroponic garden can be easier and cheaper to maintain and build than a regular flood or drip hydroponic system. The best thing about this setup is that you can always expand it. Just take off one of the end caps, attach more pipes, and plant.

Things You'll Need

• PVC pipe
• Support frame
• PVC pipe end caps
• Drill
• Hole saw
• Plastic tubing
• Submersible pump
• Water reservoir
• Styrofoam cups
• Hydroponic growth medium
• Plant seeds or cuttings

Instructions

1. Designate where your garden will go and set up your support frame in that spot. The frame can be anything from a table to sawhorses depending on your resources. Many people make the frame out of extra PVC and make cuts to keep the pipe garden in place. If you are using a table, you can keep the PVC in place by putting bricks on either side of the pipe.

2. With the PVC placed securely on the frame, lay the pipe onto the frame and use the hole saw to cut the holes where the seeds or cuttings will be planted. The holes should be facing up, and be far enough apart that the pipe will remain sturdy between them. Each hole needs to be slightly smaller than the Styrofoam cups in order to hold them securely.

3. Place the PVC caps onto the ends of the pipe. Drill two small holes into one end of the pipe---one into the top of the pipe, the other in the bottom. The holes will need to be big enough to get the tubing well into the pipe. The top hole will be the intake for the water, while the other will serve as the drain. Place a piece of tubing into each hole, being sure to make the bottom one long enough to reach the reservoir.

4. Attach the tubing from the top intake hole onto the pump and position the reservoir beneath the drilled end of the pipe. The reservoir will vary depending on the size of the PVC garden. A reservoir can be anything from a bucket to a plastic tub to a full-blown hydroponic reservoir tank. You can test how big a reservoir you will need by filling the pipe with water, letting it drain and measuring how much it took to fill. Put the pump into the reservoir.

5. Taking the Styrofoam cups, make holes along the bottom of each of the planting cups for easy drainage and fill each cup with growing medium. Plant your cutting or seed into the cup and then place the entire cup into one of the holes. Repeat until each hole has a plant.

6. Fill the reservoir and turn on the pump. Water will flood the pipe and supply water to each plant before draining back into the reservoir. When the pipe is not flooded, the plants will get the other element they need to survive and thrive: air. You will need to run the pump about three or four times a day to ensure the plants get enough moisture.

References

• Easy hydroponics: How to build PVC pipe hydroponics
• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Hydroponic systems