How to Make Hydroponic Plans
Even if you're just thinking about a small growing system for the home, you must consider a number of factors as you make hydroponic plans. Consider who's going to tend the installation, what plants you will grow, when you will grow them, where you'll place the growing systems, why you're using hydroponics, and which type of hydroponics growing system you're going to implement. Does this Spark an idea?
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Instructions
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Decide who's going to be responsible for maintaining the system day in and day out. If it's going to be a child, then a small, simple, pre-built grow system may fulfill your needs. Just keep the nutrient water reservoir full and add nutrient tablets every two weeks. Highly motivated adults, however, can learn how to provide proper routine care for any hydroponics setup.
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Decide what plants you're going to grow. Include not only what you plan to begin growing at first, but also plan your crops for each season. Tomatoes, for instance, tend to do well in the summer and lettuce fares better in cooler weather. Consider what type of growing system (nutrient film technique, deep water aeration or flood-and-drain, for example) would be most efficient and feasible for most or all of your planned crops.
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Settle on a location for your hydroponics system. Are you setting up outdoors or indoors? In south Florida or Montreal? Rain forest or desert? Do you want to grow your plants in harmony with the seasons, or do you want to plan a setup that lets you grow crops out of season? Consider the size of the space as well. Is the system to be designed for a large, enclosed, dedicated space in the back yard of your four-acre rural property, or is it simply a four-square-foot space on a countertop in the kitchen? For any hydroponics setup, you'll need access to electricity and water. All of these considerations will drive major aspects of your design, such as the need and sizing for climate controls, water and air pumps, filters and timer/controllers in your setup.
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Prepare an overall site layout sketch and preliminary equipment and parts list, both of which should be based on your answers to the questions above. Then, do a little preliminary pricing and number-crunching to get a rough cost estimate for parts and equipment for your proposed setup.
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Prepare a list of tools, if any, that you'll need to buy to construct the setup. For example, a deep-water aeration system can be built using tools consisting of nothing more than a pair of heavy-duty scissors and a sharp knife. An outdoor, 4-by-8-foot floating raft system, however, may require a full complement of tools including a screwdriver, drill, hole saw, circular saw and box cutter and utility knife.
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References
- Photo Credit three fresh hydroponics tomatos image by Flashon Studio from Fotolia.com
