What is a Hydroponic Garden?

There are many options, some which are very low cost, to start a hydroponic garden. We started with a self contained growing kit called InBloom.  The idea is you can grow many types of flowers, vegetables, fruits and herbs indoors, any time of year, directly in water. There is no soil, so you can grow anywhere. The kit comes with an attached light bar which automatically turns on and off, programmed specifically for the type of plants you choose to grow.  We have the InBloom on a bookshelf at the back of our office.

 

What should I grow?

The kit purchased came with a vegetable seed set and a greens set. The greens contained a variety of lettuces, from spinach, to chard, to American fast growing lettuce. The vegetable set came with peppers, peas, strawberries, cucumbers and radishes.  We also purchased an herb selection containing basil, mint, savory, thyme and oregano. If flowers are more your thing, there are many options available. Essentially you can grow anything that grows from a seed.

Tips and Advice

When we first started we wanted to fill the entire 12 pods with seeds. You soon realize that these plants grow very quickly and take up a lot of space and would end up choking each other out. We would recommend picking 2 types of plants and keeping only 4-6 of the healthy seedlings once they emerge.

We followed the instructions and pre-sprouted the seeds by placing them on a damp paper towel in a storage container and storing it in a dark place for 2-5 days until the seeds start to grow. You then transplant them into the foam sponges and ensure that the provided sticker is placed over the top to cover up as much surface area as possible to prevent mold growth.

Cycle once the plants get to their end of life. Sometimes its really hard saying goodbye to plants, but once a plant has yielded it’s fruit it usually done. We noticed when we planted lettuce that it eventually started to go to seed and the leaves became bitter. It was time to pull and start over.

The instructions suggest using filtered water, which we originally started doing since we live on well water. However, purchasing filtered water became expensive and a hassle, so we switched to using our regular water and haven’t noticed much difference. We do still continue to fertilize regularly with a hydroponic specific fertilizer.