Home Hydroponics

Hydroponics is simply a system of growing plants by constantly cycling nutrients efficiently to the roots of a plant. Sometimes a grow medium is used like expanded clay or cocogro, other times there can be no medium at all. For many, hydroponics is unknown, highly scientific, expensive, only for pros, or for dope. The truth is that many plants can benefit from hydroponics and it's not as difficult to get started at home in a very cost effective way as one might imagine.

After an initial venture into a store bought hydroponic system, it was clear that much could be purchased and assembled from the hardware store or even the supermarket. There you go, just saved some ambitious person hundreds of dollars. Though the store bought systems will probably be better quality a basic system is easy to construct and still very effective, and the cost savings is appealing.

The first home hydroponic system I build was from a couple of storage containers, a fish pump, and some tubing. The system holds eight plants to a fairly decent size and probably cost thirty dollars to build. Add a shop light with grow bulbs to the mix and maybe you could spend forty or fifty dollars. Most of this stuff is probably in the average garage or basement if you look hard enough.

A similar system that I'm aware of is sold for around one-hundred dollars and doesn't nearly provide the same amount of growing space. So, probably slightly less effective, but half the cost, and twice the room to grow.