🌱 Home Gardening with Hydroponics - My Garage Starter Plant Holding System
Welcome gardening enthusiasts to another home hydroponics gardening post. Here I will show you my garden systems and how I go about growing the majority of our produce-type foods right at home, even with NO farmable land.
Over the years I have established a process for starting seeds that allows me to keep a constant supply of new plants to rotate into my gardens as needed - this is known as "successive planting" in the agriculture world. As with everything in gardening, my way is not the only way to do things, but it's the way the works best for me. Over time you will learn what methods work best for you and where you live. Since I'm in the process of starting all my gardens over from seeds, this is a good time for me to continue showing my other garden systems and explaining how they all work together.
Young Tomato (left) and Eggplant (right edge) in the garage system.
Garage Starter Plant Holding System
As you may know by now, I usually start my seeds inside in small bio-dome systems under LED grow lights. Once the seedlings get to a certain size and have established a decent root system I transplant them to my other systems. For larger plants like tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, beans, and melons, I will move them to my larger hydroponics system in the garage. This system gives me the flexibility to continuously grow plants of varying ages and holding them until they are large enough and strong enough to be moved to my outdoor gardens.
Side view of the whole garage system.
My garage system is 8' wide, by 2' deep, by 6' high and is split into 2 levels. The lower level has five(5) 3" pipes that each hold 33 plants, for a total of 165 plants, with a height to light clearance of 10 inches. The upper level has three(3) 3" pipes that each hold 17 plants, for a total of 51 plants, with a height to light clearance of 15 inches. At max capacity this system can support 216 plants.
Each level has eight(8) 48" long custom-made LED grow light bars, 4 rows with 2 lights connected together. Each LED bar uses 25w of electricity for a total of 400w when they are all on at the same time. Considering the amount of light they put out, and limited red/blue wavelengths they produce, they are very efficient. In the past I had T5 daylight bulbs that used 55w each (880w) where about 40% of the energy is lost to heat and only 50% of the visible light spectrum is usable by the plants. So it's worth having the garage glow like a nightclub to get the energy savings and better growth from the plants.
The lower level is primarily used for lettuces, chard, herbs, and other smaller plants. Very rarely do I use all the spots at the same time, I usually use every other spot, but I built in the extra capacity in case it's needed in the future. The upper level with it's higher clearance and wider plant spacing is for larger plants like tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants, and peppers.
Showing both ends of the system.
Feed-line side with 1/2" line manifold with 1/4" out lines to removable caps.
Upper level pipes have 3 feed lines, lower level pipes have 2 each.
Pumps ON 24/7, Lights are on the timer - ON 6am to 7pm, OFF at noon for 15 min .
Return-side piping, 3"-to-2" reducers and 2" return pipes.
The caps on each are removable for system cleaning.
27 Gallon reservoir tank. with access panel cut out.
This shows every other row covered with seeds planted.
I no longer start seeds in the garage system like this.
A mix of plants in the lower level as well as soil-based plants in trays below.
At the time this post was written, there isn't anything growing in the garage. I'm still waiting on the seedlings growing inside. In a few more days they will be ready to put into net cups and move out to this system to mature a bit before finally moving to my outside system.
I hope you enjoyed learning about my garage starter plant holding system.
If you have any questions or comments, just drop a reply below.
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Thanks for reading, now get out there and get GROWING!
Wow thank you for walking us through this process! I've never seen a play-by-play of hydroponic gardening before.
Thank you Natasha - doing my best to help where I can.
Im just thinking about, what is that garden concept called?, where people plant vegetables and plants, feed fish with the plants, get dung from fish etc. So sustainable:)
Aquaponics, I think is the combination of growing plants in water (hydroponics) that is being used to raise/keep fish. The plants use the nitrates from the fish waste, and you can use underwater plants to increase the oxygen for the fish. I'm pretty sure I've read that depending on the fish load, some plants can adapt themselves to using up either ammonia, or nitrite, instead of the nitrate. I just recently got back into fish keeping and planting my aquarium, and the thought of being able to add some plants on the surface of the tank to keep the tank balanced, plus get some fresh (although a very small amount) produce or even some herbs, is very tempting!
Yep, that's a good overview of it. I have a Koi pond out back and I have a mix of live/fake plants in there. The live plants help keep things balanced. But that pond is not part of my edible gardens, just a pond. Most of my food is grown in hydroponics, a few things still in soil containers.
Koi pond! Amazing. One day I hope I can upgrade to a koi pond! Small steps...
It's a small one, but it makes the back yard area so peaceful. I plan to have a post on how I built that too soon.
Yes, Aquaponics. It is good for lettuce, herbs and other greens. A little more challenging for fruiting plants that require other minerals and nutrients.
Is it possible for the root system of fruiting plants to adapt to a hydroponic environment?
Hydroponics yes, I grow tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, eggplant, squash. On occasion I grow small watermelon, cantaloupe, and even sunflowers (as a test) in hydroponics.
In Aquaponics I'm not sure, since the plants require other heavy minerals like calcium and magnesium and I'm not sure how those effect the fish. You would have to research that more.
Hi @steemboys, just wanted to let you know I posted my next hydroponics article.
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WOW, you've built a super hydro system. I am also a farmer but on the first experiences, one day I would also like to have something like this. Congratulations on the job, I follow you for more posts.
That is a nice setup.
Almost looks like a growing area on some Sci-fi movie spaceship.
Thank you Dean. :-)
Wow that's a really nice set up, I'd like to do something like that someday if I could ever unclutter my garage.
Thank you @tbnfl4sun. Well it's kinda funny. I had the same problem and one day I just went for it. I moved all the crap to one side so I had space to build my workbench, then piled all the crap on the workbench side to build this, then put all the crap on the top shelf above the hydroponic system - just out of the pictures. LOL So I really just moved the clutter around.
Hi @tbnfl4sun, just wanted to let you know I posted my next hydroponics article about my main outside garden system.
Awesome post. I love how organized your systems are. You clearly spent a lot of time planning these. I have to ask, are you an engineer?
This post is making me rethink about my future ambitions for a commercial hydroponic strawberry farm. I was planning on a vertical system, but horizontal on multiple stacked rows looks like a higher density for given space.
Hi @morseke1, Thank you - no, I'm not an engineer by trade, but I do think that way when I come across a challenge. Due to my limited space here, I really have to think it through on how to build compact systems that get the most yield from the space I have.
I think most commercial strawberry growers do a mix. They have 2 or 3 levels with 2 rails of plants on each level, to make aisles like in a store. If it's a greenhouse, they run them North-South to get sun across them all during the day. If you use lights then you can arrange any way you like :-)
Great feedback as I build out my knowledge so that one day I can go for it.
I attended the Consumers Electronic Show in Las Vegas this year and sat next to a hydroponics expert from Canada who was formerly in a rooftop hydroponics start-up. He decided to go on his own focusing on the technology side. He was recently on a panel with two other highly successful commercial hydroponics "farmers" and they did an excellent panel he sent me the link to watch. With the marijuana industry become a massive market, I assume this will drive the cost of lighting, nutrients and all the hardware and supplies down to help make a better business case.
On the tech side for prices I hope so. But I do know that in that industry the lighting requirements are a lot more intense (and expensive) than what is needed for lettuce and things like that. The good thing about my outside system, the cost is relatively lower since it's all parts from the local hardware store and the Sun powers the rest :-)
This is brilliant, just proves you don't need a big garden to start growing vegetables.
Fantastically detailed post.
Keep em coming brother :)
Thank you Mark. It's true, I have found ways to grow big in small spaces :-) Lot's more coming. Hope all is well with your and your family.
Checking back to see how this article is doing and I'm very happy for you that an audience if forming and I wish you great increased success. You are doing a great job with your posts.
Thank you so much @morseke1 for your support. I have lots more coming and want to continue to help anyone interested in hydroponics the best I can.
This is a great tutorial! I am excited to start my own system now! Thanks for such valuable info!
Good to hear, and thank you for the support as always. I'm so happy this is going to help people get motivated to start their own gardens at home.
I don't see a reason not too!
Thank you!