My Hydroponics Setup #
Overview Presentation #
I gave a rough overview of my interest in hydroponics for some colleagues at work; see my slides for a summary.
Goals #
My diet goals suggest that I eat a lot of leafy greens. Unfortunately, these greens do not keep well and are somewhat expensive to buy. Therefore, they are at the highest risk (out of all foods I want to eat) of not being eaten simply because they are not around.
Luckily, leafy greens are some of the easiest plants to grow hydroponically, and hydroponic systems provide one of the easiest ways to grow plants.
Method #
Most leafy greens should take about a month to grow hydroponically. Therefore, if I want to eat two plants a day, I need 60 plant growing stations in my system. This is a 10x6 system, which seems fairly small actually.
The Kratky method provides a simple and easy (no moving parts) method to grow, and seems to be effective for the leafy greens I want to grow.
I want to use grow lights to keep my setup consistent. LED lights have fairly low power consumption anyway (~20W per light).
- A useful reference: https://www.urbanvine.co/blog/11-core-guidelines-urban-farmers-must-know-before-buying-grow-lights#intro-c
My Materials List #
To make things easy, it would be cool to come up with a reusable solution for the material to plant the seeds in, since I would be harvesting and replanting 2 per day. Could use mixture of course soils for this!
See https://hennepinmastergardeners.org/hydroponics-for-year-round-salad-greens/
Reference links #
- https://www.reddit.com/r/Hydroponics/comments/llg8im/my_pandemic_hobby_getting_out_of_control/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
- https://igworks.com/blogs/the-igworks-indoor-gardening-blog/nutrient-and-ph-chart-for-growing-fruits-and-vegetables-with-hydroponics
- https://theschoolofaquaponics.com/courses/128108/lectures/8665205
- https://ezgrogarden.com/
- Auto Aquaponics Setup
- Incredible hydroponic system (website at https://simplegreenshydroponics.com/)
- Highly automated hydroponic system
Seed Generation - not done yet! #
It would be cool to have a separate growing bin in a warmer place where plants would go to seed. This way I could generate my own seeds and not worry about needing to go buy them!
Data logging #
See https://github.com/kovasap/plant-data for code that I run on my Raspberry Pi to log data.
Water depth #
- https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/83960/accurate-water-level
- https://thepihut.com/blogs/raspberry-pi-tutorials/hc-sr04-ultrasonic-range-sensor-on-the-raspberry-pi
Need to figure out how to get https://www.amazon.com/diymore-Waterproof-Ultrasonic-Measuring-Transducer/dp/B01J5KZU8M attached to the raspberry pi if i use that.
Future Improvement Ideas #
- Create a weight sensor for my hydroponics to track water consumption and growth.
- Create a light sensor feedback system where if the light near plants goes below a certain level, the grow lights turn on.
Categories: Hydroponics