hydroponic how to get started , a guide for beginner

how to get started in hydroponics if you've never done this before but you're at all curious or interested in growing food  indoors hydroponically stick around I'm going to show you how to get started . alright so hydroponics why get started in hydroponics um?

I like to grow stuff I like to eat stuff curbs lettuce you know salad items kale spinach on it is a lot easier to grow it hydroponically inside. never rains and there are no bugs there's no fungus there's no freezing temperatures it gives you the perfect climate to grow and especially these type of plants there are certain things some hot peppers things like that that want to be outside they want to be a lot hotter but in terms of what I just described the basil the kale spinach the lettuce all my favorite type stuff like that this upper 60 temperature is just perfect for it so it thrives down here, get started in hydroponics there's a few different types of hydroponics out there I practice what's called deep water culture which is really really simple it is some sort of bucket or container with standing water the roots grow in the water of course it has nutrients in it there's an air pump to provide oxygen to those roots and

that's it really simple there's a lot of other stuff out there um drip systems Evan flow you know bottom line I've been running deep water culture which probably the most simple form of hydroponics I've been doing it for a few years now the only type I've ever really

run it works works absolutely fantastic it's simple it's reliable you know what to worry about pumps braking or possibly flooding your

basement or anything like that so I stick with it so you're going to need some sort of tub or tank I'm going to show you two examples of what I'm doing depending on what type of plant one very simple five-gallon bucket the other type would be some sort of tub like this in the tub we drill some holes and those holes are drilled for what are called these net cups this is where the little

plants the seedlings are going to live they're going to go in there like that I'm going to set up one of these today so what I'm going to do is a five gallon bucket with a giant net Cup on there there's absolutely no difference between these two chip size so why am i running to two different times two different sizes I'm gonna have one basil plant in here I have another one I'm gonna have one kale plant in there today is May 4th  my seedlings are about three weeks old by the end of the summer these plants will be two to three feet tall I'll have to continually prune them down to keep them small the basil and the kale will absolutely survive in this deep water

culture hydroponics and I want one plant in this container it's going to drink a lot of solution dedicated for one plant and also this is a big strong stable container it's not going to fall over with my blue tub which holds about seven gallons of water this is where I'm going  to run my spinach and my lettuce the lettuce don't grow tall they stay a lot shorter you can bunch them up a little bit closer and this will allow me to get six plants no eat plants in here I also have tub lids that were cut for

slightly larger knit cups like this obviously buckets are available at the Home Center we'll turn that around Lowe's is not paying me tubs that are available anywhere Home Center Walmart Target these I would recommend getting them from Hamazon I will post links in the description below for all the net cups that I'm using today of course you can get these at a hydroponic supply

shop if you happen to have one local to you but I will post links where you can buy all these on Amazon distilled water

you need to use water that has zero total dissolved solids there's really two ways to accomplish that one distilled water or to a reverse osmosis filter I don't have a reverse osmosis filter so I'm going to use the still water I tried when I first got started

hydroponics using tap water your tap water mostly most likely has dissolved solids in it maybe calcium manganese you

know small amounts of copper maybe from your from your piping system that interferes with the solution we're trying to mix up the interferes with the pH or interferes with the plant's ability to uptake the nutrients so you want to start with zero total dissolved

solids if you are wondering what the total dissolved solids are out of your tap water or your well water at your house

and get yourself a TDS meter I will post a link below to where I got this on Amazon inexpensive and this will tell

you what the total dissolved solids are of your water so if you have a reverse osmosis filter get one of these test it

confirm that your filter is working and that you have zero TDs if your if you want to start with distilled water which

is relatively inexpensive at Walmart or Target or anywhere else no need to buy this distilled water has a zero TDS

nutrients so I believe the definition of  hydroponics I should probably have  looked this up first but I believe the definition hydroponics is something like growing plants in water or growing without soil or something like that you know basically what we're doing is we're

using this to support our plants because there's no soil there's no there's no structure for the roots so this supports the plants and then the roots just live in water and that water has nutrients in it the roots uptake the nutrients and the plants grow and they grow much better much healthier and much faster than if they were outside in the soil or even inside in soil because again we're

giving them exactly what they need and nothing that they don't so for nutrients I have been using aqua flakes to Part A

and B by house garden I have been using this for years it's a two-part nutrient solution you mix equal parts a with

equal parts B and the results that I get with this are absolutely fantastic I highly highly recommend this I will post links in the description below where you can find this on Amazon I just reordered and I believe I just paid about $22 for

each one so figure 44 or 45 dollars will get you some nutrients and it's going to last you a long time the other thing that we need to do after we mix our nutrients up is adjust the pH the pH needs to be specific in order to have proper uptake by the roots the

proper pH is about a six or a six and a half for what we're going to plant today and that's very easy to measure I use

something like this just a little color test kit I will also post the link to this in the description below and this will tell you what the pH is I can tell you that when I use distilled water and I add my aqua flakes a and B nutrients my pH is always low its acidic probably

somewhere around of five so I need to bring it up I use this pH up by the tannic air I'll post a link to this I don't remember if I got this on Amazon so if I can't find this on Amazon I'll post another link in the description below for some other pH regulating

fluids there's pH up and there's pH down depending on what you need I'd say the other very very important part of hydroponics would be light the plant needs the right light and it needs proper amount of light if you're just getting started the most cost-effective way that I found to get started with lights are the compact fluorescent bulbs you want the daylight ones usually that's the blue package these are the daylight ones and very very bright white lights you can see here I have relatively different little aluminum hoods or covers found these at Home Center that is a very very inexpensive way to get started I will show you the lights that I'm running over here in a second once you get a little bit more into hydroponics that a little more serious you want to upgrade to probably t5 fluorescent tubes the high output tubes if you're really serious you can go into LEDs they're expensive to buy no different than regular LEDs for your home now the expensive to buy upfront but they last really a long time the t5 s  re not expensive to buy they don't last that long so it makes perfect sense and then you want to get up get yourself small-timer from the home center and you want to run your life I believe I run my lights for I don't know maybe 16 18 hours a day so with that being said let's get started mixing up some nutrients and some water now regarding the five gallon buckets and these net cups or these out these bucket lids if you plan on going this route under normal conditions once your plants are established and they've got you know enormous roots I run three gallons three gallons of water in here when you're just getting started and you're setting these up you're setting up small seedlings which you're going to see me do in a second and what I want to check right now is to see I put this in here okay so the the distance between the bottom of here and the water level it's about an inch that's okay so the roots are not yet going to be touching down into that water but the reason why that's going to be okay is because  we're going to put we're going to use an air pump a small air pump like an aquarium air pump I believe I got these from Petco and I'm going to use an air stone and we're going to put that in there and the reason we're doing that is because we want to put oxygen into the water for the roots without the roots can't have oxygen they'll drown but what's going to happen is that's naturally going to create a lot of bubbles and a lot of splashing so again the distance between this water level using three gallons in a five-gallon bucket and right here when that's in there is about an inch but I'm going to get a lot of splashing and that splashing is going to come up underneath and those roots I'd like to say they're going to feel that they're going to know where to go they'll going to get a little bit of splashing which will keep complain of lives and the roots are going to have a tendency to grow very very quickly downward looking for that water looking for that solution looking for those nutrients that they need let's talk about how much of the nutrients we're going to put in with established plants all nutrients are different of course about if you're going to go with the aqua flakes AMD um what I've been doing for years is seven milliliters per gallon of each one okay so three gallons seven times three is twenty-one I need twenty-one milliliters of a and twenty-one milliliters of B in this bucket when you're starting your seedlings I cut that in half so when you're setting up little baby seedlings in a starter tub I go with about three and a half MLS per gallon but my seedlings are almost a month old I'm going to go ahead and give them what I call full strength there are charts that you can find online that will talk about changing the nutrient strength for each week of the plant's life and using a little more and using a little less I'm just going to tell you what my experience says I run 7 ml 7 MLS per gallon I've been doing it for years with fantastic results that's what I'm going to do today so the instructions for the aqua flakes are to mix them in independently so I just put in my 21 milliliters of aqua flakes a into the bucket and I'm going to mix it very very thoroughly before I add my 21 build leaders of the aqua flakes be now at this point with whatever water you're using and whatever nutrients you're using test your pH I know what my pH is right now it's low it's probably about a five I don't need to test my pH right now I'm just going to go ahead and raise my pH I'm going to use a pH up product and from experience I know about how much to put in when you're doing this my advice would be put in a very very little amount of either your pH up or down and go very very gradually until you get the hang of it it's easier to come up on it slowly then to overshoot and then have to go back and forth and back and forth hopefully I either got a right or I'm close so I'm going to stir this up you can use a pH meter test meter looks very similar to the TDS test meter I'll put a link to one of those in the description below

you can use pH test strips or you can go with the liquid and the little vial in the color test so what I'll do is take my vial the first thing I'm going to do is fill it pour it out a few times making sure that if there is anything in the vial it's it's completely out the only thing I'll be truly testing is the water and with this specific kit here you want to fill the vial about halfway and put about three drops in maybe four drops now I know from experience I want this to be yellow I think that is actually a hair low so I don't know how well you can see this on the camera but that's a little low that's a little orange which is more like a five I wanted it to be yellow which is more like a six so the good news is I didn't overshoot I put in a little bit too little of my pH up which is okay because now I'll just put in a little bit more all right so I had turn off the camera for a second there but I did add a little bit more of the pH up to each one let's check it out there you go hopefully you can see that but that's basically yellow color and  the yellow corresponds to six maybe a six and a half so let me go this a long time using the same thing for me as soon as I see that yellow color I'm good I know I'm done okay this is what I call  my hydroponic starter tub so I have another video where I show the process of taking the seedlings and putting them into and setting up my hydroponic starter tub so the purpose of this little tub is its its halfway in between new seedlings starting and getting them into their permanent home so it gives me an opportunity to number one have a 50% solution strength the 3.5 MLS per gallon instead of the 7 MLS per gallon it's also a small little tub with a lot of little holes drilled in the top for the net cough so I get a lot of plants in here now you're probably wondering why is there so much algae in there why is that so green hopefully you can see this on the camera well it's very simple this is a clear tub and that clear tub allows the light to come in and the algae starts to gr  immediately so a clear  tub is would be a really really poor choice on a long-term basis for your hydroponic tank that's why you want at least a tub that is translucent if not opaque would be even better these blue tabs that are translucent they work great I don't know gee problem with that the reason why I get away with this is because it's only for a couple of weeks but these seedlings are in here for just a couple of weeks and just about the time when the tank is overrun with algae and the roots look way too much algae on them it's time to take them out so it works what we have here you need some sort of I want to say medium to hold the plant so what do I put in here to hold the plant well the answer for me I use I call lava rocks I think that's what they are I think they're inert I don't think they they don't have an effect on the pH at all they're cheap I've been using them for years I know you can use on the small little balls the little round balls work very well you can just use large grodan cubes we   used to be called Rockville cubes survey by a company called grodan these are the little small ones the one-and-a-half by one-and-a-half I talk a lot about this in that other video so link in the description below to the other video but these come in all sizes including big sizes where you could just simply put it right into here that would probably work for you well but again I use these lava rocks okay first guy up is the kale plant hopefully you can see the roots it roots look pretty good there blood allergy on them that's no good but that'll wash off very quickly no big deal so this is one one beautiful little healthy kale plant here and what I want to do is I want to get this plant to end up about maybe about a half an inch below the top of this big bucket or basket or net cup right here and I also want to see if I can get those roots to start the process of growing down through the openings first thing I'm going to do is rinse them off and I think I'll put a little bit of the lava rocks in here I'm al  st trying to see if I could just get those roots kind of start their way through the side of this big neck Cup here how does easy that looks now one of the things that I'd love to do is to help this little guy out trying to avoid a  little bit of a transplant shock here his roots are not exactly touching that solution yet so I'm going to grab a turkey baster I'm gonna get some of that solution and try to get him as wet as possible and again the best thing I can do for this is to get this going with  that air pump if that air pump is goingto create a lot of bubbles a lot of  splashing a lot of turbulence and that's going to get up underneath there and his roots will feel that he'll start to grow up pretty quickly we're going to go head and do the same thing with a basil plant there's a little  asil plant this guy you think again they're all about three three and a half weeks old looks great it's really nice roots on there so again we're to go ahead and get em soaked down all right so now let's get our air pump going these are the stones I use these are little  quarium stones and what I'll do is actually dip this in here to to wet the barb make easier to slide so one thing that you need to do is  rill a little hole in your bucket so that you can put your air tube through I'm also going to dip the end of the tube in the water again  ust to make sure that or make it easier to slide the little the barb from the stone on there I'm going to drop that in same thing with the other one here through the hole now let's go ahead and turn on our air pump now I apologize for the shaky and camera holding the  amera in my hand I want to show you what it looks like with the bubbles in here now I have an air pump that has four lines that come  omes off of it it's an aquarium air pump readily available at Petco or Pet Smart or any aquarium supply shop but the nice thing about  he pump that I have with the four lines coming out is that it also has an adjustable flow so right now that's turned down and when this plant is

established that's all you need but

because I want to have more splashing

and more bubbles and more turbulence I'm

going to come through I'm going to turn

this up

and that's going to help splash the more

that solution up underneath my roots

alright so I went ahead and set up this

seven gallon tub exactly the same way I

set up the five gallon buckets seven

gallons distilled water proper ratio of

nutrients they set the pH now we're

going to go ahead and get this air pump

set up just like the five gallon buckets

you need to drill a little hole in your

tub so that you can put your line

through

all right and now the fun part get to

put our speedlings in here we've got

some spinach here

so I'm submerging them in the solution

this baby spinach very slow this still

doesn't have roots

I'm protruding at the bottom yet the

roots are still inside of that grodan

cube right there so I want to go ahead

and submerge it to soak that Rodan cube

with that solution

you don't care at this lettuce plant

obviously beautiful roots I'll still go

ahead and Samara

this lettuce variety I believe is either

a salad bowl or a black seated Simpson I

can't remember which one Jeremy now

these two kale plants here

these two kale plants here this is just

temporary I'm actually going to give

these away to somebody next couple days

putting them in here just to keep them

alive and growing

alright guys I know that was a long

video if you stuck with me all the way

to the end thank you I really appreciate

it I really hope you learned something

and that you enjoyed it and I'm having a

blast making these videos sharing with

you guys everything that I am constantly

working so hard to learn I look forward

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