Are you all excited about setting up a small yet profitable Business from home? Hydroponics is such an easy way of growing vegetables and herbs indoor as well as a covered part of your terrace. Requiring no soil at all is an advantage as this set up is readily dismantable and could be carried to any place wherever one moves. If you are all ready to set up your hydroponic systems, it is of importance that you need to understand some theory before you start doing it practically.
There are a number of materials, kits, nutrients, starter kits available world wise, but it’s important to stick to one company and understand the details and start small. When you gradually learn and understand the systems, it could be possible that one could start making the systems at home. We were confused and so we thought of contacting our friend Manikandan Pattabhiraman and Suraj Rao of Garden Guru to understand details of their kits and functioning of their kits which will help our readers understand a little bit more about hydroponics.
Hydroponic Raft System is a DIY system that is one of the Deep Water Culture systems available. The plants are suspended from the lid of the container. The container acts as a reservoir. It is easy to assemble and is very compact. It comes with 12 plant spaces.
Deep-water Culture/Raft System method of hydroponics is a method that is simple and easy to maintain. It should also be taking less space so that we can keep the whole system in the balcony. Here plants are grown in a container that contains hydroponic nutrient solution s and the plants are suspended in the nutrient solution using a net pot attached to the lid of an air bubbler is provided to aerate the nutrient solution to increase the dissolved oxygen in the nutrient solution. Since the plants are floated on a raft this is called as raft system.
40 mm Cocopeat rooting seed plugs are used to germinate seeds. Establishing a hydroponic garden using seed plug is easier and they come compressed in 40 mm and will become 2 inches when dipped in water, the excess water is squeezed then seeds are put inside them. The seed is put half a cm inside the thumb rule is 2 times the depth of seed size.2/3 seeds could be put inside the coco peat plugs. They should be kept in a warm place or indoors. There shouldn’t be much light ,if there is then the seedling tray should be wrapped with plastic film and then after germination when 3-4 leaves happen ,should allow light to fall on them and should be transferred into netpots and then after 15 days onto the Raft system.
The DIY Hydroponic Raft System from Garden Guru is a Hydroponic Raft System priced at 2600 and is a type of a Deep Water Culture system in which the plant's roots are suspended in a nutrient rich solution that is continuously bubbled using an Aquarium Air Pump. The DIY kit contains A reservoir ( 20Ltr capacity),Lid with 12 plant spaces ( Holes of 3" dia),Nutrients salts for making upto 100 litres of final solution, Jiffy Plugs 15 nos, Netpots 15 nos, Aquarium pump 1nos,Expanded Clay (Leca),Seeds ( 3 packets) and an Instruction manual.
If you are successful with the home gardens set up and you feel like setting up a bigger system you could move on to the next level by buying a DIY HYDROPONIC KIT -a 30 PLANTER NFT. The 30-plant Hydroponic DIY Kit allows the beginners to experience and work with Nutrient Film Technique (NFT) based hydroponic systems on a small scale like a home garden. With this system, grow 30 plants using five NFT channels in just 1 sq meter of your space. The Kit Price is 11799. It comes with the following:5 NFT Channels with pre-drilled cavity to hold plant netpots, 28 ltr of reservoir with lid, Stand onto which NFT channels will be placed, Nutrient inlet and outlet accessories, Nutrients salts for making upto 100 liters of final nutrient solution, Jiffy Plugs 50 nos, Netpots 35 nos, Submersible pump 1 nos, Seeds (3 packets) and an Instruction manual.
Hydroponics could be very simply described, as a method of growing plants with the use of water mixed nutrition solution. Because we don’t require soil in this process, we are avoiding the risk of fertilizers, contamination through soil and because it is indoors, we are also reducing the risk of diseases and thereby reduced risk of pesticides. At present with the drastic climate change this technique is all the more suitable because of controlled condition indoors. People all over the world has been successfully cultivating vegetables and herbs. The cultivation at present is limited to the leafy greens and there should be much research to bring a wide variety under these conditions.
