Make Your Own Homemade Hydroponics Vegetable Garden

If you have a small area in your basement or garage that you can devote to a homemade hydroponics system you can easily grow fresh, wholesome, high quality vegetables all year round.

Here’s a simple, basic system that you can use to get started with your own homemade hydroponics vegetable garden.

Start off with a couple of the cheap coolers that are used for summer picnics. They are made of white Styrofoam and cost very little. These containers are going to be the basic equipment for your hydroponics vegetable garden. Be sure to keep the lids. You’ll need them. The bottom part of these coolers will hold your nutrient solution and the tops will hold the plants.

These Styrofoam coolers will slowly leak so next you will need to line the bottom portion of your coolers with strong polythene. Fit the polythene as neatly as possible into the containers. Fold it over the top edges and down the outside faces of your cooler. Tape it in place with duct tape.

You need to aerate the roots of your seedlings once they are in position. To do that you can use a regular aquarium air stone an aquarium air pump and tubing.

Cut a small hole in the bottom portion of the container to accommodate an air tube. Cut near the top of the box, above the water line, and make the hole just large enough to fit standard aquarium air tube. This will help prevent any leaks.

One aquarium pump will easily provide enough air for both of your hydroponics containers. Cut two pieces of tubing to about two feet in length and run it out through the hole in your boxes and to a splitter. Then run a tube from the splitter to the pump. It’s a good idea to keep your air stones off of the bottom of the coolers so they do not plug up with silt. Now it’s time to get your plants in position.

Your garden center will have plastic trays for small plants that are divided into 12 cells. These cells, cut from the tray into small individual pots will work well to hold your plants with their roots dangling into the nutrient solution. If you can’t find these trays use small pots. The idea is for the edges of the plant container to sit against the bottom leaves of your plants to keep them from dropping into the nutrient solution.

Now you need the lids for your Styrofoam coolers. If you turn them upside down and put them on the boxes you’ll see that the concave shape will allow your plants to hang down far enough for the roots to easily reach the nutrient solution. Now cut the bottoms off of your plant containers so the roots can drop through and use one of the pots as template to cut holes in the Styrofoam lid. Make sure the pots just fit snugly into the lid and that the plants are supported in the pots. You should be able to get at least four and possibly six pots into each lid depending on which vegetables you are growing.

And that’s it. Fill your coolers with nutrient solution so that about two-thirds of the plants roots are covered, turn on your air pump, provide light if your system is indoors and you have a homemade hydroponics vegetable garden.