A Little Intro To Hydroponics

I am totally in love with Hydroponics.  I became interested in that type of growing after watching some wonderful videos on YouTube made by mhpgardener .  I love this guy!  He always makes it look so easy and fun too and there is tons of great information in his videos.
We chose to use the Kratky or Floating Raft method for our first Hydroponics project.  It was very easy to build and proved to be an excellent choice for us for several types of lettuce, spinach, kale and chard.
Here is a video that shows how to build the floating rafts.

Our Rhubarb Red Chard had those gorgeous pink/red roots also.

In addition to having the floating raft table, we also save all of our food safe containers like gallon miracle whip containers, medium and large size deli tubs, cottage cheese tubs etc... and used a hole saw (we used 2") to cut holes to fit our 2" net pots in the lids.  We spray painted our water reservoir for the Hydroponics table and all the containers black to prevent algae growth and then put the nutrient solution in the containers and put the net pot with seedlings in the holes and we're good to go.  We grow many different vegetable plants utilizing these containers.  We had such an abundance of greens, we had more than enough to share :)
We also set up a dutch bucket system for our tomatoes but I will do another post on those in the near future.
As a side note, if you live in an area that gets really hot in the summer months you will want to cool the water down in your reservoirs (should be around 75 degrees) by adding bottles filled with ice and or insulating your tank in some way.  We have a lot of 100+ days in the summer so that is a must for us.

Here is another version of Hydroponics using a simple rail system using pvc pipes with end caps or you can use pvc fence post with end caps.  Many versions of this system can be found on YouTube just search using Hydroponic Rail Systems.

 I hope this post gives everyone a little bit of insight into Hydroponics gardening and that you will feel inspired to try it yourself.

Happy Growing!
Blessings,
Lisa

Welcome!

Hello everyone, so glad to have you here!
Let me start by telling you a little about myself and this project.

I am a wife to an awesome man of 25 years, a mother to 19 fur babies (13 are rescues). I love animals and all things gardening. I am a jewelry designer, Artist and crafts person.

I was born a city girl but despite living in the city my parents were very avid gardeners.  At our summer property "Up North" in Michigan, they would put in a garden of several acres and planted almost everything imaginable.  They always planted at least 200 tomato plants.  My Mom canned everything.  I didn't realize it then but we were pretty lucky :)
When I was young I never wanted any part of gardening and surely didn't want to get dirt under my nails, lol. Also, after seeing a few garden snakes out there I said no way to gardening. 
Now, much older, out of the city and trying to grow my own produce, I wish that I had listened and learned what they were trying to teach me.

Seeing a great need and feeling a responsibility to start providing our family with healthy, organic veggies and fruit, we built a greenhouse and I started gardening 2 years ago.  I have a true desire to help us become self sustainable and help provide to others in need.  Gardening is one way I can do that.
It's time for humanity to start giving back to the land and not just take from it.
I still have a lot to learn and hope that by sharing in this blog, we can all "grow" together, pun intended :)

The Growing The Seeds Of Love idea came to me when I was trying to figure out what I could do right now to help others in need.  Hunger is a huge problem all over the world and there is something we can ALL do to help.
This projects purpose is to challenge everyone to start growing their own organic food for themselves and grow extra to help at least one person or family in need.  It doesn't matter if you live in a big city or out in the country.  Everyone can grow something.  Container gardens are extremely popular and work well in spots that just don't have much space.

So come on everyone, get those seeds started and start Growing The Seeds Of Love for you and your family and someone in need.

I would love to share your stories and photo's of growing and sharing your bounty over the coming months so please send them to me so I can publish them on this blog.

I hope that all of you are inspired to help others and follow your bliss, your passion for that truly is our life's purpose <3

These photo's are of our first year trying hydroponics.  My husband built a hydroponics table and we were able to grow several kinds of lettuce, spinach, chard and kale on it.

Our first crop of rhubarb red swiss chard from the hydroponics table, Yum!