Ok Hivers I’d be the first one to admit I’m not a great lover of gardening but I do like to use fresh herbs for cooking so when I got a hydroponic herb growing kit through my FB feed I was interested until I saw the £200 price tag. Still a quick look on eBay and kits are available from around £35 which is a lot more cost effective and worth taking a punt 5 days later the box of goodies arrived.
The kit comes with lights, a hydroponic pump, plant food, growing medium and pots. Easy to assemble and setup it’s a small footprint kit with pots for 9 plants, but looking on the internet they don’t recommend you fill every pot as it can overcrowd the unit. As I only really wanted 7 different plants this unit is fine.
As the light comes on for 16 hours a day finding a location needs a bit of thought and the bedroom is out of the question fortunately the size isn’t too large so making space in the kitchen wasn’t too difficult if it works I might put another in the study.
After doing a bit of googling I 3D printed some covers to stop light getting to the hydroponic fluid and causing the dreaded algae.
Some of the seeds are really small so I made a little paper dart to add them into the sponge grow tubes.
OK what herbs did we plant, coriander, mint, basil, Rosemary, parsley, thyme and a dwarf chilli plant. Fingers crossed they will all sprout but this is my first time with hydroponics so I’m not too optimistic.
So Hivers a I’ll update you couple of weeks when fingers crossed things are starting to sprout.