Hydroponics -Growing All Year Round Indoors

I have this Marb. It works amazingly well imo.

I bought the Nursery/Sprout box and the smaller of the two cultivation insert trays. I didn't bother with the actual grow kit or their light as I was happy to pay £2.50 for the cultivation tray but I was too tight to pay the money they wanted for the tiered kits. I also had my own light (Sunblaster T5 combo) which was cheaper than theirs and works just as well if not better.

I used the Nursery unit to germinate the seeds (they appeared the day after putting them in the rockwool starter plugs - very quick), then once they had their first true leaves I transferred them to the cultivation tray, using the Ikea growing media (basically a perlite/vermiculite type stuff).

The net pots are very small and I was initially dubious about the size but the roots are not contained, they grow through the holes so it really doesn't matter what size the pot is.

I've also used the Ikea Nursery and cultivation tray to start off a Picolino cucumber (although I started this in coco coir rather than the Ikea media) and also some Micro Tom tomato plants. These have grown well and are about to be transplanted into 5 gallon lidded buckets where I hope they will continue to thrive.

If you Google 'The Kratky Method', it's very similar to the Ikea school of thought, growing in water with no pumps or air stones, only nutrients.

I'm on a roll now, my hall has been turned over to tall shelf units where trays of hydroponic lettuce, herbs and micro veg live and family members have been asked not to spend money on expensive gifts at birthday time, I would appreciate another Sunblaster grow light instead.

Give it a go Marb, you'll be surprised at the results.

The last pic is just one of the Micro Toms in an Ikea glass jar full of water with a bit of blackout fabric tied round it to help keep out the light and hopefully avoid algae build up.

That looks fantastic, gg
Very impressed

Thanks vc. You know that saying about necessity being the mother of invention? Well that applied here.

I'm not sure I'll be able to do much outdoor gardening in the future but I have to keep my hand in somehow so this seems like a good alternative.

I'm slowly getting rid of just about anything that sits on a shelf so I can get a veg plant and a grow light on there instead.

If you can grow salad and herbs in the comfort of your home, without, I hope, the threat of slugs, its an excellent idea. You're sure to get much cleaner crops than I do in the GH.
Its great to see what "real people" achieve - instead of the too-perfect pics on the IKEA site

Thanks for taking the trouble to share your images and experience. It seems like you get great results. How much does it cost to run the lighting and how many hours a day. Also, can you reuse the growing medium ? Thanks again.

Normally I have them on a 12/12 rotation. They get switched on around 8 or 9am and off at 8 or 9pm. Some people have their grow lights on constantly but from what I've read, plants need darkness and downtime too, they have a natural circadium rhythm the same way we do. Others have them on for 18 hours and off for 6 hours. Mine seem happy enough with 12/12 so I'll stick with that for now. I'm considering reversing the process though as my electricity is cheaper at night. Just not sure if I can handle going to the loo in the middle of the night and being faced with Bahama type sunlight!

Here's a useful calculator to give you a rough idea of costs.....

Electricity Cost Calculator - How much do your appliances, heaters cost to run?

My 90cm light is 39 watts. According to the calculator this should cost around £2.18 per month to run, assuming the lights are on 12 hours a day for 30 days.

(In reality you would have to adjust the figures slightly depending on how much your electricity cost was per KWh as they were using the UK average of 15.5p. Your cost might be more or less.)

The biggest Ikea light is 46cm and is 16 watts, this would work out at approximately 89p per month. The small one is only 10 watts - roughly around 56p per month.

(Roughly) comparing Ikea costs with my light costs - you would need two of their big lights to cover the same distance as my one so double the 89p which is £1.78.

So Ikea costs = £1.78
My costs = £2.18

Not a huge amount in it BUT the Ikea lights have 5 'windows' (for want of a better word) where the light emits from and my light is one long constant light source which can be height adjusted and has a good reflector.

Don't get me wrong, the Ikea lights will be just fine and cheap to run, I just preferred to have more control over my light source.

As for the growing media, the rockwool plugs can't be re-used but I have to admit to washing out some of the gravelly type stuff in a sieve and re-using that. Not sure if that's ill advised or not but it hasn't done any harm so far.

Excellent info there GG Thanks for taking the time to do such a detailed report doubt I shall be doing it, but none the less a very interesting read

hi gg thanks for sharing ,i have bought an oxypot dwc bubbler which im going to grow chillis in next year ,im wondering about the feed side of things ,can you tell how you feed yours please ? cheers

I'm so sorry for the late reply, I've only just seen your post.

Anyway, I'm a Canna girl. When I first bought the Ikea stuff I used their fertiliser just to get started as it was all new to me but I now use Canna Aqua Vega A & B, Canna Aqua Flores (for when the flowers first start to appear) and Canna A & B Coco for the ones that have coco coir in the net pots rather than clay balls.

All my plants are in the Vega solution or the Coco solution right now but once the flowers form I will be switching from Vega to the Flores solution.

I initially balked at the price of the Canna nutrients but I didn't buy them all at once and I scanned the internet regularly to find the cheapest seller. It's better value to buy the 5l size but you can buy a 1l size to start off with to see how you feel about it. You also only use a small amount it lasts a while.

From what I've read, the nutrient choice seems very much a personal thing, there seems as many people happily using x or y as there is z if you see what I mean. There are also many who make up their own nutrient solution but I'm not at that stage (yet) so I prefer to use something that is commercially available until I get more knowledgeable, then I will likely make my own as I expect it will be cheaper.

hi ,thanks for the reply as this is my 1st attempt im going to keep it simple with and just go for the yeg and bloom nuits ,do you have a ph meter and a cf meter to measure the strength of feed ?

I have a ph meter and that's it. I fill a 5 gallon bucket up with tap water and use a pump/airstone to keep it bubbling up for a couple of hours to get rid of the chlorine. I then just measure out the nutrients as directed on the bottles, mix up a batch and that's it.

We have quite good water here the ph is usually fairly good so I've not had to ph up or down but again, if I had to, I'd just buy a couple of bottles of the PH UP/Down solution to start with.

That said, the Canna Aqua is supposed to be balanced so that you don't have to adjust the ph level at all.

hi , i already have some ph up and down as we have hard water around here ,i also have a pump and airstones so i`ll try what you did to get rid of the chlorine ,not sure on what type of feed i`ll get yet but i have a while to think about that,cheers

Just wanted to give a quick update as I am amazed at the growth of this (I took it out of the Ikea cultivation tray and gave it a bucket all to itself).....

Picolino Cucumber on the 10th September (small plant back right) ....




...and on the 22nd September....that's only 12 days and there are around 10 small cucumbers growing.