New Twist on Garden Preps

Okay this week we were able to begin planting our hydroponic garden system.  After our trip to Disney's The Land behind the scenes tour that Kevin and I took back in October, he began seriously looking through system plans and decided to created one we saw in a Youtube picture.

This is the system we saw online that inspired our garden plan.

He and Cameron have been filming the process so we can post our efforts online in Youtube videos and maybe help others with their system as we learn through trial and hopefully not so much error!! I'll put a link on my blog after they get this done. While we are currently making this a hydroponic system, we are still hoping to turn this later into an aquaponics system.  That is one that is connected to a fish tank that will provide the nutrients needed for the plants instead of having to add the plant vitamin and mineral solutions this current system will need.

This is our system on the side of the yard behind Cameron's room.  There's a natural incline so they adjusted the systems for this.  We are still working to get a proper fluid flow to make sure all the plants get the moisture and nutrients they need to grow.

A net pot in place and the fluid flowing along the bottom of the tube

Some of our initial plant starters in place.

These starters were seedlings I found growing in my compost pile from a squash plant I'd thrown in there.

So once they had our towers built, I started more seeds using the same baggies and moist napkins I'd used for sprouting the heirloom beans I showed in a post last month. I've used some of the already sprouted seeds in this hydroponic garden, and I've put some of the others into pots to grow them and then will transfer once we get our raised beds done for a more traditional garden.  I want to assure us a return on our work with  vegetables we can enjoy.

My collection of baggies with various seeds in them

This okra was the first to sprout

Seeds in some of my starter packs to be planted in my "regular" garden

So here is the start of our garden project and I'll have some follow ups as we make progress.  Keeping my fingers crossed for  a good return on our time and investment.