I had the pleasure of setting up a rooftop hydroponic herb garden for my latest CRAFT Video. It’s the nerdiest way to garden. I hope you’ll check it out!
In this week’s CRAFT Video, I show you how to set up a hydroponic herb garden on my rooftop in Brooklyn. Hydroponic gardening uses water more efficiently than traditional soil gardening, and is also a lot less messy for urban apartment dwellers. It’s easier to get set up than you might think! The basic idea is that you have a reservoir of water with all the nutrients the plants could want, being circulated close to the roots of the plants. Because the water is recirculated, the plants have more than one chance to grab the nutrients in the water, so they grow faster.
I also whipped up a recipe for herb risotto to start cooking with my home-grown herbs! Stay tuned to CRAFT for more gardening projects all April long.
12 thoughts on “CRAFT Video: Hydroponic herb garden”
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Awesome job, Becky. I can’t believe General Hydroponics is still around. When I was into hydroponics as a teen, I got all of my stuff from them.
This has inspired me to maybe get back into it. I could easily set one of these up on my patio. Of course I could also use… my yard. With dirt. But I like that this is raised up for easy access with my bad back. And I always felt like I was on a space station when I was tending my hydroponic garden.
How much does one of these babies cost?
Thanks, Gar! The Rainforest kit I used is a bit pricey ($200-300) because of the fancy super-even space-age pump it comes with, but GH has drip system kits that use a simpler pump and can be as cheap as $50. You can DIY a similar setup with a pump you could get at a pet store, too. The blog post on CRAFT has links to some other DIY setups like Kelly’s from NYC Resistor, and the Windowfarms project.
Yeah, I made everything myself as a kid. That’s the cool thing about hydroponics — it’s relatively easy to make a nice set-up, mainly from stuff you have around the house and can get from the garden store. That said, I DO like the space-station chic of that Rainforest unit. And with the price of herbs at the supermarket, it’ll pay for itself in no time! :-)
Happy 4-20. Coincidence?
The HyperGrow Hydroponic Garden Kit is a awful able arrangement that provides aggregate you charge to abound your own herbs, vegetables, plants, and flowers.
Thank you. You’ve inspired me to give hydroponics a try!