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Growing Tons of Vegetables in Water! Hydroponic Growing!

Jun 07, 2021
Let's see if we can get the roots out of there, look at the roots of this paper plant. What's up, guys? I'm Daniel from the Arms Family Farm, and we're in the high tunnel early this morning. It's beautiful outside. Oklahoma has had some of the most beautiful weather over the last two weeks, we are not going to work in the dirt today. I'm going to go over and review some

hydroponic

experiments that I've been working on, so last year you guys saw us

growing

cucumbers in 55 gallon barrels and we're doing it again this year, we kind of just started, but I've been working on some other little ones.
growing tons of vegetables in water hydroponic growing
Kind of experimental stuff to me, this is not a new

growing

method, basically everything we are doing is the key style of

hydroponic

growing, which means we don't have aeration, it would be aquaponics basically if we introduced aeration or fish or something like that. Hydroponics is like growing off the grid in a

water

solution, a fairly simple growing method and I am having very good results. We're doing this in the high tunnel, but don't think that's the only way to do it, so stay until the end of the video. I'll take you to the yard and show you.
growing tons of vegetables in water hydroponic growing

More Interesting Facts About,

growing tons of vegetables in water hydroponic growing...

Some progress on a hydroponic tub I've been working on up there, which is completely exposed to the elements and has actually been through a couple hail storms, but we'll get to that, so let's start here and I'll show you what's next. Come on, let's go, so there's a couple of different projects right here, one is a cucumber crop and a five gallon bucket, so these cucumber plants are probably about a month old, it's doing very, very Well, just a five-gallon bucket drills the hole. At the top drop the plant there and the roots. I can't even get the root ball out of that top.
growing tons of vegetables in water hydroponic growing
I'm not going to try to spoil it, but last year we grew cucumbers in a five gallon bucket with some success until it got too hot, what I mainly want to focus on today is this plastic bag and how I built this and what this entails. and what I was doing here, so I know these bok choy look terrible. two different varieties of Chile bok that grow in the high tunnel, I specifically disliked this variety, the other variety looks incredible. I'll go show them to you in a minute, but we're doing very, very well, these are and I would have to look, look it up and find out the exact date.
growing tons of vegetables in water hydroponic growing
I have some photos. I'll leave some photos there if I can find them when we get started. This is a lettuce here and guys, we've been. picking food from all this stuff, so it's not just intact lettuce that we've been picking, it's obviously growing like crazy. This is called Tatsu. I first tried growing this in a hydroponic solution and this is kind of a miniature version. from a Tatsu similar to bok choy, it has some really great stems, it's a really nice Asian leafy green and this has been by far my favorite leafy green this year, grown hydroponically, so like I said, I think They are five plants that grow in one.
These are like a 23 gallon bag. I bought them on Amazon. I'll talk more about that in a moment, but you can see all those roots there and since these are black bags, there's no algae growing here. All of this blocks most of the sunlight and I don't really have any problems with mosquitoes, I guess, because we have all the holes covered up and ugly because of the way the mesh tops are, the plants and all the roots. but let me show you what goes into building that real quick now, like I said, we started with a bag that I bought on Amazon.
You can buy them at pretty much any big box store or Walmart or anything that's a little heavy. service model, you know, a lot of them are real plastic, really thin flimsy plastic, these are pretty sturdy. I think they'll hold up to the sun a little more than some of those others, but everything I made is a pretty simple concept. It was taking my tub and just measuring out a design. I wanted five plants in each so I needed a full saw on my drill and I just drilled through the lid so I put two, one, two like the number five in a and that space. seems to work great if you had a different size bag guys you don't have to buy these exact bags use five gallon buckets any size just a container to hold

water

but you can punch a hole in the lid so that once They drill holes for you and then you use small net pots.
Once you get the holes drilled, you move on to these little net pots, so this is just a cup that has holes in the bottom. Now you could use it as a Styrofoam cup or a. plastic cup and just cut a bunch of holes in it to hold your plant once you put it in there and this will just sit flush on the plastic and then we use these clay pebbles. Actually, I think it's called hydroton and the concept. This isn't necessarily to retain water, it's to support your plant, so you're going to take a little plant and put it in there and you can pull out the roots and remove all the dirt, wash all the dirt if you want or you can just use it as a block of dirt or take it out of a six pack and remove most of the dirt and put it in there, you don't have to remove all the dirt, don't worry about that, but put one in. a little seedling there, a little plant.
I have never actually started my hydroponics from seeds in these pots. I'm not saying it's impossible but I've managed to grow a lot of things from seed or even just go to the nursery and buy six packs of lettuce, anything will work but put a small plant in there and then just pack the clay pebbles around your plant and the clay pebbles hold it up and then just put the neck cup in there, which I obviously don't have a full drill. but it would just sit flush in your container so when you fill your container with water you basically don't want to drown your plants so these plants that go here need oxygen so a lot of people put air stones in there and air pump and that gives them oxygen to those roots, but in the crack key method you don't use electricity, you don't use air stones or bubbles to make the plants grow what are called aerial roots, so they will have roots that go down into the water solution, but they'll also have little fine roots here at the top that absorb oxygen so when you fill the container you'll only want to put about a quarter inch of water or so in the bottom of this cup if you put too much water if you get to where this thing sits in the water too deep you will drown your plant and you will never be able to take off because you will drown it immediately once you have it.
When you set up your container, you have your plant ready to go on one important thing that you don't want to forget, obviously, is the fertilizer, because these plants are not going to grow without food, they need nutrients to survive, so you will need a good water soluble hydroponic style fertilizer, if you go to the store and buy just a ten twenty ten or a triple 13 or something like that, you will find it difficult to get your plants to do well because it is not good water. -soluble now there are a lot of good hydroponic fertilizers, especially in recent years since many states passed the legalization of growing marijuana, there are a lot of hydroponic marijuana companies, so there are a lot of good hydroponic fertilizers, but what I use is just a good, reliable master blend.
Now I have this. This is not something that occurred to me. I got a lot of information from the MHP gardener. Bobby has been growing hydroponics for years. You can see it on YouTube at MHP Gardener the 55. The one gallon barrel method I'm using came from my good friend Leon, gardening with Leon, he's grown a ton of cucumbers and 55 gallon barrels, but the master mix is ​​a three-part fertilizer, so the formula for the tomato and vegetable master mix is ​​this. one is four 18:38 and then you mix in calcium nitrate, which is 15 point 500 and then the last part is Epsom salt and you can find a lot of different instructions on how to mix this.
I'm not going to go into that. in great detail here are websites just google master blend fertilizer mix and there are calculators you can enter for the number of gallons or the dimensions of your container and it will tell you exactly how much to mix, it will tell you what your mix is ​​for tomatoes or lettuce, so think about it this way, whether it's a green leaf or a vegetable that produces, wouldn't it just be a fruit? Anyway it's a good water soluble hydroponic fertilizer so I really enjoy experimenting with a lot of different ways of growing you know we do hydroponic stuff we have our self absorbing tubs we have several videos on them they work really well and obviously just the typical raised beds.
I mean, our raised beds are working phenomenal right now. Take a look at our pumpkins and zucchini, we are ready to eat pumpkins and zucchini very, very soon, there is our first zucchini and then down here we have a pumpkin that, in fact, we could already pick if we wanted to, well, leave it, we will leave it. fills up for a couple more days and then these are my favorites, they're called Zephyr squash, they've got that green end, this yellow squash is on the market right there, Zephyr squash, so let's take a look at a couple of 55 kegs. gallons, these are 55 gallon food grade plastic barrels.
Actually, I bought them from León. He said they came from Walmart and believe it or not, what was in these was the liquid you get when you buy those rotisserie chickens. They put some liquid in there, apparently that's what it was. chicken juice we're using it for cucumbers now anyway, so these two cucumbers have only been here for I don't know a couple of weeks. I installed them just like I showed you and you can see there is still a little bit of dirt. I started them in a block of soil and went back to my clay pebbles there and these plants are probably eight inches tall.
Well, let's look at the roots, look at those pretty white roots going down into our nutrient solution and we grew a ton of cucumbers in these barrels. last year and I don't think this year will be any different. I'll take a look at this one. The roots don't go too far yet, but look how nice, clean and white their roots are now with time. roots, let's get that down there, so over time the roots will turn a little brown and look a little covered in algae and that's pretty normal, probably in those tubs or barrels without air circulation there will be some algae buildup, so We haven't tried growing tomatoes hydroponically yet.
I know it can be done. I haven't gotten into it yet, but this year I'm experimenting with some peppers. I'll show you a bell pepper plant. I planted all of these. my peppers around the same time, I mean within a couple days of each other, they were all in the ground or in the water, so I'm going to start outside first and show you what they look like in the ground trying to survive. here's okay, so here's a garden-grown pepper plant, probably six inches tall, and the frost nipped it a little bit, but I mean, you can see our peppers are growing, but they're not doing exceptionally well. here.
However, then we'll go into the high tunnel, where there are some watermelon radishes behind these, but there's a pepper plant that was actually gnawed by a goat when it was little, but here's one that wasn't, so it's probably about Oh, ten inches. tall and it's fine and here are a couple that were planted in self-absorbing tubs at the same time. I mean they are very healthy looking pepper plants, not only were they removed but they are getting ready to start flowering and they are they are growing they are doing what they are supposed to do now how about one that grows hydroponically ?
This is my first hydroponic pepper plant, but as you can see, it is growing much faster than anything else. We are fixing the flowering like in the We can make out the peppers, but the size of the stems, I mean, we are fixed, we are way ahead in hydroponics, see if we can get the roots out of there, look at the roots on this paper plant , so there's the plant and then the roots are doing amazing, so I'm really excited to see how this hydroponically grown pepper plant turns out, how the peppers compare to those grown in the soil or in the self-absorbing containers, as well that before going to the house and showing you the tubs and containers that are up there.
I told you I would show you the difference between the two varieties of bok choy I have grown in the ground. I just put the wrong one in the hydroponic tubs. I may have to go back and farm some more. It will soon be too hot for bok choy, but check this out. There is one of my raised beds in the greenhouse. This is the Tatsu I showed you in the containers there. a while ago and then in the back is that variety of bok choy that is getting really bad so I need to get them out of here, they escaped.
I'm just letting them bloom because that attracts bees, but look at this magical little bok choy. Right here, isn't it wonderful? It is another varietysmall, but it is booming and doing very well in strained soybeans. We juice this thing in large quantities, we put it in stir-fries and we put it in salads. I mean, these little leafy greens like this are just phenomenal and since I know you guys are going to ask what variety of bok choy and Tatsu is, a lot of my seeds come from Luke, from my gardener, he grows a lot of good greens. , but he also sells seeds to my gardener, don't worry, now you are.
The seeds did not come from my gardener. I bought them at Baker Creek, so here's the baby soybeans. It doesn't have a specific name. I guess it's called Tatsu a here, but if you want to look into that and go to Baker Creek, sip, they're actually rare seeds. Don't worry, I think you can see them and then the little miniature bok choy that is doing very, very well. It's called Shanghai green bok choy and as you can see they are a smaller variety, a lot of bok choy, you have a very white stem that has a green stem, but oh man, they are both great varieties as we walk to the patio, we'll check out those plants, but if you're looking to get into this type of thing, they're a lot of fun to play with.
I enjoy it, but you can grow a lot of food in these little hydroponic tubs and buckets and things, you don't have to have anything specific except you know fertilizer is pretty important, but remember if you're looking for any of this, fertilizers, pots of net, clay pebbles. I bought all this on Amazon and I'll leave links in the description box, you can go check it out, pretty simple stuff, easy to find, a lot of it you can get locally, except maybe the net pots and clay pebbles, so this tub here is obviously in our yard it has been through a couple of hail storms it doesn't look perfect there are a couple of things that you may have to do differently when you are growing in your yard mainly one of them is that when it rains you will have water You're going to have extra water in your tub.
What are you doing again, Bella? I'm talking here again so this tub isn't growing it's probably not as big as the one in the high tunnel but it's right next to our kitchen so we have I've been eating lettuce, we've picked a lot of lettuce here, the bok choy looks like a bit hit by the hail but we've been eating it, it's actually a couple of chard plants and I love chard for juicing and stuff. and he's doing really well here Bella, get the tot suey back, as you can see, compared to the one in the high tunnel, he's not doing as well, but I mean, guys, you're still growing, you're still doing well, the roots no. they are not as white and I think that probably has to do with the rain because we are introducing new water so a lot of our fertilizer solution is diluted so after it rains a big storm comes, you know, a couple inches of rain, I have to get some water out, remember because our roots are going to drown in there, but our tops are still full of water, we should probably add some fertilizer, since you know we have to get the water out already which is not in such a controlled environment. like in the greenhouse, but it absolutely works and while we're here, we might as well give you an update on these two vertical planters, these were green stock, they were sent to us, we made a video on how they work.
A few weeks ago they've been blowing this one up, I'll especially talk about that one and what we're going to do differently there a little bit, this vertical planter on our patio is amazing because it saves us from having to go all the way to the garden to have some dreams or some herbs, but wow, it's exploding at the same time as the bok choy we're trying to put out, but we have chard, bok choy, lettuce, beets mainly for salad greens and juices. The spinach is trying to annoy me a little bit, but the herbs, this cilantro, oh my gosh, this cilantro is huge.
The little Houston mint plant, so the herbs are doing exceptionally well here. Strawberries don't like it very much, but that's probably mainly because our yard is quite shady. so they're probably not getting enough sunlight but they're surviving they're blooming now the other I went ahead and pulled out all those strawberries because I want to put more herbs in there since we're literally right next to the kitchen. I think this is the perfect place for herbs, but this was the one we planted video for you about what it was about two weeks ago and you can see it's doing well.
I mean, look at that little bok choy over there. It's pretty crazy, soy is different, it comes with different types of lettuce and spinach, so I'll leave a link to these in the description box. Okay, look who showed up there. It's a really great American company, small, family-owned, but runs very well. Vertical seeder with automatic irrigation. Guys, I hope that helps someone a little. Remember hydroponic things. It's a fun experiment. It's a great way to grow a lot of

vegetables

in a very small area. They can do it on their patio, on their porch, even on a windowsill.
If you had a small bucket, you could do this in a 1 gallon bucket on a windowsill. Grow lettuce. I promise, then you'll be able to pick fresh lettuce right from your window. The vertical planners worked very well. Go see those guys. Green Stock I'll leave a link to the ones in the description box plus all the Amazon links to all things hydroponic if you want to dig into that. I think you'll really enjoy it, it's a lot of fun, it's an interesting way to get kids involved in growing things, I mean what kids wouldn't be interested in and just growing that stuff in water is like a little miracle, really. what you say, you are fine, so guys like I said, make sure to check the description box of all the links, if you have any questions, leave them in the comments.
We will have a good conversation. There are many other people who can answer questions. I try to get as many comments as I can, but between YouTube and Facebook we get between five and eight hundred comments on every video we try, but anyway, that's all I have for today, thanks for watching, we hope you enjoyed it, have a great day and, as always, see you. in the next video

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