Close

Preperation is the Mother of a big Harvest

A project log for Aeroponic All-year Greenhouse on a Budged

My adventures in Aeroponics are now in V4.0

hyperkantehyperkante 07/01/2016 at 20:040 Comments

For the third itteration of my Greenhouse i did a lot of research in aquaponics and automatic growing, because i was bored of watering the plants by hand. My first two designs allways had problems with water leaking out of the water tank. When i used silicone to seal it, the PH of the water dropped and all plants dyed. Silicone is mixed with vinegar, which i forgot at that point.

So i give you Aeroponics plant Bucket V3.0:

What you see:

2 Buckets to hold the plants. Holes were drilled in the Lid, to hold the actual pots.

The pots have huge holes in them and are pretty cheap. I filled them with clay pebbles to give the root something to hold on to.

The third bucket is the water reservoir. Inside you see two cheap aquarium pumps. around 5-10 Watt power.

I used clear silicone tubing for the water flow. The end of the "water inlet" is closed and each bucket has 2 nozzles to spray water on the roots.

The bottom of each bucket has a 2-3cm thick layer of medium sized rocks (1-3cm).

This helps silencing the system and acts as a filter for the water.

In the picture above, you see the water nozzles and the Rocks in the background. I think simple is good.

The nozzles got clogged pretty often when i startet. The remaining dirt kept clogging the nozzles, so i cleaned the system and now it is running for about 3 Months without clogging.

I startet some of my plants early in the year, with artifical lightning (Fluorescent tubes and LEDs, about 100Watt) and an Air humidifier. Some went inside the Greenhouse, some on my Window bench.

With a cycle of 15 minutes Water ON, 15 Minutes Water OFF, and controlled water (PH,Ec,Temp) the growth took really of. The picture above was Taken on 03.April 2016.

12 Days Later

(15.April.2016) In the front you see Tomato plants, Nr 3 is a Sugar Melon, Nr.4 is a cucumber. In the background theres a pea growing first fruits.Again 10 Days have passed (25.April 2016) Still growing strong. i exchange the Nutrient solution every Week. (first design was running a month without exchange, for extreme testing)

As you can see, inside the clear silicone tubing are algae starting to grow. i could have used black tubing and avoid this problem, but i have a small budget and thats just what i had at hand.


Meanwhile on my Balcony.....

It is still the same blue led, it has a low wavelength and my camera is making it really purple. Still blue! The plants are growing faster, as temperatures are staying in the positives (still below 10°C at night)


What you will see in future updates:

-upgrading my Greenhouse to a improved Summer Version (V3.0)

-Upgrading my Solar cells, Batteries,LEDs

-Moving my plants from Bedroom to the Greenhouse

-First prototype of Aquaponics system (growing fish and plants together)

-Building a bamboo constuct for the tomatoes to grow on.

see you next mission

aka

Discussions