Last spring, Mike thought up the idea of building a hydroponics set-up for starting our vegetable seeds. When his dad came up for a visit, they worked together on it. They used PVC pipe and constructed this piece of equipment, which rests on a wooden frame next to our 35 gallon goldfish tank. Mike redid the plumbing on the fish tank filter, so that the fish water is now filtered through the hydroponics system. It’s a very simple filtration system. There is one tube for water going into the system from the tank, and one tube that flows filtered water back into the tank.
There is about an inch of small rocks inside each of the pipes, that the peat pots with the seeds sit on. Water flows through all three pipes before returning to the fish tank.
We started about half of our seeds on March 15.
The broccoli was the first thing to sprout.
March 19
March 23
March 28
April 2, time to thin the seedlings already!
Not too long after the broccoli, we started to see corn. The corn grew very quickly.
March 23
March 28
The pumpkins sprouted within just a couple of days of the corn.
March 23
March 28
April 2
The green peppers were slow to start and have been slow growers in general, but they are definitely growing noticeably each day.
March 19
March 28
Here is our lone sugar snap pea . We started one random sugar snap pea seed a week before the others. This was started on March 15 and the photo was taken on April 2.
At this rate I think I’ll need to take them out of the hydroponics system and put them into a cold frame outside before the ground is warm enough to plant them!
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