My Journey Through Hydroponics

It's been a while since I wanted to start growing my own greens using hydroponics, and I finally started! I will use this article to share my experiences planning and setting up my first hydroponic system.

The requirements

Growing lettuce
Deep Water Culture (DWC)
Fully indoor
Food grade materials only (no PVC!)
As cheap and simple as possible
Low maintenance requirement
Home assistant integration 😇

That's it, now let's choose the parts.

The parts

Keep in mind that everything needs to be 100% food safe, you don't want nasty chemicals in your lettuce, don't you?

So stick with Polypropylene (PP) or other food safe plastics.

Also avoid anything translucent to prevent any algae growth inside your container, or they'll eat all your nutrients and leave nothing to your lettuce.

4x IKEA UPPSNOFSAD boxes with lids
2x IKEA SKOGSVIKEN soap boxes as seed trays
24x net cups (I've used 55x50mm conical ones)
A bag of clay pebbles
Nutrient solution, an organic one is best
White LEDs at least 5000K for green leaves
A low power fan (maybe two)

The plans

Deep Water Culture IKEA hack schema DWC lid schema Hydroponics System Schema

To be continued...