Hey I just wanted to show you guys my hydroponic setup that I have here in my apartment I was interested in growing vegetables for obviously to eat but I didn't have any outdoor space to use so the next best option was going to be to grow them inside and that's when I got introduced to hydroponics and how it can be applicable to growing vegetables and I'm pretty excited about the whole process and I've kind of I've almost gone through the entire process so far so I felt like I'm ready to show you guys what I have and kind of the process to help you guys get started as well so first off what is hydroponics hydroponics is using using a water-based system to grow vegetables or fruits or anything really any plants without soil so soilless soil is farming really there's a lot of different mediums that you can use but I really just kind of want to focus on my cot my setup that I have here and not really go too much into the whole basics behind hydroponics but I'll show you guys what exactly hydroponics is and what you need to kind of get started so the first thing you need is son if you don't have sunlight you're pretty much not going to be able to grow anything so you can either use sunlight from the outside which I use and then I also have a grow light that I use for my vegetables as well so you could either just strictly use the grow light or you can do hydroponics with just the light outside but just getting started and experimenting with different methods I primarily use the light outside during the day and then once it gets dark out I go for another four or five hours here with the grow light it is kind of winter fall type weather here in a cow for Nia right now so we don't have the real bright side but during the summer obviously I can taper off with this light so you need light is the first thing the second thing you need is water so I'm assuming you have plenty good source of water and the third thing you're gonna need is seeds so the first I have a whole bunch of organic seeds and the first thing that gets started you need seeds some water and some paper towels and you take you take the paper towel and you put the seeds that you want to grow whatever it is lettuce kale anything on a damp paper towel and you fold that tape or paper towel in half and then you store that paper towel in a ziplock bag or in a container in about four to five days if you don't seal it up it will dry out overnight and it's no good so what you do is you wait four to five days and then you go and you look inside the paper towel and what you're gonna find are these little seeds with little roots growing on them so the next setup is you have to transplant that into a medium for it to support root growth and to grow and create leaves before you can finally put it in the hydroponic system that's how I do it so I take and the reason I put them in the paper towels first is because not all of them are going to germinate at the same time some might not germinate at all so I can pick and select the ones that I feel are the strongest before I commit to my preferred growing medium which is these rock wall plugs rockwool is just a bunch of organic material and it comes in a little cube like this with a little hole in the middle that you can't really see and you you take this cube and you're gonna soak it in water once you soak it in water you just use tap water if you want to rain water some people say oh you have to pH balance it I haven't pH balanced any of the stuff that I'm going to show you today and it's growing fine so as long as you know your pH isn't crazy you can get a pH meter a little pH test tester my pH of my water is 7 and then if I can add a little bit of drops of lemon juice in it to bring it down to 6 pH of 6 but the 7s works fine so far so I'm not even sweating it so you get this soak it in water shake it out a little bit don't squeeze it or anything just give it one good shake put the seed with the root down and then cover it up and then you're gonna want a storage place for those seeds to grow leaves that's not in direct sunlight so these are kind of wet but there's a little seed up there and it'll shoot up a few leaves in a couple days these are wet these are wet in here I mean it's the tray the tray doesn't have water in them but the cubes themselves are wet and they have a humidity dome to kind of keep the human the humidity in and they just kind of hang out there and then I just wait a few more days until I see leaves in a few days you'll get something that looks like this little guy with leaves once they have leaves these two little first green leaves then they're ready for the light so during the day I'll put them in a tray with a humidity dome it's exactly similar to this but that's gonna go in the light and that's gonna get light from morning until evening and then once it gets dark I take them and I put them up here in my little grow box and as you can see they will grow very nicely in this environment not pH balance only sub pH of seven and they'll grow some killer roots when your root structure gets this big it is time to move them to the hydroponic system now some people will once they see leaves coming out of here put it directly in the hydroponic system I am kind trying to create like a rotation system because I don't have a lot of space so I can't just have a million hydroponic system set up for growth so I I want to keep them in different stages that way I can kind of keep the system flowing in a nice even manner to create to keep my stash of kale and lettuce consistent rather than just growing them in big groups so the next thing you do is what if you have to get a receptacle I will make another video about the receptacle but I'm going to show you right now what I'm using as a receptacle so I have these two inch net pots and these are two inch they come in different sizes if a two-inch rockwool cubes and these cubes fit perfectly inside the two-inch net pot like so you take this guy with those big ol roots that we showed and we're going to gently of course get water dripping water everywhere gently kind of work our way around because it's a square cube and in a circular then you will see that it fits nicely in that pot and you have a few little roots sticking out before a receptacle or your actual what it is is the type of hydroponics is a deep water culture so essentially you fill this with water and some of the nutrients I have up there you put the pot in and the roots will grow down into the water and that's pretty much it and the plant will grow up and then you just change your water into nutrients every week now for the nutrients I have you're gonna have three different types you're gonna have micro of course these letters are all backwards for this camera grow and bloom and on the back it's gonna tell you clones and seedlings after roots so we have roots on these we're gonna use five milliliters per gallon of micro five milliliters per gallon of bloom and five milliliters per gallon of grow and these grow micro and bloom just have different ratios of nitrogen phosphorus and potassium this as a zero six five the micro is a six zero zero the grow is a two one six so obviously you're going to need a lot of nitrogen during the micro phase which is towards the beginning the growth phase needs a lot of potassium and then to bloom you're gonna need a lot of potassium and phosphorus so they give different ratios of nutrients and it has like I said on here four clones and seedlings a vegetative stage one to two weeks early flowering another one to two weeks full bloom fruiting stage four to eight weeks and a flush so it'll tell you what your schedule is so all I'm gonna do is fill this little container up with water with these nutrients in the right ratio and it's pretty much gonna grow in here for a few days until this weekend when I'll have time to make the hydroponic system on a larger scale a large bucket that holds a lot of these pots that holds a lot of this nutrients that has a little a little pump that just helps circulate and aerate the water so I'm gonna make another video this weekend about that but I just wanted to show you guys kind of the setup between getting your seeds moist in the paper towels waiting for them to germinate and then putting them in the bottom container in the dark and the rockwool cubes once they have a root and then once you see leaves you can transfer them to the light in a separate container and then at nighttime I give them the light here in this little grow box it's just reflective material and you want to get a hydroponic light a light for indoor growing that's a 24 watt two-foot t5 light so it has both the red and the blue spectrum full spectrum light in just something simple for now and and then this weekend I'm going to follow up with the larger system for the hydroponics but you get the general idea is it it uses this rockwool almost as the soil per se and the roots grow down real long like a Wizards beard through the water in the nutrient solution and as long as the roots can get the water and the water level doesn't drop too low then you're gonna go so happy happy hydroponics