THE WINDOWSILL, HYDROPONIC, INFLATION-BUSTER GARDEN

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(There is another type of hydroponic gardening, in which a plant's roots are kept constantly immersed in solution. In my opinion, however, the technique described here is far superior and a lot less trouble. Just remember that the object of this method of culture is the complete flooding—and then the complete draining-of the growing medium. In this way, the roots of your plants are always kept moist ... but are never actually immersed in solution for more than a few minutes each day.)

The total cost of one of these mini-gardens is only about one dollar ... and, for the money, the little growing units perform like champs. Whenever you want to flood the inert medium surrounding your seedlings or maturing plants with hydro. ponic fluid (at least once a day during the winter and three times a day during the longer days of late spring, summer, and early fall), you just hitch up the free end of the drainage tube with its clothespin and "start pourin' ". Stop when you see the fluid rising up through the growing medium, remove the pin, and then let the fertilizing liquid drain out through the plastic tubing into a bucket or storage container.

The hydroponic solution, of course, may be used again and again for at least a week ... although you will have to add some water occasionally to replace what evaporates and is used by the plants. The basic solution itself—at least according to the directions which come with most hydroponic chemicals—should be changed once every week or so, but we've used the same batch for as long as a month with no apparent ill effects.

In short, then, the very simple and inexpensive hydroponic trays that I've just described may only work manually ... but they do work quite well and I recommend them. The only prob lem we've ever encountered with ours was when the epoxy glu fractured on one of the mini-tanks and allowed hydroponic fluid to seep out around its drainage tube. But that was no bi deal, it was easily repaired, and it probably wouldn't have happened anyway if we'd taken a little more care when sealin the joint in the first place.

THE "NEW IMPROVED" SYSTEM

As well as our original hydroponic trays worked right from the beginning, we soon found ourselves thinking about an ''in proved" minigarden: one with a built-in overflow tube so that we could never flush our plants with too much water ... an maybe, its own fertilizing solution reservoir which, once an for all, would put an end to the need for pinning and unpinning a drainage tube, messing around with a storage container, etc.

And that's just what we built in January ... from an ordinary 59c plastic dishpan, the vegetable tray from a junked refrigerator, a piece of scrap plywood, a $6.95 pump, a $5.00 transformer, a few inches of plastic tubing, and a small square of screening (see Fig. 2).

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