THE WINDOWSILL, HYDROPONIC, INFLATION-BUSTER GARDEN

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As the drawing shows, the new unit was constructed by drilling matched holes through the bottom of the dishpan and the piece of quarter-inch plywood. (These holes were just large enough for quarter-inch plastic tubing to fit through . . . snugly.) The plywood itself, of course, must be large enough to overlap the edges of the refrigerator tray so that it will provide a sturdy and reliable platform for the dishpan to rest upon.

We bought our miniature submersible pump (remember, an "ordinary" pump can electrocute you when immersed in water or other fluids ... and you must use a submersible pump if you construct one of these automatic hydroponic gardens) from The Edmund Scientific Company, Edscorp, Building, Barrington, N.J. 08007. It's Item No. 60,307, currently sells for $6.95 postpaid, and we run ours off the kind of doorbell transformer that most any hardware store sells for five dollars or less.

The amount of electricity consumed by this tiny pump (which is used only intermittently and for very short periods of time) is insignificant and I doubt that the miniature rig makes any difference at all in our monthly utility bill. We just plug the unit in and let it run until we see hydroponic fluid beginning to rise in the growing medium. Then we unplug the pump. If for any reason we forget the second part (unplugging), the overflow tube built into the gardening tray keeps the solution from overfilling the container and spilling onto the floor.

AND FOR THOSE WHO PREFER TO GO FIRST CLASS ...

If you can't-or don't want to-construct your own hydroponic window box, a very nice unit may be purchased "ready made" for about $30 from either Miracle Gardens, Inc., 47 Hall St., Brooklyn, N.Y. 11205 or from the current Sears Farm and Ranch catalog. The system is completely automated ... right down to an electric timer that floods the growing medium at pre-selected intervals. We've programmed ours to feed its plants at 6: 00 a. m., noon, and 5: 00 p. m., the timer uses no more electricity than an electric clock, and the whole setup is especially convenient for busy people who can't always be home at a regular time to flood a hydroponic garden.

I've even toyed with the idea of using the single timer on our one "store bought" mini-garden to feed all our trays of plants at once (automatically, of course) ... and I can envision a busy apartment dweller doing little more with his or her hy droponic window boxes than adding solution once a week and harvesting a fresh salad every night.

HANG LOOSE

Always bear in mind that there's nothing sacrosanct about any of the hydroponic tanks or trays I've just described. A perfectly adequate minigarden can be grown in a coffee can that has had a few holes punched in its bottom before the container was filled with pea gravel. Almost any inert medium you can think of that is flushed with either a chemical or organic hydroponic solution once, twice, or three times a day and protected from wild temperature extremes will produce bumper crops of a wide variety of edible plants ... no matter how bare-bones simple or unnecessarily complex a container it's put in. As long as that container will hold water. I once tried to grow a hydroponic garden in a wooden box which I thought was well caulked. Try as I might, however (and I tried everything short of lining that box with fiberglassed resin, which I didn't have access to at the time), I could never get the bed to stop leaking and I eventually had to give up on it.

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