Total-control Indoor Gardening with Modern Hydrop

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But I've not factored in the savings in trips to town and the groceries that are avoided. Fresh salad veggies are the most important and perishable items on my winter store shopping list. Being able to grow all I can use at home reduces my treks to town from twice-weekly to once a month. At $6 a trip in gas alone, eliminating three trips a month over four months adds another $72 to the savings. Payback time goes down to three years for the HID lights, table and all.

Problems

If you encounter a problem, it is likely to get real bad real quick unless you catch it early. A hydroponics system is literally a hothouse for breeding bugs, germs, and molds.

Green algae on the growing medium won't hurt, except when it rots and hosts ghastly little black fungus gnats that fly all over the house and get into everything. I've found them floating in the dog water, line dancing with fruit flies on ripe bananas, and stuck to the toothpaste tube.

Algaecides are available, but it takes more poison to kill these simple plants than I want on my salad. Keep paper covers on bare media. Stir under algae covered Grorox and gravel. Sterilize and scrub everything between crops to eliminate algae. Replace small-diameter plastic tubing that is coated inside with it. Even decades-old dry green scum will spring to life when warm nutrient solution begins coursing past it.

Leave your equipment out in the sun for a while in the summer to let rainfall and ultraviolet light sanitize it. You can buy UV light bulbs to shine on nutrient reservoirs that will do the same thing.

If you notice any insects at all, get out the vacuum, put up yellow sticky traps, or use pyrethrum/rotenone spray. You can buy beneficial insects such as ladybugs or lacewings, but these natural controls are better suited to the outdoors or to large greenhouses, where they'll get enough to eat.

Whitefly are the worst indoor gardening pest I've experienced. They are tiny stark white flying bugs that are naturally controlled in nature but multiply quickly indoors. If you bring in any tomato plants or geranium cuttings from outside, you will surely import a few whitely. They will quickly multiply to rise in great clouds when you disturb a plant. There can be so many so suddenly that you can't help but breathe them in. Ech! They also coat the bottoms of your plants' leaves with a sticky mess of brood cells. Whitefly are hard to kill with anything but malathion—a very nasty pesticide. You can vacuum flying adults out of the air and wipe undersides of leaves with rubbing alcohol. But one or two are sure to survive and re-establish the population. Do your best to prevent them.

This warning also applies to spider mites and other small, fast-multiplying pests. Start with sterile equipment, sterile planting medium, and pure water. Stan everything yourself from seed ... and some experts even soak their seed in mild Clorox to kill any mite eggs or external disease vectors.

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