The Time Capsule | Roy Marshall
Kay is a working mother with two school-age children. She’s made a YouTube video showing how she raises all the greens consumed by a family of four. Her garden is in the living room and uses no soil. Because there are neither weeds nor insects, her vegetables have not been treated with chemicals. She tells us the cost is about half what she would pay at retail.
My cost is a bit higher because an ongoing expense is electricity, and in this rural area the price per kilowatt hour is probably higher than Kay’s. We get lettuce for less than retail, though, and without thought of a salmonella alert.
Hers is the type of hydroponics simplest to assemble and easiest to use. She’s artistic and created an aesthetically pleasing set-up. Mine is made of PVC pipes and isn’t much for looks.
Both systems work indoors. I chose mine as this spring it went outside to provide a weed-free growing place for compact plants, freeing the garden for things that either grow tall or need to spread.
Kay uses what experts call a “water culture system.” Hers has four small, rectangular aquariums, each enclosed in a wooden box. Paper or cardboard would serve, but material of some type is required to keep out light and inhibit algae. She chose wood for a nicer finish. Each aquarium is topped with a snug-fitting, floating sheet of Styrofoam into which she made a series of holes large enough to hold plastic plant baskets. She and her husband built a tiered shelf arrangement, with each spaced to accommodate an aquarium box and grow-light mounted on the underside of the shelf above. She filled aquariums with water, added a measured amount of hydroponic nutrient, installed an aerator. With stencils and paint she designed an attractive item of furniture that features a colorful crop of greens.
Kay tells us, and I can confirm, that lettuce grown this way has a wonderfully delicate flavor—partly because harvest takes place just minutes before being served. A drawback to hers is that rapidly maturing plants like lettuce are about all it’ll provide. That’s all she asks, though, and tells us she couldn’t be happier with indoor hydroponics.
Outdoor has been a pleasant surprise for me. Lettuce in the garden tends to be difficult--get it through weeds and bugs and then hot weather hits and it turns bitter and bolts. Hydroponic greens, with the cooling effect of water, have been ideal even when our temps reached 100. We like color so planted various varieties of leaf and head lettuce. We have all we can use, have given some away, and I’ll continue planting until time to bring the setup in for winter.
There are necessities with hydroponics, and cutting corners doesn’t work. Even so, a 36-plant arrangement like mine can be made for less than $100. This includes PVC, aquarium air and water pumps and a few feet of plastic hose. I could add a timer if we were going to be gone for a few days.
Several years ago I saw one similar to Kay’s in a senior living center. The resident we were visiting, who had done a lot of gardening, was gathering spinach. “Keeps me young,” she said.
Unfortunately, it did not. What hydroponics did was satisfy her yen to grow nourishing food even though she was pretty much confined to a wheelchair. That meant a lot to her.
Roy Marshall is a local historian and columnist for the Red Oak Express. He can be contacted at news@redoakexpress.com.