Seed Starter Dome

This cannot be any simpler, you can probably use whatever you have around the house, but I just picked up a Jiffy disposable cake pan when I walked past it in a local pharmacy.  Will certainly do the job and it was only $1, so now I can have a dedicated container to starting seeds.

Growing Medium

After extensive research on this topic, I decided to go with rockwool cubes. I honestly chose this over Rapid Rooters just because it was able to be delivered to my apartment in time for me to start on the weekend.

I also have a bag of clay pebbles that I will sanitize and use when transplanting the seedlings to the growing containers themselves.

Containers

For growing containers, I had 2x 6L plastic containers lying around here, so I drilled 3×2.25″ diameter holes into the cover to place my 2″ net cups (rim of net cup is a perfect 2.45″ so it fits in nicely).   These will be used primarily to grow loose leaf Lettuce (at least initially).

I am also using 2x Talenti Gelato containers to grow basil.  This will be an experiment as I am afraid these containers may not be tall enough to be mostly hands off throughout the growing process.

Nutrients

Chose the General Hydroponics MaxiGrow for the first trial.  Since I will only be growing plants that I want to keep in the vegetative state, no other nutrients will be used.

I have also bought pH Up and pH Down to ensure the pH level of the water is around 6.2 after mixing my nutrient solution.

Lighting

Since my space is rather small (less than 2’x2′ for growing area), I chose a dual arm, full spectrum LED lights from Amazon (45W equivalent).  Again, since the plants I plan on growing would need to stay in vegetative state, I did not need a more complex lighting solution, so decided to keep the cost of lighting under $20.

Monitoring Tech

I have purchased a digital pH meter and a digital TDS.  I cannot recommend any right now, as these are the first first I owned, but I did make sure the reviews were highly rated on the units I bought.

Since I am an automation nut, I also am using a raspberry pi with an attached camera that will take photos of the setup every 15 minutes (to eventually put together a time lapse of the grow).  The pi also serves a simple site that gives me the latest picture taken from the pi, so I can remotely monitor my growing station without getting off the couch or when I am away (via a VPN)

Air Stones and Pump

The first experiment I plan on doing is difference in lettuce growth for plants using aeration vs non-aeration (Kratky method).  I have outfitted one of my growing containers to have 2x Medium Air Stones (from Hydrofarm) with a 3.5W Air Pump.

I plan on repeating this same experiment but flipping the containers to try to minimize any placement (one container is technically closer to a window) errors that may have biased the initial results.