Want an easy way to add fresh vegetables and herbs to your diet? Indoor hydroponic grower systems are a great way to eat more healthfully. The advanced technology in today’s systems makes it simple and satisfying to grow a garden at home, even if you don’t have a green thumb—you don’t even need a yard.
Other benefits of indoor hydroponic gardens: they are pollution-free, chemical-free, and care-free. No need to worry about how much and when to water; the smart sensors in today’s high-tech indoor gardens control automated watering. LED grow lights adjust to the right amount of light, so you can place your miniature greenhouse anywhere in your home. Research suggests that these smart indoor systems can grow hydroponic plants approximately 50% faster than they would grow outside, with nearly a third increase in yield. The as para hydroponic Smart Grower from Grow green is designed to grow vegetables, fruits, herbs, and flowers in your home, without worrying about dirt, pests, or weather.
The as para Grow green device is engineered with the latest Internet of Things (IoT) wireless capabilities, and features its own app with guidelines for planting, as well as for remote monitoring and sharing progress with family and friends. The minimalist design blends into the aesthetics of any room. Back at my own house, I didn’t have waterfalls and gazebos in my backyard, but I like to think my garden was just about as spectacular as those of my clients – and the best thing was I barely spent a dime on it. Instead, I labored a few hours each week, over several years, coaxing it into existence, and I scavenged, bartered, borrowed, built-from-scratch, and grew myself everything I possibly could. Here are a few things I learned along the way.
1. Grow from Seeds, Not Starts
This one is obvious: A six-pack of lettuce seedlings costs anywhere from $3 to $6, while a pack of 500 lettuce seeds costs no more than $3. It’s a bit of work to start seeds in flats indoors, which gives you a head start on the growing season, but sowing seeds directly in the garden bed takes no more time than planting seedlings.
2. Go to a Seed Swap
Shopping for seeds is fun, and if you’re scrupulous about it, you can find some real bargains. But going to a seed swap – essentially a party where everyone shows up with seeds they’ve saved from the year before and trades them – is arguably even more fun and will save you money. Which brings about another point – save your seeds in the fall! As long as they’re not patented by Monsanto, saving seed doesn’t cost a thing.
3. Take Cuttings
You’re probably thinking: saving seed is fine for vegetables, but who really grows blueberries or dogwood trees from seed? That’s true. Lots of things are hard to grow from seed, or don’t grow “true” from seed (meaning they’re genetic clones). The good news is virtually all perennials, most shrubs and vines, and many trees are easily propagated by cuttings. Find a neighbor or a friend with the desired plant, cut a few pencil-size sticks from it, pot them up in moist perlite, and within a few weeks or months you should start to see roots and leaves emerging.
4. Repurpose and Upcycle
Plants are costly enough, but planters, pavers, arbors, and other hardscape materials are where the budget goes quickly into the four-figure range and up. But one man’s junk pile is another man’s goldmine, right? Planters can be fashioned out of everything from an old bathtub to used wooden pallets. I’ve seen arbors made from a repurposed satellite dish mounted on a pole and trellises built from ancient bed springs. Instead of expensive flagstone, try broken concrete – some people lovingly refer to it as urbanite, and dye the surface for a more attractive finish. But exercise restraint: When you go overboard, upcycling can make you feel like you have a yard full of junk.
5. Forage for Your Gardening Supplies
Nature also offers free materials to help you get the most mileage from your gardening dollar. Bamboo poles, at a garden center, which are used for everything from tomato stakes to building beautiful oriental fences and arbors, run from $1 each to $10 each (and more), depending on the size. But lots of folks have a yard full of bamboo and would be happy for you to come take some of it off their hands. There are many other examples like this – any time you think, oh I wish I had the money to buy that for the garden, rack your brain for a free, locally harvestable alternative.
6. Design it Yourself
Professional garden design can run several thousand dollars, even for a small yard. There are reasons for that (i.e. years of training and experience), but with a bit of patient effort you’ll be surprised at what you can come up with. Start at the library, where there are volumes upon volumes of garden design books and references that will tell you exactly what conditions are preferred by every plant in the known universe and how to build patios, fences, raised beds, gazebos, waterfalls, and anything else you can dream up. Then map out your yard on paper, as accurately as you can, and start penciling in ideas. Give yourself a full year to come up with a design, making careful observations through the seasons and taking the time to visualize your ideas in detail before you start building.
You must be logged in to post a comment.