How to Start a 4-Season Hydroponic Garden

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Do you wish you had a longer growing season?
Are there plants you want to grow, but you live in the wrong zone?
Are you tired of slugs, birds, squirrels and other critters beating you to your harvest?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, a 4-season hydroponic garden may be the answer you are looking for. But what is hydroponic gardening? How do you start a hydroponic garden? Is hydroponics expensive? Can you really grow anything hydroponically? Keep reading to find out.

What is Hydroponic Gardening?

Simply put, hydroponic gardening is growing plants without soil. In hydroponics, you forget the soil and substitute a neutral growing medium like perlite, coco coir, clay pebbles, rockwool, water, or even air. Much like soil, the hydroponic growing medium is used to support delivery of oxygen, water and nutrients to the plant’s roots. In soil, delivering the right mix of these essential elements is a delicate balance and can take a while (even years) to improve poor quality soil before you start getting good results – and it limits where you can grow to where you can access dirt.

But take away the soil and something magical happens… In hydroponics, you can more easily control delivery of what your plants need and they get the nutrients, oxygen and water they need served up on a silver platter. Without the stress that comes with growing in soil, your plants can put all their energy into growth and soil-borne pests have no way to get established. Check out this post to see how much of a difference this can make.

Another benefit of hydroponics is that most systems utilize a water and nutrient reservoir that holds everything your plants need for weeks at a time so you can even grow your own food without needing to get someone to water your garden when you’re out of town.

How do You Start a Hydroponic Garden?

Want to start a hydroponic garden of your own? The information available on different types of systems can be overwhelming, but getting starting doesn’t need to be. If you’re just starting out, we recommend a simple garden bin system or mason jar kit. Both these systems use the Kratky method of hydroponic gardening which is a simple, yet very effective way to get started. All our kits come with straightforward instructions to maximize success. The kits can be set up in minutes and placed outdoors in the sun, in a sunny window, or under a grow light and you have a fully functioning hydroponic garden!

If you are more of a DIYer, check out this video on how to make your own hydroponic garden bin.

Is Hydroponics Expensive?

While you can easily spend thousands of dollars on a hydroponic garden, you definitely don’t need to. Getting started with a simple system is very affordable. At Gecko Grow, we focus on keeping things simple and affordable so hydroponics can be accessible to anyone on any budget. At the time of writing this, our simple hydroponic systems range in price from $22 – $83 and can grow anything from herbs and leafy greens to peppers, tomatoes and even watermelon!

Once you are set up, the ongoing costs are very minimal. When you factor in seeds, nutrients and running an LED grow light (the only ongoing costs with our systems), it will only cost you 40 to 60 cents to grow a head of lettuce in the middle of a Canadian winter. If you decide to run a different system style down the road and add a water pump and a fan to increase airflow, you’re costs aren’t going to have a noticeable increase in the cost to grow your own produce.

Can You Really Grow Anything Hydroponically?

In short, yes, you can grow anything hydroponically. When you’re growing indoors, you can tailor the environment to exactly what your plants need. Most of us keep our homes at an optimal growing temperature year-round so with an indoor hydroponic garden you no longer need to worry about growing zones, days to harvest, hardening off seedlings, planting dates, or losing everything to an early frost, late frost, hail storm, bug infestation, heatwave, (insert other crop killing variable here – it really is a long list!).

At Gecko Grow, we are always trying out new plants and have yet to find something we can’t grow hydroponically. Here’s a list of what we have grown ourselves. This is by no means an exhaustive list… if you factor in what our customers have grown, it would be a VERY long list indeed:

What Next?

The best way to learn hydroponics is to give it a try. We recommend starting with basil or lettuce as these are the easiest to get right and then branch out from there. Want to learn more? Click here to register for an upcoming training session!

Happy Growing!