DIY passive hydro

[Bugger]

   I promised some pictures of the pots I made, so here we go… In case somebody is building something similar, I´ll try to explain a bit how and why I did them.

   I was looking for an easy, effective and inexpensive way of growing chilies, and passive hydro’s seemed like an excellent choice. However, as have a natural habit of over doing everything, I ended up growing over 200 chilies… My goal was to grow 50 myself, and the rest I gave to my friends, making ten more chileheads! So I needed 50 pots large enough for any chili. Even if passive hydro´s are cheap, buying 50 large ones ends up being quite large investment. Luckily I work in a paper bag factory, and the bottom glue we use comes in 30 liter cans, which are disposed after empty. They seemed like a good place to start, recycling was a nice bonus.

   I wanted large enough water space, so I can leave them for a longer period, and they won´t run out of water. After taking some measurements, I ended up with a 10 liter water space and 20 liter space for media. That gave me an extra benefit, the lid had a corner at the exactly same width that the inner diameter of the can at the height needed for 10 liter space. This will make the structure a bit stronger.

   I took another kind of glue container, and cut three 12 cm. slices from it, the bottom and two plastic stripes. The bottom itself works as a one reservoir and using the two stripes and two lids, I get three hydro´s from four containers.


   I cut the two lids by the corner, and drill big holes in the middle of them, and the bottom part. The I screw a cheap sock on the hole, this will act as a wick. From Fatalii´s advice, I also drill 4mm holes randomly around the sock, so that the roots can grow into the reservoir, maybe this gives better growth.


   I also wrapped aluminum paper (benefits of working in paper industry) around the containers, so that the water and roots won´t get sunlight. It also prevents the sun from hardening the container itself.


   I cut a 40mm. plastic tube so it´s a bit longer than the depth of the container, and make a hole for it to the lid´s and the bottom part. I also make cuttings to end of the tube for easy water flow. This tube has multiple purposes, it enables me to take a sample of the water, and I can add fertilizers straight to the reservoir, if needed. This is why the tube is so large. The main purpose of the tube is to hold water level indicator, made of thin bamboo sticks and a small piece of urethane foam.

   So all I had to buy was some socks, screws, pvc-tube, bamboo sticks and some packing tape, everything else is salved from garbage bin. That´s 50 big passive hydro´s for about €50, recycling pays off!

   For fertilizer, I chose Blusana, again recommended by Fatalii. The tab water in Lempäälä is so soft, that I also put about 2ml of dolomite limestone along with the 50ml. of Blusana to the bottom of the containers. Then the floor panel made from the lid, and the tube.  Now it´s ready for planting.


   For growing media I used expanded clay, again by the advice of Fatalii. The commercial clays specially made for this king of use were so expensive, that I ended up buying 1000 liters of Leca-brand, which is used as a building material. In these large sacks, it´s available in bigger grain size, 8-20mm, which is what I bought. 1000 liter sack cost me €120, so it´s much cheaper than the brands meant for hydroponics use, when buying a large quantity. This is very dusty, so I had to clean it up, washing it in two 90 liter containers, first and second wash. I also used phosphoric acid to lower the Ph of the washing water, and thereby lower the Ph of the expanded clay.

   When I plant a chili in one of these, I first fill the sock with the clay, and put some clay in the bottom. Then I wash away most of the soil from the plants roots, and try to separate the roots a bit, to get them pointing in different directions in the pot. After that, I just fill the pot with the clay, and pour water to the container. I also lower the Ph of this water to about 5, because the lime will rice the Ph, and a tab water Ph here is already around 8.


   Here is a picture of some plants that have been potted 3 weeks ago. I still haven´t put water level meters to all of them, I need to get more urethane first. It rained heavily here this week, and some pots were filled with water, as you can see from the water meters. I´m considering drilling overflow holes to the side of the pots, so it would be impossible to have too much water in them. Since I use these only outdoors, spilling water is not a problem.


   The plants seem to do fine, there hasn´t been any significant growth in three weeks, but the temperatures have been quite low at night time, last night coldest so far, 0.5C under the lace cloth..Finnish summer! But one plant is already making pods, others are starting to bloom.

   Watering is really easy, at this rate I need to water the plants two more times this summer, or if it keeps raining, not at all. Anyway, I´m quite happy with the way these pots turned out, it will be easy to move the plants to ebb (still on my to-do list...) and back out next spring.

[Fatalii]

Very proper instructions! Congrats! looking forward to see more stuff like this!

Water level will be a significant part of it, you have to find the limits between the ideal amount of water.

Be sure to shoot photos of the plants when they are progressing, flowering and preferably yielding, with those pics water level included to make sure they work well, I would be very happy to include that instruction to my site with your permission of course.

Looking forward to see more stuff from you!

BTW. That mini mini of yours looks VERY good... very much like chinense... it truly is an unique var.
Please post more pics when it flowers and starts giving yield.

[Chilicutter]

Nice work
I  should do same operation.
But i haven't buckets yet.
Wiating more pics when plants grow.

[Bugger]

   Thank you, I´m glad you find them usefull. You can use and edit them as you please, after all, your advise helped a lot with this project! I might do a similar thing when I start building the ebb later this summer, but that is still on the planning phase...

   The expanded clay seems to have much more capillarity than I expected, with the water reservoir full, the clay is moist to about couple of inches from the surface. The plants got enough water straight away, even before growing more roots. It will be interesting to see how low it can be, before plants start protesting!

   I don´t have a camera of my own, (had to loan one for these pics) so at least for now there won´t be that many pictures to share. 

   Those wild species seem to be more interesting to grow, they all look so unique. Weirdest one I´ve seen is the PI 260433 (C. chacoense), so thin stem and very eager trying to catch the light tube.