Unbe-leaf-able: The DIY kit that will kickstart your urban farming adventure

The DIY science that will teach you how to build your very own hydroponics! Learn how hydroponics function, as well as the reason behind why they are important!

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Hydroponics are a soilless growing systems that uses water and nutrient solution to grow plants. There is little to no soil involved in this process

To explain how hydroponics work, we first need to understand how plants grow.

During photosynthesis, plants turn carbon dioxide and water into glucose and oxygen using the energy of the sun. The oxygen from this reaction is expelled as waste, the glucose issued for multiple things inside the plant. The main use for glucose is to make cellulose, which is the main ingredient for plant cell walls.

Plant growth then happens in the following way. The plant grows by splitting its existing cells into two news ones, creating twice as many cells as it had before. More cells equals more cell walls, equals more glucose needed.

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With soil

Without soil

In this entire explanation soil was not mentioned once. This is because plants actually do not need soil to grow. The function of soil for plants is simply as an anchor so that they don’t get blown away in strong winds, or washed away in strong rains. The only other important function of soil is to supply minerals, because these are abundantly present in soil. In hydroponics, these minerals are supplied in the form of a nutrient solution that is given into the water.

So to answer the question, plants can grow in hydroponics just like they can in soil. Hydroponics work by supplying water and nutrients to the plant, making it able to grow.

This diagram goes a little more into depth about what a plant needs some of its nutrients for. The nutrients are labeled in pink as their chemical symbol. Whenever one of the text bubbles has a nutrient labeled next to it, this means that it is used during whatever process the speech bubble describes. For example the production of cellulose from glucose uses calcium (Ca), therefor it is labeled next to the “cellulose” text bubble.

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All of the materials necessary are included in this kit.

You will need:

- Two large containers to hold water

- Two containers with lots of holes in it -> This is the planter where the plant will grow

- Substrate -> This is the replacement for soil. The plant will get stability from this

- Two water pumps -> This circulates water between the containers

- Plastic tubing

- Water

- Nutrient solution

- Seeds Step one: preparing the containers Start with one of the two large containers

The lid of this container needs two holes in it: one for holding the planter and one that leaves room for the pumps power chord and tube to come out. The planter will sit on top of the larger container as seen in the diagram.

Make sure the hole is large enough that the planter can be submerged in water, but small enough that it doesn’t fall through.

The second hole has to be big enough to fit the power chord of the water pump and two pieces of tubing.

Cut the holes according to the diagram Use a Stanley blade and carefully, little by little cut through the top.

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Step to: transplanting the plants Fill the planter with a layer of substrate

Take one of you seedlings out of the soil you started it in. Do this by using a shovel and shoveling the chunk of soil containing the seedling and its roots out of the soil

Place the chunk of soil that contains the seedling into a bucket of water to wash away any excess soil. Be very careful with the root because it is fragile and you do not want to damage it.

Take the seedling with all of the remaining soil out of the water and place it into you planter, on top of the bottom layer of substrate.

Gently fill up the rest of the planter with substrate. The plant should not be drowned in substrate, but there should be enough for it to hold on to.

Step three: Setting up the system Fill your large container with water, add the nutrient solution and install the water pump.

To install the water pump, attach a piece of tubing to it and lead the power chord and the tubing out the hole you cut for it.

Place the planter into its assigned hole.

Repeat all of the steps for the second container.

To finish setting up the system, lead the two pieces of tubing attached to the water pumps into the opposite container. This creates a cycling system.

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This is what it should look like at the end

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As we all know by now, the earths climate is changing. But why is that?

The following is basically an explanation of climate change.

The way we get energy is largely by burning fossil fuels. Examples of fossil fuels are oil and gas. When burning these fossil fuels, a large amount of heat is produced which we harvest as energy and use to power our homes, our cars, our factories, basically everything we know.

However heat is not the only thing that it produced. One of the largest side products of this reaction is carbon dioxide. Other side products such as nitrous oxides and sulfur dioxide are also produced. These gasses rise into our atmosphere where they cause all kinds of harm. For example sulfur dioxide dissolves into water vapor and causes rain to become acidic. One of the main problems caused by these gasses is the so called “greenhouse effect”.

Our planet earth gets all of its energy from the sun. The rays from the sun travel thousands of kilometers through space to our planet, this causes our planet to heat up. The reason why we have life on earth is because our planet isn’t too cold to live on. Some of these rays are absorbed by our planet and the things on it. Most of them bounce off the planets surface and return through our atmosphere back into space.

Carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gasses form a layer in our atmosphere, that the suns rays can’t get past. Therefore what happens is:

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Rays enter our atmosphere

They hit the earths surface. Some rays get absorbed, some bounce o of the surface.

Those that bounce try and get back through the atmosphere, the layer of carbon dioxide prevents them from doing so.

They remain within our atmosphere and continue to heat up the planets surface.

This is why our climate is changing

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Of course there are ways that carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere. For example, plants absorb it and it dissolves into the oceans. But those ways are not enough anymore to balance out the amount of. Carbon dioxide that we are producing.

The earth heating up causes many problems that I am sure you are aware of. Weather patterns changing, ice caps melting, destruction of habitats etc. are just a few examples

That is excellent question.

From the previous segment we can all agree that cutting down on carbon emissions is something we should all be doing to the best of our ability.

However, for some people traveling less or using renewable energy is not a feasible option.

An easy way to do that is through the food you eat. Carbon dioxide emissions from food is not really something a lot of people think about.

Imagine this, you are out grocery shopping for a large family meal in the evening. You buy:

Avocados from Mexico

Oranges from Spain

Steak from Argentina

Fish from the north pacific.

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Depending on where you live, these places are closer or further away from you. However in all cases at least one food item was imported.

Imagine the amount of energy used to transport those avocados from Mexico. They were harvested on a farm, driven to a distribution center, shipped or flown, possibly, to the other side of the world. There it was once again distributed to the grocery store where you bought it and drove home with it.Some food items need to be cooled the entire way.

Now think about how many carbon emissions this avocado produced, because it came from Mexico.

The core idea behind growing food at home is to not produce those carbon emissions that the avocado just produced.

Using the hydroponics, you can grown your own food at home no matter if you have a garden or not.

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