Learn more about the Kratky Method hobby farm connected bucket hydroponic system, that use no power and no aeration to grow vegetables and flowers. The non-circulating hydroponics is an easy simple hydroponic method for beginners.
-~-~~-~~~-~~-~-
watch: “Office Garden – Simple Indoor Garden with No Grow Light”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWbfsPFZmTM
-~-~~-~~~-~~-~-
amazon affiliate links to the nutrients that I’ve tested over several years.
Dear Matt
Thanks a lot for your effort, I have the below questions and I hope from you to answer it:
Will there be fungus in the solution because the solution remains stagnant for a long time?
Will there be moldy roots because of the long time the plant stays in the solution?
What is the best solution to use in the cucumber production?
As you know the PH always change in the solution, so how can I make it stable for a long time?
I had a flood and drain no aeration beefsteak tomatoes sort of like your 5 gal buckets flood twice a day I used lava rock. The lava rock was a pain ph drift to 7.8 ,sediment was never ending small light inside but it worked well with beefsteak tomatoes. I adjusted the ph 6.0 90 ppm anything more I was getting tip burn full veg with a good hydroponic fertilizer. I think the tip burn was due to the small light other than white healthy roots tomato plants were growing fast and healthy
Seen this before but it's called the rain gutter grow system.https://youtu.be/-qC4JFu-Oyw
Hi Matt – thank you for sharing your Kratky setup! It looks as though you may have algae in your reservoir container 1 and 2. Your plants look a little yellow? Is that the video and sunlight? Or is that from algae from the reservoirs 1 and 2, or is that because they have too much sunlight. In my experience – tomatoes do not like too much direct sunlight. I am just starting out with Kratky and used the same large (black and yellow) tote that you have with 6 plants. I placed Kratky's recommended polysterene insulation board (1 inch) as the lid and cut the 6 holes as he did for six – 3 inch net cups. I literally completed set up last night and placed on the porch at about 11:00 pm! 🙂
Curious – how much more water do you think I will need to add? I do not have the wheelhouse yet to build the fancy flow valve pump system – gravity fed. I plan to simply pour in more nutrient solution.
What's all that stuff floating on the water? Also, these plants don't look all that healthy to me. An issue I see with this is nutrient depletion. If you added a small circulating pump, it would solve that issue, but then it probably wouldn't be kratky anymore. Still, a small pump would probably help.
Size gallos pots for weed?
Some of the sickliest looking plants I've ever seen.
Hi Matt,
This video is great, thank you for putting it together. It can be hard to cobble together the info for how to setup a gravity-fed multi-container kratky system.
A question, if you would be so kind. With the inlets to your buckets (from your brain) they all just need to be below the water level in your brain, right? It doesn't matter if they are all at exactly the same height (level from the brain), is that correct? I'm setting this up on uneven ground and I am trying to figure out how to set the height of the intake holes.
That is, if I use a laser level from the water level of the brain and just stay below that line, am I good? Does it matter if the bucket inlets are much lower than the brain outlet?
My assumption here is that the water level in the brain controls the water level in the buckets, regardless of how high the bucket inlets are (assuming they are lower than the water level in the brain, of course), and this laser level line will be the water level in all buckets. Am I missing something?
That's an interesting idea flipping the lid on the 27 gallon tub. Those tops a really difficult to take off.
But, if you connect all those buckets to a reservoir, is it still the Kratky method? Is the only difference from a DWC an air pump and air stones?
My system is exactly the same except in the Float Control Bucket I use an Airstone, on for 30 minuets every 2hrs. I have two rows of 5 buckets, controlled from their own float buckets. The Float Control Bucket with Airstone does much better than the Control bucket without the Airstone. No big deal if the power goes off, plants will still survive.
This looks genius! but Im having trouble understanding where the smaller black bucket is connected to the green buckets, is it connected to the green bucket to the immediate left or the center one? how far up is the exit hose from the smaller black bucket? I'd love to see a diagram if there is one.
Matt, can you give a shopping list of materials?
U using master blend 4-18-38 fertilizer?
hydroponics fun
I also like hydroponics
That setup is super cool! You could also put the paving stones under each plant if you had different size/maturity plants and you wanted different water levels in each bucket.
Thanks for the share.. nice vid!
Is that shredded tire mulch that you are using as media?
I really like this setup Matt.
Genius setup Matt. Thank you for sharing.