2 Liter Bottle Hydroponics Tutorial by Epic Gardening

What's going on epic gardeners? Kevin here, and I am here to talk about the two liter bottle hydroponic garden now I put out a pretty extensive guide for this on my website But if you're looking for the simplest way to get started in hydroponics on earth This is it and it's really good for kids It's great If you want to do like a science fair project with your kid or if you're just trying to get started in hydroponics And you want to do something simple. This is the way to go now Here's what you need Very first thing obviously you need a two liter bottle and the beauty of the two liter bottle You'll see why it's so perfect for this in Just a little bit then you need some sort of growing media now. I like to use either Hydroton which are these clay pellets you can also use coconut coir, which is super popular I've been using that a lot lately and what that is is it's ground up coconut husks that essentially just provides space for your roots to Grow and an area or a way for water to make it all the way up to the roots You know if you want you can use soil, but then again it wouldn't be a hydroponic garden But you know that option is open to you Obviously, we're gonna need some water We're gonna need some sort of wicking material and the wick material is essentially what's taking the water and nutrients from the bottom of the Two liter bottle and bringing it up to the top Next thing you might want this is optional is aluminum foil And that's because when light hits water that has nutrients in it Typically something that you don't want will start to form there and that something is called algae Now algae is not super harmful to the plant, but it does look a little bit gross and it can make You know it can make your garden not look as aesthetic as you might want it to look Next you'll need some nutrients. I'll talk about what kind of nutrients you'll want And then you'll also want some sort of seed or seedling Alright, so you got your bottle now Here's why the two liter bottle is so perfect for this experiment All you need to do is draw a line right across where the curve starts to end So it's as it curves it starts to get to a flat point and as long as you draw a line right around that curve You're going to have the perfect situation, and I'll show you exactly why Because when you make that cut you're gonna end up with something like this Now you can see Look at this empty space here. It is absolutely perfect for the growing media and Your plant it's the perfect little space for that to sit in and that's why the two liter bottle is so great because not only is It the perfect space, but it also gets the plant closer to the water so Let's talk about the water for a second I have an entire video on how to properly add nutrients and pH to your water But I'm gonna touch on it quickly here what you need to do is You need to first of all use as clean and pure of water as you can So tap water is good my unfortunately my tap water is very very hard up in the 400 parts per million range So that means there's a lot of calcium and other things in there So if you want since this is so small you can use something like a Brita filter to quickly filter your water Make sure that you get it as pure as possible. I also like to use general hydroponic Flora three part series, which is probably one of the more popular hydroponic nutrients out there so watch the video on how to properly pH and add nutrients to your water and This is the next step So before we go any further you're gonna want to make sure that you've got the water Properly pH with nutrients in there and just to touch on nutrients a little bit further Remember we're gonna be growing a plant that does not fruit or flower because this is a small system So you can't really grow cucumbers in this thing It's really good for something like basil something like lettuce or spinach or maybe a different type of herb So keep that in mind that means that you're not going to be wanting to using wanting to use Sorry as much of the bloom nutrients, you'll be wanting to use more of the grow nutrients, which is Going to stimulate that vegetative phase of growth Okay. Now our next step is we need to add our media and our plant Now I typically like to add a plant that I've already started. So I'll add the media Let's say this is coconut coir right here, and then I'll take a plant that I've already started So I have seeds started already and I'll dig out a little hole and I will place that plant inside You can start your your plant in the two-liter bottle if you want to that's totally fine It's just gonna take a little bit longer to get started. That's all and again I have an entire video on how to start seeds for hydroponics on my channel as well that you can take a look at okay, so the final step is to add the wick and for wick I like to use a Like a cotton rope. I Try to avoid anything that's paper based just because it's gonna be sitting in water It's gonna be wet all the time. It's gonna rot out or become like structurally instable. So I like to use Some sort of cotton rope you can use like cloth or you can cut up a Wash towel and use that if you want to So here we go. This is the final phase now, you can see how this works. Basically The wick is going to draw water and nutrients up into the growing media and it's going to moisten the growing media And then your roots are going to take up that water and nutrients and hopefully once the plant is strong enough It's the roots are actually going to make its way down and out Into this bottom area So you won't actually need to use the wick as much the wick kind of helps during that early phase of the plants grows that where it really needs moisture and it doesn't have a root structure to be sitting down in this nutrient already and You know, that's more or less it for the two-liter bottle garden It's very very simple guys Now the only other thing you might want to do is add some sort of opaque coating around the entire two-liter bottle So maybe something like aluminum foil you could do cardboard paper Poster paper or something like that, whatever you want I mean, I guess you could like duct tape it too if you want But I like to use something that I can remove so I can check the water level and make sure that nothing's going wrong All right, guys, that is it for the two-liter bottle hydroponic garden as always Visit EpicGardening.com if you want more tutorials more how-tos, you can check me out on Facebook and Twitter You can shoot me an email if you have any questions, or you can join the forums. That is it This is Kevin from EpicGardening.com Keep growing