Build some grow boxes to off-set the high cost of food.  Low cost growers will save you a lot.
     
chuck's
  Welcome to the hot pepper club website.  I would like to share with you the various building projects I have worked on during the past several years. There are several bottle garden type systems that are built from readly available items found around the house and at the larger hardware stores.   I have also built some larger systems that are simple to build and operate utilizing various growing mediums and platforms.  One system is a floating platform that is using my main nutrient tank as another growing area.  It is basically a flat sheet of styrofoam with holes cut out for styrofoam cups filled with perlit.
There is a slopeing trough system made with a plastic tarp and 2X4s.  There is a 1/2 inch PVC pipe running down each trough that has holes drilled along its length.  The resulting spray of nutrient keeps the medium damp.  The best mediums for this system are arcillite or smooth washed pond gravel.  Both work fine, but the arcillite is a finer grained kiln baked clay product used in ponds where pH is critical.  It is a neutral medium made by Schultz and sold under several names.
  I have a simple to build bottom flood cup system that uses inexpensive and light weight plastic 4 inch irrigation pipe.  Each 10 foot peice costs around $2 dollars.  Large 32 ounce styrofoam cups sit in holes cut into the pipe and the modified bottoms of the cups scoop the nutrients up into the various mediums I am trying in this system.  Perlite is cheap and works good inthis system. There is a Rockwool system that is so cheap to make, that you might make some money selling them to your friends after they see the nice veggies.
I have tried to start up some kind of forum page, but I think that the Garden Web Hydroponics forum is a good place to throw out ideas and ask questions.  I am basically a beginner myself, but I would like to try to accomplish two things; help kids get into this hobby while they are young enough to benifit from the challange of building and operating some kind of system.  Secondly, I would like to incourage anyone with the time and desire to help others, to consider building a system with the idea of sharing the crop with a local soup kitchen or mission.  Oldsters will love puttering around in the trough system.  Both arcillite and gravel will not dirty up hands.  It just falls off hands.  Flowers will grow in any of the systems.  Have a good idea you would like to share?  let me know, and we could set up a page or so with a report on your project with any helpful pictures you have. 
Thanks for stoping by.  I will be working on the site as time allows.   chuck
HOT PEPPER CLUB

NEW SWINGING PIPE SYSTEM  JAN 06

This page was
last updated on:
April 13, 2008

NEW
APRIL 2008
Build some grow boxes to off-set the high cost of food.  Low cost growers will save you a lot.