Hydroponic/ container gardening

[hasek39]

@BunBun71 posted a question about gardening for bunnies. This was timely as the past few days I've been pondering herb gardening for LB. I have pretty much decided on indoor hydroponics. I have come down to 2 systems.

One is a homemade system Aerogarden and one is made by the petro gardening company Miracle Grow.

The benefits of the homemade system is the larger capacity. The advantage the Aerogarden is the ease of use, aesthetics (not a huge thing for me as I am definitely function over form), it's cheaper, and it is more compact.

The main limitation of the Aerogarden is it's more compact and the LED grow light can only go 12 inches (30.5cm) high.

I'll most likely go with the homemade set up.

Prices have gone up since the article was written.

https://www.epicgardening.com/hydroponic-herb-garden-guide/
https://www.aerogarden.com/harvest-base.html

 

[Blue eyes]

Oooh...what fun! I like the homemade one as well. It has more room for more growing.

The smaller one says it can grow 6 plants, but I know a full grown basil plant (as I have in my outdoor garden) could fill up the whole space of that 6" x 10" base.

Would love to see progress photos if you go forward.

I've been thinking of growing some herbs indoors in the winter. I have a guest room that has a south facing window that might do nicely.

 

[hasek39]

For sure I'll keep you updated Blue Eyes. I'll be taking a couple days off this week and I'll probably start getting everything together then. Then another decade or two before I get it put together

I am thinking basil, cilantro, and lemon balm. @Blue eyes , any idea how many plants I'll need to keep a daily supply going for LB? She's less than 5 lbs. I'd imagine the grow rates vary between the plants. If I can supply a small handful daily, that'd be great.

Also a mistake in my above post, the Aerogarden is the one by Miracle Grow, not the home made one.

 

[Mariam+Theo]

I grow Lemon Balm for Theo and the small plant that I have will only supply him for one day. Basil, on the other hand, lasts a lot longer. I would plant 10 of each just to have enough (for you and your rabbit).

 

[Blue eyes]

I can only speak regarding my outdoor herb garden since I haven't yet tried indoor gardening. Basil has been by far the most prolific of the herbs I've grown. With 3-5 plants in full growth mode, I could easily harvest a good amount every single day for my buns. The following photo is an old one, but it shows a typical day's harvest. I could do that every day during the growing season with about 5 plants. (The amount in photo was shared between 2 rabbits.)

 

[hasek39]

Whelp, mission accomplished... or just started?

I went with 2 basil, 1 cilantro, 1 lemon balm, 1 peppermint, and 1 parsley.

It took some time to get everything and then to set it all up but it went smoothly. The most difficult part was cleaning the dirt off the plant roots. If there was an ASPCA or RSPCA for plants, I'd be serving a life sentence for cruelty to roots. Hopefully they'll be okay. If I wasn"t so impatient, I would have grown from seed, maybe next cycle.