What Is the Best Hydroponic System?

The best system is the Deep Water Culture (DWC) hydroponic system.

This hydroponic system is relatively easy for you to set up and maintain since it doesn’t require equipment ordinarily available at home.

 

DWC (Deep Water Culture)

A DWC system consists of five parts: reservoir, water pump, air stone(s), net pots, and medium. The net pots are placed in the container’s lid, which holds your water.

The plant is planted directly into the medium, usually clay granules or another kind of growing media that lets roots easily come through it. This way, the plant’s roots hang down directly into the nutrient solution inside the reservoir!

The air pump creates bubbles on top of the water by pushing air through an air stone submerged in the nutrient solution. As more and more bubbles form on top of each other, they create a whirlpool effect that pulls some nutrient solution up into the plant’s root system.

You won’t need to provide fresh nutrients too often because this self-feeding hydroponic system only needs some ph adjusting powder every few months! And that’s about it for this simple hydroponic system. That’s the beauty of DWC!

 

What Will I Be Able to Grow in My DWC System?

Almost any plant can be grown using a deep hydro system, but hydro systems are not suitable for growing root vegetables like carrots or potatoes. With great results, you can grow your favorite herbs, fruits, and leafy greens at home!

How to Build Your Own DWC Hydroponic System at Home?

DIY hydroponics how to get started? Do you want to build your first hydroponic system? Here’s an easy-to-follow DIY tutorial on making a Deep Water Culture (DWC) hydroponic system. It will provide healthy herbs, veggies, and other houseplants in no time!

Pick a Container for the System

The best container to grow hydroponic plants is an opaque one with a lid. It needs to hold at least 20 liters (~5 gallons) of growing media while being big enough to allow you to fit your net pots into the top part of the container.

Make sure it has some holes on its lid so you can put your net pots inside it without falling through! It should also have space to put up an air pump, preferably right underneath the air stone(s). The dimensions of your DWC system are flexible, but make sure you leave enough room around each net pot for placing your plants there.

Drill a Series of Holes into the Container’s Lid

The holes in your lid need to fit your net pots, but also small enough such that they won’t let any roots escape from them (which could clog up your system). A good rule of thumb is to make each hole slightly more significant than the tie-down part of a plant’s net pot.

This way, you can tie down your growing media, and it will prevent most roots from escaping through the holes! Make sure there are as many holes as net pots: one for each plant! You can use a drill or an electric drill/drill press if you have one available.

Assemble Your Air Pump

You need an air pump to power the bubbles in your DWC system. You can get one at any pet store that sells aquariums or order it online. An air pump pushes high-pressure air into your growing media through an air stone submerged in the nutrient solution.

This creates a whirlpool effect that sucks up some nutrients and mixes them with the bubbles before sending them to your plants’ roots.

Fill the Reservoir, Give It Nutrients, and Balance the pH

The next step is simple: fill up your reservoir! It usually takes about 1/3 (about 10 liters) of water mixed with nutrients (no more than twice as much nutrient solution as water). Often, people tend to add too many nutrients to their reservoir, burning their plants’ roots. Make sure you check the pH before adjusting it.

Assemble the System

Now that your system is filled up with a nutrient solution, you can assemble the parts of your DWC hydroponic system. This includes placing all net pots inside your container and tying down the growing media into them. If any excess roots are escaping from those holes, clip or cut them to prevent clogging later on!

An easy way to do this is by using scissors. Then put your air stone(s) into the nutrient solution and connect them to the air pump’s outlet with some tubing (or attach an adapter).

You can use a rubber band around one of the air stones and at the end of the tubing to secure it, but make sure it does not create too much resistance, or you won’t be able to run your pump at full power.

How Do I Keep My Hydroponic System Running Great?

Now that your DWC hydroponic system is assembled correctly, you will need to maintain it. Fortunately, there are only two things you will need to do regularly: check the pH and top off any evaporated water with nutrient solution.

I suggest checking the pH every time before feeding your plants because if your reservoir contains too many un-dissolved nutrients (due to an irregular pH), they might burn your roots!

As for topping off the evaporated water with fresh nutrient solution, this needs to be done pretty often (every few days). Make sure not to overdo it, though, because too many dissolved solids in the system could cause root burn as well! One way around this problem is using RO (reverse osmosis) water (or distilled water) topping off.

RO/distilled water is essentially pure H2O with no solids dissolved in it, which cannot burn your plants’ roots.

More Tips

What Is the Easiest Way to Plant Seeds in Your DWC System?

One option is to buy a particular seed starter system that you can put directly into your hydroponic system, but this might not be the best choice if you are short on cash.

I suggest making your own seed starting system with some plastic cups, which you have first punched holes in for drainage and filled up with some plant substrate (you can use rock wool cubes or perlite).

Sow the seeds inside those cups and once they germinate, rotate them so that all sides receive equal amounts of light. Then take them out of their cup(s) once they are big enough to go into your DWC system by simply punching more holes in the bottom of the container they are in.

How to Propagate Cuttings In Your DWC System?

The answer is pretty much the same as sowing seeds! You take some cuttings (like from a cannabis plant) and put them into specially made net pots filled with some hydroponic substrate (rock wool cubes work well for this).

Then you keep taking new cuttings once you see roots growing out on your older ones until you have enough plants to transfer into your DWC system! Just make sure to prune off any excess leaves on your new cuttings before moving them to avoid nutrient burn.

After placing the new cutting inside one of the net pots (with holes punched in the bottom), the whole thing will be ready to go into your DWC system! You can either put more than one cutting inside one net pot or wait until they develop their roots first. It’s up to you to decide how big a net pot should be.

Conclusion

Now that you have an idea of setting up your very own DWC hydroponic system, have a go at it! It’s likely the cheapest and easiest hydroponic system you will ever build while at the same time being very effective.