Growing Food in An Office Setting - The Begining

How It Began

As a kid, I remember my sisters and I being required to mow the lawn, rake leaves, and weed the flower beds. When as a family we started the vegetable garden, it just added one more place where we toiled endlessly pulling weeds, fighting slugs and getting sunburned. I hated it. My grandparents had a beautiful garden and I never saw then spending any time pulling weeds or fighting slugs. How did they do it?!

It took a few years before I found out that my grandfather spent hours outside doing the work of weeding, etc., since he was retired and had plenty of time to tend his garden. But it still meant hours of time spent doing something i hated. I love the end result of a garden. Lots of fresh produce that has been vine ripened, and tasty. But the work to get there made it hard not to just chuck it and go to the grocery store. There had to be an easier way.

I'm a hobby beer brewer and from time to time I like to brew a batch of beer. My local brewing supply store also happens to carry supplies for hydroponics. As a kid, hydroponics always had this air about it of being used to grow weed. If you used Hydroponics, you were a pothead,  a doper, and sure to be arrested and tossed in jail. But every time I went in for brewing supplies, I'd see the set-ups of the different systems with the growing plants. I'd see squash and tomatoes growing in the zippered booths under the weird colored lights and not once did it look like anyone was doing any weeding. So I started to ask questions.

I'm sure my questions sounded silly, to the young people behind the counter, but they humored me. They explained that since there was no soil, you don't get weeds. Because it's indoors you don't have insects, slugs, snails, or critters to deal with so you're not fighting others for the food you're growing. It's easy, and the work is minimal. Of course I had heard many of those same arguments before for other projects and ideas and it never was true. So as skeptical as I was, I thought I'd give it a try. But before I grew things in water, I thought I'd test in dirt.

My First Attempt

While I could have started something at home, I knew that having two cats in the house and no really good place to have plants, I opted for my office at work. But knowing that in some offices, they can restrict what you can have on your desk or in your cube, I first asked my boss if having a plant was okay. He didn't see any problem, so I got the go ahead, and I started to plan how I was going to start my "garden."

I got a pot and filled it with soil. I planted a green bean seed in the dirt, watered it, and placed it to get the most sunlight. Then I waited. And waited. The first sign of green came after a week, and soon I had the first little shoot coming up, only to be followed by dozens of others. I had made the mistake of filling my pot with dirt from the flower bed. I now had weeds fighting for space in my pot with my bean.

I dug up and removed everything I could, and after a couple of weeks, I stopped getting weeds. In the mean time, my bean slowly grew and started to get taller. But then I noticed as it got taller it started to lean and then to droop. It needed support. So I took a chopstick from an extra set I had in my desk and a twist tie from the kitchen at work, and my bean was supported. It never looked as healthy as the pictures I saw on the internet, but after several weeks I soon had flowers, and then actual beans.

It never produced enough for a meal, but it showed me that it could be done and done inside an office.It gave me a starting point and a foundation to build on. From there I examined my situation and looked into how best to improve things to increase my harvest, and to do more without taking up too much room. My solution was to dive into hydroponics.

Building a Bucket

I started looking at the web and digging into what I needed and how small and compact I could build it. Everything i found showed people using these giant plastic bins or 5-gallon buckets. I needed something smaller. While looking in our basement on another matter I came across a small storage bin. About 12 inches by 8 inches by 8 inches deep, it holds about 1.5 gallons of water. It was perfect, small, and I already owned it. The next item on my list was an air pump, like they use for fish tanks. But according to my research, it needed to move 5 times more air than the volume of water in my bucket. After looking around the thrift store in my area, I ended up on ebay. A fast $10.00 later, I had a pump on the way.

The next step was finding net pots to hold my plants. Made from plastic, they are slotted pots that allow water to pass through while holding your plants and the grow medium in place. The plants are started in plugs that allow the roots to gain structure as well as a foothold. They are also able to hold onto water so that the plant can get the moisture they need.

I've used several types of plugs. Rockwool is a spun fiber kind of plug. But the type I love and had the best results from is called Rapid Rooter. They are made from peat and feel like sponge. They hold together and don't breakdown in water, so they are perfect for Hydroponics.

The growing medium goes by several names. Hydrocorn, Hydroton, extruded clay pellets. Either way, it's baked clay that is porous and allows for both holding moisture and allowing air to get to the roots of the plants. It's great stuff, because you can reuse it. So it's a buy once and keep using it.

Again I went back to ebay. I found a package that offered all three of those items in small amounts. I should point out that I was trying to do this a cheaply as possible. After all, if it didn't work, I didn't want to be out a ton of money. A short time later I had a package on its way. Five 3.75inch net pots, a dozen plugs and 2-pounds of Hydroton.

The next item on my shopping list were the nutrients, the food for the plants. Once again, back to my old standby ebay, I found 1-Liter bottles of the nutrients. I know that I mentioned that my brew store also has hydroponic supplies, but I was building on a budget, so costs had to be cheaper. Everything I got was found in smaller amounts or cheaper than my local store. But now that I'm in this long term, and have been successful in growing, I spend my money locally and support my local store.

Construction

I first took the lid of my bucket and cut four holes, just big enough to allow the net pot to fit up to it's rim. It will then hang into the bin from the outer lip, so I made the holes evenly spaced and snug. An air stone from the local pet store and a length of air hose were bought to help spread the air the length of the bucket. I then drilled a small hole near the edge and fed the air line through the top. Since i was poking holes in the top for the plants, I figured another for the air would be fine. After passing the line through I plugged in the air stone. The other end was plugged into the air pump. I took the entire set-up to the office.


To sprout my seeds, I knew I needed something that would allow sunlight to pass through, hold in moisture to keep the humidity up, as well as hold heat. I used an empty clear plastic doughnut container. It's one of those nasty clamshell containers grocery stores sometimes use for baked goods. But it allowed the sprouts to get a couple inches tall plus the two inches of the plugs. So any clear container that will allow some airflow, plus light to get in, that is about four or five inches tall will work.

Once you have your sprouts, you take one and place it, plug and all, into a net pot. While holding the plug in the middle, surround the plug with the clay pellets to the top of the pot. Just don't crush or pack the sprout. When the four pots were ready, I took them to the office. I then completed the rest of the steps when I got to work. I used the mix chart on the side of the bottles, and mixed up one gallon of fluid. I got hold of a three gallon drinking water bottle, and used that to hold my nutrient water. After I mixed it up, I poured that into my bucket. After positioning the bucket on the windowsill of my office, I plugged in the air pump. After that, I just changed out the nutrient water once a week. In nearly half the time it took for the green beans to grow in dirt, the hydroponic beans grew and produced beans.