The Hydroponics Wick System Demystified
A hydroponics wick system is a very basic setup to allow the gardener some slack in the watering regimen. It uses a setup that draws water from a reservoir up into the plants roots using a wick. The reservoir can also be filled with a nutrient solution instead of plain water.
While many different applications of the hydroponics wick system are available this set of instructions are very basic and simple to implement. The required materials consist of two buckets of equal size, a nylon rope or other fibrous material, soil or other grow medium, and some water.
The first thing you will need to do is cut some holes in the bottom of one of the buckets. The holes need to be just big enough to fit the wick through. Four holes should be plenty, for four wicks. The wicks need to be long enough to fit the entire height of the bucket and to hang down long enough to reach the bottom of the second bucket when they are stacked on top of one another.
The following step is to string the rope through the holes in the bucket to the top of the bucket and hold them in place with the grow medium. Taking great care, transplant your plant into the grow medium. Make sure you are using the proper transplanting technique specific to the plant you are growing.
Finally, you will place water in the second bucket and stack the first bucket on top of it. Be sure that you place all of the wicks into the water. The wicks will then begin soaking, drawing water up to the roots of your plant and will keep the soil moist as long as you keep the bucket full of water.
If you overfill the bucket you can get a flood or you could have your plants soaking in water without adequate oxygen supply. If more than the wicks are in the water you might end up drowning your plant. Other problems could occur such as root rot.
That should give you the basic idea of the hydroponic wick system. There are many different tweaks you could give it to suit your specific situation. The idea remains the same, use a wick to draw water from a reservoir to keep the roots adequately watered. Some gardeners use a fertilized grow medium and plain water while others choose a low nutrient medium and add nutrients to the reservoir. Each method works well it just depends on what you have to work with.
As you can see the idea is the same, use a wick to keep the plants root system fed. The techniques are just adjusted based on the facts mentioned earlier, space, experience level, and available supplies. Get out there and try a few things out, and remember to be patient. Happy Gardening!
More gardening ideas for the hydroponics wick system and other hydroponic gardening ideas can be found at http://superhydroponicsupplies.com Free reprint avaialable from: The Hydroponics Wick System Demystified.
Tags: Gardening, hydroponics gardening, hydroponics gardening systems, hydroponics wick system, indoor gardeningSeptember 07 2010 | Gardening | No Comments »