🌱 Home Gardening with Hydroponics - My Garage Starter Plant Holding System

Welcome gardening enthusiasts to another home hydroponics gardening post. Here I will show you my garden systems and how I go about growing the majority of our produce-type foods right at home, even with NO farmable land.

Over the years I have established a process for starting seeds that allows me to keep a constant supply of new plants to rotate into my gardens as needed - this is known as "successive planting" in the agriculture world. As with everything in gardening, my way is not the only way to do things, but it's the way the works best for me. Over time you will learn what methods work best for you and where you live. Since I'm in the process of starting all my gardens over from seeds, this is a good time for me to continue showing my other garden systems and explaining how they all work together.

Young Tomato (left) and Eggplant (right edge) in the garage system.

Garage Starter Plant Holding System

As you may know by now, I usually start my seeds inside in small bio-dome systems under LED grow lights. Once the seedlings get to a certain size and have established a decent root system I transplant them to my other systems. For larger plants like tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, beans, and melons, I will move them to my larger hydroponics system in the garage. This system gives me the flexibility to continuously grow plants of varying ages and holding them until they are large enough and strong enough to be moved to my outdoor gardens.

Side view of the whole garage system.

My garage system is 8' wide, by 2' deep, by 6' high and is split into 2 levels. The lower level has five(5) 3" pipes that each hold 33 plants, for a total of 165 plants, with a height to light clearance of 10 inches. The upper level has three(3) 3" pipes that each hold 17 plants, for a total of 51 plants, with a height to light clearance of 15 inches. At max capacity this system can support 216 plants.

Each level has eight(8) 48" long custom-made LED grow light bars, 4 rows with 2 lights connected together. Each LED bar uses 25w of electricity for a total of 400w when they are all on at the same time. Considering the amount of light they put out, and limited red/blue wavelengths they produce, they are very efficient. In the past I had T5 daylight bulbs that used 55w each (880w) where about 40% of the energy is lost to heat and only 50% of the visible light spectrum is usable by the plants. So it's worth having the garage glow like a nightclub to get the energy savings and better growth from the plants.

The lower level is primarily used for lettuces, chard, herbs, and other smaller plants. Very rarely do I use all the spots at the same time, I usually use every other spot, but I built in the extra capacity in case it's needed in the future. The upper level with it's higher clearance and wider plant spacing is for larger plants like tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants, and peppers.

Showing both ends of the system.

Feed-line side with 1/2" line manifold with 1/4" out lines to removable caps.
Upper level pipes have 3 feed lines, lower level pipes have 2 each.
Pumps ON 24/7, Lights are on the timer - ON 6am to 7pm, OFF at noon for 15 min .

Return-side piping, 3"-to-2" reducers and 2" return pipes.
The caps on each are removable for system cleaning.
27 Gallon reservoir tank. with access panel cut out.

This shows every other row covered with seeds planted.
I no longer start seeds in the garage system like this.

A mix of plants in the lower level as well as soil-based plants in trays below.

At the time this post was written, there isn't anything growing in the garage. I'm still waiting on the seedlings growing inside. In a few more days they will be ready to put into net cups and move out to this system to mature a bit before finally moving to my outside system.

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I hope you enjoyed learning about my garage starter plant holding system.

If you have any questions or comments, just drop a reply below.

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Thanks for reading, now get out there and get GROWING!