Server Racks - you don’t interact with them often, but you will need to with the Hydroponics one.

Also, your setup is too clean. Water will drip, spill, the pebbles will fall. Looks really nice, though.

About 5 years ago, I worked with a Climate Research Scientist friend, growing exotic plants in dutch-buckets, tower aeroponics, and rack mounted red-lit setups to induce Vitamin B-12 (only found in meat, so deficiencies develops in vegetarian) to Spinach trying to produce Super Spinash.

> Farmers discovered that bright leaf tobacco needs thin, starved soil, and those who could not grow other crops found that they could grow tobacco. Formerly unproductive farms reached 20–35 times their previous worth. By 1855, six Piedmont counties adjoining Virginia led Virginia's tobacco market

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Types_of_tobacco

This is one beast of a plant. My plants stayed alive when I stopped spraying water in September and only died because of frost in late December. They were about 40 cm high due to the small volume of the root chamber.

Anyway it's a great choice for an outdoor aeroponics setup.

One setup I had was a vertical (hydroponic) window farm, which looked pretty great, but the roots start to get into the tubing, which I suspect could happen in the rack-mount system too. It also wasn't simple to just take out one plant for maintenance.

A small NFT (nutrient film technique) box has worked very well, requires very little material as substrate and is easy to maintain. Might get problematic if growing the same plants for over a year since the roots can grow a lot and basically partially outgrow the system so the flow of water starts being insufficient and therefore might need at least some trimming and replanting if some of the roots start to suffer.

I'm in the process of trying out deep water culture, which requires even less materials since there's no growing medium, just water, and roots are submerged so doesn't have the same issues as NFT. Probably has it's own problems, though, and air pumps can be loud!

Anyhow, most of my plants are in a passive hydroponics system. "Kratky method" is something a bit similar. I basically replaced soil in pots with clay pellets and manage watering so that I have to water every 2-3 days. Requires clay pellets as the substrate so needs a bit more effort up front, but doesn't require electricity and is more portable when using small/medium sized pots. Pellets can be reused (at least most of them). I also added a short tube for monitoring water level and possible maintenance if I need to wash / flush the pot with the plant in it.

Regarding fertilizing, I rarely do any accurate measurements anymore. I got a few pump bottles and measured how much fertilizer one push gets me and wrote on the bottles how many pushes per litre. I also eye-ball the water color a bit since I know how it should look like.

Oh, and the plants that have done well for me, and can grow for a long time with multiple harvests (so no lettuce): peppers, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, trying some small strawberries

This is fun!

The following isn’t a knock on anyone doing cool stuff like this: I’ve avoided any sort of tinkering and automation of my gardening because I find gardening to be a slower-moving, meditative escape from technology. My brain shifts into a different mode (almost a flow state?) when I’m out working in the soil and tending to my plants.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJuo6Te1fM4 (2.5 minutes)

The fact that it works at all after a number of years, is surprising to me, given everything that goes on with it: You've got a moist environment with water pumped through it multiple times a day, fertilizer in the water crusting up in places, living plants with their roots growing into the pipes, algae growth, and a lot of parts that are shuffled around often.

There might well be other systems around these days that are the same or better, I wouldn't know, the Gardyn is just what I ended up with when I researched it years ago and I'm happy with it. For downsides, seeds are expensive from Gardyn, but you can plant your own. I do buy some from Gardyn because they have a big selection, and they usually come out good, which regular seeds often don't for whatever reason. They try to push their subscription service but I don't need it, so don't use it.

Hope this doesn't come off as advertisement, as I said there may well be better options (would like to hear about them), but this one works for me for a pretty hassle-free experience.

[1] https://mygardyn.com/product/gardyn-home-kit/

    1. Convert acres of agricultural land into a datacenter.
    2. Put plants inside.
    3. ???
    4. Profit?

My motivation to work on such a project was my disbelief in human mankind to keep our planet earth habitable.

I do that manually with my plants twice a week, they have flowers almost all year, but it's a chore to bring them out, flood them, make them drain and bring them back home.

Also my wife always yells at me because I always wet the floor in the process.