Indoor gardeners check out this DYI guide to build a wick hydroponic system for your house or office. This step-by-step guide will help you build a cheap hydroponic watering system that needs less attention than how you likely water your plants now. Wick-based hydroponic growing helps protect your plant from the drying out then over-watering cycle that hurts the tips and edges of your plant leaves. Try this easy system and visit http://www.indoorgardenhq.com for more information on growing plants inside.

1. Build a wick watering system
Chris Buhler
Indoor Garden HQ

2. Most indoor plant damage is caused
by poor watering.
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Tip burn like this is
usually caused by
letting the plant dry
out too much then
watering it too much.
Find out more about how plants drink and avoiding tip burn at indoorgardenhq.

3. The things you'll need...
This is what we used:
Knife or boxcutter (not shown)
Cloth – absorbent preferred (not shown)
Container/pot with good drainage
Container that's watertight
Something to lift pot with drainage off
bottom of watertight pot
Growing media (such as coconut coir)
Plants
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4. Step 1: Prep the pot
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5. Be careful when you cut.
Don't cut toward yourself and take your
time!
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6. Step 2: add the wick
The wick needs to be long enough to easily rest on the bottom of the watertight
container and also come midway up the pot that contains the plant.
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7. Step 3: put something in watertight
container to hold up pot
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We used a brick that
we broke up outside
by dropping it several
times.
Please be careful of
your toes and use
eye protection if you
copy this method.
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8. Step 4: add soilless media
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Hold the wick up as you
add the media (we used
coconut coir)
You'll want the top media
of the plant in it's former
container to be level with
the top media that you
add.
The top of the media
should be 1 to 2 inches
below the pot lip.
Why use soilless media? Read this blog post on indoorgardenhq.com

9. Step 5: add plant and more media
If your plant roots are
in a tight ring around
the media, gently pull
some roots out of the
ring.
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10. ...the wick is best about halfway
between the pot side and plant stem.
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11. I water the plant from the top a little...
... then add water to
the bottom container.
Make sure that the
wick sits on the
bottom submerged
and that the water is
below the bottom of
the upper pot.
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12. In the future you will need to:
Water the plant by adding water into the watertight container rather
than directly watering the plant's media. (The wick does that job).
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Make sure that the bottom container does not dry out.
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Make sure that the water level in the lower container never reaches
the height of the upper container's bottom.
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Every 4 to 6 weeks water from the top to prevent salts from building
up too much in the root zone media.
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13. I should have a
picture of this in a
nicer container, but
we didn't have one
big enough. The pot
and pail can just be
put into a large
decorative pot.
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14. This one has a nicer container
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The spout on the
pitcher leaves
enough of a hole that
one can water it (you
wouldn't want
something tight all
the way around).
It is difficult in this pot
to see the water
level, so you'd need
to be extra careful
not to overfill it.

15. For more information on indoor gardening click here.

16. Special thanks to Kaytee!
All pictures and text in this document are copyright 2013 by Chris Buhler. Do not use them without express written
permission of Chris Buhler.
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