 Hi everybody and welcome to Little Garden on the Prairies. So we are downstairs in my indoor growing space. It is middle of October and the indoor growing season has started for me. So the weather here in Saskatchewan has been really nice this fall. We're at mid-October and we still are having really nice warm days but the nights are getting very cold and it's been freezing. The garden has been all cleaned up and pretty much put to bed for the winter season. So it's time to get growing some stuff indoors. So the first thing that I'm going to get going is a tomato cutting that I took out of my garden this fall. It's been in a jar of water here for you know since early September. I took a clipping from one of my favorite tomato plants and that is the Sun Gold Cherry Tomato. I put it in water here and as you can see it has got a really big root system going here. I did add a little bit of nutrients to the water about a week and a half ago because I figured it was probably needing some nutrients and then the roots have really taken off. So we're going to be planting it up using my favorite hydroponic method and that is the cracky method. So we are going to mix up nutrient water, fill up this container, see if we can get the roots worked through this net cup and get it set up and it'll go into my grow tent. So I'm going to start off by just trimming off some of these little branches at the bottom just so we have a smaller plant to start with. As you can see here it's kind of spread out into two directions and I think it'll be best... I'm just going to cut this big piece off. I know that seems a little extreme but I think just starting with something like this is all we need to get going. So the first thing we're going to do is get our nutrients set up and I'm going to be using general hydroponics nutrients here. So this is a three-part system. You have the directions on the back as to how much of each of these you need to mix up and I'm going to be using a four liter jug. So this is just regular tap water that I've taken from our system here and I just let it sit usually in a container for a few days just to let any of that treatment that's in the water just kind of dissipate and settle. So today we're going to be mixing up our nutrients using the general hydroponic three-part system. So when you're adding them to your water you put them in order of micro grow and then blue. And on the back of your containers it will give you different measurements of each of these three that you need to put into your water based on the size of the plant that you are growing. So it could be at the cutting and seedling stage when you just have a little tiny plant started and you don't want a very strong solution. And then from there it moves into a mild vegetative, aggressive, and then it gets into the blooming stage and the fruiting and ripening stage. So there is several different levels here and it gives you the different measurements of each of these ingredients that you should use. For today, since I am growing, this one that I would say is kind of in the mild vegetative stage. It's not really of seedling. It's a little more progressed than that. So we're going to use that as our guideline for our nutrients today. And it's a very simple recipe of five meals of each of these to go into a four liter or a one gallon size container. So you'll always start with the micro first when you're mixing up your three-part nutrients and as I said we're doing five meals and you want to make sure that it is mixed in well before adding your other two ingredients here. So each of these nutrients contains different levels of NPK. You'll see the three numbers on each of them and the chart at the back gives you those different measurements to use so that you're getting the right balance of the nitrogen or the potassium and the phosphate based on how big your plants are at that point. Okay so once you got that micro in there and well mixed in, you can add the next one which is the grow. Again it's going to be five meals of each. Finally it is five meals of the bloom and that's all there is to mixing your nutrients. You are now ready with a nice batch of nutrient water to set up your hydroponic plant. So this is the vessel we're going to be growing our tomato plant in. This is one of my favorite things to use. It's a Folger's coffee container. The red color keeps the light out. It's got a nice handle here that makes it easy to pull in and out of the grow tent and it's easy to cut a hole in the top just to fit the size of the net cop that you're using. So we're going to start off by filling up our container with some nutrient water here. So as we have the four liters here I don't think we will need to use the whole thing. You just want those roots to be in the nutrient water but you don't want to have them totally submerged. The roots need to have air to breathe and to grow so you don't want to fill up your container too full. Plus we know that we have some pretty good roots going here so it should have no problem reaching the nutrient water. So I just kind of do a check here and I can see that once we get some roots through here, they definitely will be reaching that water okay. So this is going to be a little bit of a challenge. Usually I start my plants from seed and the roots grow through the net cup more naturally but as you can see here we have quite a strong root system going already. So I'm just going to kind of have a look here and see. You can see most of these roots are starting further up here so that means I'm going to cut away some of this stem and I want them to, some of them, they will slowly work their way through themselves but I'm going to just try to pull some of the roots through the net cup just to kind of get them going in the right direction. I'm actually going to cut a little bit more off even if it takes some of the roots just so it fits a little bit better here. That way when it's set up it's going to be standing kind of like that so it'll be a little bit stronger. Just going to try get some roots through here. I'm just going to use a little stick here to try and just push some of these roots through the holes here at the bottom. So I just kind of gently get some of them going through here without doing too much damage. So I think that's enough to go right now. I think you know once these get into the nutrient waters they will really start growing and working their way down. So we're just going to get it in place and to hold this in place we're going to use some of our clay balls here which I'm just going to put around the stem to give it stability. Also helps to keep all the light out, fill it right up to the top and then none of that light will get in there and cause LJ in your water. So that's basically a very quick setup using a cutting that you can take from your garden. As you can see these roots are touching the nutrient water and within a week or so they should be really taking off and sucking up more of that nutrients and this plant will start growing. Okay so that is one way you can set up your hydroponic plants indoors and that is by taking some cuttings from a plant usually from one outdoors bringing it in rooting it and getting it set up in a cracky system like this. This should work with pepper plants I've done it with strawberries. I haven't tried it with cucumbers but tomatoes are usually pretty easy to get rooted and plant in this way. So you don't need to have a grow tent to do this. You can also just get some grow lights like I also have. I'll show you my setup there as well. You can grow lettuces, tomatoes under a couple of LED grow lights on a shelf. If you don't have a grow tent that's okay. The best thing to do is to get a timer set up on your plugins and so that your lights will come on a set time each day and you don't have to worry about it. So I have mine set for 6 a.m. they shut off at 10 o'clock at night so they get about you know 12 to 14 hours of light and then 8 to 10 of darkness. So I have got peppers, more tomatoes, a couple different varieties of tomatoes. I got some dwarfs and I got some cherries that I'm going to be setting up in these containers and also probably in my aero garden my let pot, my hortues, my I-do systems. I have a lot of those as well and I will keep updating you on how everything's doing here in the grow tent. So I hope you enjoyed this video. Please don't forget to like, leave a comment and subscribe and I will keep you updated on how everything is doing in my indoor growing space. Thanks for watching!