 Hey everybody, it's that time of year again. Everything outside is dying, so it's time to grow inside. You can see my tomatoes here have perished and this is my 2012, 2013 winter indoor hydropanics kickoff. So sit back and enjoy. Well, I'm starting off this year with a brand new bag of hydropan, this is a 10 liter. The last bag I bought was back in 2006 and I've used them here after years, just washed them off each time I used them and brand new sheet of rock wool cubes, these are 1.5 inch. I prefer these right here, the 1 inch cubes because I get more in there cheaper and they work the same. So let me show you what I'm going to do to wash off these hydropanics. You've got to wash them off before you use them. Okay, the best way I've found to wash your hydropanics, to get all the dust off of it because you don't want to dust in your nutrient solution is to get one of these six inch 5 gallon bucket net pots that fit right on top of a 5 gallon bucket. I'm not going to snap it on right now. So my dude just take the hose and spray them off, fill it up like that and they're stick the hose and then get them in there. And see how cloudy that is. I decided to grow some hoist meadows in the 5 gallon bucket. So what I'm going to do is drill a hole right here, under the handle, install a grommet and this elbow here. I'll use this tubing here to have a drainage tube and this handle will support the tubing. One easy way to get a grommet in there is use some dish washing soap, it makes it nice and slimy and it should be able to push it right in there. Put that too much effort like so and do the same on the elbow, put some dish washing detergent and get the push right in. All right, drill a quick hole near the top of the bucket for the air supply line. We'll feed the tubing through there. All right, next I'm going to drill an access hole or an hole for short to be able to fill a nutrient solution without lifting up the sled and disturbing the plant. So here I go with that. And I bought this rubber stopper from the American Science Center. It's you plug the hole, what I'm not using it. Oh, he easy can see here. I attached my drainage hose and I'm going to cut a link right here. Stuff's pretty thick. Here we go. Now I did a quick test for leaks and there's no leaks and you can see my water level right there is right below the end of that pot. So everything is good to go. All right, the air stones I'm going to be using. I was using big ones like this, but they don't distribute the air so well. So I came up with this here. You can see that. It's just a splitter and two air stones off the side. I get rid of the air stones each time these are cheap. And right now I'm just going to put these in the bottom of the bucket with some hot glue. All right, do it just like this. The nozzle pointed up. And then hold it in position. This year I thought I'd try in the bucket system a tomato. And I cloned my hoi tomatoes from outdoors and you can see the roots are coming out. And I'll pick the best one of these three. They've been in there too long. See those roots are getting quite long. And let's see. I think this one looks the best. This year just like last year I'm sticking with my old reliable super air pump. And I have a pretty big collection of these aquarium pumps. And I'd rather use one air pump than five of these things. And for the tomatoes I'm using maxi grower right now putting it at 1100 p.m. And right now I have a batch mixing in here. And you can see how well that air goes in there. And what I did is filled it up just to the bottom of the net pot. So all the spray gets going in there. And also marked my hose there. So I know where that level is. All right time to put the tomato into the hydroponic unit. And I'm just going to cut this little branch off there. Put the plant all the way at the bottom. And then fill it all around the hydrosin. And this hydroponic unit I'm growing cucumbers again this year. Last year I did an heirloom cucumbers and they're such a pain to pollinate that I thought I'd go with the different kinds. These are called diva. They have all female flowers and self pollinate. So I don't have to pollinate. And these I put in here about two weeks ago and they've been in here too long. You can see the roots are popping out of the top of the rock wall. And I'll just pick the three best plants and put them in this unit. And then for the instead of string, I'm going to use this mesh to have them climate instead of having to deal with clipping them to the strings. It should be a lot more easier this year. How'd you like that time work? Here we are three two days later. And there's this Mr. Sleeck and he's guarding all the cucumbers. Look how much they've grown. And that's made over there. That's the way tomato. Look how big that thing got. That's just 32 days of growth. And what I did I switched out the lighting. This is now a 400 watt high pressure sodium. And on this side I have a 400 watt metal halide. It was the light side built a couple years ago now. And down here I have a rogue tomato plant that was outside in the 28 degree weather. Stunted its growth. But it's producing one tomato. It's kind of like a Charlie Brown Christmas tree tomato plant. So it's a Van Wurt O'Hio tomato. And hopefully I'll get some seeds out of that. It seems to be doing fine now for a few weeks. So let me give you a closer look at what's going on here. All right, here's a quick look at the Hoi Tomato plant. If you remember last summer it was the biggest tomato I ever grown. And I wanted to keep the strain going. I saved some seeds from other tomatoes, but I need more seeds because one tomato doesn't have very many seeds. And this thing is starting to have flowers right now. And you can see how green and healthy it is. Let me show you the little buds popping up. Here's a quick look at the flower buds. And you can see them right there. Not going to cut them. No. But I am going to cut this sucker right here. Here's a above shot of my cucumber plants. As you can see they've gone totally bonkers. And their tendrils are cleaning everything and anything. Like you can see here if they're cleaning to the hordes of the electrical for the lights. And over here they're just another cord that was just hanging there. They're gripping too. But I did have one problem with these things. And let me show you what that is. And here's the problem I was talking about. This is a male flower. And back there is another male flower. And up here another male flower. But the problem is this is a diva cucumber plant. And it's only supposed to produce female flowers and not require a pollination. And I have zero female flowers so far. And looking up online they say when the plant gets stressed it only produces male flowers. So this may not be the best variety of cucumber to grow in hydroponics because hydroponics can throw things off very easily and stress out the plant. So I'm going to order some seeds of another variety that produces female flowers only. And if these aren't producing female flowers by the time those seeds get here I'm going to rip these things out. Anyway let me show you what else is going on. Well it's that time up here again. And the seed catalogs for the 2013 growing season have started coming in the mail. Here is a Stokes catalog for 2013. And this came in about two weeks ago. Here is a seed savers catalog for 2013. It came in about three days ago. And last one coming was Johnny selected seeds. These are only three catalogs I've gotten so far. I usually get about 50. I created a web page where you can just click the link to the seed company and they'll bring you right to the catalog ordering page. It's pretty cool and fast to order catalogs all at once. And I'll put the link below the video. So go order some catalogs because some run out like totally tomatoes they always run out every year. So get them all over there and that's all for this time. So until next time take care everybody.