Easy Home Gardening using 100-yen store goods

Right after I visited Mr. Ito in Yokosuka to interview for a radio show, I started this home gardening at home.  Please check his book for more detailed information.  “Hydroponics with 100yen Goods.”

Prepare a 3cm-deep plastic tray, available at a 100yen store.  Select your favorite seedlings with soil around roots, approximately as high as 10cm.  Stuff them in a mesh filter bag fully.  Then place expanded vermiculite (an ore, pumice type) about 1cm wide all around the bag.  I have 10 plants of mint and roquette.  I also have a plant of snap peas.  Now it has gotten cold to leave the plants outside, I recommend that you keep the plants indoor or start in March, if you are interested in trying.

Get a liquid fertilizer, HYPONICA (available for \1200 on-line shopping) and dilute it with water for 500 times.  I usually keep the diluted fertilizer in six of 2-liter plastic bottles.  Pour the diluted fertilizer up to 1cm deep in a tray.  When it’s almost gone, add some more up to 1cm deep again. 
That’s it!  My plants have grown much bigger than those must have been if planted in soil.  Mint and roquette have become over 40cm high with a full of branches and a stem as thick as 1cm. 

I am planning to try mini tomatoes soon.  My office staff has experimentally planted a tomato from a seed and I’m going to use one seeding from hers.  Now it is as tall as 20cm.  I’m planning to move the plant inside my house so that I can get some tomatoes. 

The points that I like about this home gardening using the liquid fertilizer:
1.You can prepare the materials cheap at a 100yen store.
2.Making the diluted liquid fertilizer is so easily that you can keep it in a stock. 
3.The plants absorb the liquid fertilizer much more directly than those planted in soil as if babies drink milk.  That stimulates the plants to grow quickly.
4.It is okay to have several plants together in a tray, and you can even place several trays in a small balcony.
5.Utilizing this technology in the upcoming low eco-growth era in earnest, we can grow vegetables like tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, and others which will help our family expenses in a long way.

Just be careful not to pour so much liquid fertilizer that it covers the stem for 2 or 3cm high.  It may lead to rot the root.  Mr. Ito showed me that he could get more than 10 baskets of mini tomatoes from only 5 plants!  I was so amazed and that’s how I made up my mind to try by myself!!  Now I can have a fresh mint tea every day.  My fresh roquette adds excellent flavor to my salad.  My snap peas have bloomed flowers under the cold sky of December.