Light Stands

Lights need to be hung carefully on a sturdy frame.  We’ve built many frames for only a few dollars using parts from our local hardware store. A hood and bulb can weigh up to 50 lbs., and lighting stands should support that weight with the possibility of stress from all angles.

Never cut corners with construction. Lighting fixtures are a fire hazard if they are not properly secured and have adequate clearance. Learn how to make your own light stand.Stands designed specifically for hoods and trays are available on our site through special order only. These stands are steel, and expensive to ship which is why they are not included in our online inventory. Email us for a specific quote on stands.
Active Aqua Tray Stands (special order only): 2x4: $166.95; 65.0 lbs.
4x4: $261.95; 72.0 lbs.
8x4: $379.95; 90.0 lbs.

About Development

I’m proud to introduce hydroharbor.com. This felt like writing a novel in algebra, and I’m anticipating at least another 3 months of edits. It would be enormously validating if this website went on to become a huge success. However, even if I move on to do other things, it gives me a strong sense of accomplishment.

HydroHarbor.com is clean, efficient, requires little maintenance, and could run forever. There’s a sense of pride in listening to the hum of an engine that you have been working on for a long time. Sometimes you sell that car for less than you put into it, but that doesn’t remove the satisfaction of knowing it works.

HydroHarbor.com is an organic website, developed specifically for urban gardening retail. All open-sourced and original content. You can define your own standards for organic, but my focus has been to build a resource that is sustainable (opensource), with virtually no overhead, that can be expanded and maintained with even a little revenue. The content of the website is the local, real experience of gardeners here in Arizona. We welcome content from contributors and sponsor an affiliate program.

We don’t use any facebook plugins on our main website. This is because we take our privacy policy seriously, and even an unclicked facebook like button recovers the IP address of the vistor, the page URL, and the date to the millisecond. This is not important to most people, but a few people appreciate it. Our blog, however, is fully integrated with social plug-ins as well as our youtube channel.

The advantage hydroharbor.com has is that it carries no subscription to expensive licensed software because all of the code is original or opensource. The majority of online retailers pay monthly for software that manages their inventory and transactions for them. We manage the entire directory we use for the website, and can recover and launch the website and data anytime if we ever needed to.

This website could not have been possible without the help of my brother Nate, an expert on hydroponics, and the participation of local retailers.

I appreciate any feedback, especially critical feedback!

Educators and Community Organizers

HydroHarbor.com supports community education! We provide discounts for educators and community organizers to set up projects like gardens, greenhouses, classroom experiments and displays. Describe your project to us, and we’ll find solutions to match your budget. Let us worry about the details!

Our website hydroharbor.com aims to be a comprehensive educational resource for sustainable and urban agriculture. Hydroponics involves a scientific approach to gardening. We mix elemental nutrients specifically for different stages of plant development, measure pH and dissolved solids, and identify mineral deficiencies in growing plants.

Indoors, we use High Intensity Discharge bulbs that are chemically engineered to produce an ideal spectrum of light. These bulbs target plant photoreceptors that only absorb certain wavelengths. Different bulbs are used for different stages of the plant’s life cycle.

If you have a project in mind, we’ll help you plan from start to finish. We would love to work with you! Feel free to email me, or use our contact form.

Dan Porter
dan@hydroharbor.com


We've designed a few setups that will work great as classroom displays:

400W Start To Finish Deepwater Kit

400W Complete Coco Setup

Starting Seedlings

Chrysthanthemums have been reported by NASA to reduce indoor air pollution. Also, Dalmatian Chrysanthemums are an industrial source of insecticide, because they naturally contain active chemicals called Pyrethrins that inhibit the nervous system of insects. While I prefer not to use industrially refined insecticides, the chrysanthemum plant naturally repels insects, making it a perfect companion plant to your garden. We grew some chrysanthemums from seed to put in our garden and share with friends.

We used the following merchandise to sprout our chrysanthemums:

+10”x20” Cut Kit Tray
+72 cell Square Cut Kit Insert
+81 Jumpstart Pellets (peat moss) +2” Seedling Humidity Dome +3ml Pipette All of the parts we use are in our Seed Starter Kit

The end of a paintbrush is enough to open holes in the pellets before planting the seeds. For these chrysanthemums, it was ideal to plant the seeds just under the surface. Young seedlings will need light as soon as they spread their seed leaves, so it’s important to plant them based on the size of the seed and by what has been proven effective for each species.
We only used half the cells, so we checkerboarded them for even moisture, but there’s no reason not to fill the tray. Later, we’ll transfer the successful seedlings into their own 5-1/2 inch square planter pots To contrast the JumpStart peat pellets, we planted the chrysanthemum seeds in a tray filled with Coco (ground coconut husk fiber). Seedlings can be temperamental, so try a few different approaches to get a good feel of what will work best for you or your seed variety. Humidity domes help control moisture, but in some environments they may create an ideal climate for mold. Try less watering with a dome or more watering without a dome and see which works best for you. There are a number of ways to keep the trays hydrated. A pipette will give you control, but takes the most time. You can use a spray bottle to keep the plugs wet and water less frequently. Soaking the trays will give you the most time between waterings, but creates the risk of dampening off (which means to rot from being too wet). Plants won't need nutrients until they have begun photosynthesis, indicated by green leaves and then only use weak nutrients. Make sure plants have plenty of light as soon as they begin photosynthesis to avoid stretching.


We use a 24” T5 Fixture that holds four 24 watt High Output T5 bulbs, hung from a simple board stand.
After a few weeks, young plants can be strong enough to transplant into soil or larger hydroponic systems.

-Nato

Introduction

Hydroharbor.com is a hydroponics retail website focused on urban gardening and sustainable living. The website is designed to be a community resource for anyone seeking to bring plants into their homes. Our tutorials and featured products will appear on our blog at blog.hydroharbor.com where you can follow us on Google+, or our facebook page: www.facebook.com/hydroharbor

More than anything we want to bridge the gap that keeps many people from growing their own fruits and vegetables at home. We have the materials and experience to help new urban gardeners grow healthy plants even indoors with limited space. If you live where you have the advantage of the full sun and a favorable climate, we encourage using hydroponics outside for incredible yields.

Tell us about your specific situation and we will give it some thought and offer suggestions to help you turn empty space into green space. Write to us here!

Illustrations and tutorials appear on our website from the first menu option START GROWING. As we expand the instructions on these pages, we update our blog with the new content and features.

We are actively enrolling affiliates to earn commission by promoting our website. This can be as simple as linking to our website from a post, or featuring a product on a blog or newsletter. You can learn more about our affiliate program here: hydroharbor.com/affiliates

HydroHarbor.com is the joint project of Nate and Dan Porter and a lot of other contributors. To those who have helped, and will help, thank you!  

Affiliate Program

HydroHarbor.com now has an affiliate program! This allows anyone to earn a commission on sales when they refer potential customers to our website. This is your invitation to create an account and spread the word about urban gardening and sustainable living! 

You will receive a unique referral code when you create an account at hydroharbor.com. From your login, click "Customer Affiliate Tracking Code" for complete instructions.

Create an Affiliate Account

The Basics