Home School: Hydroponic Gardening #2

I am just a little frustrated with myself because I had intended to take pictures of the entire process of putting this system together. But I forgot... side tracked are we?
So I will just tell you what we did.

1. You see the little coco puff like things in the planter? That is called hydroton. It's expanded clay balls. We had to take that outside and rinse it until the water ran clear.
2. Before we could put it in the planter, we had to put a felt-like white material in called the moisture mat. It was pushed all the way down into the bottom of the baskets and made to conform to the shape of it.
3. Then we put the hydroton in on top of that up to within two inches of the top line on the basket.
4. Then we wrapped the remaining moisture mat over the top of the hydroton and placed our plants on top of the moisture mat.
5. Then we filled in with hydroton all around the plants and up to one layer over the base of the plant stems.
6. We plugged in the pump and turned it on.

Ideally, this system shouldn't be placed as close to the window as we have it. But we had to make do. The reason is that it may become too hot by the window and scorch the plants and the plants will all lean toward the window and this unit is too hard to turn every day. So this is what we are doing to improvise:

• We covered the bottom part of the window with tin foil to help keep the reservoir from getting too hot.
• We bought and put up car window shades that can be rolled down during the hottest parts of the afternoon to keep my plants from scorching.
• We bought and hung an emergency aluminum blanket to reflect light back so my plants won't lean so much toward the window.
• We will purchase a small electric fan to help circulate the air and cool the plants when it is too hot.

The only frustration we have had so far with the hydroponic system is that it leaks around the water level indicator, so I have to keep a towel stuffed in under there to soak it up. We will get some aquarium sealant to seal it the next time we take it apart and hopefully remedy the problem.