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The Humble Gardener's Beginner Guide โ free download
Your first hydroponic garden shouldn't be the one you throw away.
I've been growing food without soil since 2012. The Humble Gardener's Beginner Guide to Mastering Hydroponics is everything I'd tell you standing in my grow room โ the six systems and which one to start with, the pH range that decides whether your plant can eat at all, and how to catch root rot in week one instead of week four.
Tell me where to send it.
Chad โ Humble Growth
What's inside
The whole table of contents. Nothing held back for later.
Six chapters, with diagrams of every system and photos of what problems actually look like โ not stock images of lettuce.
- 01
Take out the middle man
Why growing without soil works, explained in about two minutes and zero biology lectures.
- 02
Six ways to grow without soil
Kratky, deep water culture, drip, ebb & flow, NFT and aeroponics โ each one diagrammed, with what it's genuinely good at and who should start there.
- 03
pH decides what your plant can even eat
The 5.5โ6.5 window, why a reading that looks "a little off" is ten times off, and the order you're supposed to adjust in. This is the chapter most people needed a year ago.
- 04
Nutrients, without the biology class
What the three numbers on the bottle mean, the supporting cast behind them, and exactly what I mix.
- 05
Root rot: catch it in week one
Four stages in real photos, what to do at each one, the water temperature that starts the whole thing, and the two stages where the plant is already gone.
- 06
The toolbox
Every meter, pump, light, fan and nutrient I actually run after fourteen years of buying the wrong ones first.
Page one
From chapter 3 โ the window where every nutrient is actually available
Where this came from
It did not start pretty.
start here โ
These are my own grow spaces, in order, out of my own camera roll. Every single one of them taught me something I'd have paid to skip. The guide is that shortcut.
SEP 2021
A wire shelf in the living room and a forty dollar zip-up greenhouse. Cucumbers, basil, and a lot of guessing.
SEP 2022
The hallway. Seed trays under one shop light and PVC I cut on the floor because there was nowhere else to cut it.
FEB 2023
The first tower I built myself. Those stains are nutrient runoff โ I had the flow wrong and didn't know it yet.
JUL 2024
Roots I'd have panicked about in 2021. White, stringy, separate strands โ this is what you're aiming for.
MAY 2025
Tomatoes on one side, cucumbers up the netting on the other. One tower, four square feet.
JAN 2026
Outside on Maui. Exactly the same principles as the wire shelf. Better view.
Before you give me your email
Who this is actually for.
I'd rather you skip it than open it and find it's not your thing.
Read it if
- You've never grown hydroponically and want to start without wasting three months
- You've killed a grow and never worked out why
- You bought a system and it's sitting in the box
- You want to know what gear is worth the money before you buy it
Skip it if
- You're running a commercial operation โ this is written for home growers
- You already dial in EC by crop and inspect roots weekly. You're past it.
- You want a magic system that needs no maintenance. That's not a thing.
Who's sending it
Hey โ I'm Chad.
I've been growing food without soil since 2012, first on a shelf indoors and now on towers outside on Maui. I make videos about it, I answer a lot of the same questions, and eventually I sat down and wrote the answers out properly.
That's this guide. It's free because the fastest way to get more people growing their own food is to stop making the first year so hard.
