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I have always been fascinated with the idea of growing plants without soil especially after I visited Epcot at Disney World here in central Florida. They have a few acre hydroponic set up that would make any grower never look at the conventional way of growing plants again.

Then when a grow store opened up in Tampa FL I jumped at the chance to buy my fist hydroponic garden from the largest maker of hydroponic gardens. Bad design, to expensive. After the first harvest I redesigned the garden to meet my needs.

After reading an article in a magazine called Pot for Pennies that used recycled two liter soda bottles and PVC pipe to build a hydroponic system I could see the possibilities of something I could build inexpensively.

After building a few indoor commercial gardens I built a 30x30 600 plant greenhouse and filled it with every kind of vegetable, herb and spice, and ornamental plant that I could find at my local nurseries. I soon realized their wasn't many plants that I couldn't grow in this system and in some cases in half the time. I was surprise at how easy it was to grow hydroponically.

After test marketing a verity of sizes and the different kinds of plants that grew best in this system I headed for my local flea market to see what kind of reaction I would get from the public. To my surprise I was overwhelmed from the reaction I got.

The people not only bought everything I had in inventory, they bought my display models and wanted the plants too. But what most of the people wanted was information about building their own home hydroponic garden.

From their I built a 50 ft. by 50 ft. shade cloth greenhouse and filled it with 500 tomato plants to test the system commercially.

Inter the World Wide Web.

After teaching myself web page building I went on line in early 1996 to make available what I had learned to the public and would worry about how to make a profit from it in the future.

After selling numerous small gardens locally and a 100 unit greenhouse system to Evans High School in Orlando and a dozen 16 plant gardens to Fisk University in Tennessee , I began to realize the interest in hydroponics was overwhelming.

I came up with the name Pipe Dreams Hydroponics because the gardens are made out of PVC pipe and not because the future of this company is a pipe dream.

I try to keep up with the latest technology which isn't easy on a farmers salary but I know the Internet is going to be a big part of the future of this company as a link between ordinary people around the world exchanging ideas about hydroponics and discovering that yes it is as fun and easy as it looks.

Unlike other web sites that try to make a buck from everyone who visits their site, this web site will be devoted to the free flow of information between people around the world.

Stay tuned to Hydroponics OnLine because it will be constantly under construction in order to bring you a real World Wide Web service that is not only fun and informative but could very well be used to feed not only your family but the world family.

Ron Hancock aka HydroRon

This is what I did before I got into hydroponics. (JPG pictures)

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