| 摘要 |
A modular soilless garden system can be started as a small garden and built gradually into a larger, automatic garden system irrigated by a pump. Two formed plastic tanks, a larger sump tank and a smaller grow tank, are provided with barbed nipples at their base for connecting the tanks with flexible plastic hose and barbed insert T-fittings to assemble them in any number of different sized systems. In one embodiment, the sump tank is designed to contain multiple grow tanks and a water supply for irrigating them. This is fed to the grow tanks by a pump located outside the sump tank. Using the hoses and T-fittings, multiple sump tanks and grow tanks can be connected and added on to the pump so a larger system can be gradually built. In a second embodiment, the smaller grow tank can be used individually with one hose and any one gallon container as a manual garden by watering from the top of the tank and draining through the bottom of the tank through the hose into that container. The grow tank has an insert nipple formed at its lowest point so it can be filled and drained from the bottom when being irrigated by the pump. It also has an overflow drain a certain distance from the top to drain off water at a desired level during the pumping cycle when the grow tank is being used in the sump tank irrigated by the pump. When the pump is used to irrigate the grow tanks, as it is in the first embodiment, water is pulled from the reservoir out of the sump tank by the pump and then pushed back through the sump tank in a second closed line connected to the grow tanks, to fill them from the bottom up to their overflow drain, at which point water spills from the grow tanks down to the sump tank below, thus recirculating the water through the grow tanks and the sump tanks until the pump is turned off. When the pump is no longer running, the water flow is reversed and drains by gravity back from the grow tanks to the pump and into the sump tanks to be stored until the next pumping cycle.
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