Why this works in South Africa specifically
Two things make hydroponics unusually well-suited here. The first is water. A recirculating channel pumps the same solution past the roots and sends it back to the tank, so a bed uses somewhere around a tenth of what the same crop drinks in open soil. In a municipality that has been on restrictions three summers running, that is not an efficiency — it is the difference between a garden that survives and one that does not.
The second is that it does not need land. Most of the places that most need a food garden — a school on a hard-standing yard, a clinic in a township, a block of flats — have no topsoil worth the name. A hydroponic bed does not care. It stands on concrete, on gravel, on a stoep, on a rooftop.
Set against that: it needs electricity and it needs somebody to look after it. A soil garden forgives a week of neglect. A hydroponic bed does not. We say so plainly because a kit that gets bought for a school and then abandoned in the second term is worse than no kit at all.
less water
than the same crop grown in open soil, because the solution recirculates instead of draining away.
seed to harvest
for most leafy greens, against eight to ten in soil — nine or ten crops a year off the same channels.
of soil needed
the bed stands on concrete, gravel or a stoep. Contaminated or compacted ground is irrelevant.
How the channel actually works
All three kits use the same principle: nutrient film technique. A shallow stream of water carrying dissolved nutrient runs down a gently sloping pipe. Plants sit in net pots let into the top of the pipe, roots hanging into the stream. Because the film is only a millimetre or two deep, the top of the root mass stays in air — which is the whole trick, since roots need oxygen as much as they need water. The stream runs to the end, drops back into the reservoir, and the pump sends it round again.
The three kits at a glance
| Stoep Grower | Community Grower | Market Grower | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plant sites | 24 | 120 | 480 |
| Footprint | 1.2 m × 0.6 m × 1.5 m high | 4 m × 3 m | 8 m × 12 m |
| Built, delivered, commissioned | R5 400 | R18 800 | R76 550 |
| Produce value a year | R4 320 | R16 200 | R60 480 |
| Training included | printed guide | half a day, on site | two days, plus crop plan |
| Typical buyer | a household | a school or NPO | an emerging farmer |
Nothing proprietary. We build these out of 110 mm PVC, standard net pots and an ordinary pond pump, on purpose. If a pump dies in four years you buy another at Builders and fit it in an afternoon. There is no part in any of these kits that you can only get back from us, and no consumable we have locked you into.
Stoep Grower
A back-door food garden that fits on a townhouse patio.
What it grows
Roughly 24 heads of lettuce, spinach or a mix of herbs every five weeks — about 240 a year.
Who buys this one
Households, flats with a sunny stoep, school science rooms, a first system to learn on.
What the produce is worth
| Plant sites per cycle | 24 |
| Cycles a year | 10 |
| Heads a year | 240 |
| Resale value per head | R18 |
| Produce value a year | R4 320 |
| Kit pays for itself in | 15–17 months |
Priced at what leafy greens fetch at a gate sale or a small shop, not at supermarket shelf price. Yields assume shade in summer and no serious pest event.
What R5 400 covers
- Three 2 m channels cut, drilled and deburred, on an assembled pine A-frame
- 65 L reservoir, 800 L/h pump and timer, plumbed and run-tested before it leaves us
- Growing medium, nutrient A and B, and seedlings for your first cycle
- A printed setup card and a laminated daily-check sheet for the wall
- Courier delivery anywhere in South Africa, flat-packed with the frame pre-drilled
- 12-month warranty on the pump and fittings
- One fruit tree planted with a community — photo and location sent to you
Built to order, so allow 7 to 10 working days from payment. If your space is an odd shape or the sun comes from the wrong side, we set it out to suit — that is part of the price, not an extra.
Community Grower
Feeds a school kitchen, a creche or a church feeding scheme — and teaches while it does it.
What it grows
About 120 heads every five to six weeks — roughly 1 080 a year, or a bag of greens a day through term time.
Who buys this one
Schools, creches, churches, NPO feeding schemes, clinic gardens, CSI and ESD projects.
What the produce is worth
| Plant sites per cycle | 120 |
| Cycles a year | 9 |
| Heads a year | 1,080 |
| Resale value per head | R15 |
| Produce value a year | R16 200 |
| Kit pays for itself in | 14–16 months |
Priced at what leafy greens fetch at a gate sale or a small shop, not at supermarket shelf price. Yields assume shade in summer and no serious pest event.
What R18 800 covers
- Ten 3 m channels on three galvanised cross-stands, cut, drilled and deburred
- 210 L reservoir, 2 000 L/h pump, digital timer, manifold and return gutter plumbed
- EC and pH pens, growing medium, and three cycles of nutrient and seed
- Delivered, assembled on site and handed over running, not in boxes
- Half a day of hands-on training for up to six people, whoever will actually run it
- Wall chart and logbook for the daily readings
- 12-month warranty and phone support through your first full season
- Two fruit trees planted with a community — photos and locations sent to you
Built to order, so allow 2 to 3 weeks from payment. If your space is an odd shape or the sun comes from the wrong side, we set it out to suit — that is part of the price, not an extra.
Market Grower
A small commercial bed that can carry a wage.
What it grows
About 480 heads every five to six weeks — roughly 4 300 a year, enough to hold a standing order with a shop or a lodge.
Who buys this one
Emerging farmers, co-ops, agri-village and land reform projects, lodge and restaurant kitchens, ESD suppliers.
What the produce is worth
| Plant sites per cycle | 480 |
| Cycles a year | 9 |
| Heads a year | 4,320 |
| Resale value per head | R14 |
| Produce value a year | R60 480 |
| Kit pays for itself in | 15–17 months |
Priced at what leafy greens fetch at a gate sale or a small shop, not at supermarket shelf price. Yields assume shade in summer and no serious pest event.
What R76 550 covers
- Twenty 6 m channels in four banks on sixteen galvanised A-frame cross-stands, with working aisles
- 1 000 L tank, 5 000 L/h pump, 50 mm manifold, inline filtration and float control
- Shade net structure erected, and the DB board fitted by a qualified electrician
- Solar panel, battery and 12 V backup pump so load-shedding cannot cost you a crop
- EC and pH meters, calibration solution, and three cycles of nutrient and seed
- Two days of training, plus a written crop plan for your first year
- 12-month warranty and a site visit at month three to catch what you cannot see yet
- Five fruit trees planted with a community — photos and locations sent to you
Built to order, so allow 4 to 6 weeks from payment. If your space is an odd shape or the sun comes from the wrong side, we set it out to suit — that is part of the price, not an extra.
How your kit gets built
Worth knowing what you are paying somebody else to get right. Any of this can be done badly in ways that do not show up for a month, by which point you have lost a crop and cannot say why. These are the six things that decide whether a bed works or sulks.
Cut and mark the channels
Cut the 110 mm pipe to length with a hacksaw. Mark your hole centres 200 mm apart down the crown of the pipe and snap a chalk line first, so the row stays dead straight when the pipe rolls on you.
Drill the net-pot holes
A 50 mm hole saw in a corded drill, run slow. Clamp the pipe in an offcut cradle so it cannot spin. Deburr every hole with a knife — a rough lip shreds roots at transplant and you will not see the damage until the plant sulks.
Build the stand and set the fall
Assemble the frame, then tilt each channel about 1 cm per metre towards the return end. Check it with a spirit level and a 10 mm packer. Too flat and the channel floods and drowns the roots; too steep and the film runs off before it wets anything.
Plumb the feed and the return
Feed line from the pump to the head of the top channel. Every tail must discharge into the next channel or into the return gutter, and the last one back into the reservoir. No open ends anywhere — one unnoticed dribble empties a reservoir overnight and kills a whole bed.
Mix the solution and set the timer
Fill the reservoir, add nutrient A and nutrient B separately and stir between them — never mix the two concentrates in the same jug or the calcium locks up. Aim for EC 1.2–1.8 and pH 5.8–6.2 for leafy greens. Timer: 15 minutes on, 30 minutes off through daylight hours.
Transplant, then keep the book
Move seedlings across at the two-true-leaf stage with the roots rinsed clean of soil. Write EC, pH and top-up volume in a notebook every day for the first fortnight. That book is the whole difference between one lucky crop and a bed that produces every five weeks for years.
The two mistakes everyone makes. The first is a channel that is dead level, which turns the film into a standing pond and rots the root crown within a week. The second is mixing nutrient concentrate A and B together in the same jug before either goes in the water — the calcium and the sulphate precipitate out as a white sludge and the plants starve in a tank that looks full. Add them separately, stir between.
What these get used for
Most of the kits we build are not bought by hobbyists. They are bought by a project with a budget line and a report to file at the end of it.
What it costs to keep running
| Per month | Stoep | Community | Market |
|---|---|---|---|
| Electricity | R15 | R40 | R160 |
| Nutrient salts | R45 | R210 | R820 |
| Seed and seedling plugs | R15 | R70 | R280 |
| Water top-up | R5 | R25 | R110 |
| Total | R80 | R345 | R1 370 |
| Labour | 10 min a day | about an hour a day | one person, most of a day |
Electricity at roughly R2.80 per kWh. Nutrient and seed costs assume continuous cropping of leafy greens. Add a pump replacement roughly every three years.
Questions people ask before they buy
How much does a hydroponic kit cost in South Africa?
R5 400 for the 24-plant Stoep Grower, R18 800 for the 120-plant Community Grower and R76 550 for the 480-plant Market Grower. That is the delivered price with nothing further to buy: the system is built, plumbed, run-tested and handed over growing, with your first cycles of nutrient and seedlings in it and a 12-month warranty on the pump and fittings. The two larger kits include on-site assembly and training.
What happens when something breaks in five years?
You fix it yourself for the price of the part. We build these out of deliberately ordinary components — 110 mm PVC underground pipe, standard 50 mm net pots, an off-the-shelf pond pump, normal irrigation fittings. Every one of them is stocked by Builders, a plumbing merchant or an agri co-op. Nothing is proprietary, nothing is imported, and there is no consumable you can only buy back from us. A kit that strands you when the supplier loses interest is not worth owning.
How much water does hydroponics use compared to soil?
A recirculating NFT bed uses roughly 80–90% less water than the same crop in open soil, because the solution is pumped past the roots and returned rather than draining away. The Stoep Grower tops up with about eight litres a week. In a country that budgets water in litres per person per day, that is the argument that usually wins the meeting.
What can you actually grow in these kits?
Leafy crops are what these channels are built for: lettuce, spinach, Swiss chard, rocket, pak choi, coriander, basil, parsley, spring onion and celery. Fruiting crops like tomatoes and peppers need a Dutch-bucket setup instead, which we can quote separately. Root crops do not work in NFT at all.
Does load-shedding kill the system?
Not on a normal schedule. Roots in an NFT channel hold moisture for several hours, so a two- or four-hour outage does no damage. The Market Grower ships with a 100 W solar panel, a battery and a 12 V backup pump so a commercial bed never depends on the grid. For the smaller kits we can add a small inverter if your area is unreliable.
Do you deliver and set it up anywhere in South Africa?
The Stoep Grower ships nationally by courier as a flat pack, pre-drilled, with a printed setup card — an hour to stand up. The Community and Market Growers are delivered, assembled on site and handed over running, with training for whoever will actually look after it. Those two are covered at the listed price within about 400 km of Gauteng; further afield we quote the travel separately. Send us a location and we will confirm before you commit.
Can a school or company fund this as a CSI or ESD project?
That is what most of these kits are bought for. A Community Grower is a self-contained, auditable project with a fixed cost, a visible output and a photo record — the kind of thing that reports well against socio-economic development and enterprise development spend. We supply a one-page project brief, an invoice made out to whatever entity your finance team needs, and the delivery photographs for your report. For three or more kits going to different sites, ask us for a bulk price.
What does it cost to run each month?
Electricity is the small part: the Stoep Grower draws 18 W, which is under R15 a month even running through daylight hours. The real running cost is nutrient salts and seed, roughly R60 a month for the Stoep Grower, R280 for the Community Grower and R1 100 for the Market Grower, plus water top-ups.
Tell us the site and we will size it
Send a photo of the space, roughly how many people you are trying to feed, and whether there is a plug point and a tap. We will come back with which of the three fits, what it will cost delivered to you, and what it will take to keep it alive.
Every kit sold plants fruit trees with a community, and you get the photograph and the location. That part is not marketing — it is written into the price breakdown on each kit above.