About
Hi, I'm Claire.
I've been growing things for as long as I can remember. A relocation took my backyard away and led me straight to hydroponics.
From a backyard to a blank wall
My first real garden was a patch of tomatoes, peppers, and herbs that somehow kept my whole family fed through the summer. That backyard taught me more about patience and problem-solving than anything else I've tried.
Then we moved, and everything changed. When my husband's career took us to a new city, we went from a suburban home with a proper yard to something smaller, shadier, and with an HOA that had very strong opinions about the front lawn. No raised beds. No room to dig. No outdoor growing at all.
I spent the first few months genuinely missing my garden. If you've grown your own food, you know the feeling.
Our old backyard, the garden that started it all.
The setup that replaced the backyard, and then some.
I almost kept scrolling
I started researching alternatives after the move. Containers. Grow lights. Eventually I landed on hydroponics, and I was skeptical at first. Plants growing in water with no soil, under artificial lights, felt like a science project, not a home.
What made me stay was a single forum post from a home grower pulling heads of lettuce off a basic Kratky setup every two weeks. That was enough.
My first system was a disaster. pH swings, nutrient deficiencies, roots that looked wrong and a harvest that never came. I made every beginner mistake there is, some of them twice. But I also learned more in those first three months than I had in years of traditional gardening.
One system became two. Two became four. Eventually I had a full grow tent setup running in our spare room, and my husband (who works in IT and reserves judgment on my projects until they prove themselves) started asking when the next harvest would be ready.
Why I started writing it all down
When I was learning, I couldn't find one clear resource that covered everything in one place. Most guides assumed you already knew half the terminology. Forum threads went cold mid-answer. YouTube tutorials were scattered and inconsistent.
So I started keeping notes for myself. Then I started sharing them.
A few years ago, HydroGreenSpace became the resource I wished had existed when I was starting out. Every guide here comes from real growing experience, including the failures. Especially those.
A little about us
My husband keeps everything running behind the scenes. He's more comfortable with spreadsheets than seedlings, but he's fully converted on homegrown lettuce. Our two kids are in school and have developed surprisingly strong opinions about which varieties taste best straight from the reservoir.
I'm a fairly private person by nature, and we've made a deliberate choice as a family to keep our personal lives off the internet, so you won't find our faces here. What you will find is our grow room, our harvests, our old garden photos, and everything we've learned since.
Harvest day is a family affair.
What you'll find here
HydroGreenSpace covers hydroponics and indoor growing for home growers, from beginners setting up their very first system to experienced growers troubleshooting specific problems. No filler, no beginner-shaming, no theory for theory's sake. Just what actually works at home.