Today we're looking at hydroponic vegetables.

Hydroponic? Is that a race of mutant robots; half vegetable, half machine? Captain Carrot and the Invincible Onions? They take on giant earthworms and badgers with pointy teeth...

Er... close but not exactly. Actually you're not close at all. It's just a neat way to grow stuff without soil. I went to see some friends who have a hydroponic garden. Elsa and Rudy can tell us more: it's their garden.

Hey, Izz. Hi, Dex. Our dad put this all together and now we're growing fruit and vegetables in these containers. We put water in these little hoses. We water the top one and it drips through each one and down to the ground.

There's no soil. The plants grow in this mix of old coconut husks, styrofoam and rocks. Plus there's a little plant food. That's it.

Do the poles help keep animals off?

Deer ate all my grandma's tomatoes once. Animals can't climb these poles. We don't have deer, but we do have rabbits.

Mutant rabbits? Robotic alien rabbits?

Regular non-mutant rabbits. Just as dangerous where veggies are concerned.

Rudy, what have you grown here?

Tomatoes, peppers, squash, beans, chili peppers, watermelon, eggplant and cantaloupe.

We even grew some of those from seed in our greenhouse. I had this whole code thing tracking them with which seeds were which and how much they all cost.

So did you sell anything?

We could have — we grew more than we could eat. But no, we gave a lot away. We did get some salsa back in return from one of our neighbors. Dad made some too. The salsa made with some of our Cherry Bomb peppers was REALLY spicy.

Thanks for sharing all this with us.

Okay, so that was pretty cool after all. Even if they didn't meet Captain Carrot and the Invincible Onions.