Why Would You Grow With Hydroponics?
It is easy to grow with Hydroponics. The plants have an easy time of it, you supply them with the right conditions for them to grow.
You add nutrient at the right strength, light them with the right lighting, support them if they need it, so what else do they have to do, but grow?
When planting in soil you have very little control over what is going to happen with your plants. They may or may not have the correct nutrients within the soil. You will need to keep an eye on them for lack of growth, problems with lack of different nutrients or lack of water. Normally you will overload the soil with requirements from fertiliser, natural or otherwise. This can lead to its own problems where too much of certain nutrients will prevent the plant from taking up vital micronutrients ( nutrients required in small amounts).
Who Would Grow With Hydroponics?
Whether you want larger plants or increased yield hydroponics will be able to help you.
What you grow with hydroponics can grow at a rate up to 4 times faster than with standard systems. There are different types of systems to suit different plants. They can also be used in places that plants can find it very difficult to grow.
Soil which could not support the growth of crops can now be used as a support for hydroponic systems. The hydroponic systems can grow the plants to create an income.
Hydroponics can be used indoors and outdoors. With the indoor systems, they can be either enclosed or not enclosed dependent on the growth rates and requirements of the plants .
Indoor systems can be as complex as you want them, dependent on the plants needs. You can have a system in the kitchen to grow herbs used in cooking – or to keep the flies away. You can have a difficult to grow plant, like wasabi (reputedly to be the hardest plant to grow) – imagine devoting 30 years to growing a plant!! In which case the system to grow it would be very complex – and expensive, involving a lot of controllers to get the conditions right. You could choose easy plants, like lettuce, imagine picking fresh lettuce for the salad.
You can also make a profit from hydroponics within your home. Grow the right plants and you can sell them. Mushrooms, ginseng and other crops can all be grown hydroponically. These systems can be set up within the house to yield the maximum crop.
Outdoor hydroponics can be a little tricky dependent on the climatic conditions. Growth within a greenhouse or simple covering will exclude the ravages of the rain and wind, both of which will have an enormous effect on the hydroponic system.
What have you grown with hydroponics? let us know what can be grown by leaving a comment below.
what you grow with hydroponics is up to you, the systems detailed within this site are suitable for all types of plants.
The soil where we live has made having a garden very difficult, it is really tough clay when you get to a certain point. I had never heard of hydroponics, but it seems like a great option for me. I love fresh tomatoes and would love to give this a try.
Hi Kenneth, thanks for stopping by to read the post.
It is a real pain when where you live is stopping you enjoy your life.
With the problem you have, where you meet clay, you have two choices.
One is to add soil improvers to try to break up the clay, or the second is to try hydroponics.
The second method is the easier, maybe not the cheaper but in my view the most reliable.
With hydroponics you can grow a wide variety of crops in place where no other crops would grow. With this you could set up a simple bucket of nutrient and grow the tomatoes in here. This is essentially the method I am using very successfully year on year. I grow them in an open greenhouse for weather protection but use the sun as a light source and no heater during the summer in the nutrient. Growing this way would outperform tomatoes within a grow bag by at least 3 to 1, you are controlling how much water and the type of nutrient they are receiving.
Kenneth, I would definitely recommend this method with either the bucket or if you insist on using soil the method detailed in this post http://myhydroponica.com/be-the-envy-of-your-neighbours-turbocharge-your-tomatoes.
If you need any more information or help with this please don’t hesitate to come back and ask another question
Phil