A number of years ago, I forget how many now, I came across theAerogarden 7 pod unit. Now the (#ad)Aerogarden Classic.
I was starting to get into hydroponics and had tried a few systems outdoors and wanted a system for indoor gardening.
I managed to find a cheap one on ebay and bought it.
In a straight shootout of hydroponics vs soil growing which would be better, let’s find out.
Are you bored as a gardener in the winter?
Want to get out into the garden but can’t?
Dream of the long summer of days to come?
Why not try gardening in the winter indoors?
It will challenge you to grow something – you never know you may like it
how do you fancy growing crops without soil? Impossible? Nope there is a technique.
Due to unseasonal weather in the regions we rely upon in the winter to grow our out of season vegetable crops, like cucumbers, lettuce and kale. We can expect price hikes within the UK during 2017. This will continue until the next regions crops are ready.
What are Hydroponic systems?Hydroponic systems are a method of growing plants without soil. Or more strictly with ‘working water’, but it mainly means any system which does not use soil.
There are several different hydroponic systems. These include
All of these systems can be used indoors and outside. Although using some of these outside will entail covering the system to prevent dilution of the nutrient system.
Are you interested in growing tomatoes? Getting year after year consistent results?
I am and I would like to share with you my method of Deep water Culture (DWC) for tomatoes.
This system may not be the best but it does give repeatable and reliable results.
Well everything the plants need is run off the mains in most systems.
You have heaters, pumps, timers and sensitive electronics all required to keep your plants alive.
Without electricity for a few hours your plants will suffer and some will never recover.
So how can you reduce the chances of the mains outage disaster?
You get yourself a UPS (uninterruptible power supply), a home battery backup power supply. This device, when the mains decides to disappear will keep your computer alive – preventing a catastrophic crash.
Looking around you will see a whole ream of them – how do you decide which one is suitable.
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?
Yeah – then you should be using this system to turbocharge your tomatoes.
I came across hydroponics about 10 years ago. Looking around at the time, even the basic systems were expensive. Nowadays the market has developed into a mass market and prices of the basic sytems have dropped.
What most people don’t realise is that hydroponics is not a recent technique for growing plants.
Way back Before Christ, we find that the Arabs were growing melons on the dry and sandy riverbeds, being watered with solutions of composted animal excreta. A simliar process was used in India to grow watermelons, cucumbers and other green vegtables.
In China, into ancient times, rice cultures were carried in water, detailed in the diaries of Marco Polo.
One of the ancient Wonders of the World, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were supposed to be grown hydroponically. There is talk of the plants being grown in channels simliar to the modern technique of NFT (Nutrient Film technique). The nutrient was recycled and transported back to the top in a bucket and chain system.
