As hydroponic gardening becomes increasingly popular more and more ideas are coming to the forefront. With growing plants in water and a nutrient solution, you can save time, money and space and enjoy year round fresh fruits, vegetables and flowers. Although there are many commercially produced nutrient solutions available to nourish and grow your plants, it is possible to create your own homemade hydroponics nutrients solutions, even if you have no previous experience.

Creating your own nutrient mixtures can be nearly as enjoyable as growing the plants themselves. It is quite possible to produce various kinds of solutions. Doing some homework is essential to determine which nutrients you need and in which concentrations to best suit your plant’s needs.

This is a bit technical but good information from my favourite magazine:

by J Benton Jones, Jr.

pH is defined as the negative log of the hydrogen ion (H+) concentration on a scale from 0 to 14, 7.0 being the neutral point, with less than 7.0 being defined as “acidic” and greater than 7.0 as “alkaline.”  The optimum pH ranges for plant root function growing in a mineral soil, an organic soil, a soilless organic rooting medium, or a hydroponic nutrient solution are not the same. In addition, there is no one explanation for the pH effect on plant roots growing in these four media. A pH range of 4.5 to 8.5 is the normal encompassing range associated with these rooting media with plants functioning best in “acidic” environments.

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If roses are worth growing, they’re worth feeding with the best nutrient fertilizers.  If you want to grow quality roses, feed them quality fertilizers.

Generic fertilizers found at box stores and other gardening stores and supermarkets, generally lack two important things. One is the essential minerals needed to produce quality flowers. Even when a cheap product appears to have a complete formulation, don’t be fooled. Some manufacturers use cheap minerals which plants cannot readily absorbed. This will end up giving you disappointing results.

The other reason for shopping quality is to be assured of a well tested nutrient formulation that includes the proper balance of minerals. Too little or two much of a particular mineral can either starve the plant or set up a toxic condition.

After the first successful application of hydroponics techniques in the 1930s, the stage was set for a shift in crop production from conventional cultivation in soil to hydroponics or soil less cultivation. Among the first crops to be commercially harvested included tomatoes and peppers, but the techniques were soon successfully extended to other crops such as lettuce, cucumbers and more. It was not long before successfull hydroponics techniques were adapted to cut flowers production. In fact, any plant can be grown hyrdroponically.

The extended growing season is not the only advantage to the soaring popularity of hydroponics production with both growers and consumers. Other advantages include the consistent vegetable quality and superior taste, plus the elimination of the use of pesticides and herbicides. Pesticides and other chemicals used in conventional agriculture have an adverse environmental impact; the run off from these chemicals contaminate groundwater supplies. Commercial hydroponics systems eliminate these toxic chemicals and contribute substantially to keeping the groundwater free from contamination.

You might be surprised to hear that such a large plant as a banana tree was being grown hydroponically on liquid feed alone, but it is entirely possible that there are people out there growing them that way. Hydroponics gardening really is not that difficult once you get the hang of the basic requirements and if you are well enough disciplined to attend to your growing plants regularly and consistently you will have great success.

The technique of hydroponics gardening might seem complicated to a person doing it for the first time, but usually novices are able to quickly get the hang of it. Just like you need gardening supplies for a regular garden, you will need hydroponics gardening supplies for hydroponics gardening. The supplies might not be available in your local supermarket but they can simply be ordered online at at very good prices.

Propagating plant clones, or cuttings, is not a new concept but the process of aeroponic cloning is not always well known.  In aeroponic propagation, the cultivation of sibling or cloned plants is done using an aeroponic system instead of the more traditional soil-potting.

When setting up an in home garden, aeronponic propgation might sound like something you may be interested in.  Here are some basic steps to follow to start your own aeroponic cloning operation:

• Select a healthy branch from the parent plant with several clusters of leaves.
• Cut off a piece of the branch leaving at least 2 leaf nodes intact.
• Remove the largest few leaves as they can be hard for a rootless plant to maintain in the early stages.
• Then remove all branches and leaves apart from the top 2 sets. Make sure they are within close proximity to the aeroponic fogger and aeroponic mister.
• You are now well on your way to procuring your first crop of cloned plants.

I just read these interesting statistics in a news item.  Why on earth do we still do traditional farming to grow these foods?  Let’s do our best to spread the word and get everyone growing at least part of their own food at home in hydroponics.

“The yield in hydroponics is much greater than the traditional way of soil farming. Wheat yields 5,600 lb in soil farming, while it produces 8,000 lb in hydroponics. Potatoes yield 1,56,000 lb in hydroponics in contrast to just 18,000 lb in natural farming.

The pioneers of hydroponics were Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research, New York, New Jersey Agriculture Experimental Station, Alabama Polytechnic Institute and Horticulture Experiment Station, Netherlands. Hydroponics did not reach India until 1946. First research on hydroponics was done in Government of Bengal’s Experimental Farm at Kalimpong in West Bengal.”

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There are many wonderful experiments going on all around us with hydroponics, with the view to feeding the people of the world when conventional methods start failing us.  I love this article combining fish and vegetables and urge you to read further at posted link:

“Growing fresh fish and vegetables in the Sonora Desert’s 110-degree weather has never been easier.

Through aquaponics, Jason Licamele, a doctorate candidate at the University of Arizona, is growing tilapia and fresh vegetables in a closed water system that operates year round.

In four separate 350 gallon tanks Licamele farms tilapia in Tucson. Waste water is pulled from those tanks and sent through mechanical and biological filters before being mixed with minimal organic nutrients to water the plants he is growing in an adjacent greenhouse room. The plants pull necessary nutrients out of the water and the water is returned to the tanks with the fish.

Jason Licamele adds the fuel to his system, fish food. Through hydroponics he can grow 32 heads of lettuce per square meter.”

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I like this article with a new idea for growing food for the world with hydroponics.  There are dissenters, of course, but they don’t put forth new ideas to solve the problem for us to consider.  Not very constructive, I’d say.  I’ve posted a link so you can read the whole article.  It would be very interesting to read your comments and, perhaps, alternative solutions?

Growing crops in buildings proposed as solution to world’s food woes

Is it an elegant solution to pressing problems related to the food supply, or another example of putting too much faith in technology?

That’s a tough question to answer. But what is clear right now is that vertical farming is in its infancy.

The idea is to grow food inside buildings — not conventional greenhouses, but multi-storey buildings, quite likely in cities — in closed ecosystems using hydroponics rather than soil, and without the use of pesticides.

So far it has only been tried on a very small scale. Paignton Zoo in South Devon, U.K., for example, is growing produce to feed some of its animals.

But advocates of vertical farming — notably Dickson Despommier, a Columbia University professor of public health — envision towering gardens in the heart of a city. Despommier, who is working on a book on the idea, sees vertical farming as part of the answer to global warming, water shortages and inner-city health problems.

Read more….

In hydroponic plant growing systems, nutrients are dissolved in water.  The soil is replaced with a growing medium, which is a soil substitute that holds the roots and supplies them with water, nutrients and oxygen.

Nutrient solutions can be delivered in a couple of ways.  You can drip feed it to each plant, or you can flood the root chamber, then drain it out. These methods require a pump and timer to circulate the nutrients through the roots. You can also grow the plant roots in the air by spraying them with a fine mist of nutrient solution or grow them by aerating the solution under each root mass with an air pump.

There are six basic types of hydroponic systems making up the basis of all hydroponic gardening:

* Wick
* Water Culture
* Ebb and Flow (or Flood & Drain)
* Drip
* Nutrient Film Technique (N.F.T)
* Aeroponic