Hydroponics

What is Hydroponics? Well, what do the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Floating Gardens of China? Not sure, then read on and all will become clear.

You may have heard of a hydroponics system before, if you have you'll probably have a rough idea where I'm coming from. If you haven’t heard about hydroponics before then don’t worry. Hopefully by the time we reach the end of this article, you will have a better understanding about the areas of hydroponics gardening. If someone asks you whether you think a drip system, or an ebb and flow system is better, then you won’t have to squint at them and say ‘eh?’ you'll be able to answer with some basic knowledge of the systems.

Before we get onto the subject of drip or ebb and flow systems, let’s have a quick look at hydroponics gardening in general.

Hydroponics comes from the Greek words "hydro" meaning water, and "ponics" meaning labour. The word hydroponics in gardening terms is used to describe plants that don’t have their roots in soil. This soil-free type of gardening depends entirely on a water based system enriched with nutrients.

These nutrients can either be in the form of specially formulated chemicals for hydroponics or they can come as a variety of natural nutritional ingredients found in nature itself. The use of either nutrient form is solely dependent upon the gardener and the conditions available to them.

Since hydroponics gardening is a soil free system, containers are normally the best methods for growing, and a number of different varieties of containers, and pots are available to buy for this purpose.

As a growing medium for the plant and to give them something to get their roots into, different gardeners will have different likes and dislikes. Shale is probably the simplest and easiest solution, especially for the first time gardener.

With a little bit of research however, you can easily find out if Hydroton or Rockwool is a better growing medium for you than shale. (Hydroton and shale can be used in an ebb and flow system, whilst horticultural Rockwool can be used with just about any system).

Any system refers to the method used to pass along the nutrient enriched water to the plants. There are various different ways that the hydroponics gardener can choose from, but I will explain here only the two systems that I mentioned earlier.

Simply put, the ebb and flow system uses a pump to respectively flood then drain the containers holding the plants at regular intervals. A drip system uses a continuous drip that supplies a steady ration of water solution that’s controlled to give each plant the correct amount of water.

Hydroponics gardens generally have a higher growth rate than soil based gardening and it's becoming more common for gardeners take advantage of this to create higher than average yields of vegetables and fruit.

Now that you now generally what hydroponics gardening is based upon, a little more research and you'll be able to setup your own system of cultvating plants this way. It's a nice system to try out and see how you get on and is great as a topic for discussion at your gardening club!