Hydroponic gardening

Hydroponics gardening is growing plants without soil. Just as all plants need light/sun, water, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and minerals, so also do plants grown using hydroponics. But they acquire some of these needs differently than soil grown plants. When growing hydroponics, there are a vast variety of growing mediums that may be used. The mediums include materials, including perlite, vermiculite, coconut fiber, gravel, sand, or any number of other materials. Even air may be used as a hydroponics growing medium.

Hydroponics is very simple. The average hydroponics system usually consists of a few basic parts, including a growing tray, a reservoir, a timer controlled submersible pump to water the plants, and an air pump to oxygenate the nutrient solution.

In normal plant growth, the soil holds the mineral nutrients that the plants need to grow, but the soil itself isn't essential. The soil is just acting as a reservoir or a place to store the nutrients that the plants need in order to grow. There are two main types of hydroponics. There are solution culture and medium culture. Solution culture is when the plants roots aren’t in any type of solid medium. And Medium culture is growing plants with the plant’s roots in a solid medium.

There are seven basic categories of hydroponics systems. There are passive, water culture, flood and drain, drip, wick, nutrient film technique, and aeroponic.

There are also two types of irrigation methods: sub irrigation and top irrigation. Sub irrigation involves the nutrient solution being pumped into the medium solution at regular intervals and draining all the way through the medium and back into a reservoir. Top irrigation is accomplished by applying the nutrients only to the surface of the medium.

Most hydroponics planting takes place in a greenhouse, or some other enclosed structure to allow the most controlled environment. This allows you to better control the light, temperature, pests, weather, etc.  Hydroponics gardening is what some would say is garden growing on steroids. When you get the correct blend of mineral nutrients for a particular plant, fruit, or vegetable, harvesting time comes considerably sooner and with a higher yield.

Hydroponics is the wave of the future. It is fun and easy to do and productive new way of gardening for you.