Introduction to Hydroponics: Growing Your Plants Without Any Soil

Table of Contents

Introduction
Advantages of Hydroponics
Nutrients for Healthy Plants
Macronutrients
Micronutrients
The Difference Between Hydroponic Growth and Soil Growth
Different Growing Mediums
Hydrocorn And Expanded Clay
Coconut Coir
Rice Husks
Growstones
Vermiculite and Perlite
Sand, Brick Shards, and Pumice
Slivers of Wood
Wool Products
Mineral wool aka Rock Wool
Ordinary Gravel
Containers and Irrigation
Static Solution Hydroponic Culture
Raft Culture Solution
Continuous Flow System
The NFT system
Traditional Bengal System
Deep Water Culture
Top Fed Water Culture
Buying Nutrients?
Conclusion
Author Bio
Publisher

Introduction

If you start a discussion on hydroponics with a person who is a keen and an avid gardener, he is going to say in a very blasé tone, “Oh yeah, you are talking about a gardening method which you are not going to use any soil at all. In fact, you are going to be growing your plants in water.”
And he is going to be so right. Hydroponics is that gardening method, in which you are going to grow your plants in lots of water. This gardening method is normally implemented in places where the soil is not fertile enough to sustain plant life. I, being a practical doomsayer, predict that within the next 50 years plants are going to be grown extensively through hydroponics because we will have poisoned all the soil, with our chemicals, by then.

The idea of hydroponics is not something new. I would not be surprised if in ancient times plants were grown in water, especially in places where one wanted to grow plants indoors – especially in palaces. By the way, a couple of years ago, archaeologists who were doing a little bit of digging in Egypt found some Lotus and water Lily seeds going back more than 2,000 years ago, in some pond excavations in a palace in ancient Egypt. Out of the 20 buried seeds found, which were sent to Kew Gardens London, three of them germinated, and so we have 2,000-year-old lilies, whose ancestors were collected by Egyptian princesses.

The princesses in the palace collected the lotuses every day in the ponds and use them for religious rituals as well as adorning their rooms and persons. I do not think they went bathing in the scented waters, because they must have been really careful about the muddy and dirty waters, especially with natural organic fertilizers put in them to promote the growth of the plants.