November 26th, 2024Glen, about the house

Hydroponics, a means of growing plants without soil, has long been  recognised as a means of producing food in areas where traditional  agriculture is unsuitable. Its also a fascinating and rewarding hobby.

Flowers,  vegetables and herbs can be produced in a limited space without digging,  mulching or weeding.  

Hydroponics is not a new science, nor is it difficult for home gardeners to  produce lush, healthy plants with a minimum of equipment or effort.

In fact, anyone  who has grown sprouting vegetables, struck cuttings or grown a pineapple top or an  avocado seed in a tumbler of water, has dabbled in hydroponics.  

To put it in its simplest form, the plants are grown in a watertight container, anchored by a clean medium such as cinders, pebbles, sawdust or peatmoss, and fed by having water, to which the correct balance of a soluble mixture of plant nutrients  is added having passed through the medium to keep the roots fed and moist.  

The solution can be recycled until the effectiveness of the nutrient mix is  diminished, after which it can be changed or simply recharged or replaced with a  fresh mix.  

Commercial growers in areas where water supplies are either non-existent or unreliable have found that the water can be recharged more often if is aerated in much the same way as an aquarium.  

On the smaller domestic scale, the plants can be watered, simply by using two  plastic containers. the outer one to contain the solution and the inner one, several sizes smaller and raised on small rocks, to level their rims.  

Drill at least a dozen small holes in an even pattern around the bottom and insert  them to protrude through to bottom of the outer container to draw moisture through  the growing medium to the plants.

Nutrients are replenished by topping up the water  level in the outer container.  The term hydroponics was coined by Californian Dr. W. F. Gericke from two  Greek words hydro (water) and ponos (labour or work). It was through the professor’s  laboratory experiments and trials in the late 1920s that hydroponics was able to  developed to a commercial reality.  

It was World War II however that brought about fulfilment of Gericke’s dreams.  Troops stationed on remote islands needed fresh fruit and vegetables – and hydroponics was the answer.

One of the best examples of this was on rocky, soilless  Wake Island where from tanks, 11 square metres in area, grew 15 kilograms of  tomatoes, 20 heads of lettuce, 9 kilograms of string beans, 8 kilograms of marrow and  20 kilograms of sweet corn weekly.  

Hydroponics of a kind was practised by the Babylonians in their famed Hanging  Garden, and the Aztecs who grew crops on soil-covered rafts tethered on shallow  lakes.

The roots grew through the soil layer and down into the water.  Records of hydroponics experiments as far back as the 17th Century show that  John Woodward of England experimented with growing plants in water to which  were added different types of garden soil, to show that certain substances were  obtained from the earth itself and not from the water.  

The experiments of Sachs and Knop in the late 1860s were recognised as the  real scientific breakthrough and beginnings of hydroponics when these two plant  physiologists proved that plants were able to grow in a solution of in organic salts,  showing that they were essential plant nutrients.  

It may seem at first that hydroponics could create a lot of unnecessary work  to provide much the same as growing plants in a normal garden bed, but there is  no doubt that a soilless culture has distinct advantages over traditional methods, apart from making it possible to grow plants where normal gardening is out of the  question.  

Plants growing by hydroponics require no digging or weeding, and are usually  pest and disease resistant due to being healthier, while at the same pests and diseases  are more readily detected and controlled.  

Most important of all is that when the crop is harvested, the old plants can be  easily removed, old beds readily cleaned and renewed and new plants quickly planted.  

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