Hydroponics

What is Hydroponics?

Hydroponics is a method of growing plants using mineral nutrient in water, without the use of soil. It’s a soilless solution of growing plants.

What are the advantages?

• No soil needed – can be grown anywhere, especially useful if land is at a premium.

• The water that the plant uses can be reused, this saves on water costs.

• Soil-borne diseases are significantly reduced. Diseases don’t spread so well without soil and reduced health hazard to consumers.

• Water & nutrients are conserved – a hydroponics system recycles nutrients and produces less pollution than land based plants.

What are the disadvantages?

• Start-up costs are very high – hydroponics technology is still very expensive

• Any failure to the hydroponic system can lead to rapid plant death resulting in high losses to the producers.

• Hydroponic plants require different fertilizers and containment systems and so to produce the mineral wool & the fertilizers that are needed, a large amount of energy is required.

Different types of Hydroponics?

Wick system – Plant sits in container and is connected to a reservoir of mineral solution.

Ebb & Flow - Rockwool, clay pebbles, sand (etc) are placed in a pot and act as soil for plant’s roots and solution put into pot.

Aeroponics – Plant roots supplied with a consistent saturation environment where a fine mist spray lightly coats the roots with nutrient liquid solution. Proven successful in commercial production.