Something that has been buzzing around the growing community is the idea of growing your beautiful plants indoors using a process called: Hydroponics. Now, hydroponics is something that is not good for those of you who grow a garden specifically to get out in the dirt and dig in manure, but for those of us who don’t have large tracts of arable land, or any type of land, hydroponics is starting to sound like a much more attractive offer.
Why hydroponics?
- Hydroponic gardens are compact and can be placed anywhere.
- They use and reuse water over and over again and require minimal additional water to function properly.
- They eliminate the need to keep an eye out for garden pests such as aphids, caterpillars, potato beetles, and fungi.
- They are very efficient growers for plants: plants grow very quickly in a hydroponic setup.
- They are convenient, and most systems are easy to automate, requiring minimal interference on your part. Any plant can grow (or start to grow) in a hydroponic system, regardless of the time of year or how far north or south you are.
There are other reasons why one would choose hydroponics over a traditional garden, but there are downsides as well. For example, many people associate hydroponic gardening with growing certain illegal plants that are often abused as controlled substances. It seems like every week there’s a big house in a nice neighborhood that the police are arresting and removing hundreds of CFLs, sprinklers, containers, farmland, nutrients, and plants. However, like everything, a small percentage of people can ruin something good for everyone else.
Actually, the main benefits of hydroponic gardening is giving people who otherwise couldn’t grow plants the ability to grow plants. It is very common for avid gardeners to start their tender young plants in a hydroponic setup, and then transfer those plants back to their gardens after the soil thaws.
Orchid growers, in particular, seem to gravitate towards hydroponic growing systems. The obsession that many people have with orchids is intense. This obsession, coupled with the frustration of not being able to meet the demanding needs of the orchid in one person’s undisturbed backyard, leads many to try growing it in greenhouses or in a hydroponic system.
Also, technology for hydroponics is everywhere. Light timers are used in many applications to conserve energy, just as they are used in hydroponics to time the light cycle of plants. Compact fluorescents, metal halide, T5, and other types of intense lighting used in hydroponics are also used in aquarium systems that struggle to meet the demanding needs of freshwater plant life or delicate corals and anemones. Water drip systems are used in greenhouses and large-scale agriculture, as well as gardening and outdoor landscaping on a regular basis. Plant nutrients have been in development for quite some time, ever since people tried to grow non-native plants in partially depleted soil. PH meters are used in scientific applications and again in all forms of gardening. We wouldn’t know where the acid soils for growing grapes are located if we didn’t use a PH meter, apart from expensive trial and error.
Hydroponics evolved from a combination of need and desire. We want fresh tomatoes, we want fresh basil, we need a place to grow them because we don’t all live on farms anymore. The more we hear that plants are covered in wax and pesticides, the more we worry that those substances will reach our children and ourselves, and we want some way to be sure of our food sources. While it’s impractical to think that we could go from buying our groceries at the store to growing them in our apartments, it’s nice to know that we can supplement some of our produce in this way. Special sauces, for example, or your own personal herb garden for fresh cilantro, basil, and oregano are a tempting reason to go hydroponics.
For die-hard people who only grow natural gardens, hydroponics may not be your cup of tea. If you are using plants that are native to your region, simply sow your seeds and let nature take its course. However, for many in northern climes, the wait for spring is too far away. These people appreciate the plant life that technology can bring into their homes.
Something to keep in mind: Before this writer knew what hydroponics was, she was buying “hydroponically grown, vine-ripened tomatoes” at the local grocery store because of their superior color, texture, and flavor. They were consistently bright red, juicy, and spotless. They were always smaller than the so-called “braised tomatoes”, but the larger, lighter-colored tomatoes were less rich in flavor. The balance of nutrients, light, and water, combined with the plant’s reduced need to fight infection, insects, and fungus, produces a much healthier specimen plant than would otherwise be possible.
