Like everything else in this world, gardening certainly has evolved as well. I am hooked on the concept of growing your own food through means other than sticking seeds in the dirt and hoping the plant survives all of the elements,diseases and pests. Hydroponics is one of the systems that will change our future through sustainable, easy and safe food production.
I went ahead and listed a few advantages of hydroponics:
- Grow anywhere – gone are the days of only growing in the spot with the most sunshine and fertile soil, you can grow almost anywhere from your basement to your living room. just be sure to have adequate grow lights.
- Less space – with hydroponics you can grow more plants in a smaller space and produce even more than you would have with conventional gardening
- Less water- Hydroponics can use way less water than conventional gardening because it is a closed system, you only have to top it up now and then due to evaporation.
- Reuse water -Because the water is clean and unpolluted you can reuse it for the rest of your garden.
- Less pests – you control the environment your plants grow in so you can keep it clean and closed and there wont be any pest eating away at your crops.
- Less weeds – No more weeding..ever! who would not want that? That convinced me already.
- Minimal upkeep – Once your system is up and running the upkeep is minimal , just ensure your pH levels are good and give the nutrients and your good as gold.
- Easy harvest – grow beds are raised so crops are at a nice level to harvest, there is no dirt so this ensures a no mess harvest with clean and healthy plants
- All year long- If you grow in a controlled environment and you can control the temperatures you can extend your growing season through the while year.
- Scalable -You can start very small and work up to bigger things are there no specific sizes or scales for hydroponics to work.
Hydroponics, aeroponics and aquaponics explained
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| Aeroponics explained |
So in my never ending quest to grow the easiest,healthiest and most frugal vegetables, I frequently stumbled upon three growing methods that really captured my attention. I proceeded to read on and learn as much as I possibly could without paying those heavy rates for online books/courses. I decided to provide an easy summary of the three methods without all the fancy words and complicated guides.
Simply put hydroponics, aquaponics and aeroponics all provide the plants with the necessary elements to grow ,eliminating the need for soil and in the process drastically decrease the threat of pests and diseases as you can grow plants indoors in a controlled environment.
The three PONIC’s
Hydroponics
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| Hydroponics explained |
Aquaponics
Aquaponics combines hydroponics (soil-less growing) with aquaculture (raising fish). In this case the fish waste replaces the use of chemical nutrients/minerals , the water (now enriched through the fish poo) gets pumped to the plants and the plants filter the water and uses the nutrients.The water again gets sent back to the fish tank where the fish will replenish it again with those “nutrients”. This process is basically a small recreated Eco-system.
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| Aquaponics explained |
Aeroponics
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| Aeroponics explained |
Small space growing 