20Jul/110
General Hydroponics Techniques Used For Homegrown Fruits, Vegetables & Flowers
As American's look for ways to get healthier, lower their food bills and find home-based hobbies, they're turning to general hydroponics for homegrown fun, fruits, vegetables and flowers. General hydroponics gardening & growing are catching on as a trendy new alternative to traditional backyard gardens.
Instead of traditional hydroponics that use expensive lighting, special hydroponics equipment, and other commercial techniques, average American's are now using a hybrid style of gardening combining the benefits of outdoor soil gardening with the features of hydroponics technology.
General hydroponics gardens produce fresher, more vibrant and tastier fruits and vegetables and more fragrant flowers because gardeners have more control over their gardening environment. These hybrid gardens allow you to control temperature, humidity, plant nutrition, growth phases and harvest timing. Traditional gardening methods do not give you that type of control over these key factors.
As families across America become aware of the dangerous chemicals now being used in food production, they are looking for ways to control their food intake by eating only healthy foods. By growing your own fruits and vegetables at home, you control what goes into these fruits and vegetables providing you with a steady supply of healthful food. Moreover, general hydroponics cultivation saves you money because it gives you cheaper, better produce and an interesting home activity that involves your whole family.
Here are a few general hydroponics techniques to help you set up your garden:
Choose the appropriate system - Most people choose one of the following methods of hydroponics growing:
- The Ebb and Flow system features plant pots filled with sterile grow medium inundated with nutrient-rich water for a few minutes every hour. Often, the pots sit in an upper reservoir that drains into a lower reservoir. The most commonly used grow medium for Ebb and Flow gardens are rockwool, perlite, vermiculite, and lava rock.
- Drip systems use an irrigation approach that relies on drip emitters suspended just above the root zone. These emitters come in varying shapes, sizes and spray patterns, so growers can use the emitters to regulate the amount of moisture reaching root media, and how the moisture is distributed spatially. Drip systems can be fine-tuned in conjunction with temperature and humidity to create a near-continuous feed cycle that pours lots of nutrients and water into plants to produce growth.
Always apply the correct nutrients - Until a few years ago, most people fertilized their crops with generic fertilizer that was designed to be an all purpose fertilizer for house plants and common vegetable crops. But now, you can purchase specifically designed macro and minor nutrients that contain proper ratios and are tested to work specially for hydroponics gardens. These products are designed to work in hydroponics mediums and regulate soil conditions for optimal growth, quality and health.
Shed some light - Growing media is an important consideration for anyone who does general hydroponics gardening indoors, but you won't get any growth without light, and most professional growers are using indoor high intensity lighting such as Metal Halides and High Pressure Sodiums. In an ideal world, we would all have secure outdoor areas where massive amounts of sunshine hit every day, but most professional specialty growers grow indoors or outdoors using some artificial lights. Of course, if you are considering gardening only in the summer, then light should not be a major problem.
The average American is growing houseplants, flowers, fruits and vegetables with general hydroponics techniques and finding that it is becoming a popular past-time with the entire family enjoying the fun and fruits of their labor. General Hydroponics gardening is a great benefit to those who want to produce flowers, fruits, vegetables, houseplants and other crops. It allows total control over growing environment and plant nutrition, and can often result in a higher yield of better quality fruits, vegetables, flowers and other crops.
By: Michael Straumietis
17Jul/110
Hydroponic Gardening – The Pros and the Cons
When it comes to some of the problems we are facing in the world with regards to food production, hydroponic gardening offers some promising solutions. In the poorer countries where the terrain or climate is inhospitable to agriculture, hydroponics offers a means of growing healthy foods easily. Also, in those areas where the soil has lost its nutrients or fertile land is hard to come by, hydroponics can produce healthy foods using minimum space and resources.
As with all things though, it is not all good news. There are many pros and cons any grower should weigh before deciding to commit to hydroponic gardening.
First, the pros. In comparison to traditional farming, hydroponic growing can be more productive in two ways. For one, hydroponic gardening saves space. Plants can be placed much more closely together than in traditional fields because of the way nutrients are provided to them. As many as four times as many plants can be grown in same amount of space using hydroponic techniques! Secondly, hydroponics minimizes many of the problems associated with traditional farming which means less sickly, damaged, or wasted crops.
Because hydroponic growers customize their own nutrients mixes, it takes the guess work out of figuring out which field has the best soil and proper nutrition for which crop. The nutrient mix is the right one for the particular plant, in the right ratios, every time. Also, soil based diseases are virtually eliminated because there is no soil. These two factors alone make hydroponics an extremely efficient method for producing food.
Benefits accrue to the environment as well. The water consumption in hydroponic growing is significantly less than traditional methods. In many cases, hydroponic crops use just one tenth of the water! Also, the water that is used is used more effectively. For example weeds cannot come in and steal part of the crop's water supply. And because the crops are in a controlled environment and not in a field, there is no pesticide run-off water to contaminate the surrounding ground.
The benefits are not without their costs however. The expense of hydroponic growing is an area where improvements need to be made. The nutrient mixtures and growing mediums used can be expensive.
Hydroponic growing also requires an increase in energy consumption. Much hydroponic growing happens in greenhouses, where significant amounts of electricity are used in order to give the hydroponic plants all the light they need.
While research is happening to try and bring the costs down (such as in the field of aquaponics), hydroponics can be financially prohibitive for those areas where it is most needed.
Research in the field of hydroponics is filled with promise and much research needs to be done. Many of the problems are being addressed however, and many farmers and amateur gardeners are eagerly awaiting new developments in this promising field.
By: Tony Buel
30Jun/110
Top 4 Ways To Grow Plants
As the prices for food rise and will keep rising I think it makes common sense to at least try to grow your own food. With a little knowledge and some love you can grow a garden that will put food on your table. It is not going to get any cheaper to feed a family of four and in these days saving money is no laughing matter for those who are trying to make ends meet.
At this time I know of four ways to grow and each one has it's benefits and draw backs. No matter what plants need water sunshine and the appropriate amount of nutrients and minerals to grow to their fullest potential. A green plant is a healthy plant.
Aquaponics is one of the newest ways I have seen and read about. It is a hydroponic process by moving water that is airriated with the key ingredient fish. The idea is awesome as you can have a fish farm and a plant farm. Feed the fish and the fish feed the plants. It really is a ecologically-green method that has a great potential on a large scale. It really doesn't make it easy for someone living in an apartment complex to grow plants.
Growing in soil is okay and works. Don't get me wrong but growing out of soil can be confusing when you don't know what your soil has in it or the lack of. I have grown out of soil for years and sometimes I have great results and sometimes not so great. I have to blame it on just not knowing what is in the soil. Growing out of dirt is a slow process to the technologies we have figured out to growing a healthy plant.
Hydroponics has by far been the Holy Grail to growing with water and nutrients. The popularity has grown in the last few years and has proven to give the results people look for out of growing. It is fast and calculating for the Indoor Gardner and it is being expanded to outdoors as well. I think that is where aquaponics came from as rain water doesn't effect the system like it does hydroponics. But root systems can grow in water as long as there is air and nutrients.
Aeroponis is another way to grow that is on the rise. Unlike Aquaponics and hydroponics, Aeroponics doesn't have the roots soaking in water. The water is sprayed into the air and onto the roots of the plant. and the water drains away leaving the roots which are suspended in air. NASA came up with the idea and it was so the astronauts would be able to have fresh vegetables. There isn't a lot of room in space so the design had to take up the least amount of space and be containable.
When it comes to space and containable this solves a problem for the person that doesn't have a lot of room for an indoor garden. Aeroponics allows you to grow a garden on a shelf and if you have a window space for sunshine aeroponics maybe the answer to getting more out of your garden.
As prices for a tomato go up it only makes sense to grow a tomato plant and have fresh tomato's at your disposal to pick off the vine and eat. That is one thing nice about a tomato plant, it grows like a vine which makes it nice to manage where it grows. Just Imagine have an assortment of your favorite vegetables growing at your finger tips. Wouldn't that be great?
By: S W Kelley
14May/110
Your Aeroponics System
What if you could take the concept of soilless cultivation a step beyond hydroponics? This is what an aeroponics system is all about. Whereas with a hydroponic system you place the plants' roots into a growing medium that contains a nutrient solution, the aeroponic garden system dispenses with even that; plants are literally grown in the air.
Nature's Own Precedent
Although the modern aeroponics grow system is based on solid, modern scientific principles, the concept is as old as life itself. In the tropical rainforests of the planet's equatorial regions, plants derive as much water and nutrition from the moisture-laden air as they do from the ground. In fact, one manufacturer of aeroponic grow systems has even taken the name of this unique and bountiful ecosystem; the Rainforest Aeroponic System is one of the most popular products among those who choose this type of cultivation.
At its simplest level, an aeroponics system is one in which plants are suspended with their roots bare; the nutrients are administered through a mist of water and and air within an enclosed environment. Since oxygen in the root zone is necessary for plant health, the plant itself is able to grow to maturity in a very short time.
The Aeroponic System and Hydroponics
An aeroponic grow system is really a form of hydroponics; in fact, many people use a hybrid aeroponic hydroponic system. With an aeroponic hydroponic system, the latter functions as kind of "fail-safe" in the event the former should fail for any reason.
Send In The Clones!
One of the advantages of an aeroponic system is that it makes it much easier to propagate plants from cuttings, which is a form of botanical cloning. The reason is that the aeroponic grow system environment is less likely to contain the type of pathogens that can result in damaging bacterial infections to which cuttings are susceptible. In some aeroponic garden systems, this process can be automated, allowing for hundreds of plants to be propagated at one time.
Advantages of the Aeroponic System
In addition to minimizing plant diseases, aeroponics actually increases the efficiency of the photosynthetic process by making virtually all CO2 in the environment available to the plants. This is especially useful for those living at higher elevations. With an aeroponic hydroponic system in place, you can be assured of a healthy, bountiful crop. The aeroponics system of cultivation is indeed the future of home gardening, if not agriculture itself.
By: Susan Slobac
7Mar/110
Indoor Hydroponics Kits – One Way to Cut the Learning Curve For Hydroponics
Hydroponics does have a technical aspect to it that can be challenging. We're all very familiar with the idea of finding a plant, getting a flowerpot, getting some kind of soil, putting a plant in, give it some food and water on schedule. Even if we haven't done it before, we already have an idea how it's done.
Though hydroponics has been around for longer than 150 years, it is still novel to many. It's not commonly known how efficient a method it is for plant cultivation. Multiple ways to set up hydroponic systems exist depending on the knowledge and ingenuity of the gardener.
Even those of us who lack do-it-yourself skills, would enjoy touch of green in the home. And as beginners we may be reluctant to use hydroponics; it can seem so technical.
We're looking for a plant to complement our life. The reason may be aesthetic. It may be culinary. - the idea of having fresh herbs during the winter months. Or growing cherry tomatoes in a small apartment.
The difficulty when opening up some books on hydroponics you see more technique than plants. Of course, those who have any kind of commercial interest (both legal and illegal), must bring the product to market as efficiently as possible. It makes sense for such growers to have mastered many technical aspects of hydroponic gardening.
So they devote entire grow rooms to their crop: rooms covered in reflective material; lights and lamps of all kinds; complicated methods of watering the system. If you followed their example you would be paying much more in energy and water bills.
However, you may be living in a small apartment or studio. All you have space for is one or two plants.
By: Lenni Easton