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Hydroponic Gardening

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Hydroponic gardening allows plants to be grown without any soil, which can yield larger, healthier crops in less time and allows for gardens to be grown almost anywhere.

Crop nutrition has been studied for thousands of years, although hydroponic gardening has only been studied for a few hundred years, and only successfully implemented until recently, farmers have always been looking for ways to increase the size of their plants, and grow more of them. Because of this desire for large crop yields, plants have been selected for their size, hardiness and taste. The modern day potato looks nothing like its ancestor, a small shriveled weed, because over time farmers have chose only to plant the seeds of the largest potatoes, and over time they have expanded into what they are today. Selecting the best seeds to grow is only a small part of the process though, the plants need sunlight, water and nutrition, the latter typically being soil.

Growing plants without soil had been speculated about since the 1500’s, but it wasn’t until John Woodward published his water culture experiments with spearmint in 1699 that real experiments began taking place with hydroponic gardening. He observed that the plants grew much better in dirty water as opposed to distilled water and concluded that the plant gets its nutrients from the water solution. By 1842 nine elements believed to be essential to plants were documented and by 1865 soilless culture became a standard research and teaching technique that is still used today.

Soilless culture studies were largely unknown to the public and even most farmers until Professor William Frederick Gericke of the University of California in Berkeley began promoting solution cultures to be used for agricultural production. He was the first to show the large crop yields that were possible by using hydroponic gardening, a term he helped coin. His studies were disputed, other professors claimed that sunlight was the largest limiting factor to plant growth, which led to him leaving the University and publishing his own book two years later.

Even if light is the limiting factor for plant growth, hydroponic gardening still has a number of advantages over soil. The main advantage is constant access to oxygen and water in the root system. Since the plants roots are partially in solution it can take as much or as little water as is needs and still has access to oxygen, this eliminates the anoxic condition that can drown roots and consequently kill the plant. A plant in soil has to be watered precisely, too much water and the plant drowns, not enough and it cannot take any nutrients from the soil.

Another big advantage that hydroponic gardens have over soil gardens is they can be grown anywhere there is access to light and water. Many areas have very little soil suitable for farming, mountains deserts and islands especially, but plenty of light and water. With a hydroponic system plants can be grown easily, and with the addition of lights they can even be grown underground or in space. As soils are continually contaminated by industrial and military chemicals, hydroponics could become a necessity for growing healthy, safe food in the future, and will become essential for further space travel and human exploration.

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