Hydroponics provide you with a very interesting, unique approach when it comes to cultivating and growing vegetables in your home.
Even if you live in an apartment, you can create a hydroponics system for your kitchen.
Some would even say that hydroponics could be the future of farming, so it all comes down to how we manage and take care of everything in the long run.
The thing to keep in mind is that you need to create a powerful hydroponic system that’s easy to use and adaptable to your kitchen.
Introduction to Hydroponics Gardening
Ask people what makes plants grow, and they may come up with a similar reply: soils.
The right answer, but that’s not the only one. The garden can be grown soilless in a water-based environment. As long as you can provide plants with sufficient nutrients, oxygen, and light, they will survive and can grow better than the soil-counter parts.
The method is called hydroponics. With hydroponic gardening, growers can grow plants all year round, regardless of the weather and the surrounding conditions. You may have seen some kinds of it in your nearby greenhouse.
Hydroponics is a dirt-free, space-saving, water-effective method of growing soilless.
This practice is not new. In fact, the earliest records of hydroponics dated back to the ancient civilizations. And modern hydroponics has been used widely in the commercial greenhouses as well as at home for over 30 years.
In fact, it has been used widely to produce fresh vegetables in commercial greenhouses as well as at home.
If you’re just getting started with hydroponics, or you’re looking to hone and your knowledge and skills, you came to the right place.
Keep reading to get to know the main types of hydroponic systems and how they work, and what plants you can start planting using hydroponics.
Benefits of Hydroponic Gardening
As you’d imagine, growing plants without using any soil has numerous advantages. These include:
Optimizes space – Combining hydroponics with vertical farming maximizes space, leading to greater output per square meter.
Water conservation – While hydroponics uses water, it’s less than what you require for soil farming. In fact, some plants use 98 percent less water than in traditional farming methods.
Higher yields – By creating ideal growing conditions, plants in hydroponic systems get exact nutrients, leading to higher yields. A hydroponic greenhouse can produce almost 240 times what you’d get from other farming methods.
No soil needed – The world has lost more than half of its nutrient-rich topsoil in the last 150 years. Soil is also facing increased degradation due to erosion, harmful farming chemicals, compaction, etc., leading to lower yields and plant diseases. Hydroponics sidesteps that.
Faster plant growth and predictability – Plants grow 30-50 percent faster with hydroponics farming because they get all the necessary nutrients. Farmers also have the option of growing foods off-season because you control the growing conditions. Indeed, you can grow and harvest strawberries in the dead of winter with hydroponic farming.
Is it viable to have hydroponic cultures in your kitchen?
Yes, this is possible, and that’s for a variety of reasons.
First, you need to keep in mind that you are using a nutrient-rich water solution and you ditch the regular dirt medium.
The fact that you just use water full of nutrients to grow your veggies means you can still get some amazing results without having to worry about any problems or anything like that. It just makes a lot of sense to use this type of approach, especially in a kitchen.
Growing regular plants may bring in lots of dirt and nuisance, and that’s why you need to find the very best hydroponic cultures on the market.
You need to give this a shot as much as you can!
Should you get a hydroponics kit?
With the hydroponics kit, you get all the stuff you need and so much more in a comprehensive package.
That’s what you need to adapt and adjust in meaningful ways, and the experience will be second to none in that perspective.
Also, you need to understand that not all plants are suitable for such an approach. Some of them will attract bugs and pests in general, whereas citronella, for example, will keep most of the pests away.
So, you must figure out which is the right approach and tackle that as fast as possible to get the best results.
What do you need for a DIY hydroponics solution?
If you go the DIY route, you have your work cut out for you. But thankfully there are plenty of options to consider yet again, so the value will shine no matter what.
- You want to start with an opaque container that can hold water
- If it has a lid too, that will be very good. Mesh pots are a necessity, the amount will differ for everyone based on the plants they grow and the container size
- You will also need a Rockwool grow cube. Growing solutions are a must for any hydroponics system
- Air stones and an air hose
- An aquarium air pump
- This is optional, but a syringe may be necessary at times depending on the situation too, so you must take your time with it.
What are other things you need to consider?
A good hydroponics container needs to have some sort of aeration. Getting some fresh air in your container will be very important for your plants.
It doesn’t matter where the hole is located, as long as it’s functional. You want to keep the sunlight of the container and the rainwater out.
Make sure that the air stones are placed adequately.
It’s important to sterilize the water with some chlorine bleach. You want to do everything you can to eliminate any intruders the best way that you can.
Ideally, you want to clean this with chlorine, wash it after that and let everything dry so you can use the hydroponics system.
After you fill up the container with water, you need to prepare the place for each plant. If you get already grown plants, things will be easier.
You just get those from pots, and then you remove some of the soil and transfer them to the hydroponics system.
In case you acquire these in the form of a seed, the seeds will usually have instructions on how to use them in a hydroponic system, so try to keep that in mind.
No matter the situation, you still get to protect the environment, so that’s a crucial aspect to consider.
Why should you grow your own vegetables?
There are many reasons why growing your own vegetables is a very good idea. You get to stay away from veggies that are grown using chemicals and other compounds that can cause you harm.
Nothing is better than growing your own vegetables and harnessing all those natural nutrients during your day to day life.
Of course, you still have to do some maintenance, but that doesn’t mean that you have to invest in some fancy tools if you don’t want to.
Each one of the hydroponic systems you use will require some plant maintenance from time to time.
So, you have to understand that this is not a one-time thing, you set up the system and wait. You also have to control the water levels, make some changes to them and also check on your plants.
But while this is a very challenging task at first, it can also be a very rewarding one once you start collecting your fully-grown, healthy veggies!
We found that having hydroponics systems in your kitchen makes a lot of sense.
The idea is to opt for the smaller kits, so you can easily move them around. Of course, the size of the hydroponics container needs to fit your kitchen.
You don’t want the system to be very large, and instead, you want to focus on making it smaller and simpler as you see fit. But rest assured that getting a good hydroponics kit will help you grow the desired vegetables without that much of an effort.
In the end, the results can be more than ok, it all comes down to make the right choice when you select the hydroponics kit.
An Introduction to Hydroponics Infographic
In this infographic, you’ll learn the fundamental details about hydroponics and all the basic knowledge to set up a year-round hydroponic garden of your own. Let’s start!
