Table Of ContentHYDROPONICS GARDENING
How to build your greenhouse and diy hydroponics garden. A safe guide to
create your garden using hydroponics growing systems in tubes, pots and
other containers.
HYDROPONICS GARDENING
DIY HYDROPONICS GARDENS
Introduction
CHAPTER ONE
What is Hydroponics Gardening?
Why Hydroponics?
CHAPTER TWO
How Plants Grow
CHAPTER THREE
Hydroponic Herb Gardening
CHAPTER FOUR
Setting Up Your Own Hydroponic System
CHAPTER FIVE
Hydroponic Grow Tents
CHAPTER SIX
Different Hydroponics Systems
CHAPTER SEVEN
Selection of the Best Hydroponics Medium
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Roles of Plant Root
CHAPTER NINE
Aeroponics Systems
CHAPTER TEN
Hydroponic Culture Systems
HYDROPONICS GROWING SYSTEM
Introduction
CHAPTER ONE
Systems of Hydroponic Culture
CHAPTER TWO
Organic Media Soilless Culture
CHAPTER THREE
Hydroponic Lights
CHAPTER FOUR
Hydroponics Supplies
CHAPTER FIVE
Hydroponics Grow Box
CONTAINER GARDENING FOR BEGINNERS
CHAPTER ONE
Hydroponic Cropping
CHAPTER TWO
Hydroponic Crops
CHAPTER THREE
Tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill)
CHAPTER FOUR
The Hydroponic Greenhouse
DIY HYDROPONICS GARDENS
How to build quickly your greenhouse and self sustainable garden with
hydroponics growing system. A complete guide to create your perfect diy
hydroponic garden.
Introduction
There are three aspects that many people associate with gardening: soil, a
large space and hard work. Although this may be partially true, there is an
alternative way to develop a lush and profitable garden without at least two of
these being required. This is called gardening with hydroponics. Many might
even claim it is less laborious than a typical garden. There is no digging,
bending, weed tending which sounds better for me. Hydroponic gardening is
a way to grow plants without using soil. Hydroponic plants are grown in
solutions which are water dependent. These water solutions contain the
majority of the minerals and salts required for healthy plant production.
Hydroponic plants can usually be grown directly in the mineral solution
alone. Alternatively, plants can also be planted in an inert growing medium
such as coconut fibres, rockwool, growing rock, etc. Hydroponic growth has
not only become a common pastime hobby; it has become a profitable
enterprise. When proper mastery of the skills and techniques of hydroponic
gardening, you can literally grow any plant as you wish using hydroponic
process.
Using the hydroponic method, you can easily install a hydroponic garden or
greenhouse inside or on the rooftop of your home. When large-scale use of
hydroponic gardening technique can become a very effective way of growing
commercial crops.
Like growing plants with traditional soil cultivation, there is no need for the
roots system of hydroponic plants to search for nutrients and minerals in the
soil. In the nutrient solution, all the much-needed nutrients and minerals are
given, readily to be supplied to the root system. The plants will then
concentrate on the top growth in order to produce more flowers and fruits,
rather than exerting energy to look for nutrients.
In hydroponic growing, the root systems often supply oxygen and carbon
dioxide to the nutrient solution to improve the absorption of nutrients. This
assists in fostering higher growth rate and healthy plant growth.
Besides that, when growing plants using hydroponic techniques, you'll also
have less problem with plant diseases and pest problems. As most plant
diseases and pest problems relate to soil use.
CHAPTER ONE
What is Hydroponics Gardening?
The idea of growing your beautiful plants indoors using a method called:
hydroponics is something which has been buzzing in the growing culture.
Sure, Hydroponics is something that isn't ideal for those of you who actually
garden to get down into the dirt and dig around in the manure, but for those
of us who don't have vast tracts of arable property, or any property at all,
hydroponics starts to sound like a much more enticing deal.
Why Hydroponics?
• Hydroponic Gardens are lightweight and can be built anywhere.
• They use and reuse water over and over again and need limited extra water
to operate properly.
• The need to look out for garden pests such as aphids, caterpillars, potato
beetles and fungi is removed.
• They are highly productive plant growers-plants grow very quickly in a
hydroponic system.
• They're versatile and most systems are easy to automate, requiring minimal
input from you. In a hydroponic system, any plant can grow (or begin to
grow) regardless of the time of year, or how north or south you are.
There are other reasons why one should choose hydroponics over a
conventional greenhouse, but there are negative ones as well. For example,
many people equate hydroponic gardening with the growth of some illicit
plants that are exploited as controlled drugs in general. It seems like every
week in a nice neighborhood there's some big house being bustled by the
cops with hundreds of compact fluorescent fixtures, water sprayers,
containers, rising soil, extracting nutrients and plants. Like everything
though, a small number of people will ruin a good thing for everyone else.
In fact, the main benefit to Hydroponic Gardening is to offer the ability to
grow plants to people who would otherwise be unable to grow. It is very
popular for avid gardeners to start their tender young plants in a hydroponic
system, and then move those plants after the ground thaws to their gardens.
In particular, orchid growers seem to gravitate toward the hydroponic
growing systems. The fascination with orchids that many people have, is
serious. This fascination, combined with the disappointment of not being able
to fulfill the orchid's exacting needs in the unaltered back yard of a
individual, leads many to try to grow in greenhouses or in a hydroponic
system.
In addition the hydroponics technology is everywhere. In many applications
light timers are used to save energy, just as they are used for plants in
hydroponics to time the light cycle. The compact fluorescent, metal halide,
T5 and other forms of extreme lighting used in Hydroponics are often used
on aquarium systems that aim to fulfill challenging freshwater plant life
needs or fragile corals and anemones. Water drip systems are widely used in
greenhouses and in large-scale cultivation, as well as in outdoor gardening
and landscaping. Plant nutrients have been in production for quite a long
time-as long as people in partly depleted soils have attempted to cultivate
non-native plants. PH meters are used in science, and again in all types of
gardening. If we didn't use a PH tester, apart from expensive trials and error,
we wouldn't know where the acidic soils to grow grapes were located.
Hydroponics developed out of a combination of need and desire. We want
fresh tomatoes, we want fresh basil, we need to cultivate them somewhere,
because we no longer all live in farms. The more we learn about wax-coated
plants and chemicals, the more we think about these contaminants getting
into our children and ourselves, and we want to be sure about our food
supplies in some way. Although thinking that we should go from buying our
food in the supermarket to growing it all in our apartments is unrealistic, it's
good to know that we can supplement some of our items in this way. For
example, specialty sauces or your own personal herb garden for fresh
cilantro, basil, and oregano are a tempting reason for going Hydroponic.
Hydroponics may not be your cup of tea for the die-hard, natural gardens
only humans. If you're using plants native to your area, you'll just sow your
seeds and let nature take its course. However, waiting for spring is too far off
for those in northern climes. Such people admire the plant life that
technology will bring home.
Many people mistakenly believe that the art of growing plants successfully
without using soil, known as hydroponics, is a new technology. Leading
Hydroponics experts and suppliers, Great Stuff Hydroponics, aim to throw
some light on the origins of this ancient technique.
It is commonly thought, amongst gardening experts that the famous hanging
gardens of Babylon could be the earliest example of a complex use of
hydroponic techniques. Fresh water containing plenty of oxygen and
nutrients were used to keep plants alive without having any soil surrounding
their root structures. Other possible uses of hydroponics in the ancient world
have also been suggested within Aztec culture.
However, it was not until the middle ages when scientific knowledge about
the workings of plant life began to develop. In 1600, Jan Van Helmont
deduced that plants take their nutrients only from the rainwater, rather than
from the soil itself. He realized this because plant mass rises according to
plant growth over time however soil mass stays much the same. This paved
the way amongst scientists and chemists to find out more about exactly which
nutrients need to be present in water to promote healthy plant growth.
Then the English scientist, Joseph Priestly, discovered that plants
photosynthesize, converting carbon dioxide into oxygen, and that this process
is speeded up when the plant is exposed to bright sunlight. This was also an
important development regarding the lighting techniques which are now used
for commercial hydroponic growth.
By the mid 1800's as a result of much interest in the subject and many
experiments, a definitive list of minerals and nutrients needed by plants in
order to thrive had been developed, with nutrient solutions created by the
German botanist Wilhelm Knop.
The techniques of hydroponic growth, such as controlling the amount of
light, water and nutrients available to the plant, are ideally suited to growing
plants indoors. For this reason, in the early half of the twentieth century,
commercial greenhouse growers began to realize the potential of
hydroponics. Hydroponic plant growth uses only 1/20th of the water which
traditional (soil based) agriculture demands. Also, soil borne diseases and
virtually all pests are eliminated. These growth techniques are not only
environmentally friendly, using less water and reducing agricultural 'run off'
which would normally find its way into the water table, but it is also ideally
suited to arid climates. This was proven brilliantly during the war, when
American troops stationed on barren Wake Island in the Pacific, were able to
survive by growing fresh food hydroponically.
Dr. William Gericke perfected hydroponic techniques during the 1940's, and
even decided upon the name for them, amalgamating the Greek 'hydros'
