Growing mediums

There are various preferred growing mediums for the hydroponics gardener. Hydroponics in latin itself means water work. That means we remove the use of soil as a growing medium. The nutrients are applied directly to the roots through application in water.

Various growing mediums have their advantages and disadvantages.

Clay balls: They have good retention of water and due to the porosity they also retain good aeration. They have to disinfected the first time and between subsequent uses.

Perlite: Their operation is same as the clay balls, but due to their small size they tend to clog the automated systems.

Coco Peat: Cocopeat are the cheapest option of all. They are acid neutral. They have to be processed before using as they tend to contain high amount of salts.

Rock wool: They are the costliest growing medium. They were used as insulating in refrigerators previously. They tend to be alkaline, processing in acidic water is required before application.

Sand: Sand is the easiest available and the cheapest growing medium. They need continuous supply of water as they have low water retention capability. Aeration is never a problem with sand.

Common features of growing mediums.

• They are not needed to throw away the old medium (as is sometimes needed with soil), so the long-term expense is reduced.
• It is lightweight, so no hassle in removing large pots.
• Its numerous tiny air pockets provide a good source of oxygen and help hold moisture.

Newspaper pots as seed starter

How to use old newspaper pots for seed starting.

When stating seeds like tomatoes. People look for something to sow them. That way when the seedlings are larger they pull them out and sow them in proper deep pots. But when it comes to starting the seeds, people remember that they did not collect sufficient curd containers to fulfill their needs. Now here is a project that can help you in these places. Just by using old newspapers you can make as many seed starters as you like.
For that you will need find a small glass to use for the project, this will depend on what size seedlings you’re transplanting, but generally a small juice glass will be sufficient. Get a glass of straight sides, rather than one that is tapered.

Step 1: Cut it. Start by cutting a fully unfolded newspaper sheet into four equal strips, lengthwise.	Step 2: Roll it. Layer the strips, one on top of the other, creating a single strip of newspaper that’s four layers thick. Wrap the newspaper around the open end of the juice glass, leaving enough slack in the paper so that you can slide it off the glass in step 3
Step 3: Tuck it. Stuff the end of the newspaper into the opening of the juice glass, then slide the glass out of the newly formed tube. If you haven’t noticed the taper in your glass, this is the point at which it will become frustratingly apparent.	Step 4: Tamp it. Flip the juice glass around, insert the bottom of it into the tube, and tamp down to secure the base of the pot.
Step 5: Fill it. Remove the glass and fill the tube with potting mix.	Step 6: That’s it! Now you’re ready to transplant. The pots will hold together until you’re ready to plant your seedlings in the garden, though you’ll want to avoid moving them around too much in the interim. The newspaper can be composted when you’re finished with it.

How to Grow food in Cans

Here’s a little garden idea, an idea for a small garden, an idea for someone who knows little about gardening.

You have various cans lying around the house. Simple!

1. Take a food can.
2. Punch holes at the bottom.
3. Fill with mix of soil manure and coco-peat.
4. Water it thoroughly.
5. Put some seeds available on your kitchen counter. (Coriander, fenugreek, cucumber, bittergourd or anything else)
6. Place the can in sunlight or near the window.
7. Water regularly.

Who says canned food is bad for you?

History of hydroponics 2

1860 & 1861 marked the end of a long search for the nutrient source essential for plants' growing when two German botanists, Julius von Sachs and Wilhelm Knop delivered the first standard formula for the nutrient solutions dissolved in water, in which plants could be grown. This is the origin of "nutriculture". Today, it is called the water culture. By this method, plants' roots were totally immersed in a water solution that contained minerals of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), magnesium (Mg), sulfur (S) and calcium (Ca). They are now seen as the macro elements or macronutrients (elements required in relatively large amounts).

However, surprisingly enough, the method of plants growing in water and nutrient solution was only seen as experiments and merely used in the laboratory for plant research. 

Only when the greenhouse industry appeared that interest in the application of the nutriculture practice was eyed on in 1925. Researchers were caring about the issues of soil cultural methods with soil structure, fertility, and pests. They worked extensively to implement the benefit of nutriculture to large-scale crop production. 

In the early 1930s, W.F. Gericke of the University of California at Berkeley experimented with nutriculture to produce agricultural crops. Initially, he called this process aquaculture but dropped it after learning that this term has been used to describe aquatic organism culturing.
W.A. Setchell recommended the term "hydroponics" to Gericke in 1937. So the name goes.
The word was derived from two Greek words. Hydro (“water”) and Ponos (“labor”)— literally “water working.”

Gericke began publicizing the practice of growing plants in a water solution while he was at the U.C. Berkley.
However, he met up with the skepticism from the public and the university. His colleagues even denied the use of the on-ground greenhouses for his study.
Gericke declared them wrong by successfully growing 25-foot tall tomato plants in nutrient-filled solutions. 

The university still doubted his account of successful cultivation and requested two other students investigate his claim. The two performed the research and reported their findings in an agriculture bulletin 1938, titled "The Water Culture Method for Growing Plants Without Soil"
They confirmed the application of Hydroponics but concluded their research that crops grown with Hydroponics are no better than those grown on quality soils. However, they missed many advantages of agricultural Hydroponics in comparison with the cultural practice. The benefits that nowadays any hydroponic growers know by heart. 

The earliest well-known application of Hydroponic plant cultivation was in the early 1940s when Hydroponic was used on the Wake Island, a soil-less island in the Pacific Ocean. This island was used as a refueling stop for Pan American Airlines. The lack of soil meant that it's impossible to grow with the cultural method and it was incredibly expensive to airlift fresh vegetables. Hydroponics solved the issues excitingly well and provided fresh vegetable for the whole troops on this distant island. 

After World War II, Hydroponic cultivation was still used widely by the military. The U.S. army planted a 22 ha at Chofu, Japan.
In the 1950s, the soil-less method of Hydroponics expanded to a variety of countries including England, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, the USSR, and Israel.

History of hydroponics

Simply put, hydroponics is the practice of growing plants using only water, nutrients, and a growing medium. The word hydroponics comes from the roots “hydro”, meaning water, and “ponos”, meaning labor, this method of gardening does not use soil.

Sounds high tech and futuristic, right? It’s not.

However, this practice (which is so called Hydroponics) has actually been used for thousands of years.    

The famous Hanging Gardens of Babylon in around 600 B.C. are the earliest record of Hydroponics in use. 

These gardens were built along the Euphrates River in Babylonia. Since the region's climate was dry and rarely saw the rain, people believe that the ancient Babylonians used a chain pull system for watering the garden plants.
In this method, water was pulled from the river and flowed up along the chain system and dropped to the steps or landing of the garden. 

Other records of Hydroponics in the ancient times were found with the floating farms around the island city of Tenochtitlan by the Aztecs in the Mexico in the 10th and 11th century. And in the late 13th century, the explorer, Marco Polo noted in his writing that he saw similar floating gardens during his traveling to China.

It was not until 1600 that there were recorded scientific experiments done on plants growth & constituents. Belgian Jan Van Helmont with his experiment indicated that plants obtained substances from water. However, he failed to know that plants also need carbon dioxide and oxygen from the air.

John Woodward followed to study the growth of plants using water culture in 1699. He found that plants grew best in water that contained the most soil. So, he concluded that it was certain substances in the water derived from soil that led to the plant growth, rather than from the water itself. 

There were several following studies done until 1804 when De Saussure proposed that plants were composed of chemical elements absorbed from water, soil, and air.
Boussignault, a French chemist, went on to verify this proposition in 1851. He did an experiment to grow plants in an insoluble artificial media including sand, quartz, and charcoal without soil. He used only water, media, and chemical nutrients. And he found that plants need water and get hydrogen from it; the dry matter of plants contains hydrogen plus carbon and oxygen which comes from the air; plants consist of nitrogen and other mineral nutrients.

Basic Hydroponics

Hydroponics is a branch of horticulture, which is a method of growing plants without soil by using mineral nutrient solutions in a water solvent. Terrestrial plants may be grown with only their roots exposed to the mineral solution. The roots may be supported by an inert medium, such as coco-peat or rock-wool.

The nutrients used in hydroponic systems can come from various sources. These include, but are not limited to, byproduct from fish waste, duck manure, or purchased mineral salts.

Why hydroponics?

I was introduced to hydroponics by my father who was a hobby gardener. He brought a book on hydroponics from the local library. We started experimenting with chemicals bought from the local supplier. Getting little or no success at first. Slowly started getting success with the formulations. Got the concepts of hydroponics then. Left home for job and got the touch from hydroponics. Now that I have my family, was thinking a year back about the current pesticide problem and how to provide good healthy food for my kid. Recalled the things about hydroponics and thought to give it a try. Lucky for me, now I did not have to make the nutrients by hand. Found some great suppliers who are now friends. Getting good response from those nutrients. Will share my experiments and many other things about hydroponics.

Hydroponics101

This blog is intentionally created for teaching people to grow food at home. Considering the number of pesticides that the store bought vegetables and fruits come with, mere washing the food doesn't help in any way.

An excerpt from an online journal:From 2016 to 2017, spinach jumped up six spots to become the second “dirtiest” produce you can buy, right behind strawberries.Of the 708 non-organic spinach samples collected in 2015, a whopping 96.6 percent had traces of at least one pesticide, and 13.6 percent contained at least ten. For comparison, only 81 percent of lettuce samples contained pesticides, and just 1.1 percent had traces of ten or more.

Here we will publish about anything and everything about hydroponics. So, keep a watch, learn, implement and enjoy healthy food.

My credibility:
About me: https://www.thebetterindia.com/163293/hydroponic-garden-home-plastic-bottle-pune-news/
Me: