Do you have a fertile land or large extent of land to grow your crops? If you don’t have you need not to worry. Because here is a solution, “hydroponics”. Have you ever heard the word hydroponics? What comes to your mind when you hear it? Yes, you are correct. The word “hydro” giving meaning of water is somewhat familiar to us. It can be understand by most of you. So if I say simply what hydroponics is, it is a method of growing plants using water as the growing medium instead of soil.
Hydroponics is a modern agricultural system that uses water as a medium of growing vegetables. In here uses a water medium rich with nutrients.
If you are going to start a hydroponic cultivation system or if you are a student you would like to know well about hydroponic method of cultivation. Therefore, through this I am going to enhance your knowledge by providing some basics pertaining to the hydroponics.
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Growing Medias for Hydroponics
| Perlite |  |
|---|---|
| Clay Pellets |  |
| Rock Wool |  |
| Peat Moss |  |
| Vermuculite |  |
| Coconut Coir |  |
| Oasis Cubes |  |
| Start Plugs |  |
| Rice Husks |  |
In this method the roots are allowed to contact directly with the nutrient rich water solution and also proper aeration is allowed for the roots.
Hydroponic Nutrient Solution
I think that now you can understand that the hydroponic nutrient solution plays major role in the hydroponic system. Because now you may aware that all the nutrients needed by the crops are provided by this hydroponic solution.
When talking about this solution you have two options. That means you can either buy premixed nutrient solution, which is easy or you can make this solution by your own.
For the crops to grow well you have to provide all the nutrients needed by the crops. These includes mainly nitrogen (N), potassium (K), phosphorous (P), calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), sulphur (S), iron (Fe), manganese (Mn), copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), molybdate (Mo), boron (B) and chlorine (Cl).
You have to provide all those nutrients if you need your plant to grow very nicely. If you are preparing your nutrient solution by your own you have to pay very especial attention whether your solution contain all the above nutrients or not.
If you go for premixed solutions these solution contain some nutrients that are not essential plant nutrients that means these nutrients are essentially not needed by the crops but if present they are beneficial. Some of these nutrients are nickel (Ni), silica (Si), selenium (Se) and cobalt (Co).
Another important thing about this nutrient solution that you need to know is the indicators that you need to measure. These includes electrical conductivity (EC), total dissolved solids (ppm) and pH.
Importance Of Hydroponic Cultivation
As you already know the hydroponics system is of great advantage for the places where there are no soil suitable for cultivation. Imagine that you are living in a place where there is a rock bed in your garden where ploughing or digging the soil cannot be done, then the best option for you is to use the hydroponic technique. But not only for them hydroponics is well suitable for all the growers.
If you want to have best quality products then hydroponics is a brilliant choice. When we are using this technique we can produce juiciest, tastiest and largest plants. We can have a high profit as the demand for this type of products will be very high. So try this method of hydroponics.
Advantages Of Hydroponics
Hydroponics have many advantages if you are going to start a one.
As I mentioned earlier also hydroponics is more suitable for the places where there are less and infertile land for growing crops. If you want to see your crops growing very fast that means if you want to make your plants growth rate high then this is the best choice. Because the plants grown in a hydroponic system have high growth rate than the crops that are grown in the soil medium. If I am to say it using a number the plants grown hydroponically are 25% faster and about 30% produce is given than the soil grown plants.
And also for your happiness I can say that this gives largest, tastiest and juicy products than the soil counterpart. But one and important thing for you to keep in mind that you can have these benefits only if you control your nutrients, pH and the EC level in the desired level by the plants that you are growing.
Another point that will definitely like to hear by eco-friendly growers are, the pollution caused by this system is less as no runoff of water in the soil and this generates less wastes.
In addition you may wonder to hear that this method consumes less water than the soil based plants as the system is enclosed and it helps to reduce the evaporation.
Disadvantages Of Hydroponics
You know well that each and every thing has its good and bad things. This is common to hydroponics also. But if you are a wise and a technically competent one you do not have to worry.
The first most disadvantage that arise with this making it less popular is the initial cost of starting this system. This is expensive than that of the soil counterpart and it adds fear to growers to start a hydroponics cultivation, because if anything happens the loss is higher.
The other thing is when practicing this is large scale it is bit time consuming and you have to use your technical knowledge well in order to become success.
Another disadvantage is time taken to manage these crops are higher as you have to check your EC, pH and nutrients in your solution on daily basis. As well as you have check out your motor that pumps water too.
But actually these are not really disadvantages. If you are careful enough and if you dedicate and manage your hydroponic system well then these facts can be easily removed making you a successful hydroponic cultivator.