Hydroponic farming is taking the agricultural world by storm. It’s a way for a farm or garden to grow without soil. Instead, it uses an inert medium like organic coco coir and rock wool to support the root structure. This mechanism allows for more efficient plant growth by putting them in direct contact with the nutrient source.
What is Hydroponics?
Hydroponics derives from the ancient Greek words “hydro,” meaning water, and “ponics,” meaning labor. It’s an appropriate term because water does the work in this practice.
At its core, hydroponics is a way to grow plants. Instead of soil, hydroponics depends on a water-based, nutrient-rich solution. The idea may seem like a novel “hack.” However, it has been around for thousands of years. It has helped to enable population growth as the availability of arable land decreases.
The ability to replace soil with organic substances has provided benefits to growers everywhere. The roots of each plant come in direct contact with the nutrient solution. The increased access to oxygen further enables this compared to its soil counterpart.
Why Hydroponics?
Less water: farmers claim that some hydroponics crops use 90% less water than the same crop in traditional farming.
Less land: you can plant 10 times the amount of crops in the same space as traditional farming.
Zero Soil: grown in an inert medium without soil with perfectly balanced pH, nutrients and highly oxygenated water delivered to the roots.
Double growth: some crops can grow twice as fast in hydroponics due to getting exactly the correct amount of nutrients, water and oxygen.
Free Chemicals: hydroponically grown crops can use no pesticides or herbicide chemicals which significantly impact the environment and our bodies.
Types of Hydroponics Systems
Hydroponics is a complex mechanism. There are multiple techniques for ensuring the nutrient solution reaches your plants. These vary depending on the investment required and the level of complexity.
We’ve included six methods below:
Deep-water Culture
The Deep-water culture is the easiest type of hydroponic system to use in commercial.In a DWC system, you use a reservoir to hold a nutrient solution. The roots of your plants are suspended in that solution, so they get a constant supply of water, oxygen, and nutrients. To oxygenate the water, you use an air pump with an air stone to pump bubbles into the nutrient solution.
Figure<? (a) Deep Water Culture. (b) Drip System. (c) Aeroponics. (d) Nutrient Film Technique (NFT). (e) Ebb and flow. (f) Aquaponics.
Drip System
Drip hydroponic system can be recovery or non-recovery type system.
They are among the most common types of hydroponic systems in the world, especially for commercial growers.
the nutrient solution is pumped and dripped onto plants’ base through a small drip line. And with this line emitter
