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Hydroponics Tutorial
A quick overview of indoor gardening with hydroponics.
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Hydroponics is NOT new!
Hydroponics gardening has existed for thousands of years... the Hanging Gardens
of Babylon used hydroponics! Grow flowers, foliage plants, or even fruits &
vegetables indoors...
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Hydroponics gardening is easy!
Plants and flowers use the nutrients (plant food) and water that
are in their soil, not the soil itself. Hydroponics systems
provide plants and flowers the nutrients and water they need,
without the mess of the soil. Did you know that soil carries
diseases and pests? Soil also seems to sprout weeds every time
you blink! Hydroponics gardening eliminates these problems... no
soil, no diseases, no pests, no weeds!!!
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In addition to providing your family with a safe, fun, and productive hobby,
growing your own hydroponics vegetables eliminates the possibility of illness
or death
associated with e. coli bacterial outbreaks from store bought veggies. You'll
also be avoiding pesticides, and harsh chemical fertilizers that are applied to
the main stream vegetables. When you look at all of the benefits of indoor
gardening, all costs associated with buying and maintaining an indoor garden are
really quite small.
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Large root system with
small plant from
growing in
soil.
Small roots with large
plant from growing in
hydroponics! |
Hydroponics gardening is more efficient
because your plants' roots can reach the food and water
without having to burrow through the soil, which can
really wear out a plant. Your plants and flowers will
grow more quickly because the nutrients are already
dissolved in the water - they don't have to 'root' them
out!!!
And, since they don't have to work as
hard to get what they need, their roots don't have to
grow as much, which lets the plant itself grow bigger
faster and with less effort.
Hydroponics gardening has been used
primarily by commercial growers (farmers) for ages, but
now Growco Indoor Garden Supply can offer you the same
reliable convenience right in your own home! Most of our
hydroponics systems come as a complete package,
nutrients and all, ready for your plants and flowers to
move into!
Growco even gives you illustrations in
the instructions for setting up your hydroponics
arrangement, and it only takes a couple of minutes to
start your own indoor garden!
Once you've got your plants and flowers
moved in, you only need to add water and nutrients to
keep them growing like wild fire.
Our hydroponics systems range from
shelf-size clear up to greenhouse size. If you just need
grow room supplies, go here.
And in the summer, you can pick up your
whole garden and move it outside. In the winter, keep it
in your bedroom, your basement, your kitchen, your
living room, or anywhere else you want. If the room
doesn't have enough windows, just add a
grow light, and your plants and flowers will have all
of the sunshine they need to thrive.
Need to know more about grow lights? Here's a high-intensity discharge lighting (HID)
tutorial...
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Types of hydroponic techniques:
Ebb & Flow is probably the most popular type of
recirculating hydroponics for hobbyists. This is a
simple method of flooding a top tray with water from the
reservoir below. The water/nutrient solution pumps up
into the plants root area and holds there for as long as
you set the timer for (usually 15 minutes, 1-6 times a
day), then it drains back through the pump into the
reservoir. This is a very easy automated form of
hydroponics. As with any hydroponics, you should drain
and refill with fresh nutrient solution at least once
every couple of weeks. Our most popular Ebb & Flow
systems are: CAP
Ebb & Gro, Titan
Flo-n-gro, and
American
Hydroponics Econo-tray systems. Find these, and
other ebb & flow hydroponics systems
here.
Top-Feed-Drip is very popular with rockwool/stonewool
lovers. This is probably the most widely used commercial
method of hydroponics nutrient delivery. In
top-feed-drip systems, you apply the nutrient solution
to the plants by timed release through drip-lines that
are arranged at the base of each plant. Most tray-type
Ebb & flow systems can easily be converted to
top-feed-drip by simply adding some plumbing and drip
emitters. Our best selling top-feed-drip system is
American
Agritech's Turbogarden with top-feed-drip. Take a
look at top-feed-drip hydroponics systems
here.
Deep water culture, a.k.a. Passive, is nothing
new, but it has recently become a very popular method
for growing big plants fast. There are many variations
on deep water culture systems, some being hybrid systems
with big pumps and aggressive water movement, other
systems using separate containers for each plant, and
some systems have multiple plants in sharing a single
container. The common theme to all deep water culture
systems is that the plants roots are hanging directly
into the nutrient solution, and a healthy dose of air
bubbles is being pumped into the solution. Our best
selling deep water culture systems are the
Current Culture Systems, and the
Emily's Garden.
This is also popular with do-it-yourselfers who build
their own systems using: 5 gallon buckets, "net pot
bucket lids", and a big air pump/airstone combo. You'll
find the deep water culture hydroponics systems
here.
Aeroponics is a very specialized form of
hydroponics. This is the delivery of a fine mist of
nutrient solution to the plants hanging root system.
Because the plants roots are never fully submerged in
water, the plants get more oxygen to the root system,
and grow very fast as a result. As with top-feed-drip
systems, it has become very popular to cross aeroponics
with other methods of hydroponics nutrient delivery,
creating many hybrid systems. Our best selling
aeroponics systems are the
Apollo Systems,
and the Aeroflo2
Systems from General Hydroponics. Specialized
aeroponics systems for plant cloning are
here.
General aeroponics systems
here. This is just a brief summary of this
intriguing gardening process. Wikipedia (the free
encyclopedia) has an in-depth look at hydroponics
history and techniques.
Take a look. |
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