What is Hydroponics?

The name “Hydroponics” was produced from a latin word which stands for “Working Water”. To many of us, it in reality means growing plants without dirt by furnishing all needed nutrients in the plant’s water supply.

Contrary to  soil gardening, with hydroponics, there’s no need for a shovel, hoe, or plow for planting and harvesting crops. After a good deal  of researching and investigating with soiless gardening, scientists discovered a method consisting of combining a chemical mix with water, placing the plant seeds in plastic tubings filled with some sort of soil-like material (growing medium), and inserting these tubes through a cardboard placed directly above the chemical solution. When scientists found this new and easy way to raise plants, farmers and gardeners started to grow more of their crops hydroponically. Since then, both farmers and scientists been experimenting with different techniques of hydroponics to discover a process which works best for them.

Nowadays, there are hundreds of different ways of hydroponic gardening. In creating a system one must debate:

* The hydroponic grower/hydroponic systems
* The watering system
* The media
While the system may vary, the basic needs of the different hydroponic systems remain the same.

History of Hydroponics.

Experimenting with plant nutrients began over 300 years ago. An English scientist, named John Woodward, experimented with plant life nutrients. He wanted to know whether plants got their nutrients from the soil or the water. He started out with plants in water and slowly added soil to the water daily. He ascertained that the plants improved in size and health. He reasoned that it was the soil, and the water which provided the nutrients for the plants.

However, his findings contradicted those of the farmers. Farmers thought that the soil only offered stability for the plants to take root on to. This belief was established on their experiences with droughts. Without water, the crops died, no matter how fertile in nutrients the ground was.

This was the start of many more experiments on plant nutrition. Breakthroughs and new wonderings which came after Woodward’s investigations, contributed to what we now recognise as the science of hydroponics.

Today, many of the different techniques of hydroponic gardening derives from the ideas of Dr. Gerike, a plant professor at the University of California at Davis. Dr. Gerike became renowned with producing tomato plants 25 feet tall through his process of soilless gardening. In fact, Dr. Gerike was the individual who named the science of soilless gardening, “hydroponics.”

Hydroponics, growing and cultivating plants without soil, has been in existence since ancient civilization. The Egyptians, Inca Indian tribes, the Aztecs, and the Babylonians are illustrations of ancient cultures which exercised hydroponic gardening without even realizing it,way before the word “hydroponics” was ever dreamt up. Although many of us believe of hydroponics as a relatively new method in agriculture, our ancestors, in their endeavours to always improve their technology in agriculture, have already been working and learning whatever their gardens could teach them, including soiless gardening. There, however, remains a good deal to be learned in the science of hydroponic gardening. Because of its affordable cost and easy workload, hydroponics captures the interest of many gardeners. Fresh methods in hydroponic gardening are always being explored and will continue to be studied by other gardeners.