In the 21st century, with the spread of “Save the Environment”, the number of plant-lovers has significantly increased. More and more people now love to have gardens with green and colourful plants beside their homes. In fact, many people treat plants as if they were their own family members.Â
Such people take great pains to ensure that their plants are in good health. Ploughing, excavating, applying herbicides and insecticides, applying fertilizers, removing weeds, harvesting, and other typical operations are all necessary for plants to have a healthy existence.Â
All of this, though, is an extremely exhausting process. Furthermore, performing these duties under the blazing heat makes them more difficult and time-consuming.
What if we told you that you could avoid doing all of these things while still growing healthy, lush plants? It is true that it is conceivable. You can easily accomplish this with the help of hydroponics.
From the first half of the word “hydroponics”, we can clearly interpret that this method makes use of water.Â
The other half comes from the Greek word ‘ponos’ which means work. Collectively, it means’ ‘working water’. It is a method of growing plants, where liquid solutions or some inert medium play the role of soil.
With the application of this method, one no longer needs to go to the field and do tedious tasks like ploughing, digging, etc.Â
With hydroponics, all such tiring tasks relating to soil are eliminated. In addition, this method is implemented inside a greenhouse. Hence, you do not need to do gardening under the hot sun. Let us move ahead and learn about various other aspects of hydroponics.
In its most basic sense, hydroponics means growing plants without any soil. Instead of soil, liquid solutions are used that consist of added minerals and nutrients.Â
This solution does all the functions for the plant that are generally done by the soil. Since it involves growing plants, it is a form of horticulture, specifically hydroculture.
When you grow plants using such a method, the plants are said to be hydroponically grown. It is important to note that though hydroponics does not require soil, pesticides, etc., it requires a whole setup including pipes, containers, a greenhouse, lights, nutritious solution, etc.Â
However, once this setup is made, it eliminates the pain of gardening, ploughing, and digging under the hot sun.
In general, terrestrial and aquatic plants are cultivated with this technique. The liquid solution includes all the required nutrients, manure, and fertilizers, which facilitates the growth of plants. Hydroponics techniques are generally practiced within a greenhouse and sometimes make use of some inert medium. The inert medium acts as a catalyst in the process and facilitates better output.
Onions, tomatoes, strawberries, and cucumbers are examples of some plants grown using the hydroponics method.
Now that we are aware about the concept of Hydroponics, let us have a look at certain Pros and Cons of this method.:
Pros:
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Cons:
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Hydroponics has drawn a great degree of attention from the Commercial growers. People who get their livelihood from agricultural practices are often attracted to Hydroponics techniques. There are three main reasons responsible for this:
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Hence, the farmers get higher and better output with less effort and costs. The above three benefits help the commercial growers to generate higher profits.Â
Though the initial setup cost may be high, the costs incurred in future are significantly lowered. Hence, many farmers and traditional growers are attracted towards this method of farming.
From the above details and analysis, we can safely say that Hydroponics  is a more effective method of growing plants than traditional gardening methods.Â
Though you will have to make sufficient investment to set up a Hydroponic system, you get a lot of advantages like time saving, space saving, higher yield of plants, control on plant environment, etc. packed with it.Â
Hence, you no longer need to do gardening under the hot sun. We can clearly see that Hydroponics is beneficial not only for plants but also for the gardeners.
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