What is Hydroponics? Things You need to know!

Table of Contents

Introduction

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. 

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. 

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.

What is Hydroponics?

From the first half of the word “hydroponics”, we can clearly interpret that this method makes use of water. 

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. 

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.

What we're talking about when we say "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. 

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. 

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.

What are the Pros and Cons of Hydroponics?

Now that we are aware about the concept of Hydroponics, let us have a look at certain Pros and Cons of this method.:

Pros:

  • The main advantage of Hydroponics is that you can grow plants anywhere and everywhere you want. This is because you do not need any form of soil.

 

  • According to various researches and studies, hydroponically grown plants generate  higher quality output when compared to those grown using traditional techniques.

 

  • Another advantage of Hydroponics is that it helps in conservation of water. This is because the amount of water used in this method is comparatively very less than cultivation on soil.

 

  • Under a Hydroponic setup, plants can be vertically stacked up. Hence, you can grow more plants in less space. This way, Hydroponics acts as a space-saver.

 

Cons:

  • The main disadvantage of Hydroponics is that it is an expensive technique in the initial stages. One has to set up a greenhouse, arrange containers, make the water pipe system, etc. All these things make the method costly in the initial period.

 

  • Plants grown in a Hydroponic setup need a lot of care. Certain failures like not giving sufficient amounts of water or not removing weeds, etc. can lead to dying of your plants.

 

  • Hydroponics systems require the availability of technology and expertise, which is not easily available in rural areas. Hence, it is difficult to implement this method in such areas.

 

  • Generally, a large number of plants are connected to the same water source in a Hydroponics system. In case any part of the system fails, it can lead to dying of a large number of plants collectively. 

Commercial Growers view on Hydroponics?

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:

  • This method makes less use of space as plants can be vertically stacked up. Hence, commercial growers can grow a higher number of plants in a limited amount of space.

 

  • Secondly, Hydroponics has proven to give greater yields as compared to traditional farming practices. Greater yields means greater profits for farmers. This makes the method more attractive to farmers.

 

  • In addition to greater yield, the quality of the yield is also observed to be superior to that of traditional techniques. 

 

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. 

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.

The Final Verdict

From the above details and analysis, we can safely say that Hydroponics  is a more effective method of growing plants than traditional gardening methods. 

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. 

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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