Gardening is a hobby that can be adapted to almost any surroundings. Whether you’re living in an apartment, or you have a huge backyard you can practice some form of it. But, can you believe that you can grow plants even if you don’t have a lot of free space to plant and care for plants?
Hydroponics is a way to grow plants in a space where there is limited or no soil at all. So, if you’re interested in growing plants in a mineral nutrient solution, let’s take a look at the benefits of hydroponics!
What is hydroponic gardening?
Hydroponics is a method of gardening where instead of soil, mineral nutrient solutions are used to grow plants.
You can use either green nutrients (like fish waste and animal manure) or use chemical fertilisers.
So, how does hydroponics vs soil compare and is it worth the shot? Let’s take a look!
Benefits of hydroponics
Some of the biggest benefits of hydroponics include gardening in limited space, much better growth rate and, the best of all – it’s pollution free.
You can skip the traditional soil
Hydroponic gardening has no major disadvantages compared to growing plants in soil. Not only that you need more space when it comes to gardening with soil, but you also produce a lot more pollution with it.
Swapping soil for a growing medium makes it for the plant to access nutrients much easier. In return, the plant grows much faster than it would in regular soil.
No need for weeding
Anyone who’s spent any time gardening knows how time-consuming and annoying weeding can be. Hydroponics eliminates all of that.
As you’re growing plants in a medium and water solvent, weeds can’t appear. So, hydroponic gardening is saving you a lot of time that you can use to improve the health of your plants or grow your current garden.
You don’t need pesticides
While some gardeners prefer a greener way to deal with the pests on their plants, others go all in with pesticides.
Whatever your way is when it comes to dealing with pests, let’s admit it – you’d much more prefer if you didn’t have to deal with them at all.
And, we get you! Pests can be persistent and some pesticides can cost quite a bit. Hydroponics requires way fewer pesticides because of it greatly reducing the diseases that you can find plaguing soil-grown plants.
You do less work
Gardening can be a great stress-reliever, but sometimes the back-breaking work can be too much. Hydroponics, on the other hand, requires you to do less work, and you get more produce from your plants.
No trilling, weeding, cultivating and fumigation is required. So, you have more time and do less work while having more produce.
You grow more in less time
Hydroponics allows you to control every aspect of the surroundings that you grow your plants in. This ensures that your plants can grow two times faster than they would in normal soil.
Plants grown hydroponically can also have an all-year produce because they don’t depend on weather and seasonality.
You are the master of the pH levels in the soil
Improper pH levels of the soil can hurt any plant. And, pH is quite hard to control when you have all types of outside factors that affect it.
Hydroponics allows you to control the pH level, as you’re the one making the growing medium from scratch. This allows you to create the perfect growing environment for your plants.
Hydroponics is perfect for limited space
Not all of us have a lush backyard that we can use for growing all kinds of plants. Luckily, you can use hydroponics to grow any type of plant you want even if you live in an apartment.
Should you go with hydroponics instead of regular soil?
Well, it depends. Hydroponics may sound like a great substitute for soil, but you’ll still have to know how to take care after a plant.
The best advice we can give you is to give it a shot and see for yourself. The good thing is that you can start out small, with a single plant, and then decide if that’s your thing or not.
