Hydroponic Gardening

Hydroponics is simply growing plants without soil, bringing exactly what your plants need directly to where they need it. In a soil garden the soil serves as a place to anchor the plant and provide nutrients; in a hydroponic garden an inert medium is used. Inert media covers a wide range of things to grow your plants in - from coconut husk (coco) to clay pellets (hydroton) to rockwool cubes. What makes a hydroponic media work is allowing flow of both air and nutrient solution across a plants root zone.

At its simplest a hydroponic system can be a hand watered container with a mixture of coco and perlite. The coco will hold onto the nutrients until the plant can use them and the perlite creates pockets of air so that the plant can get plenty of oxygen in its root zone. Don't let the simplicity of this system decieve you, when done right, the advantages of giving the plant exactly what it needs lead to increased yield and a quicker time to harvest.