Why should you grow your plants with hydroponics? Well, the simple answer is: You can grow almost anywhere.
Why you want to grow is your own business. I grow a lot of my own produce with hydroponic systems; I can control what I put into my plants and know what I’m getting at harvest. It’s a labor of love, quite honestly. I’m not some random liberal hippie, or a right wing extremist. I’m just Gary, the guy who likes food. By the way, if you are a random liberal hippie or right-wing extremist…no disrespect intended; to each their own.
Anyway, like I said, I’m Gary, the guy who likes food. When I first started out growing my own tomatoes about 10 years ago, it was outside. I had some awesome organic tomatoes that just tasted so much better than store-bought that it made me really want my own garden. I didn’t have a lot of space but I planted in the back yard anyway.
Apparently I did it all wrong. Tomato seeds need to be prepared a certain way. I just took a bunch of seeds from the tomatoes and planted them. I watered the soil and waited. And waited. And watered. And waited. *sigh*
I’ll tell you how to cultivate tomatoes later. Suffice-it-to-say, I did it wrong. Anyway. Then I went out and bought a bunch of other seeds and planted those. I ended up overcrowding my garden, (my eyes were bigger than my small patch of land).
After a couple of crops I decided I needed a bar-b-cue pit more than a garden so after the last harvest, I gave up on my garden.
A couple years went by and I saw a clip on the Web about hydroponic gardening. Since I had an extra room in the house I decided to give it another go.
I didn’t make a lot of mistakes this time, because it was pretty straight forward. I wasn’t perfect by any stretch, but I did manage to eek out a nice harvest of peppers.
I was hooked. The benefits of hydroponics are:
- Grow almost anywhere
- Plants grow quicker than in soil
- Greater control of what your plants are made of
- Higher yielding harvests
- Less water used
- Year round harvests
- Higher electric bills if you’re using artificial lighting
- Hydro systems can get expensive
- Typically more work involved, (but not that much more).
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