 | Hydroponics is really a means of growing plants in nutrient water without using soil. Instead of soil a non-reacting medium is employed such as perlite, gravel, or even the husk of coconuts. It was known as early as the 18 century that plants absorb their minerals in water as ions. The soil in traditional growing provides a nutrient reservoir but doesn't actually contribute to plants growth. Water dissolves the minerals inside the plants soil enabling the plants for their services. In hydroponics the minerals essential for plants growth are artificially dissolved within the water making soil unnecessary. You'll be able to grow almost any soil based plant using hydroponics. Hydroponics is really a promising field that there are much research into different methods in the academic community.
The initial book ever published on hydroponics was published in 1627. Then, water cultivation soon became a popular technique. Experiments were done along with 1699 it was found that plants grown in mineral water grew less rapidly then plants grown in plain water. This is due to the dissolved ions within non-pure water. By 1842 scientists had published a summary of nine elements considered to be responsible for plant growth along with the results of which generated what is known as modern hydroponics. At first they used soilless cultivation and grew terrestrial plants while using nine essential elements. It quickly spread throughout academia and became an area of hot research. Among the first achievements of hydroponics was done by Dr. Gericke at the University of Berkley. He were able to create tomato plants that grew close to 25 feet tall. At the time this was considered only possible because of the usage of hydroponics. He claimed that hydroponics would revolutionize growing. Only when he were alive today to see how it has. He wrote the sunday paper in 1940 called the Complete Help guide to Soilless Growing which had become the go to guide on hydroponics of their day; although, at first he refused to publicly reveal his secret. As a result of extravagant nature of his claims several scientists go about reviewing his work. At first they found that soilless growing had not been better than soil growing. They learned that the yield of crops were restricted by other factors other than minerals, for example light. The research overlooked many of the important factors that make hydroponics benefit plants. Namely that hydroponics allows the plants roots to seize more oxygen. During this time period mineral solutions were developed called Hoagland solutions were developed and in use today. Hydroponics was adopted on Wake Island early on to grow vegetables high was no soil. Recently hydroponics has become thoroughly researched by NASA. While using advancement of modern hydroponics along came advances in grow lights. To start with the introduction of HPS (high pressure sodium) grow lights allowed plants being grown indoors. They produced high light output and allowed plants to mature fully. Recently the advances of LED grow lights initiated a policy of to revolutionize the field of hydroponics. They completely take away the heat issues that happen with HPS lights and will reduce electrical costs by around two thirds. grow lights |
