Home Hydroponic Gardening

Even if you don't really have a large amount of space you can still do a bit of gardening. The best type of gardening that you could use for an area such as this is called hydroponic gardening. Simply put, this type of gardening is one that requires little or no dirt at all, and therefor one that will allow you to grow plants just about anywhere. Before you begin attempting home hydroponic gardening, it is a really good idea to understand the basics.

• What is it? In the simplest possible terms, hydroponics is where you grow vegetables and other kinds of plants without any soil. To offset this, typically an extremely rich nutrient infused solution is used instead which gives rise to the term hydroponics. Without the use of a soil medium you can find yourself faced with quite a few options or variants of hydroponics that will all produce some amazing plants.
• Types, or options. There are several different types of hydroponics that you can choose from, and a detailed analysis of each would cover enough information to fill a book. That being said, there are a few forms of hydroponics that are more common than others. One example of this is called NFT, which stands for nutrient film technique. In this particular type of hydroponics a thin layer of nutrient solution is run over the roots. Ebb and flow hydroponics is where you will temporarily flood your roots, and then allow the nutrients to slowly drain away. The one that you most often see in the movies is where you hang the plants in the air, and regularly mist or spray the roots. This last one is often called aeroponics, though it is a form of hydroponics.
• Benefits. Hydroponics has quite a few benefits, all of which can tempt you into trying it out even if you have plenty of soil on hand. One of the biggest reasons is that with hydroponics you can change, adjust, and simply tweak the food that is given to the plants as needed a whole lot easier than you can with soil gardening. What this basically means is that you have a whole lot more direct control over the whole growing process than you do with traditional growing.
• Drawbacks. As with most types of growing systems, you will also find some with hydroponic gardening as well. For example, if you decide to go with a prefabricated hydroponics kit, you can easily end up spending around $200. However if you are willing to take your time (since you can typically begin growing in any season) you can easily spend around $30. Another drawback with hydroponics compared to regular gardening is that hydroponic gardening will often require a bit more hands on work, and a bit more dedication to really make it work.

As you can see, home hydroponic gardening is really rather simple to understand, if not to initially implement. While hydroponic gardening may seem a little confusing at first, it is one type of gardening that is really friendly towards experimentation. So if you like to have some hands on control, and see relatively immediate results, then this is a type of gardening that you should seriously consider utilizing.