Hydroponic Gardening Blossoming in America After Nearly 40 Years

State-of-the-art "soilless" gardening techniques may have been developed in the 1960s, but the population of hydroponic gardeners in the United States has not waned in four decades, and has been dramatically increasing in recent years.
Hydroponic Gardening Blossoming in America After Nearly 40 Years
By Mark Hoerrner

There’s no need to wipe your feet after coming in from this garden. , the science of growing plants in a "soilless" nutrient solution, has piggybacked on the organic food movement to become a regular and fairly technical hobby among gardeners. The benefit of hydroponics is simple. It produces a larger, more organic yield that doesn’t face the soil-living pests that most crops face. It has become a popular way to grow vegetables in the backyard without tearing up the backyard completely, thus gardeners in land-starved areas like New York City can grow hydroponic gardens on rooftops, in postage-stamp sized backyards, and even on balcony areas overlooking busy city streets.

Though many people believe it was developed during the 1st century, it’s possible that hydroponic gardening was born even earlier. There are stories of Aztec cultures using a floating raft design in various lakes in Latin America as a way of growing crops to the point that when they were mature, some farmers would simply row the raft over to a marketplace and sell fruits and vegetables right off the vine. But the technology would not become prevalent in the U.S. until hundreds of year later, around 1925.

At the time, soil management was becoming quite a chore for large-scale crop production because it had to be replaced often or else be maintained by using large amounts of commercial fertilizer. The art of hydroponics saw considerable growth and research into nutrient methods over the next decade, but it would not be until the early 1960s, when plastics entered the scene, that the hobby really took off. Plastic components of greenhouses, irrigation, and bedding systems changed the face of hydroponics, and soon large-scale commercial production of growing systems hit the consumer market.

"You could really get taken back in those days," said Eve Masters, a hydroponic gardener who has been dipping into the hobby since 1968. The Charleston, SC, native, now living in New York City, bought into the craze early. "The systems were offered as something that would change the world," she said. "Advertisements said we were on the cusp of a complete rethinking of how we grew vegetables. It wasn’t the sweeping change they promised and I think a lot of people were bilked into buying these massive growing systems by people who weren’t really gardeners."

She said that at the time, her initial investment of $1,000 was probably overkill, but she and her husband had the time and money and were looking for a different way to spend their off time from their furniture business. "It was tough at first," Masters said, "but we eventually got the hang of it and started experimenting with different techniques. My husband and I really loved tomatoes and that seems to be one of the primary crops grown for hydroponics. There’s lots of information out there about it."

Tomatoes aren’t the only thing on the market, but each crop seems to have its own preferred growing method. Four growing situations are currently the most stable: ebb and flow, passive, nutrient channel, and the drip system:

  • Ebb and flow systems are much like they sound; a non-soil gardening medium is used and the nutrient solution is piped in every so often. This requires considerable equipment but produces an excellent yield.

  • Passive systems generally have slow growth but require the least maintenance of any of the hydroponic methods. Roots grow directly in the nutrient solution, but because the solution is not aerated in any way, roots get less oxygen and growth is subdued.

  • Nutrient channel systems allow multiple plants to grow in a nutrient solution channel where the tops of the roots are exposed to air and the bottoms of the roots are resting in the nutrient solution.

  • The drip system is similar to ebb and flow in that it uses a nutrient return and a potting medium, but uses a drip-irrigation method where the medium is constantly being charged by the nutrient solution.


Despite what sounds like a lecture in Botany 101, the science of growing plants in nutrient solutions has appealed to a broad audience. One of the reasons is pest control. While early hydroponic methods were fraught with pest problems, most pest issues are now controlled through the introduction of colonies of insect predators such as ladybugs, which can effectively keep crops pest-free. This keeps unwanted chemicals out of the growth systems and creates a more eco-friendly sustainable food source.

The many benefits of hydroponics have been big with baby boomers like Masters. "We looked at a lot of things we could do and really liked the idea of gardening," she said, "but a lot of gardening required heavy use of fertilizers, insecticides and other chemicals we knew were harmful to the earth. So hydroponics really appealed to us as a way to experience growing vegetables without completely poisoning the local soil."

Further, hydroponics has lent itself well to areas in which typical crop growth is nearly impossible, such as the arid lands in Arizona and Nevada. Many hectares of hydroponic gardens have been added in recent years in those areas, marking a public understanding of the technique. Though far from being a primary gardening method, as land becomes more and more scarce and as scientists search for new ways to feed a growing global population, hydroponics will surely be on the forefront of such endeavors. For additional information on hydroponics, check out http://www.hydroponicsonline.com.

By Buzzle Staff and Agencies
Published: 1/2/2006
 
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