Have you ever noticed that the vegetables in your nearby supermarkets and grocery stores always look as if picked right off the farms?
Modern commercial farming techniques use huge amounts of pesticides and other harmful chemicals to speed up the yield growth and to keep them sales-ready for longer.
As an attempt to avoid consuming such items, people nowadays prefer to grow the essential veggies in their home gardens.
If you're someone researching building your home garden, then you'd have come across the concept of hydroponic farming.
To help you understand the concept of hydroponic farming better, today we bring some of the key benefits of this method.
What is Hydroponic Farming?
Hydroponic farming refers to the method of growing plants/crops without the use of soil.
The concept of hydroponic farming follows the idea that plants don't depend on the soil itself for survival and growth. Instead, it only uses the soil to consume the nutrients and water in it.
Instead of the traditional method of adding fertilizers and other compounds to the soil to nurture the plants, hydroponic nutrients are added in the form of liquid to the hydroponic system.
What Are the Benefits of Hydroponic Farming?
Now that you know in detail about the concept of hydroponic farming, let us now go through some of its key benefits.
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Ability to Grow Plants Anywhere:
One of the key highlights of hydroponic farming is that it can be followed anywhere and everywhere. Regardless of whether you're trying to farm on your balcony, or your rooftop, or even in harsh conditions with extreme temperatures, you can follow this farming concept everywhere. What makes this possible is that as the nutrients and water are directly provided to the roots, the roots don't need to grow deep in search of soil-based nutrients and water.
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Better Yields:
Plants grown in hydroponic environments are constantly or periodically provided with the necessary nutrients and other resources. Thus, they have been proven to offer better yields than traditional farming techniques. In fact, plants grown in hydroponic systems mature about 25 percent faster than soil-based plants and produces at least twice the yield.
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Fewer Resource Requirements:
Resources such as water, nutrients, etc. are directly provided to the plants instead of generically adding them to the surrounding soil. As a result, hydroponic farming systems use fewer resources when compared to traditional techniques.
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Less Influence of Surrounding Climate:
With traditional farming, the yield is dependent on the surrounding climate to receive necessary nutrients, water, etc. However, in a hydroponic farming system, the impact of environment-based factors on the system is minimal.
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Easy to Control Negative Factors:
In a hydroponic environment, you can easily external negative factors that affect your plant growth and yield. Are pests affecting your plants? All you need to do is shield your plants, or if possible, relocate them to a better environment.
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Environment-Friendly:
According to the WWF, commercial agriculture has contributed heavily to the erosion of about half of Earth's soil in the past 150 years. Newer farming techniques such as hydroponics also help in reducing our impact on the environment.
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No Weed Trouble:
"Weed" refers to unwanted crops that grow along with the main crop. These crops aren't useful and also consume the nutrients and other resources in the soil, which are meant for the main crop. Weeds don't grow in a hydroponic system, thus giving you one less thing to worry about.
What More to Know About Before Going Hydroponic?
Hydroponic farming does sound like a very interesting concept to grow our essential vegetables and plants right within the limitations of our living space.
However, there are many factors you need to consider before you begin hydroponic farming.
To begin, there are different types of hydroponics, such as wick, aeroponic, drop, flood & drain, etc.
Then, you need to research the type of crop/plants to grow, the nutrients it requires, and other efficient ways to grow your hydroponic plants.
You may be interested in: How to Set Up Your First Indoor Garden
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